Part 26 (1/2)
The sky was filled with enormous blossoms of violet, blue, and green light, crisscrossed by soaring flares tracing lines of white and gold. The music reached a grand finale of flourishes and the Emperor on the palace steps some fifty ells away rose from his throne and stood with his arms outstretched. The crowd began to chant: ”Denombo! Denombo! Denombo!”
Prince Tolivar unfastened the cord that had bound the sack to his back and drew forth the long narrow box with the Star emblazoned on its lid.
”Open it,” the sorcerer said, ”and place the coronet inside.”
The boy's jaw tightened. ”Not until you free my mother!”
Orogastus lifted his hand in a brief gesture. Six men dressed in black feathers, having weapons of the Vanished Ones protruding from the openings of their cloaks, emerged from the oblivious mob. They flanked the two Star Men in charge of the Queen and formed a close semicircle about Tolivar and the sorcerer. For the first time the Prince noticed how many celebrants in the area of the pleasance nearest to the palace were wearing black costumes. Of course! They had to be the henchmen of Orogastus.
The boy lifted his ringers to touch the sides of his coronet. ”I command you to free the Queen!”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Orogastus smiled contemptuously and waved one hand. The two Star Men released the weeping Anigel, who held out her arms to Tolivar. He rushed into her embrace and they stood locked together until a voice of thunder said, ”The talisman! Now!”
Orogastus and his Guildsmen stood shoulder to shoulder, and the eyes of all three blazed with malignant power. Anigel tottered and sagged to her knees, moaning and pressing her hands to her belly.
”You must not do it, Tola!” she cried. ”He will use the talisman to conquer the world! Resist him, dear son! Never mind me. He cannot take the coronet from you by force-aahr At the Queen's cry of pain, the boy screamed, ”Let her alone!” He tore off the talisman and dropped it into the open box. There was a small flash, lost in the colorful bombardment of the fireworks.
Anigel murmured, ”No! Oh, no.”
”At last!” Orogastus swooped down to seize the container. The Prince pulled the Queen to her feet and drew her back against the fence, where there was a dense thicket of dripping shrubbery. The Star Master removed his rayed headpiece and handed it to Gavinno, leaving his head bare and his long white hair flying in the wet wind. Then he began to press the jeweled studs within the box, bonding the talismanic coronet to himself.
All at once no less than a dozen rounded small objects flew out of the bushes and smashed on the cobblestones, releasing a cloud of sparkling confetti and fungus spores that were hardly hindered at all by the mist. Orogastus's bellow of rage was cut off by a mighty sneeze.
Queen Anigel felt herself hauled backward over the low fence. Branches scratched her face and she wailed in astonishment, struggling to free herself. ”Nay!” someone said in a harsh voice. ”We are friends. Hold your breath!” She heard violent sneezing and curses from the Star Men and the warriors in black, and then her shoulders were painfully compressed as her savior thrust her headfirst down an opening in the ground that was rimmed with iron. Other hands took hold of her, pulling her into some sort of vertical conduit. She was flung over a second man's back and the two of them slid into darkness and landed in shallow water with a loud splash. Faint illumination came from overhead and she saw Tolivar scuttle down iron rungs affixed to a lofty shaft. The man still holding her called out, ”Hurry! Blast the drain closed before the Star Men recover!”
”Get back out of the way!” shouted the person above. He came hurtling down the ladder. Anigel was dragged through water into total darkness, hearing her son mouth rea.s.surances from somewhere nearby. Then a dazzling burst of ruby light silhouetted a stocky misshapen figure having something cradled in its arms. She heard a rumble of collapsing masonry. Some of the stones were red hot, sizzling as they hit the water, and the tunnel was filled with roiling dust.
”Keep moving!” yelled the hunchbacked shadow. He lifted the thing he held and produced another explosion, dancing away from the fresh avalanche of stones.
Instinctively, the Queen pulled her soaking wet costume hood over her head to a.s.sist her breathing and scrambled along on hands and knees through water and slimy sediment. Incredulous excitement replaced the deadly languor that had numbed her wits. She had recognized the burly malformed body of the young King of Raktum.
”Ledo?... It's you? Oh, thanks be to the Lords of the Air!”
”Aye, Mother-in-Law-Elect. And thanks also to the Archduke Gyor, here, who remembered this warren of sewer tunnels, and to your Black Trillium amulet that led us straight to you, and even to young Tola-who brought along the sneeze-eggs.”
She was suddenly hoisted to her feet. A golden glow, visible through the open weave of the hood's feathered fabric, dispelled the darkness. The air had cleared miraculously. Anigel discarded her soaked griss costume and saw that she was in a vaulted tunnel with water running through it. Tolivar and two men in sodden clothes stood there, grinning at her. She gave a cry of joy as King Ledavardis stowed his antique weapon, lifted the s.h.i.+ning droplet of trillium-amber from around his neck, and transferred it to her own.
Gyorgibo said, ”We dare not stay here. The Star Men will soon discover that there are other drains in the pleasance leading to this tunnel. They will be after us. We shall have to block the pa.s.sage behind us as we flee, and hope they do not cut us off.”
