Part 27 (1/2)
Orogastus does not pursue her. At present, she is not in danger of capture. The situation may change if she exits the tunnel.
”This is unbelievable! Where is Anigel going?”
She goes to the Emperor Denombo.
Kadiya blurted out to the knights what the talisman had said. They became very agitated, speaking all at once, begging her to bespeak the Queen and urge her to turn away from the imminent danger. The vanguard of the invasion now poured into the main entrance of the palace, while in the pleasance a deadly panic had broken out among the frenzied populace. But Kadiya was concerned now only with the safety of her sister.
”Gather closely around me,” she ordered the Oathed Companions. ”I shall have to bespeak Queen Anigel. She is doubtless fearful and distraught, and it will be very difficult to catch her attention without the aid of a second talisman.” She crouched low while the four knights spread their feathered capes over her in meager shelter, then stared into the open brown Eye of the broken dark sword. ”Talisman, let me descry my sister Anigel,” she prayed, ”and let me bespeak her also, so that I may save her life. I ask this in the name of the Triune and the Black Trillium.”
For a moment she thought she had failed. Then the noise and confusion around her was cut off as if some door had slammed. She beheld a tunnel lit by the golden glow of trillium-amber, a place of hewn granite blocks dripping with glistening mold, where a rivulet of grayish water flowed underfoot and the air was oddly filled with drifting dust. Standing stock still with his mouth wide open in shock was King Ledavardis of Raktum, bearing Anigel in his powerful arms. Another man, having coppery hair and looking equally stunned, stood behind the King. At his side was Prince Tolivar.
”Lady of the Eyes!” the pirate croaked. ”What are you doing here?”
Anigel smiled tremulously. ”Dear Kadi! Have you come to join us in our tour of the Brandoba sewers?... Put me down, Ledo.”
Kadiya realized than that she had succeeded beyond her wildest hope. Not only did she descry and bespeak the Queen and her companions, but they in turn saw her image as well, in a magical Sending.
”How did you get down here?” Kadiya asked her sister. ”Are you hurt?”
”Ledo and his friend s.n.a.t.c.hed me from the very clutches of Orogastus,” Anigel said. ”I am unharmed, save for an ankle sprained during my rescue that makes it hard for me to walk.”
The Pirate King said, ”You are a welcome sight, Lady Kadiya-and your mighty talisman even more so.”
”I am not with you in the flesh,” Kadiya said with regret. ”This is only a simulacrum of my true body, which actually remains above ground near the golden fountain. I have come with awful tidings. Orogastus and his army have stormed the imperial palace. You must turn back at once-”
”We cannot,” said the redheaded man calmly. He carried a weapon of the Vanished Ones, which he rested on one shoulder. ”In order to foil any pursuit, we have from time to time blasted the tunnel behind us with this useful implement's magical lightning. It is impossible for us to turn back.”
”In a few short minutes the palace will belong to the sorcerer's warriors and Star Men,” Kadiya said. ”The Emperor is already taken prisoner.”
”Poor Denombo!” The man bowed his head. ”My sister will surely slay him. May Matuta grant him eternal peace.”
”This is Gyor, the Emperor's younger brother,” Anigel explained to Kadiya. ”The two of them played in the sewer system as boys. Coming this way, we had hoped to give Denombo warning of the sorcerer's plot.”
Ledavardis added, ”The sister of whom Gyor speaks is the Archd.u.c.h.ess Naelore, a member of the Star Guild and a thoroughgoing she-devil, who has conspired with Orogastus to seize the throne.”
”Is there no other way out of the sewer,” Kadiya asked desperately, ”save through the palace?”
The Archduke raised a tearstained countenance. ”This is a storm drain, not a true sewer. The shafts ahead of us serve the hanging gardens and the downspouts of the palace roofs. But once we get below the north wing of the palace, we can enter another sewage conduit. It is a vile and noisome tunnel that I never explored, but I know that it eventually debouches into a ca.n.a.l emptying into the River Dob. Unfortunately, there is no egress from the tunnel aside from those within the palace until one reaches the ca.n.a.l, nearly half a league away from the fortified wall.”
”You will have to continue on to the ca.n.a.l,” Kadiya decided. ”My men and I will find a way to enter the sewer system ourselves, guided by my talisman, and eventually we will meet you. Find a safe spot and wait for us. Together we will find a way to travel down the river to the sea. Only G.o.d knows what will happen then. We had an aboriginal boat at our disposal, but its skipper was put into an enchanted sleep-”
They had all forgotten Prince Tolivar, who broke in, saying, ”Jagun and Critch will awaken from my spell at dawn, Aunt Kadi. You can summon their boat then, and we can all sail away to safety.”
The vision of Kadiya stared at the boy in silence for a moment. Then she asked, ”Tola, where is your talisman?”
Queen Anigel suddenly spoke in a ringing voice. ”My dear son gave it in ransom for my life, and the lives of his unborn brothers! Orogastus has the Three-Headed Monster now, but it will do us no good to bemoan the fact. We will speak no more of the matter.”
”Very well,” the Lady of the Eyes said through clenched teeth. ”I dare not stay with you any longer. May the Holy Flower protect you and guide you true until we meet again.”
The Sending vanished.
Kadiya told the Oathed Companions what had transpired in the tunnel. They rejoiced that both Queen Anigel and Prince Tolivar were safe, and declared that they were willing to fight their way out of the pleasance at Kadiya's side if she would but wield the Three-Lobed Burning Eye against their enemies.
