“Greatness, you are a welcome sight,” Inos said weakly. She could feel herself floating in strange surges of emotion, like long ocean swells, up and down and up . . . There was pain and terror and screaming—horrible-hair-tearing hysterics inside her somewhere, there was a broken ankle and worry about Kade and Azak, but all those were overlain by the silken web of calm that she had recognized as Elkarath’s. It was an intensification of the spell he had used on her every day from their first meeting until she had fled from him at Tall Cranes. It was magnified now to soothe her after what she had endured. The slow ups and downs must be variations in the intensity of the magic as he sought to adjust it to her needs.
He nodded calmly from the eminence of horseback. “I regret that I did not arrive sooner, Majesty. However, it would seem that you have suffered no harm I cannot heal.”
Her ankle had stopped throbbing already. She fingered the swelling absently. ”My aunt?”
Elkarath glanced across the clearing to the body of the felled horse. ”She has been stunned, but she is in no danger. I shall attend to her when we have meted justice here.”
“And Azak?”
“He also will survive. I was just in time for him, also.”
A wave of relief burst through the emotional blanket, and Inos muttered a swift prayer to the Gods. “This is good news indeed, Greatness!”
“Humph!” The white brows came down in a scowl, and Elkarath turned his regard on the four frozen youths. They twitched slightly and mumbled. Harmless as flies in amber, they drooled and rolled their eyes in their efforts to move lips and tongues.
“These vermin,” the sheik said icily, “shot down a man from ambush and then did not have the grace to kill him. He might have lain there suffering for days so far as they knew, or cared. As it was, he had almost drowned in his own blood when I arrived. Else I had been here sooner.”
He swung a leg and dropped as nimbly as an adolescent, although the stallion stood at least seventeen hands. Then it didn’t. The great horse shrank and faded and in moments had become merely another shaggy mountain pony like many Inos had seen in the foothills on the far side of the Progistes. Its occult glow dimmed and vanished. Even through the euphoria spell, Inos felt prickles of shock, and she heard the four immobilized pixies mumble gutturally.
The least surprised seemed to be the pony itself. It flickered ears and swished tail in a sort of equine shrug, then lowered its head to crop the lush grass.
The sheik knelt to examine Inos’s ankle. Inos had no clothes on. He chuckled softly. “Do not be shy. No woman has secrets from me.” He laid a cool hand on the swelling and it subsided. Her other scrapes and bruises were healing also.
“There! That will do for now.” The old man rose, with none of the stiffness he displayed when there were others around to tend him. He held down a courtly hand to help Inos rise also. Silver sandals appeared on her feet and, as she came erect, a silken robe enveloped her. A filmy shawl materialized over her filthy, tangled hair. He had either forgotten underwear or was too tactful to use magic so intimately.
She mumbled thanks and bobbed a shaky curtsy. He bowed in response and laughed softly, as if he were enjoying this rare opportunity to exert powers he normally concealed. He did not look straight at her, though. He never did. Being a sorcerer, he could see without looking, she supposed, and that had become a habit to him. But she always found it irritating.
The prisoners moaned and slobbered and twitched in their efforts to move. Lighted by Elkarath’s awesome light, they all seemed younger and slighter than they had before—unusually broad, perhaps, and with a curl to their hair that she had rarely seen on men before, and only by artifice on women. Their eyes were large and angled like elves’, stretched wide now in terror. The irises were pale hazel, almost gold. But they were no hideous monsters, merely youths little older or taller than herself. How could they have behaved so?
“Scum!” said the sheik. “Who are they?” Inos asked.
He shrugged. “Not formal guards at their age. Just a hunting party, I fancy.”
“They are well groomed, civilized-looking. Their clothes are well made.”
“Ha! Their behavior was not civilized. They had been stalking you for some time. Their lives are forfeit, so it matters not who they are, nor whence they came.”
The amber eyes rolled in their sockets. Curiously, Inos was discovering that she felt very little hatred toward her attackers. Perhaps it was because they looked so helpless and she could remember how it felt to be pinned down by sorcery, or perhaps because she had escaped without permanent hurt. Maybe it was only the sorcerer’s spell working on her emotions, but they seemed very young to die.
The sheik was stroking his shining white beard in dignified consideration. ”They did not actually consummate their violation of your person, Queen Inosolan, but the intent was manifest. Your escape was narrow enough to justify granting you the traditional satisfaction.” He drew his dagger and offered it to her with a flourish, hilt first.
Inos stared at it in bewilderment. “What am I supposed to do with that? ”
“Take what they were so eager to give.” She recoiled a step and turned to meet the horrified gaze of the immobilized youths. “No!” she said. “I am not a public executioner! And I would not stoop to barbarity like that.”
“Indeed?” Elkarath murmured, and snatched away the occult blanket he had laid upon her emotions.
A thunderbolt of rage and hate struck her, followed at once by a shivery wild joy at having the tables turned. Again her heart thundered in her ears. She tasted bile burning her throat as she recalled what these four moral cripples had done to her and what they had intended. The gloating, the mockery, the actual pain, and above all the planned degradation . . . four men against one woman . . . her hand trembled as she reached for the dagger. Revenge would feel very good.
And she heard her father’s voice. “Do what is good,” he had told her once, “not just what feels good.” When? Why? She could not recall the occasion—perhaps something very trivial in her childhood. But the precept was not trivial. With a great effort she mastered her fury and turned to face the old man.
“No! They deserve punishment, I agree. But not by me.” The sheik raised his snowbank eyebrows in disbelief and for once looked at her squarely.
“Punishment and vengeance are not the same,” Inos shouted. ”You are judge here. Yours is the power. They are your captives. Judge then, and execute your judgment.” She took a deep breath, steadied her voice, and added, “And if it please your Greatness—I prefer the world this way. I want to take life as it is and as I am, not a painted replica seen through the eyes of a drunkard.”
He frowned. “You are trembling.”
“I am not ashamed of that under the circumstances. I would rather tremble than be a puppet.”
A faint smile rumpled the folds of his chubby red face. “Spoken like a queen! So be it.” He replaced the dagger in his sash and turned to the four captives. “You are judged unfit to live. Die, then, and may the Gods find more good in you than I can.”
They jerked into motion, turning on their heels and starting to walk. Inos stuffed knuckles into her mouth as she saw the nature of the sentence. Of course the old man would be watching her, but if he expected her to have a fit of hysterics, then she would not give him the satisfaction. So she held herself rigid and watched, and by some occult trick she was allowed to see through the darkness as the four boys advanced over the grass, stumbled down the little bank, and continued across the sand. They waded into the river until the water reached their waists, and the tall one lasted until it was halfway up his chest. Then the current took him, as well. None of them reappeared.
Inos released a long breath. She felt nauseated. She was still shaking. She would have nightmares for years . . . so be it!
It had been the sheik’s justice, not hers. “Now my aunt, your Greatness?”
“Of course. And First Lionslayer will be here shortly.. Come, then.”
He led the way across the meadow, walking within the moving circle of his own radiance. The grass fire that Kade had started had died away to a few red flickers and pale smoke drifting among the trees, so the forest was not going to burn down. The sky was full of stars already—night came more swiftly here than it did in Krasnegar.