“Sir Robert! Sir Robert!” the Scorpion called mockingly. “My dear, your father is a blustering, reckless fool.”
“Which is why you had to steal his daughter, rather than confront him directly,” Enid answered merrily, ironically.
“You think he will come and rescue you. Oh, yes, Lady Enid, he will walk into the arms of my soldiers, into the arrows and the daggers of the long dead men of Neraka—the ‘generations from the grass,’ as the prophecy calls them. He will feel the Scorpion’s sting, my sweet one.”
The Scorpion leaned back on his throne and laughed richly, venomously. From the folds of his robe he drew something that shone, something that glittered, and he began to speak as he held the pendulum to the light, swinging it back and forth like a cheap carnival hypnotist.
I did not notice the swirling gray stone near the railing of the balcony, and it was all I could do to grab the curtain as I fell through it. My stifled cry of alarm was not stifled enough. Both Enid and the Scorpion looked up at me from their seats in the great hall.
For the first time, I saw clearly that Enid’s hands were tied to the arms of her chair. And the eyes of the Scorpion glowed red, glowed blue, glowed white.
“Welcome, Weasel,” he purred, clutching the arms of his throne with a grip that whitened his knuckles. “We were just getting ready to . . . discuss you.”
Chapter Nineteen
“We can always discuss this later, if you’d like,” I offered, but the Scorpion was having none of it. He leaned forward on his throne, his eyes spiraling though all the colors of fire until they took on the white of the fire’s very center.
“I think I have no further need of you,” he snarled, his voice stripped of its deadly music, become something harsh and remotely human. We were in his country now, where he had no more need of masks. He pointed at the floor below me, the golden pendant dangling from his long, pale index finger. The spot of floor to which he pointed began to turn, twist, and glitter, much like the walls and floors of the corridors through which I had passed. But this vortex was black, not the slate gray of the walls and the other floors.
I squinted and looked closer.
A blanket of scorpions covered the floor beneath me. They flickered and twisted in the torchlight, poisonous tails aloft. To fall into their midst would make you pray on the way down that the fall itself would kill you. Slowly, ever so carefully, I tried to pull myself up the curtain and over the railing of the balcony, praying to Gilean, to Mishakal, to whatever god or goddess came to mind for a strongly woven fabric in my hands, for careful carpentry on the railing and no more illusions where I was headed. The mechanical bird chattered again in the hall outside.
I sighed and whispered to myself, “Now just climb up and tunnel your way out of here, Weasel.”
Then I saw the giant scorpion, its black scales shimmering, its sharp tail raised, as it began a slow climb down the curtain, clutching the hem and the stitchery on its way toward my hands. Things like this compose your worst nightmares. I reached for the railing, only to have my hand pass through it as though it were made of smoke.
There was nothing of substance to serve as a lifeline. I let myself down the curtain as far as I could, hand over hand like I was descending a rope. Then I thought of the boiling throng of creatures below me and stopped where I was, not daring to move down any farther, lest I run out of curtain.
Still the giant scorpion approached me, its black tail raised and its delicate legs dancing over the soft drapery.
“Get away!” I hissed. The thing paused, tail turning in the air like a black leaf catching moisture or sunlight, then hopped threateningly in my direction before pausing ironically on a gold tassel not a yard from my hands.
“Such heroism!” the Scorpion drawled ironically. “A creature not a tenth your size, and you shy from him as though he were . . . poison?” His laughter rose into a piercing howl; the scorpions below me churned more frantically, and Enid covered her ears.
“You’re not known for picking the fair fight yourself, Benedict!” Enid shouted angrily. She was saying something more, but her words warred with his laughter and lost.
Finally, when the laughter subsided, Benedict looked up at me. With a strange, demented tenderness he smiled, but I could see his glowing eyes sink farther and farther into their sockets, and the framework of the skull emerging from the pale, yellowed skin.
“You did me good service once, did you not, Galen Pathwarden?”
The verminous thing above me paused in its descent, as its master spoke. “As reward for your service, little Weasel, you shall live longer than all your friends.”
Enid shot an angry glance at me, reminded, no doubt, of the stories of my betrayals. I looked remorseful and shrugged, or at least as much as I could while hanging from a drapery. Her anger softened,,. Helplessly we stared at one another. Helplessly I dangled. Above me and below me, the chittering poisonous things awaited their orders. I was left in wicked suspension. Dimly through the halls, I could hear someone pounding at the door—the door I had tried to get to, to open. The Scorpion cupped his hand to his ear, ironically.
“We have visitors, my dear! Don’t get up. I’ll answer the door!” he exclaimed, then burst once again into laughter. “It should be my father-in-law, if I am not mistaken.”
He turned to me, his eyes glowing.
“And I am never mistaken. For after your verbal gymnastics, your long nights with poetry and history and Solamnic lore, it is I who broke the code of the prophecy, not Bayard, who nursed it for a lifetime, nor Sir Robert, who pondered it like his father did and his father before him.
“I like to think that a little bit of . . . the bardic soul resides within me,” he mused, and leaned back on his throne exultantly.
“If it does, Uncle Benedict, I’d wager it is lonely,” Enid retorted.
“Silence, child,” Benedict commanded softly, almost soothingly. “For your . . . bridal time is nigh.”
From the folds of his robe he drew a dagger. It shimmered in the off-yellow light of the hall as he placed it delicately on the arm of his throne. Just as he did, the door to the Great Hall shivered and burst from its hinges. Bayard and Sir Robert stood in the doorway, swords drawn. Sir Robert’s left hand was tangled in Alfric’s hair, which he had used as a rein to guide my reluctant brother to the spot. Alfric puffed and whimpered.
“Welcome,” the Scorpion intoned ominously. “I have awaited you, Bayard Brightblade. And you . . . Sir Robert. There is time—not much time, but time enough—to take up our quarrel of four centuries. But first, let us cover a wound more freshly opened, a factional dispute of scarcely thirty years back.”
He held out his hands, palms up, and raised them slowly above his head. Its chain entwined in the fingers of his left hand, the pendulum dangled and glittered.
“Let my friends resume their quarrel. . . where your high-and-mighty Order fancies it has put all quarrel to rest,” he pronounced casually. “Let ‘generations from the grass arise and lay the curse aside.’”
Beneath me the scorpions began to scatter, the floor of the hall to shake and crack. When the attention of its master turned elsewhere, my enemy from above resumed his scrambling descent.
“Stop right there!” I threatened, trying to sound menacing, then clamping my mouth shut in the realization that the creature might be following the sound of my voice. I reached into the mist for my belt and the knife that hung . . .
Did not hang.
I remembered the windowsill through which I had entered this castle, the glitter of iron in the light of the red moon. My dagger was conveniently three corridors away, forgotten on a windowsill beyond my reach. In vain I fumbled through my pockets for anything sharp or heavy. At last my desperate hand rested on something rough, thick, and leathery.