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The Duke clambered onto the battle-steed’s back, the cold metal yielding as live flesh between his thighs, and he urged it forward.
A leap and it was racing through the froth and flux of Underspace: together they were tumbling through the madness between the worlds. The Duke laughed, then, where no man could hear him, as they travelled together through Underspace, travelling forever in the Undertime (that is not reckoned against the seconds of a person’s life).
‘This feels like a trap, of some kind,’ said the battle-steed, as the space beneath galaxies evaporated about them.
‘Yes,’ said the Duke. ‘I am sure that it is.’
‘I have heard of this Queen,’ said the battle-steed, ‘or of something like her. She lives between life and death, and calls warriors and heroes and poets and dreamers to their doom.’
‘That sounds right,’ said the Duke.
‘And when we return to real-space, I would expect an ambush,’ said the battle-steed.
‘That sounds more than probable,’ said the Duke, as they reached their destination, and erupted out of Underspace back into existence.
The guardians of the palace were as beautiful as the messenger had warned him, and as ferocious, and they were waiting.
‘What are you doing?’ they called, as they came in for the assault. ‘Do you know that strangers are forbidden here? Stay with us. Let us love you. We will devour you with our love.’
‘I have come to rescue your Queen,’ he told them.
‘Rescue the Queen?’ they laughed. ‘She will have your head on a plate before she looks at you. Many people have come to save her, over the years. Their heads sit on golden plates in her palace. Yours will simply be the freshest.’
There were men who looked like fallen angels and women who looked like demons risen. There were people so beautiful that they would have been all that the Duke had ever desired, had they been human, and they pressed close to him, skin to carapace and flesh against armour, so they could feel the coldness of him, and he could feel the warmth of them.
‘Stay with us. Let us love you,’ they whispered, and they reached out with sharp talons and teeth.
‘I do not believe your love will prove to be good for me,’ said the Duke. One of the women, fair of hair, with eyes of a peculiar translucent blue, reminded him of someone long forgotten, of a lover who had passed out of his life a long time before. He found her name in his mind, and would have called it aloud, to see if she turned, to see if she knew him, but the battle-steed lashed out with sharp claws, and the pale blue eyes were closed forever.
The battle-steed moved fast, like a panther, and each of the guardians fell to the ground, and writhed and was still.
The Duke stood before the Queen’s palace. He slipped from his battle-steed to the fresh earth.
‘Here, I go on alone,’ he said. ‘Wait, and one day I shall return.’
‘I do not believe you will ever return,’ said the battle-steed. ‘I shall wait until time itself is done, if need be. But still, I fear for you.’
The Duke touched his lips to the black steel of the steed’s head, and bade it farewell. He walked on to rescue the Queen. He remembered a monster who had ruled worlds and who would never die, and he smiled, because he was no longer that man. For the first time since his first youth he had something to lose, and the discovery of that made him young again. His heart began to pound in his chest as he walked through the empty palace, and he laughed out loud.
She was waiting for him, in the place where flowers die. She was everything he had imagined that she would be. Her skirt was simple and white, her cheekbones were high and very dark, her hair was long and the infinitely dark colour of a crow’s wing.
‘I am here to rescue you,’ he told her.
‘You are here to rescue yourself,’ she corrected him. Her voice was almost a whisper, like the breeze that shook the dead blossoms.
He bowed his head, although she was as tall as he was.
‘Three questions,’ she whispered. ‘Answer them correctly, and all you desire shall be yours. Fail, and your head will rest forever on a golden dish.’ Her skin was the brown of the dead rose petals. Her eyes were the dark gold of amber.
‘Ask your three questions,’ he said, with a confidence he did not feel.
The Queen reached out a finger and she ran the tip of it gently along his cheek. The Duke could not remember the last time that anybody had touched him without his permission.
‘What is bigger than the universe?’ she asked.
‘Underspace and Undertime,’ said the Duke. ‘For they both include the universe, and also all that is not the universe. But I suspect you seek a more poetic, less accurate answer. The mind, then, for it can hold a universe, but also imagine things that have never been, and are not.’
The Queen said nothing.
‘Is that right? Is that wrong?’ asked the Duke. He wished, momentarily, for the snakelike whisper of his master advisor, unloading, through its neural plug, the accumulated wisdom of his advisors over the years, or even the chitter of his information beetle.
‘The second question,’ said the Queen. ‘What is greater than a King?’
‘Obviously, a Duke,’ said the Duke. ‘For all Kings, Popes, Chancellors, Empresses and such serve at and only at my will. But again, I suspect that you are looking for an answer that is less accurate and more imaginative. The mind, again, is greater than a King. Or a Duke. Because, although I am the inferior of nobody, there are those who could imagine a world in which there is something superior to me, and something else again superior to that, and so on. No! Wait! I have the answer. It is from the Great Tree: Kether, the Crown, the concept of monarchy, is greater than any King.’
The Queen looked at the Duke with amber eyes, and she said, ‘The final question for you. What can you never take back?’
‘My word,’ said the Duke. ‘Although, now I come to think of it, once I give my word, sometimes circumstances change and sometimes the worlds themselves change in unfortunate or unexpected ways. From time to time, if it comes to that, my word needs to be modified in accordance with realities. I would say Death, but, truly, if I find myself in need of someone I have previously disposed of, I simply have them reincorporated . . .’
The Queen looked impatient.
‘A kiss,’ said the Duke.
She nodded.
‘There is hope for you,’ said the Queen. ‘You believe you are my only hope, but, truthfully, I am yours. Your answers were all quite wrong. But the last was not as wrong as the rest of them.’
The Duke contemplated losing his head to this woman, and found the prospect less disturbing than he would have expected.
A wind blew through the garden of dead flowers, and the Duke was put in mind of perfumed ghosts.
‘Would you like to know the answer?’ she asked.
‘Answers,’ he said. ‘Surely.’
‘Only one answer, and it is this: the heart,’ said the Queen. ‘The heart is greater than the universe, for it can find pity in it for everything in the universe, and the universe itself can feel no pity. The heart is greater than a King, because a heart can know a King for what he is, and still love him. And once you give your heart, you ca
‘I said a kiss,’ said the Duke.
‘It was not as wrong as the other answers,’ she told him. The wind gusted higher and wilder and for a heartbeat the air was filled with dead petals. Then the wind was gone as suddenly as it appeared, and the broken petals fell to the floor.
‘So. I have failed, in the first task you set me. Yet I do not believe my head would look good upon a golden dish,’ said the Duke. ‘Or upon any kind of a dish. Give me a task, then, a quest, something I can achieve to show that I am worthy. Let me rescue you from this place.’
‘I am never the one who needs rescuing,’ said the Queen. ‘Your advisors and scarabs and programs are done with you. They sent you here, as they sent those who came before you, long ago, because it is better for you to vanish of your own volition than for them to kill you in your sleep. And less dangerous.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘Come,’ she said. They walked away from the garden of dead flowers, past the fountains of light, spraying their lights into the void, and into the citadel of song, where perfect voices waited at each turn, sighing and chanting and humming and echoing, although nobody was there to sing.