James Enge: Blood of Ambrose

"What are you planning to do?" Genjandro asked, pausing at the door of the stall.

The dwarf grinned deep in his gray-flecked brown beard. "Something very like treason, if I were you, my friend."

The Ontilian took the hint and left with a curt nod. The dwarf spent a few moments unweaving the "horse" and stowing it in his pockets, and then strolled out himself. The day's light was already strong and hot, and the carnival air of the enclosure was thick with dust and the anticipation of death.

Hlosian Bekh, the Red Knight, lay on a table, his gray flesh cold and lifeless, as the Lord Protector and Steng, his chief poisoner, argued over him.

"Still: make the golem stronger," the Protector was saying. "If he does appear-

"It hardly matters, my lord," the poisoner replied with deferential soothing contempt. "If the Crooked Man (assuming there is such a person) turns up, he will be subject to the same limitations as any other challenger. The law is clear. Magic is forbidden at the trial by combat; its use compels the user's side to forfeit."

"But we are using it," the Protector pointed out.

The chief poisoner smiled as he wondered whether stupidity was an inevitable consequence of hereditary power. After all, had any of the descendants of Uthar the Great and Ambrosia really matched the ferocious supple intelligence of their forbears? And, though Urdhven was Protector merely by virtue of his late sister's marriage with the late Emperor, his ancestors had been warlords on the northern plains before the Vraidish tribes broke through the Kirach Kund to conquer the lands of the south and found the Second Ontilian Empire on the ruins of the First. "We may safely break the law," the poisoner explained, "since we enforce it. The Crooked Man must come, if he does, with ordinary sword and shield to kill our champion. And that he cannot do, since Hlosian cannot die."

"Nevertheless," said the Protector, returning to the point at issue, "make him stronger."

Steng stood motionless for a moment or two. He realized that the question was no longer Hlosian's strength, but the Protector's. And the poisoner was forced to admit to himself that the Protector would have his way, no matter what the cost. Perhaps that was what made his power more than merely hereditary.

The poisoner turned away to his worktable, where the golem's life-scroll lay. Taking up his pen, he dipped it in a jar of human blood and added a number of flourishes to the already-dried dark brown script.

"These are intensifiers," he explained over his shoulder to Urdhven. "They focus the pseudo-talic impulses-"

The nobleman waved him silent with imperious distaste. °I don't wish to know about it. Just do it properly."

The poisoner finished his task in silence. When the new figures had dried, he rolled up the scroll and sealed it with wax (tinted with blood). He turned back to the prone form of Hlosian and placed the scroll in the gaping hole in its back. He drew to him several bowls of red mud and clay and began to trowel it into the breach between the Red Knight's shoulders. He worked steadily, pausing only to inscribe certain secret signs in the drying clay with a peculiar pointed stylus. Finally he was done. He spoke a secret word, and the stench of cold blood grew hot and dense in the workroom.

"Hlosian arise!" Steng cried.

The golem rose from the table and stood before them.

"Hlosian Bekh," the poisoner said, "seize yonder stone-yes, the one I have marked seize it from the wall and crush it."

The golem roared and swept the table out of its way. In ten breaths the stone was smoking rubble at the Protector's feet.

"Hlosian," the poisoner asked, "what is your purpose?"`

"I will kill the witch's champion."

"Why?"

"The witch Ambrosia must die."

The poisoner glanced at the Protector, who had hardly moved as his monster performed for him.

"You've done well," the Protector said.

"Thank you, my lord."

"Arm him and bring him to the enclosure."

"His squire will arm him, my Lord Protector. There will be less talk that way."

The Protector nodded in agreement.

They walked together into the corridor and, by some peculiar mischance, they encountered Ambrosia as she was being escorted up from the dungeon in the green robe of an appellant.

"What's this? What's this?" cried Ambrosia, as genially as if she were still preeminent in the empire, as if the death-house watch were an honor guard. She carried the chains on her broken wrists like royal jewelry. "Protector, poisoner, and champion-celebrating your victory in advance, I take it. That's always safest, isn't it?"

"Take the prisoner out to the field," the Protector said, his voice as flat and expressionless as his face had become.

But Ambrosia braced her feet and lifted her limp, swollen hands. "Urdhven, you don't look as triumphant as you did a moment ago. Perhaps it's come into your mind that if you hadn't had my hands broken, I'd be riding as my own champion today-and yours would be nothing but a breathing dead man.

"Speaking of breathing," she continued, "what's that reek I smell? Is it mud or blood-or is it both? It is both, isn't it, Steng, you dog? I see the clay under your fingernails."

Ambrosia laughed engagingly, as if they were all parties to some slightly disreputable secret. She leaned confidingly toward the poisoner, who was blushing a deep unpleasant shade of maroon. "But surely," she remarked, in a low but audible tone, "surely, Steng, you must know that when we were young, my brother's and my favorite hobby was killing golems. We killed them with fire, we killed them with water. We killed them with words-an easy thing to do, Steng, for a golem's life is simply words, magical words inscribed on a name-scroll, which other words can interrupt and make meaningless. Did you think you could defeat Morlock Dragonkiller with a golem?"

"Take her away!" the Protector said, white-lipped with anger or fear.

"Better yet," Ambrosia continued, as if Urdhven had not spoken, "suppose I simply pointed at this thing out on the field and cried: `Golem! The Protector's champion is a golem!' For it strikes me that the Protector is guilty of trying to harm my champion by magic-the legal definition of witchcraft. A capital offense, I believe. You might be burned at the stake, my Lord Protector."

"A witch's lies mean nothing," the Protector said mechanically. "But she might utter spells to twist men's minds. Therefore-gag her, soldiers. Do it now. See that her mouth is bound throughout the ceremony."

"The trial, my Lord Protector," Ambrosia said, as the guards tore away the hem of her robe.

"The execution, my Lady Ambrosia," the Protector retorted as they knotted the gag tight across her mouth. She made no attempt to reply, but her eyes were bright with vengeful triumph as she was led away.

"If she had not spoken now, who knows what might have happened?" the Protector muttered to Steng. "Ambrosia's temper was always quicker than her wit."

Steng looked at him almost pityingly. "The chances that any would have heard her on the field were small, and who would have dared believe her?"

"But-"

"She spoke for the guards," Steng said gently.

"Ah. I see."

"They will remember. They will talk. They saw you were afraid to have the story spread-"

"I said, `I see.' Have your people take care of them, Steng. Make it look natural."

"Yes, my Lord Protector."

There was a brief silence. Then out of his own thoughts, the Protector said accusingly, "And you blushed."

"Ambrosia is my better, my lord."

"She is not mine," Urdhven snarled. "I have beaten her, point by point, and today she dies."

"Let the fire of death cleanse the world of this witch's evil," the King said, in a clear, firm voice.

"Excellent, Sire," applauded Kedlidor, the Rite-Master of Ambrose. "That should be audible for quite a distance, even in the tournament enclosure. The Protector's Men will conduct any further ceremonies attendant on the execution of the sentence. You may properly depart at any point after the inarguable death of the witch-there is no formal close of the ceremony, any more than there is an end to death itself.