King Of Zunga

The walls stretched for miles along the top of the ridge, forty and fifty feet high, built of massive blocks of stone and crowned with square towers every hundred yards or so. Behind the wall, more towers rose black and gray against the blue sky. So did columns of smoke from dozens of chimneys, as bakeries, forges, and ta

As the caravan approached a massively towered gate, someone hailed them from the gatehouse.

«Horun! Do you bear the prisoner Richard Blade of the English?»

Horun shouted back. «Yes, I do.»

«The queen has left orders that he be brought to the Summer Palace at once.» Horun looked down at Blade, with a lewd grin on his face.

Then Horun rapped his mount sharply on the right side of its head with his goad. The animal swung ponderously to the left, turning away from the gate, and lumbered along the wall. The rest of the caravan vanished through the gate, while Horun goaded the animal to a lumbering trot that kicked up a cloud of dust behind it. They kept on at that pace for a good two miles, until they came to a sprawling gray-brown palace, and rode into its fore courtyard. Horun brought his mount to a stop just inside the gate. A dozen slaves ran out to help him dismount and unload Blade.

After carrying Blade like a piece of furniture into the cellar of a nearby building, the men unwrapped him. They left the chains on, however. Word about Blade's qualities indeed had run on ahead. Chains and all, they bathed him, shaved him, oiled and perfumed and pumiced and scraped him, massaged him-the process went on for what seemed like hours. Blade began to feel like a prize bull being groomed for a cattle show.

Horun watched the process with a continuous grin flickering across his thin face, openly amused at Blade's mounting a

Horun ran on. Indicating the slaves scurrying around the chamber, he gri

Eventually the slaves finished their work. Blade was dressed in a tight-fitting loin-guard and given an empty sheath to hook over it. «There'll be a sword in that sheath soon enough,» said Horun. Then, with a bawdy chuckle, he added, «And your other sword may be in another sheath even before that. Lucky man.»

Now a squad of soldiers tramped in, and Horun unlocked Blade's chains. The soldiers surrounded him with drawn swords, and he was marched out of the cellar. They went along a damp, twisting corridor, each section seeming gloomier than the last, for what seemed like hours. Finally their journey came to an end as they mounted a flight of stairs and Horun pushed open a massive door. Sunlight poured in, for a moment dazzling Blade's eyes. The soldiers paid no attention to his stumblings, but shoved him into the open.

Slowly his eyes readjusted to the daylight, and he saw that he was standing in the center of another large courtyard-no, garden would be a better description. It was nearly as large as a football field. Where it was not covered with lush green grass manicured to almost billiard-table smoothness, white gravel walks led through rainbow-colored masses of flowers. Their scents filled the air, striking Blade hard enough to almost make his head swim. After the austere plains and the foul smells of his journey, such an overpowering mass of perfumes seemed unhealthy. He felt almost ill.

«The queen's private garden,» said Horun. «I wonder if you'll be the only thing on show today-no, I see somebody else coming.»

Out from the shadows of one of the porticos around the garden came a line of slaves. They were struggling with something immensely long and thick, done up in a version of the canvas sack that had carried Blade. Whatever it was, they were sweating with the effort of carrying it, and wide-eyed with fear. They kept on coming, until there were nearly two score of them. The thing they carried seemed to nearly sixty feet long. After the slaves came yet another squad of the ubiquitous soldiers, carrying a thick iron collar, a massive chain, and an iron post pointed at one end. By the time all this hardware was gathered together, Blade hardly needed to hear the explosive hiss that sounded from inside the bag to know what the slaves were carrying.

Then Horun jabbed Blade sharply in the ribs and pointed up toward a second-story balcony half-screened by the tops of a quartet of small trees. A woman had stepped out onto the balcony, and even in the shadows she made an impressive sight. Tall-nearly six feet-with a great foaming mane of blue-black hair pouring down her back. She wore a golden gown that above the waist might have been sprayed on, so tightly did it cling to her luxuriantly curved figure. In her hair sparkled a thin tiara of rubies.

«The queen?» whispered Blade.

«Yes. But don't pay any attention to her until the trumpeters blow. That's the sign that she's officially present. Until then we treat her as just part of the scenery. A very nice part of the scenery,» added Horun.

Blade kept his eyes fixed on the woman nonetheless. A moment later two men in yellow tunics and green tabards joined the queen on the balcony, each carrying a yard-long brass trumpet. They raised these to their lips, and blew a long raw blast.

Blade winced at the sound. Then from behind him the hiss exploded again. This time it did not die away. And then he heard the clank and clash of iron, scrapings, thumpings-and a chorus of mad screams of panic.

Blade whirled around. His eyes flicked from the queen, frozen motionless on her balcony, to the great snake rearing up in the middle of the scattering slaves. Horun shouted an order, and several of the soldiers ran forward, drawing their swords. But instead of attacking the snake, they waded into the ranks of the slaves, slashing and thrusting. The slaves were screaming in agony now, falling and writhing on the ground. Some of them abruptly stopped screaming as the snake writhed over them, its tons of scaled mass crushing the last bits of life out of them.

Blade could not contain himself. «You idiot!» he roared at Horun. «Get that snake and let the slaves alone!»

Horun whirled and backhanded Blade across the face. «Keep your mouth shut, boy. This is just another slave trick. I don't need you to tell me how to handle it.»

Four soldiers were holding onto Blade, so he did not lunge forward, pick up Horun, and break the officer in two with his bare hands. He watched the snake slowly coiling and uncoiling itself, as the fact penetrated to its tiny brain that it was free. Its head bobbed up and down like a yoyo, sometimes rising twenty feet above the ground, sometimes lying flat on the grass.

Now the head rose again, and swiveled toward the balcony. The snake's blank green eyes flickered open as they caught sight of Roxala, still frozen by the railing. Blade's mind was yelling at the queen, «Get back inside, you stupid woman! Don't just stand there gaping like an idiot!» He knew that in another second he was going to shout it out loud.