[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

The single stupendous fact about Magdag, which marks it off from most other cities, is the incredible
area devoted to the megaliths. For dwabur after dwabur they stretch along the plain, colossal blocks of
architecture, striding with the insensate hunger of continual growth. Thousands of slaves and workers toil
ceaselessly, forever creating new halls and courts and pavilions, raising fresh towers and cupolas to the
glory of Grodno the Green. Always, in Magdag, there is building as the overlords indulge their obsessive
craze. As a slave, as a stylor, I had worked there, and, too, I had been caught up in the dark mysteries
revealing the reasons for this fraught building mania.
As Gafard in his preysany litter and I, astride a sectrix and riding abaft him, made our way through the
crowded streets, those enormous blocks, the megaliths of Magdag, fractured the far skyline. Dominant,
impressive, brooding, they lowered down over the city of Magdag.
The reception at King Genod s palace proceeded much as I had expected. There were all the usual
panoply and pomp and circumstance, the frills and the rituals, the protocols. We were escorted through
court after court, up marble stairways, and through immense arches in the tall pointed fashion of
Grodnim. Everywhere stood guards, ramrod stiff, on duty, only their eyes moving as they watched every
arrival and departure. They wore a variety of fancy uniforms, and I stored away details of armor and
weaponry against future need.
The chamberlains in their green tabards and golden wands went before us. Trumpeters pealed a blast as
we passed that was designed, I felt damned sure, to make the suppliants to the throne jump out of their
skins with fright. On we went and, at last, came to the anteroom to the reception chamber. Like many of
the palaces of Kregen of which I had knowledge, this Palace of Grodno the All-Wise contained a maze
of rooms and chambers and secret ways. I held myself erect and I looked about openly, as would be
expected; but I had loosened my longsword in the scabbard and my right hand remained limp and flexed,
ready for instant action.
Trumpets pealed again, the anteroom doors were flung back, and preceded by the chamberlains, Gafard
and I marched into the gleaming brilliance of the reception chamber.
Light, color, glitter. The sight of waving fans, bare shoulders, silk and furs, armor of iron and steel, and
everywhere the green, that green, shining and refulgent, here in the reception chamber of King Genod
Gannius of Magdag.
Designed to impress, the chamber weighed down on my spirits. What was I, who had once been of
Zair, doing here, even if the Krozairs of Zy had rejected me?
The device of the lairgodont appeared in many places. Guards with spears and swords, in glittering mail
swathed in green robes, stood dumbly along the walls. I marked their helmets. Atop each burnished helm
rose the sculpted form of a lairgodont, in the round, fashioned of silver, shining and winking in the light
streaming through the clerestory above. The artist who had created the master image had caught all the
violent, vicious character of the lairgodont, portraying him with a half-turned head so the wicked fangs in
that gap-jawed mouth showed prominently. The body scales were delineated to perfection, the spiked
tail curled high and menacingly, the skull-crushing talons gripped like vises of death.
We marched down the marble length of floor to the throne at the far end. There were three thrones and
in the center, higher throne, sat King Genod.
Our studded sandals rang on the marble.
Gafard presented a formidable picture of a fighting-man, loaded with honor and wealth, harsh and cruel,
superb in his strength.
I, this same Gadak, marched a half-pace to his left rear. Over the mail shirt he had given me I wore a
white robe well splashed with the green decorations, with a green sleeveless jacket embroidered in silver
over that, the Genodder scabbarded high on my right side, the longsword swinging from a baldric at my
left.
Past the watching lines of guards we marched, past the crowds of courtiers and officials and high
officers, past the clustering women who arranged, every one, to wear their flaunting green feathers in
ways individual to each. The light streamed in above, the mass of gems and feathers and precious metals
formed a chiaroscuro of brilliance, and over all the hated green prevailed.
We halted where a golden line in the marble pavement indicated the distance by which we must be
separated from the king and his magnificence. I halted, still that half-pace to Gafard s rear, and the
chamberlains wheeled to the side and stood, their heads bent, facing the throne. Deliberately, I looked at
the smaller thrones.
The right-hand chair of gold held the small, shrunken body of a man I judged to be well past two
hundred, well past the age he should have gone to the Ice Floes of Sicce or, in his case, up to sit in glory
on the right hand of Grodno in the green radiance of Genodras. His role, I judged, would be that of court
wise man, perhaps wizard, and his lined, pouched face and those dark darting eyes, like lizard eyes,
confirmed the shrewd intelligence of the fellow. His frail body was so smothered in green and gold no
indication of his figure was possible; I fancied he had little longer to spend on Kregen.
In the left-hand chair sat My breath sucked in and I forced my ugly old face to remain a carved chunk
of mahogany.
Oh, yes, I knew her.
She had changed since I had last seen her. Plumpness had softened the lines of beauty in her face,
making her appear more petulant than ever. But she remained superbly beautiful, still lithe and lovely. Her
dark hair had been dyed the fashionable green. Her kohled eyes regarded me and I kept my face blank.
The last words we had exchanged  so long ago here in Magdag as my old vosk-skulls surged forward
to the victory that was surely theirs, that victory so cruelly denied  had been words of anger and
unfulfilled yearning. She had said I looked ridiculous, standing there with an old vosk skull upon my head. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]