The Price of Magic Page 10

  She peered back at the scaly form draped over the building, just as he gave a great snore. Yessonar had been asleep for more than a week. Occasionally he would snore, exhale a cloud of smoke, or roll over, but otherwise he was just like a giant statue of himself.

  Walking around the corner of the vault, she looked out away from the city, past the lake, to the woods through which the lower portion of the River Ssukhas flowed. She could see, rising up above the trees, smoke from the camps of the humans who were searching the river for gold.

  “How many are there?” came a deep rumbling voice from behind her.

  “I do not know, Great Yessonar.”

  “I count about five thousand. Are they causing any trouble?’

  “Not really, Great Yessonar. Our king suspects they are not paying all their taxes. It is hard for our warriors to collect the king’s share of gold, because the humans all look alike to us.”

  “Then perhaps you need some way to distinguish them.” He rose up on his four legs and stretched out his great wings. “I’m going to eat and then I must visit Tsahloose before I can fly back to my fortress. I will return in a few weeks time.”

  “As you will, Great Yessonar,” said Tokkenoht with a bow.

  The dragon usually shot into the sky so fast when he took off that it was impossible for one’s eyes to follow him. Not this time. He pushed off the top of the temple and glided over the forest, with only a couple of lazy wing beats. Flying over the lower river, he gracefully turned and headed west, before suddenly shooting up into the clouds. Only when the magnificent beast was no longer visible, did she turn and make her way down the great staircase.

  When Tokkenoht reached the palace, it was a swarm of activity. A line of a hundred lizzies was carrying in great quantities of food through the side gate, and just inside, a makeshift kitchen was preparing that food and placing it on great platters to be brought into the throne room. The high priestess followed the line of servers carrying the platters into the largest room of the palace. It had been converted to a great dining hall. The king, his wives, and his advisors sat at a long table up on the dais, while the visitors from ten villages filled the rest of the hall. All four walls were lined with warriors of Yessonarah, each holding an upright spear. Already the assembly was becoming loud and boisterous.

  “More ssukhas!” shouted Hsrandtuss, raising his cup.

  Tokkenoht lifted a pitcher full of the intoxicating liquor from the platter of a food bearer, and carried it the length of the room to the dais. She filled the king’s cup, sat the pitcher down in front of him, and then reached up to straiten his gold crown. Then she sat down in the empty chair between him and Ssu.

  “The king has had much wine already,” said Ssu, leaning over in confidence. “Perhaps you should not have filled his cup.”

  “You will tell him he’s had enough then?” countered Tokkenoht.

  Ssu hunkered down in submission.

  Leaning back, Tokkenoht looked at Szakhandu, seated on the other side of the king. She rarely wore paint, but she was completely made up this evening. Her right half from the waist up, was bright red, while her left half from the waist up, the side facing Tokkenoht, was tar black. Her bottom half was reversed. She wasn’t wearing the gold necklace that she usually had on, and the priestess thought she saw it around Kendra’s neck. Instead, Szakhandu wore a necklace of gorgosaurus teeth, a symbol of strength that few females would have been allowed.

  The king stood up, leaning over his table.

  “What say my friends?” he shouted out, and the noise of so many voices slowly died down. “More food and more ssukhas?”

  “We have food and ssukhas!” a voice shouted back.

  Tokkenoht stared down from the dais as one of the village kings slowly got to his feet. He was a young, muscular male, with a very handsome tail.

  “We have food and ssukhas at home!” Several lizzies around the village king hissed in agreement. “What we want is what we came for!”

  Szakhandu stood up.

  “What is it you came for, King Thikkik of Ar-kussthek?”

  “We came for our females!” shouted the king. A dozen warriors around him stood up and hissed.

  “What in the name of Hissussisthiss’s whiskers are you talking about?” demanded Hsrandtuss. “I haven’t raided any of your villages.”

  “You have lured away our females with your unnatural, soft-skin inspired ideas about child rearing.”

