It was not an easy business, reading that scroll. The text was close-packed and verbose, and the calligraphy was ornate and of an antiquarian sort, with many an irritating curlicue and decorative swirl. It called for close concentration, verging almost on decipherment. Dekkeret, struggling with it, soon discovered that it opened with a lengthy and circumlocutory preamble, implying, perhaps, that the Sambailids were asking for nothing more than provincial autonomy and a revival of the procuratorial title. But it was followed by other clauses that contradicted that, clauses seeming to assert that what they actually wanted was a good deal more—in fact an end to all imperial rule everywhere in the continent of Zimroel, complete independence, total withdrawal of the existing regime.
“Is there a problem, my lord?” asked Mandralisca, hovering by Dekkeret’s shoulder and leaning close.
“A problem? No. But I find a certain lack of clarity in your opening statements. I’ll look at them again, I think.”
Frowning, he went back to the beginning, sought to disentangle clause from clause, separating each statement from its carefully mated opposite. It was a task that called for the deepest concentration, and deep concentration was what Dekkeret endeavored to give it.
Not so deep, though, that he failed to see from the corner of his eye the bright flash of the blade that Mandralisca had suddenly pulled from that tasseled pouch at his waist, nor heard Fulkari’s immediate gasp of alarm. But it was all happening so swiftly that he could do nothing more than lean backward, away from the thrust that was heading his way from the rear.
But then in one split second the long-haired boy, Mandralisca’s own aide, reached his hand forward, swooped up the wine-bowl at Dekkeret’s elbow, and hurled its contents into his master’s eyes. At the same time with his other hand he made a grab at Mandralisca’s descending arm. Mandralisca, eluding the boy’s grasping hand, whirled about blindly and swept the dagger-blade in a furious gesture across the boy’s throat, drawing a spurt of red. The boy seemed to crumple and disappear. And then, amid the general uproar, Septach Melayn appeared at Dekkeret’s side, his drawn sword in his hand, ordering Mandralisca in a terrible roaring cry to stand back from the Coronal’s presence.
Mandralisca, half blinded, his face streaming with wine, did back away, but only as far as the place where the Lord Gavahaud stood gaping in astonishment and terror. From Gavahaud’s scabbard he yanked the elaborately chased dress-sword with which the vain Sambailid had furnished his outfit, and swung quickly around, still trying to blink the wine out of his eyes as he confronted the onrushing Septach Melayn.
“Here,” said Septach Melayn coldly, halting and tossing to Mandralisca a kerchief that he was carrying tucked in his sleeve. “Wipe your face. I will not kill a man who is unable to see.” He gave the surprised Mandralisca a moment to blot away the wine; and then he came forward again, his rapier in swift motion.
Dekkeret, still stunned and bewildered by all that had taken place, half rose from his seat at the conference table. But no intervention was possible. Septach Melayn and Mandralisca were already hard at it, moving steadily out in the meadow as they fought. Dekkeret had never seen two swords moving so swiftly. Septach Melayn was the swiftest man alive with a sword; but Mandralisca met him thrust for thrust, parry for parry, a wild display of virtuoso swordsmanship, feinting, pivoting, moving always with lightning speed. There was no stroke that Septach Melayn could not deal with and deflect, but still—still—to see Septach Melayn held at a standstill, unable to break through the other’s defense—
And then Mandralisca, turning abruptly away from Septach Melayn, reached down and snatched up a handful of the soft, loose meadow soil and flung it into Septach Melayn’s face. Unlike Septach Melayn, he had no compunctions about fighting with a man who could not see. The earthen clod broke up as it struck Septach Melayn, some going to his eyes, some to his nostrils, some to his mouth; and as he stood baffled for a moment, coughing and spitting and wiping at his eyes, Mandralisca rushed forward in a furious frenzied onslaught, driving his blade toward the center of Septach Melayn’s chest.
Dekkeret watched in horror. Mandralisca’s sword and Septach Melayn’s moved with blurring speed. For an instant it was impossible to see what was happening. Then Dekkeret caught sight of Septach Melayn parrying Mandralisca’s desperate attack, sweeping Mandralisca’s sword aside with a grand upstroke of his own. An instant later Septach Melayn lunged and thrust, and took Mandralisca through the throat with his stroke.
The two men stood frozen for an instant.
There was an utterly weird look, a strange thing that was almost a look of triumph, on Mandralisca’s face as he died. Septach Melayn pulled his blade free of the toppling Mandralisca and swung about so that he was facing toward the conference table and Dekkeret. But then Dekkeret realized that somewhere in the final melee Septach Melayn had been wounded also. Blood was streaming down the front of his doublet, a trickle at first, then more, so much that the little golden Labyrinth emblem was completely hidden in the weltering flow.
The whole meadow was in chaos now, concealed Sambailid troops emerging from their hiding places in the forest, Dekkeret’s own guard rushing forward to protect him, and the rest of Dekkeret’s soldiers, coming in now from the outskirts of the field where they had been waiting for a signal from their king, joining the fray also when they heard the bellowed command that came from Dekkeret. In the midst of all this the Coronal ran toward Septach Melayn, who was staggering and lurching, but still contriving somehow to remain on his feet.
“My lord—” Septach Melayn began. And halted, for some spasm of pain seemed to overtake him; but then he recovered himself a little and said, smiling, “The beast is dead, is he not? How glad I am of that.”
“Oh, Septach Melayn—”
Dekkeret would have caught him then, for it seemed that he was about to fall. But Septach Melayn waved him away. “Take this, my lord,” he said, handing Dekkeret his sword. “Use it to defend yourself against these barbarians. I will not need it again.” And added, with a glance at the fallen Mandralisca: “I have achieved what I was put into this world to do.”
Now Septach Melayn tottered and began to topple. Dekkeret seized him by the shoulders and held him upright in a tender embrace. It seemed to him that Septach Melayn weighed next to nothing, tall as he was. Dekkeret held him that way long enough to hear a quiet little sigh come from him, and then the death rattle. And then he eased him gently to the ground.
Swinging about, now, Dekkeret took in the madness all around him in a single glance. One swarm of his guardsmen stood in a circle of swords about Fulkari; she was safe. A second group had formed a wall around his own self. Gialaurys loomed like a mountain beside the conference table, clutching the Lord Gaviral by the throat with one huge hand, and the Lord Galahaud the same way with the other. Dinitak had found a poniard somewhere and was brandishing it at his uncle’s breast, and Khaymak Barjazid had his hands raised high to show that he was his nephew’s prisoner. All over the field the Sambailid warriors, realizing now that their leaders were taken, were throwing down their weapons and lifting their hands in similar gestures of surrender.
Then Dekkeret looked down and saw the boy who had thrown the wine in Mandralisca’s face, lying practically at his feet, with Mandralisca’s plump little aide-de-camp kneeling over him. He was streaming with blood from that terrible wound to the throat.
“Is he alive?” Dekkeret asked.
“Barely, my lord. He has only moments left.”
“He saved me from death,” said Dekkeret, and an eerie chill came over him as there entered into his mind the recollection of another day long ago, in Normork, and another Coronal faced with an assassin’s blade, and the casual unthinking swipe of that blade that had taken his cousin Sithelle’s life and in a strange way simultaneously set him on his path to the throne. So it had all happened again, a life sacrificed so that a Coronal might live. Dekkeret, looking across to Fulkari, saw the ghost of Sithelle instead, and trembled and came close to weeping.