The Sword of Skelos by Andrew Offutt Read Free Book Online Page A

sword into the hand of Farouz, that it might be outside the dungeon. Zafra stood back and seemed to blend into the wall at the head of the stair.
    “M… my lord! To such a place—? Those
men
!” The Shanki maiden’s voice quavered with her trembling.
    “Rejoice!” the khan bade her. “They are Iranistani, spies sent against us by a king whose mind is set on conquest! Yet one was a seer, and he made the happy prophecy that of you anon shall be born a beautiful boy who will grow up to rule not only Zamboula, but all the magnificent empire of Turan!”
    She looked at him from black eyes surrounded by black cosmetic. Her hand remained in his, and she wondered, seeming enchanted by his words, in their thrall. Behind her, Farouz quietly closed the great door, paneled with wood on its outside.
    “Below stood my very own sword, symbol of my rule. So overjoyed was I that I removed my own medallion of gold and pearl and topaz and the pigeon’s egg from my mother’s bosom, and hung it there. It was then that the spies made at me, and had to be slain by my loyal guards who fetched you here. For I set my hand on the pommel and made vow: She who retrieves this Gem of Zamboula shall by first among the women of Zamboula and all the land round about, that the way may be prepared for the ascension of the fruit of her loins.”
    The stare of those great dark maiden’s eyes had left the khan’s face while he broidered thus, and was now fixed on the winking pendant that swung like a victor’s waiting prize from the gem-hilted sword below.
    “M-mer… my lord… I… I cannot go down
there
!”
    “Why Derketari… Lotus of the sun-kissed desert… you must! Shall the prophecy of a dead man come to naught? Shall the proud tent-dwelling Shanki not then be elevated above all others and receive the favors of a great ruler-to-be—of Shanki blood?”
    The child stared down at the dangling medallion. She looked again at the hawk-nosed man beside her. Now he held his honeyed tongue. She looked again upon the two corpses, and again at the pendant. It dangled, beckoned silently in flashes of gemmy fire through the flicker of smoky dungeon torches. Her tongue appeared to trace over her full lower lip.
    She heard; she heard every word. Khan and mage knew she had thought of her poor desert-bound people, sun-wrinkled of face and hand ere they were twoscore years in age; of her father’s pride and hopes—and doubtless his shame unto rage, did he learn she had robbed him and his people and incidentally herself of great glory and high honor because of a childish trepidation; merely a dungeon. Merely two dead men, and new-dead at that. None among the people of the desert but saw corpses long ere they were twelve. Most saw them at least once at their most hideous; sun-bloated, fly-bedecked and vulture-pecked.
    “Hmp,” the child whose name was not Derketari muttered to herself, “I have seen corpses afore. Hmp!”
    And Akter, smiling, looked down at her over the bridge of his vulture’s nose. He released her hand at the moment he felt the beginning of a tug. He wiped the hand on his multi-hued robe, for her palm was sweating.
    In a gesture almost queenly, she bent her knees just a little to gather in one hand both ends of her “skirt,” drawing the strip of white behind in between her legs. She descended, slowly. Her steeling herself was visible every step of her way downward.
    Across the head of the steps, khan’s eyes met those of mage. The khan spoke, quietly.
    “You have a spell that wants completing, have you not?”
    The maiden continued her descent without glancing back. The stair numbered five-and-twenty slabs of stone; she set her felt-shod foot on the nineteenth.
    “Aye, my lord.”
    Akter glanced down at the gift of the Shanki. She set her left foot on the twenty-first step.
    “Complete it, then, wizard, and doubly happier will by my life, whilst for you… would you entertain a very tigress this night, Zafra? A Tigress, of