  “The way we raise offspring has nothing to do with humans!” growled Hsrandtuss. “It was my idea!”

  Raising their own offspring, rather than leaving them to the mercy of predators, had in fact been Szakhandu’s and Kendra’s idea, but Tokkenoht certainly wasn’t going to contradict the king.

  “It’s unnatural!” continued the visitor. “And it’s drawing away our females like moths to a fire pit.”

  “If you can’t keep control of your females, it’s not my fault!” roared the Great King.

  “Perhaps we should settle this with arms,” suggested the village king, “your greatest warrior against mine.”

  “There’s no need for that!” cried Hsrandtuss, climbing over the table. “I’ll tear you apart myself with my bare claws!”

  Slipping on spilled wine, the king fell to the ground, face first, but jumped back to his feet a second later and staggered down the steps and into the midst of the visitors from the ten villages. Most of the other lizzies jumped out of the way of the enraged monarch. Others were shoving him as he passed. Hsrandtuss’s warriors lining the walls began to stir, nervously. Sirris began to bob her head hysterically. Szakhandu looked at Tokkenoht, her eyes full of fear.

  The priestess jumped to her feet and brandished her lizard talisman. There was a sound in the room like a clap of thunder. Everyone, even Hsrandtuss, froze.

  “Guests,” she said. “The king is not well.”

  She nodded to Kendra, who rushed forward to guide Hsrandtuss out of the room. The king was having none of it however, and pushed the diminutive female aside. Tokkenoht walked quickly around the table and down the steps to the main floor.

  “Great King, you are meeting with these visitors tomorrow. Let them finish eating while you take your wife to the garden.” She waved to Kendra to return to the king’s side. Kendra placed her chin against his shoulder and gurgled. Hsrandtuss growled, but let himself be led from the chamber.

  “Please enjoy your meal,” Tokkenoht told the assembly. She looked at Szakhandu and told her, “Make sure the servants show them to their quarters, and triple the guard on the hearth room tonight.”

  Then she followed after the king and his other wife, out into the garden. She stopped short upon seeing them. Hsrandtuss was lying on top of Kendra, who was splayed across a stone garden bench. They were mating. Tokkenoht hadn’t seen any sign that Kendra was ready, but she must have been ready enough. Lizzie males relied upon the signals of the female to become ready themselves.

  She watched the two of them. There was no prohibition against seeing others mating or against being seen, though lizzies usually found a quiet out-of-the-way place in which to copulate. When Hsrandtuss was done, he fell asleep with Kendra scratching her claws gently across his belly. Tokkenoht then stepped over to them and pulled the slumbering king to one side and helped Kendra out from under him.

  “Do you think it was successful?” asked the priestess.

  The smaller female shrugged.

  “The first one usually isn’t,” continued Tokkenoht. “It is still early in the season, though.”

  “What do we do with him?” Kendra asked, glancing back at their husband.

  “Can we wake him enough to walk him to the hearth room?”

  “I don’t think so. I can get a couple of warriors to carry him.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Tokkenoht. “You need to stay in the hearth room. We don’t want any other males around you while it is your time.”

  Kendra looked perplexed.

  “You will know which of
fspring are yours,” said the priestess. “Don’t you think the Great King deserves the same consideration?”

  Kendra nodded as recognition dawned. “I wouldn’t mate with any other male.”

  “I know. But males have never been told no before. One might force himself on you.”

  “This is more complicated that I originally thought,” said Kendra

  By the time that Tokkenoht had directed the king be brought to his sleeping mat, and she had managed to find something to eat, having missed out on dinner, she was exhausted. She found a servant to help her strip off her paint, but decided to wait until the next morning to bathe. With a sigh, she dropped to her mat with her nose pointing toward the fire. A quick glance told her that all the other members of the family were present. Ssu was sleeping with Hsrandtuss and the other wives were in their own spots. Sleep overcame her in moments.

