Albanus motio
ned the others to silence as a serving girl entered. Blonde and pale of skin, she was no more than sixteen years of age. Her simple white tunic, embroidered about the hem with Albanus’ house-mark, was slashed to show most of her small breasts and long legs. She knelt immediately on the marble floor, head bent.
“Her name is Omphale,” the hawk-faced lord said.
The girl shifted at the mention of her name, but knew enough not to lift her head. She was but newly enslaved, sold for the debts of her father’s shop, but some lessons were quickly learned.
Albanus held the red crystal at arm’s length in his left hand, making an arcane gesture with his right as he intoned, “An-naal naa-thaan Vas-ti no-entei!”
A flickering spike of flame was suddenly suspended above the crystal, as long as a man’s forearm and more solid than a flame should be. Within the pulsing red-and-yellow, two dark spots, uncomfortably like eyes, moved as if examining the room and its occupants. All moved back unconsciously except for Omphale, who cowered where she knelt, and Albanus.
“A fire elemental,” Albanus said conversationally. Without changing his tone he added, “Kill Omphale!”
The blonde’s mouth widened to scream, but before a sound emerged the elemental darted forward, swelling to envelop her. Jerkily she rose to her feet, twitching in the midst of an egg of flame that slowly opaqued to hide her. The fire hissed, and in the depths of the hiss was a thin shriek, as of a woman screaming in the distance. With the pop of a bursting bubble the flame disappeared, leaving behind a faint sickly sweet smell.
“Messy,” Albanus mused, scuffing with a slippered foot at an oily black smudge on the marble floor where the girl had been.
The others’ stares were stunned, as if he had transformed into the fabled dragon Xutharcan. Surprisingly, it was Melius who first regained his tongue.
“These devices, Albanus. Should we not have some of them as well as you?” His pouchy eyes blinked uncomfortably at the others’ failure to speak. “As a token that we are all equals,” he finished weakly.
Albanus smiled. Soon enough he would be able to show them how equal they were. “Of course,” he said smoothly. “I’ve thought of that myself.” He gestured to the table. “Choose, and I will tell you what powers your choice possesses.” He slipped the red crystal into a pouch at his belt as he spoke.
Melius hesitated, reached out, and stopped with his hand just touching the sword. “What … what powers does this have?”
“It turns whoever wields it into a master swordsman.” Having found that such was the extent of the blade’s power, Albanus had researched no further. He had no interest in becoming a warrior-hero; he would be King, with such to do his bidding. “Take the blade, Melius. Or if you fear it, perhaps Vegentius … .” Albanus raised a questioning eyebrow at the square-faced soldier.
“I need no magicks to make me a bladesman,” Vegentius sneered. But he made no move to choose something else, either.
“Demetrio?” Albanus said. “Sephana?”
“I mislike sorcery,” the slender young man replied, openly flinching away from the display on the table.
Sephana was made of sterner stuff, but she shook her head just as quickly. “If these sorceries can pull Garian from the Dragon Throne, ’tis well enough for me. And they can not … .” She met Albanus’ gaze for a moment, then turned away.
“I’ll take the sword,” Melius said suddenly. He hefted the weapon, testing the balance, and laughed. “I have no such scruples as Vegentius about how I become a swordsman.”
Albanus smiled blandly, but slowly his face hardened. “Now hear me,” he intoned, fixing each of them in turn with an obsidian eye. “I have shown but a small sampling of the powers that will gain me the throne of Nemedia, and grant your own desires. Know that I will brook no deviation, no meddling that might interfere with my designs. Nothing will stand between me and the Dragon Crown. Nothing! Now go!”
They backed from his presence as if he already sat on the Dragon Throne.
I
The tall, muscular youth strode the streets of Belverus, monument-filled and marble-columned capital of Nemedia, with a wary eye and a hand close to the well-worn leather-wrapped hilt of his broadsword. His deep blue eyes and fur-trimmed cloak spoke of the north country. Belverus had seen many northern barbarians in better times, dazzled by the great city and easily separated from their silver or their pittance of gold—though often, not understanding the ways of civilization, they had to be hauled away by the black-cloaked City Guard, complaining that they had been duped. This man, however, though only twenty-two, walked with the confidence of one who had trod the paving stones of cities as great or greater, of Arenjun and Shadizar, called the Wicked; of Sultanapur and Aghrapur; even the fabled cities of far-off Khitai.
He walked the High Streets, in the Market District, not half a mile from the Royal Palace of Garian, King of Nemedia, yet he thought he might as well be in Hellgate, the city’s thieves’ district. The open-fronted shops had display tables out, and crowds moved among them pricing cloth from Ophir, wines from Argos, goods from Koth and Corinthia and even Turan. But the peddlers’ carts rumbling over the paving stones carried little in the way of foodstuffs, and their prices made him wonder if he could afford to eat in the city for long.
Between the shops were huddled beggars, maimed or blind or both, their wailing for alms competing with the hawkers crying their wares. And every street corner had its knot of toughs, hard-eyed, roughly dressed men who fingered swordhilts, or openly sharpened daggers or weighed cudgels in their fists as their gazes followed a plump merchant scurrying by or a lissome shopkeeper’s daughter darting through the crowd with nervous eyes. All that was missing were the prostitutes in their brass and copper bangles, sheer shifts cut to display their wares. Even the air had something of the cloying smell he associated with a dozen slums he had seen, a mixture of vomit, urine and excrement.
Suddenly a fruit cart crossing an intersection was surrounded by half-a-dozen ruffians in motley bits of finery mixed with rags. The skinny vendor stood silent, eyes down and careworn face red, as they picked over his goods, taking a bite of this and a bite of that, then throwing both into the street. Stuffing the folds of their tunics with fruit, they started away, swaggering, insolent eyes daring anyone to speak. The well-dressed passersby acted as if the men were invisible.
“I don’t suppose you’ll pay,” the vendor moaned without raising his eyes.
One of the bravos, an unshaven man wearing a soiled cloak embroidered with thread-of-gold over a ragged cotton tunic, smiled, showing the blackened stumps of his teeth. “Pay? Here’s pay.” His backhand blow split the skinny man’s cheek, and the pushcart man collapsed sobbing across his barrow. With a grating laugh the bravo joined his fellows who had stopped to see the sport, and they shoved their way through the crowd of shoppers, who gave way with no more than a wordless mutter.
The muscular northern youth stopped a pace away from the pushcart. “Will you not call the City Guard?” he asked curiously.
The peddler pushed himself wearily erect. “Please. I have to feed my family. There are other carts.”