Slaves wearing the gray slave breechclout unlocked the cage and the chains. The reasoning was, I suppose, that the slaves were expendable. As it was, the four of them shook so much their fingers made a sad hash of the locks, until I said: “Hai, brothers! I am not a slave-master. One day the light will reach this evil place of Huringa. One day slaves will be free.”
They didn’t believe me, of course. And, to my shame, it was a bravo’s gesture, words out of an empty bladder of courage. They got the locks undone and then it was the old bloodstream twisting me about so that, for a time, I could not have faced a woflo, let alone a ponsho, and a quoffa might have had his way with me unmolested. When at last I could stand up, the guards with their crossbows aimed and their trigger-fingers white as death escorted me, all naked, through the far gateway. Oh, yes, believe me, I can see that scene now, etched in acid on my retinas. I stepped onto the silver sand of the arena. Everything was the same and everything was different. The terraces and boxes rose into the high blue sky. I was let out onto the sands of the arena exactly as the Suns of Scorpio reached the zenith. Shadows shrank small. Everyone would have a fine unobstructed view. The roar! The yells and shrieks in a bedlam of sound pulsed down from those thousands of throats. And I heard the tenor of much of that noise, the howls for “Drak the Sword! Hyr-kaidur!” Oh, yes, they loved to see the hot blood spurting, and if it gouted from a champion, from a favorite, there were always new accolades to be won by kaidurs forcing their way upward in the Jikhorkdun. The silver sand gleamed under the suns. The smell of caged beasts wafted in a streaming fetid breath down here, down on the blood-soaked sands of the arena, where the action was. There was, as usual, no wind. I looked up as a skein of mirvols with watchful patrolling aerial cavalry passed, and guessed they would find an excuse to wing around and so hover near, taking their fill of the sport below. They swung away, and a smaller, slimmer flying figure appeared, slipping in over the roof of the western stand and so disappearing in a twinkling. I had caught no sight of a flier upon the flying animal’s back. The beast roar smothered reason. Men and women — apim and halfling — screamed and screeched and banged the benches and swung their rattles and beat their gourd-drums. The winesellers passed along the benches, and could not sell their wares fast enough to slake the throats that all this yelling turned into volcanoes of thirst. Young slave girls, apims, Fristles, Lamnias, sylvies, in particular, moved among the seated thousands carrying fresh paline bushes for sale. Their masters employed girls from those races which traditionally produced the most beautiful girls. I have not mentioned the sylvies before out of decency. But they were there, and doing a roaring trade with their palines and squishes and gregarians and all the exotic fruits of Kregen.
The royal box had never been more ornately decorated. It blazed with color and fire. Queen Fahia sat there, enthroned, and I could guess she would be sitting with her hand propped on her chin, absorbing all this pageantry of the Jikhorkdun with those blue eyes wide, her full lower lip caught between her teeth, mesmerized. If I say that I was to witness a similar spectacle that would surpass this Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana, that is not to say that it was not a most impressive spectacle. Golden trumpets cut the air, shrieking their high notes above the din. A silence gradually fell, a silence of waiting, of lip-licking expectation.
I had been let out onto the sands, all naked as I was, from that special area near the queen’s box from which her own Queen’s Kaidurs — who owed no allegiance to any color — would march proudly forth to fight for her. They would halt and lift their arms in salute. There was nothing about the Queen’s Kaidurs or their prospects in the arena to prompt them to cry anything about imminent dying and present saluting.
I walked out a little upon the sand. I had not been able — all the time I moved from that stone gateway onto the sand, all the time the corner of my eye had picked up that mysterious flier slipping over the roof of the amphitheater, all the time my senses had been drowned by the noise and smells — all that time, I had been quite unable to take my eyes from the stake positioned in the center of the arena. I prayed she was unharmed.
Silver chains they had used to bind her. This was not because she was a princess, for Fahia did not believe that. The silver chains, I guessed, and felt the black rage in me, were a direct reference to the silver leem.
All naked she was suspended there.
Her glorious brown hair lay strewn about her shoulders and bosom. Her shape would set fire to any man. The silver chains draped her so that she could not move, and her arms were drawn up above her head and fastened with silver staples to the black balass of the stake. She was a princess, and she looked more proud, more beautiful, more regal, than anyone there -
anyone!
Soon, I knew, the horned bosks would be let out.
The thought of those long cruel bosk horns tearing into that slender form filled me with such horror, such rage, that I nearly allowed myself to go berserk and strive to climb that sheer unmarked marble wall to place my fists around the fat neck of that fat, evil woman.
I stood there, and I saluted her as her own Queen’s Kaidurs might salute had they wished to die instantly.
There is on Kregen a gesture of such obscene connotation that I have made it a practice never to use, for I am squeamish in such matters.
Now I drew myself up and saluted the queen with this sign.
The sigh that rippled around the amphitheater might have been the sigh of the mourners around an open grave or gathered by the pyre.
I was naked and unarmed. I faced, as I expected, either a single bosk and his long horns, or two or three together. The Chulik Chuktar came to the edge of the arena and tossed me a djangir. The short sword, squat and fat and two-edged, landed in the sand at my feet. Being frugal in the matter of weapons, as you know, I bent and retrieved it. It was sharp. They wanted their sport, then, before I died. And with my death, the death also of Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, fastened by silver chains to an ebony stake.
Once, she had said to me, “I wish to be known as Delia of Strombor.”
But I had always thought of her as Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. Now, perhaps in a few heartbeats, it would not matter.
Cunning are the ways of the managers of the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, which is the capital city of Hyrklana, in Havilfar. But, of them all, none so cunning or malefic as their queen, Queen Fahia, she of the blue eyes and golden hair and heart as black as the fur of her own neemus!
This time they did not wait until my back was turned to release the beast into the arena, as they had done when I fought the leem with the silver collar. This time they wished me to see at once the horror I faced. One of the larger iron-barred gates swung up. Those bars were thick, and strong, and closely set. They had need to be.
I waited with the djangir in my fist, positioned halfway between the stake and the barred opening. I had not spoken to Delia. She had not spoken to me. We knew all there was to say to each other at a moment like this. I waited, then, poised and ready, for the first bosk to rush out, horns lowered. A boloth emerged onto the silver sands of the arena.
A boloth!
Huge, impossible, sixteen legs, eight tusks, a massive monster of destruction, standing there with his bunch of whiplash tails swatting flies, staring, with his rapacious mouth half open so that its red darkness glistened and its rows of jagged teeth glinted in the Suns of Scorpio. A boloth!
Impossible, inhuman, unstoppable.