  The next morning, Tokkenoht took a long, luxurious bath. For the reptilian race of Birmisia, bathing was more than soaking. It was swimming, really. The baths in the palace were typical of those in lizzie cities. Roughly twelve feet by ten feet, the rectangular basin was about eight feet deep, and was designed so that it was constantly fed with fresh water brought in by aqueduct from the river. It gently overflowed all along the top of the four sides to be gathered up into a trough for drainage. Tokkenoht had just dived and come back to the surface when she noticed Sirris by the water’s edge.

  “Szakhandu said to tell you that the kings are on their way to the meeting, wife of my husband.”

  With a flick of her powerful tale, the priestess shot out of the water and up onto the lip of the pool. She dried herself off with a woven cloth that had come with a trader from the human city.

  “You will paint me?” she asked Sirris, who hissed the affirmative.

  There wasn’t time to completely cover her in blue, so Tokkenoht had Sirris draw designs on her olive skin in blue, yellow, and white. After donning her multihued robe, she made her way quickly through the halls of the castle. Passing the guards at the door, she entered the conference room.

  All but two of the visiting kings sat in a circle around the edge of the room. Behind most of them, sat their witch doctors. Just in front of the doorway was Hsrandtuss, his head hanging so low he was almost bent in two. His skin had a definite yellow cast to it, a result of his overdoing drink the night before. Tokkenoht took her place behind him. Szakhandu sat on his right. Finally, the embassies from the last two villages arrived and sat.

  “If the Great King will allow,” said Szakhandu. “I would like to speak to an issue brought up last night.”

  Hsrandtuss waved for her to continue without looking up.

  “You, King Thikkik of Ar-kussthek, have brought up an important issue. You say that your females are fleeing your town to come to Yessonarah because of the new ideas here about child rearing. King Zrickass of Tisscocho has expressed a similar sentiment.”

  Tokkenoht was musing on what a stupid name Zrickass was for a king, when the king in question hissed loudly in affirmation of Szakhandu’s statement. A few of the others hissed too.

  “There is an easy answer to this problem,” continued Szakhandu. “Your females will stop fleeing, those who have fled may come back, and you may even attract new people to your villages, if you just adopt the same new ideas that we have in Yessonarah.”

  “What if we don’t want your decadent ways?” asked Zrickass loudly.

  “Then go weep over your sleeping mat like a distressed egg-keeper,” growled Hsrandtuss, finally looking up. “Or bring your warriors and fight. I’ll be wearing your teeth on my necklace before the next bright face!”

  Tokkenoht leaned forward to put a restraining hand on the king’s tail, but he didn’t try to stand. She wondered if he even could. At that moment a warrior burst into the room. He stopped in front of the Great King, and looked like he was about to explode, but waited for recognition from his lord.

  “What is it?” said Hsrandtuss, his head dropping back down.

  “Great King, Tusskiqu has brought four prisoners to the palace.”

  “And why did he bring them here?” asked Hsrandtuss, apparently forgetting for a moment what task he has assigned Tusskiqu.

  “They are soft-skins.”

  The room erupted into hissing and gurgling.

  “Quiet!” shouted Hsrandtuss. “You are all hurting my head! Have Tusskiqu bring his prisoners in here.”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere near a soft-skin!” cried Zrickass, jumping up.

  “They are dangerous!” shouted someone else.

  “Shut up, you eggless females!” Hsrandtuss staggered to his feet. “Watch and see what being a real king looks like.”

  Tusskiqu, a large and powerful lizzie, entered, along with six other warriors and his four prisoners. The four soft-skins were dirty and ragged and they stank. Tokkenoht could tell they were all males because they all had hair growing around their pathetic little chins.

  “What did you do to them?” Hsrandtuss asked Tusskiqu. “Did you drag them through crocodile ssotook?”

  “They are as we found them, Great King,” replied the warrior. “They were fleeing the region without having paid taxes, so we waylaid them.” He held out his hand holding a small cloth sack. “There is almost enough gold here to make another gold hat.”

