“Sword! Can it be that you now flatter yourself?”
“There’s but one way for you to find out,” Dardash replied easily. Much later as they lay together in the darkness, with Nirrineen contentedly asleep in his arms, he exulted in the discovery that his mind had regained all of its former clarity.
He began to consider ways of killing the king.
The city of Bhitsala was clustered around a semi-circular bay which provided good anchorage for trading ships. It was protected by a range of low hills which merged with the shoreline at the bay’s southern edge, creating a cliff-edge prominence upon which sat the palace of the Koldanian kings. It was a sprawling, multi-centred building, the colonnades of which had been sheathed with beaten gold until Marcurades’ accession to the throne. One of the young king’s first actions after assuming power had been to strip the columns and distribute the gold among his people. The underlying cores of white marble shone almost as brightly, however, and at the end of the day when they reflected the aureate light of sunset the dwellers in the city below told their children that the gods had gilded the palace anew to repay Marcurades for his generosity.
Dardash imagined he could sense the universal adoration of the king as he rode into the city, and for him it was an atmosphere of danger. The task he had undertaken would have to be planned and carried out with the utmost care. He had already decided that it must not appear to be a murder at all, but even a naturally occurring illness could lead to suspicions of poisoning—and a magician, a reputed brewer of strange potions and philtres, was one of the most likely to be accused. It was essential, Dardash told himself, that Marcurades’ death should occur in public, before as many witnesses as possible, and that it should appear as either a pure accident or, even better, a malign stroke of fate. The trouble was that divine acts were difficult to simulate.
“I have prepared a room for you in my own quarters at the palace,” Urtarra said as they passed through the city’s afternoon heat and began the gradual climb to the royal residence. “You will be able to rest there and have a meal.”
“That’s good,” Dardash replied, “but first I’m going to bathe and have Nirrineen massage me with scented oils—I’ve begun to smell worse than this accursed horse.”
“My intention was to send Nirrineen straight back to her father.”
“No! I want her to stay with me.”
“But many women are available at the palace.” Urtarra brought his horse closer and lowered his voice. “It wouldn’t be wise at this time to share your bed with one who has a special interest in you.”
Dardash realised at once that Urtarra’s counsel was good, but the thought of parting with Nirrineen—the she-creature who worked her own kind of voluptuous magic on him through the sweet hours of night—was oddly painful. “Don’t alarm yourself—she will know nothing,” he said. “Do you take me for a fool?”
“I was thinking only of your own safety.”
“There is only one whose safety is at risk,” Dardash said, fixing his gaze on the complex architecture of the palace which had begun to dominate the skyline ahead.
When they reached the palace gates a short time later, Urtarra conferred briefly with his men and sent them on their way to nearby lodgings. Dardash, Urtarra and Nirrineen were able to ride through the gates after only a perfunctory examination by the captain of the palace guard—yet another indication of the unusual bond that existed between the king and his subjects. Servants summoned by Urtarra led away their horses and mules. Others came forward to carry Dardash’s belongings into the astrologer’s suite, which was part of a high wing facing the sea, but he dismissed them and moved the well-trussed bundles in person.
While thus engaged he noticed, in one corner of a small courtyard, a strange vehicle which consisted principally of a large wooden barrel mounted on four wheels. At the base of the barrel was an arrangement of cylinders and copper pipes from which projected a long T-shaped handle, and near the top—coiled like a snake—was a flexible leather tube, the seams of which were sealed with bitumen.
“What is that device?” Dardash said, pointing the object out to Urtarra. “I’ve never seen its like before.”
Urtarra looked amused. “You’ll see many of Marcurades’ inventions before you are here very long. He calls that particular one a fire engine.”
“A fire engine? Is it a siege weapon?”
“Quite the opposite,” Urtarra said, his amusement turning to outright laughter. “It’s for projecting water on to burning buildings.”
“Oh? An unusual sport for a king.”
“It’s more than a sport, my friend. Marcurades gets so obsessed with his various inventions that he spends half his time in the palace workshops. Sometimes, in his impatience to see the latest one completed, he throws off his robes and labours on it like a common artisan. I’ve seen him emerge from the smithy so covered with soot and sweat as to be almost unrecognisable.”
“Doesn’t he know that such activities can be dangerous?”
“Marcurades doesn’t care about…” Urtarra paused and scanned Dardash’s face. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Dardash almost smiled as his mind came to grips with the information he had just received. “Now, where can I bathe?”
“Watch this,” Dardash said to Nirrineen as they stood together in the elaborate garden which formed a wide margin between the royal palace and the edge of the cliffs. It was a fresh morning and the livening breeze coming in from the sea was ideally suited to Dardash’s purpose. In his right hand he had a cross made from two flat strips of hardwood, smoothly jointed at the centre. He raised his hand and made to throw the cross off the edge of the cliff.
“Don’t throw it away,” Nirrineen pleaded. She had no idea why Dardash had constructed the cross in the first place, but she had seen him spend the best part of a day carefully shaping the object, smoothly rounding some edges and sharpening others, and obviously she disliked the idea of his labour going to waste.
“But I’ve grown weary of the thing,” Dardash said, laughing. He brought his hand down sharply, in an action like that of a man cracking a whip, and released the cross. It flew from his fingers at great speed, its arms flailing in the vertical plane, gradually curving downwards towards the blue waters of the bay. Nirrineen began to protest, but her voice was stilled as the cross, tilting to one side, defied gravity by sailing upwards again until it was higher than the point from which it had been launched. It appeared to come to rest in mid-air, hovering like a hawk, twinkling brightly in the sky. Nirrineen gave a small scream of mingled wonder and terror as she realised the cross was actually returning. She threw herself into Dardash’s arms as the strange artifact fluttered back across the edge of the cliff and fell to earth a few paces away.
“You didn’t tell me it was bewitched,” she accused, clinging to Dardash and staring down at the cross as though it were a live thing which might suddenly attack her.
“There is no magic here,” he said, disengaging himself and picking up the cross, “even though I learned the secret from a very old book. Look at how I have shaped each piece of wood to resemble a gull’s wing. I’ve made you a little wooden bird, Nirrineen—a homing pigeon.”
“It still seems like magic to me,” she said doubtfully. “I don’t think I like it.”
“You soon shall. See how reluctant it is to leave you.” Dardash threw the cross out to sea again in the same manner and it repeated its astonishing circular flight, this time coming to rest even closer to its starting point. Nirrineen leaped out of its path, but now there was more excitement than apprehension in her eyes, and after a third throw she was able to bring herself to pick the cross up and hand it to Dardash.