“Look what you’ve done to our thrones!” The phantom gestured at the splintered remains of the moldering bench, then fixed his red-rimmed eyes on Filfaeril. “When did you grow so fat? You’re as big as a sow!”
And Filfaeril suddenly felt as large as a war-horse. Her breathing grew labored and slow, her body became ungainly and sluggish, and her stomach began to rumble and growl. A terrible feeling of despair and lethargy came over her, and she looked down to discover a mountainous lump of flesh in place of her once-svelte body. She cried out in shock, then tried to back away from the phantom and found she could not move her own weight.
“Who are you?” The queen was surprised to hear her demand pour out in a barely-coherent wail. “What are you doing to me?”
The creature kneeled beside her and ran his gore-caked fingers through her long tresses. She would have knocked the hand away, save that when she tried, her arm was too heavy to lift. Behind the phantom, the dank room once again became a majestic throne room.
“Why do you make me do these things?” the phantom demanded. He wrapped his hand into her hair, then jerked her head back. “Do you think this is the way I want to treat my queen?”
“Your queen?” Filfaeril took a deep breath and forced herself to look into the phantom’s mad eyes. “I am nothing to you but a hostage-a hostage that you would be wise to treat well. When the king finds us-“
Something huge and hard slammed into the side of Filfaeril’s face and sent her corpulent body tumbling across the dais. She did not stop rolling until she slammed into the plinth of a marble pillar.
“I am king!” The phantom sprang to her side, then grasped her chin and tilted her head back. “And you are my queen.”
Filfaeril shook her head. “I am wife to Azoun.”
As she spoke, the throne room grew murky again. The ghostly outlines of cask racks appeared along the ambulatory, and she began to see that her only hope of salvation lay in clinging to her true identity.
“I am Filfaeril, queen to King Azoun IV.”
The cask racks grew more substantial.
“You are queen to no king but me!” The phantom slapped her again, and her vision went momentarily black. “You are wife to King Boldovar. To me.”
Filfaeril began to tremble, and the murkiness vanished from the throne room at once. As adolescents, she and her sisters had delighted in keeping each other up nights by telling grisly tales of how King Boldovar had murdered his mistresses.
“B-boldovar the Mad?”
“Boldovar the King-husband to Queen Filfaeril!” The phantom pressed Filfaeril’s comb-dagger to her fleshy breast, then ordered, “Say it.”
“K-king Boldovar, h-husband…” Filfaeril stopped, realizing that to indulge the phantom was to lose herself in his madness-perhaps forever. She shook her head, then raised her chin. “I’d rather die.”
Almost instantly, her body became slender and beautiful again, and she found herself lying on the floor of a dank wine cellar Boldovar scowled and looked around in confusion, then shrugged and returned his attention to Filfaeril.
“As you command, milady.”
The phantom scraped the sharp tines along the queen’s flesh, opening four shallow cuts along the top curve of her breast. She closed her eyes, surprised that death’s black fog had not risen up to carry her off already. Once Vangerdahast’s enchantment was activated, even the weapon’s scratch was supposed to kill instantly and surely. She commended her soul to Lady Sune, then opened her eyelids to find Boldovar’s ghastly eyes still gazing into her own.
“What is this? Did I drink up all your magic?” He tossed the comb aside, then flashed her a needle-fanged smile. “Perhaps you wish to recant?”
12
The royal wizard woke bound and naked, covered by a single blood-stained linen, surrounded by enemies of the realm. To the right stood Owden Foley, a clammy cold cloth in one hand and a brass basin in the other. Alaphondar Emmarask and Merula the Marvelous watched from the foot of the bed, eyes beady and observant, alert as always for any sign that the royal magician knew their thoughts. He did of course, but he could not let them see it. They would kill him on the spot.
To the wizard’s left stood Azoun IV, his arm hanging in a sling and his shoulder wrapped in a bloody bandage. Good. Vangerdahast had done some damage after all, even if he did not recall when or how… or why.
Vangerdahast’s head ached from the bridge of his nose to the nape of his neck. His thoughts came slowly and for only short periods. His scalp felt crusty and swollen and strangely taut, with long stripes of hot pain crossing it from right to left. His body ached with fever. He was hungry enough to eat a cat, though of course he knew better than to ask for one. He refused to give his captors the pleasure of seeing him beg.
Owden, of course, was the torturer. The priest’s implements lay on the table beside the bed, arrayed in neat rows of knives and needles and coarse loops of thread. Knowing they had only left the instruments in the open to frighten him, Vangerdahast looked away. Had his hands not been bound to the bed frame, he would have grabbed one of those knives and shown the traitors the error of their ways. Then again, had his hands been untied, he would not have needed a knife. He was, after all, a wizard.
If only he could remember his spells.
While most spells required gestures and special components and the uttering of mystic syllables, some required only an incantation. They would be ready for that. The enemies of the realm were as cunning as they were pervasive. If Vangerdahast wanted to escape and save the crown, he needed to be as clever as they were. He raised his head and glared at Merula.
“Help me, and I will forgive you this treason,” he said. “Use your magic against them, and I will pardon you when the crown is mine!”
Merula’s face paled, and he looked to Owden.
Owden looked to Azoun. “Forgive him, Majesty. It is the wound madness. You yourself raved on and on about how the Ladies Rowanmantle and Hawklin were jealous of the sons of your other-“
“Yes, yes!” Azoun’s hand shot up to silence the priest. “I am quite familiar with the insane thoughts caused by the creature’s wounds.”
“Insane thoughts? The insanity is this.” Vangerdahast strained to raise his left arm. “Unbind me, and I grant you safe passage to exile in a foreign land.”
Azoun scowled at Owden. “I hope this madness can be cleared up soon.” He looked back to Vangerdahast and grasped his arm, then said, “Old friend, I know your thoughts are muddled, but you must try to answer me. What happened to my daughter? Is the princess safe?”
Somewhere deep down beneath the madness, Vangerdahast felt a guilty pang. “Tanalasta?”
Azoun nodded. “Yes. Princess Tanalasta. She didn’t return with you.”
The battle in the canyon came flooding back to Vangerdahast-and with it a surge of anger.
“She defied me!” Vangerdahast’s temples pounded with hot anguish. “The brazen harlot!”
“Harlot?” Azoun repeated. “Then she’s with this Cormaeril fellow?”
“Spoiled now!” Vangerdahast spat. “He’s spoiled her now.”
“But is she safe?”
Vangerdahast tried to sit up and managed only to lift his head off the pillow before the restraints jerked him back down. He began to toss his head back and forth, trying in vain to shake loose the memory of some spell that would set him free. Azoun laid a palm on Vangerdahast’s brow and pressed down to hold the wizard’s head still.
“Don’t smother me!” Vangerdahast cried. “How can I tell if you smother me?”
Azoun eased up. “I’m not going to smother anyone.”
Vangerdahast laid very still and regarded the king suspiciously. “How do I know?”
“Vangerdahast, I would never hurt you.”
“Tell me you don’t want me out of the way.”