Through all the red roaring madness on me, through the thunder of blood in my head, the beat of blood about my body, the roar of warring multitudes in my brain, I heard my Delia. I dropped flat and squirmed about, and Delia was at my side, gasping and laughing, and a masichieri tumbled down on top of us with a long shaft feathered through him.
Screams burst out from horror-stricken throats.
From the walls, from the niches where the rotting idols slumbered, the Crimson Bowmen of Loh methodically swept the whole cavern with the arrow storm. That sleeting hail punctured skull and leather armor, struck through mail vest and oval shield alike. Among the Crimson Bowmen were the lithe and lissome forms of girls, all clad in trim rose-red tunics, slender and quick, shooting with a deftness to equal the men’s.
“The Sisters did not forget me, then, after all!”
I looked for Seg as we shielded beneath a barrier of dead bodies, but I did not see him. This was the emperor’s work. The Crimson Bowmen of Loh, and the Sisters of the Rose. The shrieks died down to moaning whimpers and soon a dread silence hung over that cavern of death. Slowly Delia and I stood up. I swirled a black feathered cape about her glowing blood-spattered loveliness, and so we waited as Naghan Vanki walked slowly through the heaps of slain. The Bowmen had killed with that sleeting storm of clothyard shafts and not a priest or masichieri remained alive.
“So you were not Makfaril, Vanki,” I said.
His expressionless features, white and contained, did not reveal a single iota of himself as he said, “Had I been, you would surely be dead, Prince.”
Then, with cool insolence, he turned and bowed deeply to Delia. “Princess Majestrix,” he said in that flat and chilling voice. “The emperor my master will be overjoyed that you live.”
Delia is, after all, a princess, and knows how to conduct herself. She held out her hand. I saw the bloodstains.
“Thank you, Naghan. You have proved yourself a loyal servant to my father today. And to me.”
“Always, my Princess, to you.”
So that solved that problem.
Even then I still could not make up my mind how I regarded all those gallant men of Vallia who adored their princess and would gladly die for her — aye! — as so many did die and joy in the giving of their lives for that of my Delia.
“And Makfaril?” I said in my surly, oafish clansman’s way.
“He ran back through the idol of Hjemur,” said Vanki. Then, waspishly, he added, “I had thought you would stop him, Prince.”
The cool effrontery of the man had no power to enrage me now. I felt amused. He served the emperor. He was the emperor’s spy and, as I more than half-suspected then, the emperor’s spy-master. Now girls crowded up and quickly more seemly clothes were found for the Princess Delia. We walked toward the exit, past the droves of dead bodies. I saw the Jiktar in command. He looked a little at a loss, for once Naghan Vanki’s use for him was finished, Vanki lost all interest in him. I said,
“Jiktar! Gather up all the arrows! Send search parties to comb out all the runnels. Have the dead disposed of and if you find any living, question them. Check all the cells.” Then, because I was the Prince Majister and these things are expected of simpletons in that position, I added: “And, Jiktar, you and your men are to be congratulated. You shot as I expect Bowmen of Loh to shoot. There are barrels to be broached tonight.”
I did not mention the great word ‘Jikai.’ This had not been a Jikai. Rather, mention of barrels brought vividly to mind what the shooting had been truly like. Fish. .
Naghan Vanki and an advance party of his men had climbed down the rope ladder. Makfaril — Rafik Avandil — had discovered the ladder, but I had prevented his immediate arrest. Vanki was cutting about that. “And this villain Rafik has been close to you, Prince. He led us to you. Why he wished to have you under so close an observation we do not yet know. But, when he is found, we shall question him.”
Naghan Vanki, the emperor’s spy-master, might not know. But I knew. When my wizard Khe-Hi set up his sorcerous interference, preventing the monstrously egomaniacal wizard Phu-Si-Yantong from spying on me, that villain had sent his tool to seek me out and report my whereabouts and continue the spying on my movements. Yantong wished to rule all Vallia through me. Well, his plans to bring about the destruction of Vallian life and open this land to his greedy authority had fallen into ruins this day.
“And you suspected Avandil all along?”
“Since he came here from Hamal pretending to be a loyal cheerful Vallian koter. The emperor’s agents never sleep. We dogged his footsteps, except when interfered with. That he was Makfaril was a surprise.”
“And the emperor knew of this?”
A look of such cold hardness passed over Vanki’s corpse-white face as to make his resemblance to the imagined devils of Cottmer’s Caverns vivid and repulsive. “The emperor, may he live forever, knows we serve him as best we may. He has other problems weighing on his mind.” Then Vanki looked at me with all the chilling presence of a dedicated, clever man who understands not only his own power but also his own limitations. “The racters. . you must realize, Prince, how much more powerful they are now? Had you been seen visiting them you would have been taken up.”
“But, Naghan,” said Delia, smiling, holding my arm. “Not now, I think?”
“There is a night to be lived through yet, my princess.”
I pointed to four Bowmen who marched in step. They carried a burden between them by arms and legs and the golden wink of glittering armor scintillated among the heaps of slain.
“You will not question Makfaril now, Vanki.”
We looked down on the body of the numim Rafik Avandil, Makfaril, tool of Phu-si-Yantong. From his throat above the golden rim of the corselet protruded the hilt of a long slender dagger. I pulled it out and the blood welled. The jewels clustered on the hilt were red, and they formed the outline of a rose.
“It is mine,” said Delia. “But how-”
“What is more to the point, my love, is how you came here?”
We walked a little away from Vanki and his black-and-silver-clad men. The chamber of death bustled as the Bowmen did as I had commanded. Delia looked at me, her head on one side.
“Again, my heart? I will tell you all that I may in honor reveal. Melow was wounded and I saw her safely to our Delphondian villa here in Vondium. I went about the business that took me away — just for now let me keep that close, for I will tell you, I promise, when I am able — and I remember nothing from the moment I was drugged in some damned inn until they whipped that black covering off me and I saw-”
She shivered and I put my arm about her. “It was wicked and scarlet! Hissing! I thought then that-”
“Yes, well,” I said, an onker to the end. “You know what thought did.”
When I asked about Dayra and Lela as we made our way through the maze of chambers and past the barracks and so up the circular slimy stair and out into the fresh air of Vondium, she told me they were well and as far as she knew dwaburs away and busy about business for the Sisters. She had left them with instructions to come and see their father as soon as they were able. Her smile was sweet, yet I saw the weariness in her. Her experiences had been horrific. Mine had been compounded of her horror, lumped together with my own and hurled full in my face, as a leem springs, near-shattering me when I saw the black-feathered cloak whipped away to reveal the naked body of my Delia spread for sacrifice. The devilish hand of Yantong was in this, surely. The sacrifice of the Princess Majestrix would have been used in ways I could not comprehend. Chyyanism was finished. All the priests who would have carried the word for the day of uprising were dead. Makfaril was dead. The Day of the Black Feathers would never dawn in Vallia.
The simple people who had been hoodwinked would wait and they would grow restless. If they rose the insurrection would be in uncoordinated attacks, sporadic, local, able to be dealt with. Then the people would tire and lose faith and in the end they would curse the Great Chyyan and his twinned spirit, Makfaril.