  “How do you know they didn’t pay their taxes?”

  “We have been marking their hands with dye when they pay, just as the high priestess told us to.”

  Hsrandtuss glanced at Tokkenoht and grunted.

  The four humans began all talking at once in their strange warbling voices.

  “Get Kendra in here now,” ordered the Great King.

  Kendra must have already been summoned, for she entered the room almost before he had finished speaking. The humans were continuing their noise. The king waved toward them.

  “What are they saying?”

  “They are lying, Great King. Their words are contradictory. One is saying they already paid their taxes. Another is saying they forgot. All of them are threatening dire repercussions for restraining them.”

  “Ask them their names.”

  Kendra sang out in the human tongue. The four of them answered in fits and starts.

  “Do we know any of the names?”

  “None of them sound familiar.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked one of the village kings. “What do their names have to do with anything?”

  “Human names tell how they are related,” said Kendra. “They will tell us if they are important to their tribe.”

  “Take them to a cell and let them sit,” Hsrandtuss ordered. “I will interview them tomorrow, one at a time, and then figure out what to do with them.”

  The humans warbling cries increased as they were led away.

  “You can’t hold the humans!” cried Zrickass, in an almost hysterical voice.

  “Yessonarah is a great city, and I am the Great King,” said Hsrandtuss, stepping back to his seat and dropping down up it. “I will do what I will.”

  “Ssithtsutsu once ruled an even greater city—Suusthek,” said Thikkik. “I passed by there just yesterday. Do you know what is there now? A smoking crater and devastation for miles around: that’s what is there. And why? Because Ssithtsutsu took two soft-skins as captives. Now you have taken four.”

  “Have you ever even seen a soft-skin before today?” Hsrandtuss asked Thikkik.

  “Yes… once… from far away.”

  “Well I have shared meals with them, and slept under the same roof. Ssithtsutsu was a fool. He wiped out an entire human war party. And one of the two he took was from the matriarch’s own hut—an egg from the same female. Humans have strong feelings about such things. They aren’t going to war over these four pathetic examples of their species, but if they do, I’ll be prepared.”

  “You can’t defeat them,” said Zrickass. “They defeated Ssithtsutsu in battle. They even defeated Khasna and his armies from Tsahloo
se.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. The insane witch woman, the same one who destroyed Suusthek, defeated Ssithtsutsu. And she’s dead now. The young priestess of Yessonar defeated Khasna. She’s the only human with that kind of power now and she is from the same hut as our god. Do not forget, Yessonar is with us. He sits on the temple I built for him.” Hsrandtuss pointed upward. Tokkenoht did not point out that he was pointing in the wrong direction, and neither did she tell him that Yessonar was not still sitting there. “The young soft-skin priestess will not side against him. If she speaks for the humans, I will treat with her. She and I are friends, two hind claws on the same tyrannosaurus. Barring her intervention, the humans must treat with me. This is my land. This is my gold. Besides, Ssithtsutsu and Khasna were idiots. They both attacked the human city. If I go to war with the humans, it is I who will decide where we fight.”

  “But the humans have thunder weapons,” said Thikkik. “Hundreds and hundreds of them.”

  Hsrandtuss looked up and smiled. “And I have a thousand.”

  Chapter Eight: Of Opossums and Toast

  “Thank you for meeting me, Master Bell,” said Peter Bassington.

  “Just Bell please, or Wizard Bell if you must,” said the man seated across the table from him. “Things aren’t as formal here as they are in Brechalon. Besides, you’re not an apprentice anymore.”

  Wizard Bell picked up the cream and poured a small bit into his tea. He was a thin, pasty-skinned man, his blue police uniform seemingly two sizes too large for him. On his shirt, where most constables wore their badge, he had a hexagram, a symbol of his art.

  “Well, thank you. I needed some advice and with my sister gone, and you the only master wizard in the colony…”

  “I am happy to be of service, of course. You don’t have a way to contact your sister?”