”But where shall we go?” Prince Tolivar asked, his glee changed abruptly to panic.
”Look!” Anigel cried. ”The amber!”
The pendant was blinking rapidly, and in its heart the Flower was bisected by a line with a bright tip.
”It points in the direction of my brother's palace,” Gyorgibo said, ”the only possible place for us to find refuge. Run!”
Enc.u.mbered as he was with the star-box and its precious contents, which he instinctively held to his breast, Orogastus could at first think only of protecting the Three-Headed Monster. It had bonded to him at the instant the diabolical eggs smashed, and even as he doubled over in a helpless paroxysm he managed to pull out the coronet and clap it safely onto his brow. A miniature of the Star at his breast now shone beneath the central head of the Monster.
”Talisman!” he gasped. ”Banish the d.a.m.ned spores! Cure me and my men of the sneezing! Do you hear me?”
Yes. It is done.
His eyes and sinuses cleared and he darted to the bosquet fence and parted the bushes, revealing a large hole amidst the trees with a displaced iron grating beside it. Before he could command the Guildsmen he heard hollow voices issue from underground: ”... blast the shaft... out of the way...”
”Beware!” the sorcerer cried, falling back against one of his warriors. He still held the star-box tightly. ”They have magic weapons!” An instant later a flash of red light came from the hole, along with a thunderous noise and a plume of dust. A second blast followed. Cursing, Orogastus cleared the air again with the talisman, only to find the opening in the ground sealed with rubble.
”Talisman, show me Queen Anigel!”
The request is impertinent.
”Why can you not show her?” he raged.
She is s.h.i.+elded by the Black Trillium.
The sorcerer groaned. ”It cannot be! Unless-” He broke off and requested Sight of Prince Tolivar; but the boy was s.h.i.+elded also by the proximity of his mother, as were Anigel's rescuers. ”Then show me the layout of the drainage system beneath this pleasance, and the site of this blocked shaft.”
This time the coronet obeyed, and into his mind sprang a lucid diagram of the tunnels, with a blinking spark showing where the Queen and Prince had gone to ground. ”Show me the drain openings nearest this one!” Two additional lights began to flash, and hope sprang into his heart as he realized that one of them lay behind him, near to the fountain, and another was not twenty ells beyond the bosquet, across the cordoned-off boulevard that skirted the pleasance.
But before he could order his men into position there was a third red flare, dimly visible through the crowd lining the thoroughfare as it shone up through a storm drain. The fugitives were sealing the access points as they moved away. But he could trap them easily if he could but study the sewer diagram for a few more moments- ”Master! The main gates of the palace are opening. The Imperial Handsel procession is beginning!”
Again Orogastus groaned. He heard trumpets and drums. There was no time left to spare. The army was poised to advance, and Naelore and her group of n.o.bles awaited a successful outcome to the attack. He grasped his Star and bespoke the Guildsmen in charge of the partisan warriors: ”Prepare to storm the palace when I give the command.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
”WHAT the devil was that?” Sainlat shouted. ”I could have sworn I felt the pavement move-but with this accursed throng making such a hullabaloo, I cannot be certain.”
”It is only the fireworks exploding,” Melpotis yelled at him.
Edinar laughed. ”Or your own big feet crus.h.i.+ng the cobblestones.”
The four Oathed Companions moved forward through the close-packed celebrants on the southern side of the pleasance, with Kadiya in the midst of them wielding her talisman to part the crowd. She had removed her headpiece to see better and Sainlat had lost the pointed beak worn on his nose, but otherwise their disguises were still intact: Kadiya in purple feathers, Edinar in red, Melpotis and Kalepo wearing steel-blue, and Sainlat voluminously swathed in pothi-pink.
The talisman, with Kadiya's trillium-amber embedded in the hilt, had guided them from the waterfront directly to the audience portal at the far southern wing of the palace, through which visitors were usually admitted to the presence chamber of the Emperor. But there they were stymied. Short of slaying him, which was not an option, the Three-Lobed Burning Eye could not coerce the imperial porter into giving them entry. The man had been adamant: Denombo would see no one this night, not even an emissary from the King and Queen of Laboruwenda. Kadiya was told to return in the morning.
But morning would be too late.
”The crowd thins out near that fountain with the golden birds,” Kalepo pointed out. ”Once we reach it, we should be able to approach the main gates of the palace quite easily. But I don't see how we can hope to have better luck there than at the visitors' portal. It's plain that the Emperor and his court don't want to be disturbed during the big show.”
”You should have smitten that insolent palace flunky with your talisman's magical fire when he denied us entry,” Sainlat grumbled. ”Or blasted a hole through the outer wall.”
”No,” said Kadiya. ”I told you that the success of our venture depends upon Denombo's goodwill. He would hardly receive us graciously and give credence to our warning if we broke into his palace by force or harmed his servants. He is obviously a man terrified of magic. If I could only think of a stratagem that-”
”Aagh!” Suddenly, Sainlat found himself unable to budge. ”This b.l.o.o.d.y costume! The tail has snagged again on something. Help me!”