”It is the poor citizens of Brandoba,” she chided them, ”rather than the henchmen of Orogastus who hinder our escape. Look about you: almost all of those wearing the red or black disguises have joined the a.s.sault on the palace. The rampaging mob surrounding us is made up of ordinary people.”
She crouched low again, holding her talisman. All around them, the night was filled with screaming and a horrible rumbling sound; the crowd were trampling one another in their efforts to escape. ”We must go into the sewer system as Anigel and her party did, and move underground toward a certain ca.n.a.l that flows into the River Dob. It is there that Anigel and the others will meet us. Let me ask the Burning Eye how to manage it.”
The knights waited grimly while Kadiya muttered her queries and listened to replies inaudible to ordinary men. But when she lifted her head again her face was bleak. ”The sections of tunnel closest to us have been deliberately collapsed by my sister's rescuers in order to prevent pursuit by the Star Men. To circ.u.mvent the obstacles, we shall have to make our way to the Northern Boulevard yonder and proceed along it for two city blocks. We gain access to the drain shaft by pulling up a grating in the front garden of one of the mansions.”
”That means penetrating the very heart of the riot,” Melpotis warned. ”It may not be possible to shunt people aside gently, as you did before. There will be no place for them to go.”
”If only I were a more experienced sorcerer,” Kadiya lamented.
”Lady,” Melpotis said implacably, ”you will have to blast a path with your talisman's fire. There is no other way we can penetrate that crazed melee.”
”I cannot kill innocent people!” she cried.
Sainlat uttered a despairing curse and tore off his ridiculous pink costume, stamping it with malicious satisfaction. Then he drew his sword. ”We cannot remain here dithering! I for one am ready to cut our way to the tunnel entrance.”
”And I,” said Melpotis, also removing his disguise and donning his helmet.
”I have it!” Edinar's beardless young face brightened. ”Lady, beseech your talisman to put the people hindering us into an enchanted sleep, just as Prince Tolivar did to Jagun and the Cadoon! They will fall, and we can leap over them.”
Kadiya was skeptical. ”I have never done such a thing, but let me try.”
Once again, as during the unexpected Sending, Kadiya used all her strength to summon a calmer frame of mind. She winced when a loud blast came from the direction of the palace and flames shot forth from several upper windows, causing a great roar of fear to arise from the mob. But then she steeled herself, concentrating on a single pathetic reveler clad in tattered feathers who sat weeping and gibbering at the fountain's edge a few ells away.
Sleep, and wake only at dawn, she told him, holding the talisman high and at the same time closing her eyes to visualize him in peaceful slumber. When she opened her eyes the man lay p.r.o.ne in a shallow puddle of gray water, a faint smile on his lips.
”I've done it!” she exulted. She tried again, singling out a pair of brawlers belaboring each other in pointless ferocity. Keeping her eyes open this time, she imagined them both sinking to the spray-washed cobbles unconscious and again p.r.o.nounced the spell. The pair folded as gently as children drifting off to dreamland.
”Companions,” Kadiya said, drawing a deep breath, ”we are ready to venture forth.”
She removed her own costume, revealing her scale-mail cuira.s.s emblazoned with the Eyed Trefoil, and donned the helm she had carried in a bag at her waist. Then she lifted the talisman. The droplet of trillium-amber inset among the lobes shone warmly.
”Stay close to me,” she ordered the knights. ”I will try to make a broad enough swath so that we need not tread upon the sleepers.”
They set off through the falling water toward the same small bosquet where Anigel and Tolivar had gone to ground, at first penetrating the fringes of the throng with relative ease. Kadiya swept the talisman back and forth, back and forth, her gaze pausing only for a split second upon each obstructing person. Rioters who had been screaming hysterically or flailing about in demented rage began to topple. Those who remained upright, untouched by magic, drew back in terror as others dropped around them. Someone shouted, ”A sorcerer!” A great wailing arose, punctuated by more cries of ”Sorcery! Beware!” The crowd shrank back on all sides of Kadiya, struggling madly to get away, believing that the felled ones had been slain by enchantment.
Kadiya and the Companions marched on, stepping over bodies. She used every whit of her concentration to bring on the magical sleep, trusting in the knights to keep her moving in the right direction. After pa.s.sing the small grove of trees they headed for the boulevard, where the mob was packed thicker and in an uglier mood. The handsel floats had been overturned, sending the draft-beasts into foaming fits of terror. Looters had seized the coffers containing the imperial gifts and now battled over possession of the boxes, scattering colored favors everywhere as they pummeled each other. One of the giftgiving maidens lay unmoving, covered in blood, where a maddened volumnial had stamped her. Other injured and dead people were everywhere on the pavement now, but Kadiya and her knights could only continue down the seething boulevard, leaving unconscious bodies in their wake and fending off the occasional deranged attacker.
The mansion that was their goal now lay less than thirty ells away, just beyond a side street jammed with a howling rabble. Paradoxically, those on the lesser thoroughfare were striving to return to the pleasance rather than to flee it. At first, there was no clue to the anomalous movement.
As Kadiya and the Companions attempted to breast this ma.s.s of humanity their thus-far-successful maneuver began to falter because of the sheer numbers surrounding them. No matter how many people fell, others surged forward to take their places. The inexorable pressure of the advancing throng was making it impossible for Kadiya to perform the magic. Her justified fear that the enchanted sleepers would certainly be crushed to death destroyed her mental focus.
Edinar and Sainlat, at her right hand and subject to the strongest onslaught, found that even their swords were useless to fend off the human flood. They could advance no further. Helpless, they were being swept across the boulevard and back toward the pleasance.