Queen of Demons (80 page)

Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons

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In ancient Carcosa the King of the Isles addressed the people assembled in the Field of Heroes from a high balcony on the back of the palace. Since the Dukes of Ornifal had become Kings of the Isles, they'd practiced a cooler sort of kinship. The populace had seen Valence III in formal processions and at ceremonies before the great temples, but he'd never addressed them directly. Anything the king had to say to his people came through the mouths of underlings.

That was going to change. It had
already
changed, beginning the day a combination of pragmatism and fear forced Valence to adopt Garric as his son and successor. Garric thought the idea of a podium or high balcony was a better choice than this screen, but the notion was an interesting one.

The screened audience chamber had solid walls on the other three sides. The windows in the sidewalls had screens of electrum filigree, and the door in the back wall had a grate over the viewport.

The room was empty save for dust and a bier of travertine marble. Discolored patches on the floor showed where bronze hardware had decayed. Whatâ

Garric stepped through the alabaster as he had the door of the conference room when he started this journey. He felt momentary surprise, but he was too busy taking in his changed surroundings to marvel at inconsequentials.

Now that Garric was inside, he saw a plump old man in a tasseled tunic on the bier. Over him a serpentine shape waxed and waned, never fully visible but casting a glow like a golden blanket.

The old man's eyes opened. He rose with a cheery smile, pulling with him a tail of the quilted velvet covering the stone. “Good day, sir!” he said, extending his arm to clasp Garric's. “And who would you be?”

The old man paused. His smile slipped into an expression
half-wary, half-peevish. “Or have we met? Do I know you? Tell me!”

It was late evening. The sky, visible through the electrum grating, was a sullen red. Crowds were looking up from the streets. Ships packed the quays, moored several deep in some cases, but no vessels were under way in the harbor.

“Sir, I don't think we've met,” Garric said. He stepped forward, offering his arm though the old man had jerked his own back as doubt struck him. “I'm Garric or-Reise of Haft.”

He swallowed. “But I think I'm dreaming.”

The old man's smile returned like the sun flashing after a summer shower. They clasped, hand to elbow so that their forearms joined. The old man's grip was firm; his flesh resilient and vaguely warm.

“Dreaming?” he said to Garric. “Nonsense! You're here, aren't you? How can you be dreaming?”

The room was the same as when Garric viewed it through the alabaster, except that now signs of occupancy littered it. A cushioned pad covered the bier, and wooden bookcases lined all three walls: shelves for codices and pigeonholes for scrolls.

The cases were empty. Here and there a locked screen hung askew, wrenched off as the library was ransacked with brutal haste.

Garric stepped back. The old man looked around him with dawning puzzlement. “Sir, may I ask your name?” Garric said politely.

“What?” said the old man, again with a querulous tone. “I'm Ansalem, of course!”

He'd been looking at the glowing shape rippling in and out of existence above the bier. It seemed to be a serpent with a short, fat body, but sometimes the head appeared to be on one end, sometimes on the other.

Ansalem paused and fingered a wall niche large enough to have held a life-sized statue. It, like the bookcases, was
empty. “I think I am, at least,” he said. “But I don't understand. If I'm Ansalem the Wise â¦”

He turned to Garric, his face wrinkling in an expression of concern foreign to it. “If I am, then where are my books? And where are the baubles I've gathered over the years?”

Ansalem's expression flowed suddenly into something as cold and inhuman as the ice of a pond at midwinter. “Have you taken them?” he demanded. “You must return them at once! They're objects of power. They aren't safe for anyone to have, you see. I know better than to use them, but anyone else mightâ”

He snapped his pudgy fingers in a sound as sharp as nearby lightning. “âblast this world to dust! I'm not joking, young man. You must return them at once!”

“Sir,” Garric said. “I haven't taken your property or anyone else's. I just arrived, and I don't even know where I am.”

His mouth was dry. Ansalem was as unpredictable as the sky in summer, changing from sun to storm before a shepherd has time to call his flock.

And for all his general good nature, Ansalem was more dangerous than any storm. Garric didn't recognize the name, but he knew that the old man was a wizard. If he'd brought Garric here, he was a wizard of incalculable power.

“Where you are?” Ansalem said, his sunny disposition reasserting itself. “Why, you're in Klestis, in my palace. Don't you know?”

He gestured broadly. That made him notice the empty cases again; his face slipped back into a worried frown. “Where canâ”

Ansalem stopped. He fixed Garric with an analytical gaze and took the youth's chin between finger and thumb. He twisted Garric's head from one profile to the other.

Garric accepted the attention, though he felt a surge of anger at being treated like a sheep being sold. Ansalem was an old man and obviously confused.

Ansalem wasn't a bit more confused than Garric, though, if it came to that.

“Are you sure I don't know you?” Ansalem asked, not harshly but with a note of sharp interest. “Surely we've met! Now where, I wonder?”

He turned to the bookcase on his right, obviously reaching for a volume that was no longer there. He froze, his face taking on the terrible icy hardness Garric had seen before.

“Where are my acolytes?” Ansalem demanded. “Have you seen them, Master Garric? Purlio will know what's going on here.”

“Sir, I don't know anything,” Garric said. “I've never heard of you, and the only Klestis I know of is a fishing village on the south coast of Cordin.”

“Fishing village indeed!” Ansalem said in a tone of amazement. He beckoned Garric to the window looking onto the harbor. “Does this look like a fishing village, sir?”

“No sir,” Garric said, “butâ”

“But what's wrong down there?” Ansalem said, looking himself at the scene and finding it different from whatever he'd meant to show Garric. “Everyone's standing in the streets and staring up â¦”

He spun on Garric with another flash of mercurial temper. “What have you done with my acolytes?” Ansalem said. “Purlio, come here at once!”

“Iâ” Garric said.

Ansalem stepped to the bier from which Garric had awakened him. He ran his hand through the air, seeming to caress the flickering serpent. “The amphisbaena is here,” he said, “but not the other objects. Some of them are too dangerous to use, even for me! Don't you understand?”

Ansalem patted the tall niche, then touched other alcoves and ran his fingers over the top of a marble plinth standing empty beside the door in the back of the chamber.
He moved with the quick, jerky motions of a toad hopping, desperate in its terror.

“You must bring them back!” Ansalem said. “They won't do you any good, I assure you. There's nothing there but destruction for whoever uses them!”

The chamber grew foggy as another world began to interpenetrate it. “Bring me â¦” Ansalem cried in a voice as high as a distant gull's.

The words faded. Garric felt his soul rushing back the way it had come. He was a shimmer in existence like the current of a rushing stream.

“Garric?” a voice said. Not Ansalem, butâ

Garric opened his eyes. He lay on a bench in the conference room. Liane stood beside him, holding a lamp; the light through the open door was the last red of sunset. His friends were watching him with guarded concern: Cashel and Sharina, Tenoctris and Ilna; and Liane, thank the Lady; Liane, her worry clear in her dark, limpid eyes.

“I was dreaming,” Garric said as he sat up cautiously. “And I'm very glad to see you all.”

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

QUEEN OF DEMONS

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^Â®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781429911696

First eBook Edition : May 2011

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-7132

First Edition: August 1998

First Mass Market Edition: June 1999