Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [67]
“But you won’t,” I interrupted sharply. “Because it makes perfect sense that I’d offer my allegiance to you. My woman betrayed me. My friends died or ran. Or they are yours.” I nodded toward the body she possessed.
“My own brother serves you,” I continued. “And besides. I don’t like to lose. Those who go against you...lose. But.” I lifted my left hand, raised the index finger. “I’ll not wear a milkstone for you. Had your servants been less controlled I could never have penetrated this far or blown up your ships. That was a mistake on your part.”
Deliberately, I’d made my tone harsh; I imagined Vohanna had seldom—or never—been spoken to in that way. I figured my chances were about eighty out of a 100 that I’d be slaughtered immediately for insolence, but there was a possibility she’d be intrigued enough to let me live a bit. My hand rested on the ornate hilt of my sword. If death was my sentence, at least I’d go out with a weapon in hand.
Diken Graye’s body stiffened, and drew itself up in a way that the man I’d known never would have done. Sweat slicked my palm as the witch’s black eyes flashed at me. The moment was here; now I lived or died.
Vohanna...left Diken Graye. I saw the man’s muscles sag as she abandoned him, saw the brightness of his eyes dull and the red return. In the room for a moment there hovered a presence. It had a sound, like telegraph wires humming. It had an image, like smoke and golden light swirling in a sunbeam.
It had a voice.
“Bring him to my throne,” it said.
Then the presence passed from the room, and I was alone with Diken Graye and the Vhichang guards with their crossbows. Graye’s body twitched. He lifted his head, the face and eyes inflamed, as if he’d been running a fever. From a corner of his mouth there dribbled a thin stream of dark spittle where he’d bitten at his own mouth.
With no words, but with agony in his red eyes, my one-time companion stepped aside and motioned me past him toward a stone hall leading deeper into the pyramid. Half the crossbowmen went ahead, half followed behind; and as we pressed on, other guards, of many races, stepped from dusty, silent stairwells and joined us. I was left my sword, though it would hardly be of use against such numbers.
Gradually the hall widened around us, until we came out into a large area lit by glow lights of a soft butter-gold rather than the harsher blue-white that I’d become accustomed to. The room was built in the shape of a half moon, with—at the heart of the crescent—twelve steps of white marble leading up to doors of argent.
The floor where I stood was tiled in cinnabar and ebon, with the tiles intertwined so as to draw the eye into interpretations, like seeing faces in clouds or in the leaves of a summer tree. I did not like what I saw there—temples built from burning bodies, rose-eyed skulls with black, pointed tongues—and I forced myself to look away, to look up toward the silver doors where four guards awaited.
The guards were Klar, of that reptilian race who are pirates, slavers, and savage fighters. Their nearly naked bodies were scaled in dark grey, tattooed and gleaming, with the flat, opalescent sheen of milkstone shards flashing from their foreheads. Each held a warhammer of black iron that was as long and thick as a stallion’s leg. I walked toward them, Diken Graye beside me, and two of them turned and pushed back the twin doors for us to pass within.
At the threshold, Graye drew to a halt. I glanced at him, and his disconcerting eyes met mine and held. For a moment I thought he would speak, but he did not—or was not allowed. He stepped back, his gaze dropping to the floor, and I bit at the inside of my lip to keep from screaming in anger at what had been done to him. Then I turned and entered the throne room of Vohanna.
Despite an aura of veiled decay, it was instantly clear that this was a throne room made to stand above throne rooms, a place to impress enemies and