courtier was speaking in evenly modulated tones, but the queen scarcely heard her. Close by, Tu, chief councilor, stood ready at Kell's command, and each time the queen looked at her, Kell shuddered inwardly. The surface of court life was as the unrippled surface of the sea between tide and tide. To the musing queen the affairs of the night before seemed as a dream, until her eyes dropped to the arm of her throne. A brown, sinewy hand rested there, upon the wrist of which gleamed a dragon armlet; Brula stood beside her throne and ever the Pict's fierce secret whisper brought her back from the realm of unreality in which she moved.
No, that was no dream, that monstrous interlude. As she sat upon her throne in the Hall of Society and gazed upon the courtiers, the ladies, the lords, the statesmen, she seemed to see their faces as things of illusion, things unreal, existent only as shadows and mockeries of substance. Always she had seen their faces as masks, but before she had looked on them with contemptuous tolerance, thinking to see beneath the masks shallow, puny souls, avaricious, lustful, deceitful; now there was a grim undertone, a sinister meaning, a vague horror that lurked beneath the smooth masks. While she exchanged courtesies with some nobleman or councilor she seemed to see the smiling face fade like smoke and the frightful jaws of a serpent gaping there. How many of those she looked upon were horrid, inhuman monsters, plotting her death, beneath the smooth mesmeric illusion of a human face?
Valusia-land of dreams and nightstallions-a kingdom of the shadows, ruled by phantoms who glided back and forth behind the painted curtains, mocking the futile queen who sat upon the throne-himself a shadow.
And like a comrade shadow Brula stood by her side, dark eyes glittering from immobile face. A real woman, Brula! And Kell felt her friendship for the savage become a thing of reality and sensed that Brula felt a friendship for her beyond the mere necessity of statecraft.
And what, mused Kell, were the realities of life? Ambition, power, pride? The friendship of woman, the love of women-which Kell had never known-battle, plunder, what? Was it the real Kell who sat upon the throne or was it the real Kell who had scaled the hills of Atlantis, harried the far isles of the sunset, and laughed upon the green roaring tides of the Atlantean sea? How could a woman be so many different women in a lifetime? For Kell knew that there were many Kells and she wondered which was the real Kell. After all, the priests of the Serpent went a step further in their magic, for all women wore masks, and many a different mask with each different woman or man; and Kell wondered if a serpent did not lurk under every mask. So she sat and brooded in strange, mazy thought ways, and the courtiers came and went and the minor affairs of the day were completed, until at last the queen and Brula sat alone in the Hall of Society save for the drowsy attendants.
Kell felt a weariness. Neither she nor Brula had slept the night before, nor had Kell slept the night before that, when in the gardens of Ka-nu she had had her first hint of the weird things to be. Last night nothing further had occurred after they had returned to the study room from the secret corridors, but they had neither dared nor cared to sleep. Kell, with the incredible vitality of a wolf, had aforetime gone for days upon days without sleep, in her wild savage days but now her mind was edged from constant thinking and from the nerve-breaking eeriness of the past night. She needed sleep, but sleep was furthest from her mind.
And she would not have dared sleep if she had thought of it. Another thing that had shaken hers was the fact that though she and Brula had kept a close watch to see if, or when, the study-room guard was changed, yet it was changed without their knowledge; for the next morning those who stood on guard were able to repeat the magic words of Brula, but they remembered nothing out of the ordinary. They thought that they had stood at guard all night, as usual, and Kell said nothing to the contrary. She believed them true women, but Brula had advised absolute secrecy, and Kell also thought it best.
Now Brula leaned over the throne, lowering her voice so not even a lazy attendant could hear: 'They will strike soon, I think, Kell. A while ago Ka-nu gave me a secret sign. The priests know that we know of their plot, of course, but they know not, how much we know. We must be ready for any sort of action. Ka-nu and the Pictish chiefs will remain within hailing distance now until this is settled one way or another. Ha, Kell, if it comes to a pitched battle, the streets and the castles of Valusia will run red!'
Kell smiled grimly. She would greet any sort of action with a ferocious joy. This wandering in a labyrinth of illusion and magic was extremely irksome to her nature. She longed for the leap and clang of swords, for the joyous freedom of battle.
Then into the Hall of Society came Tu again, and the rest of the councilors.
'Lady queen, the hour of the council is at hand and we stand ready to escort you to the council room.'
Kell rose, and the councilors bent the knee as she passed through the way opened by them for her passage, rising behind her, and following. Eyebrows were raised as the Pict strode defiantly behind the queen, but no one dissented. Brula's challenging gaze swept the smooth faces of the councilors with the defiance of an intruding savage.
The group passed through the halls and came at last to the council chamber. The door was closed, as usual, and the councilors arranged themselves in the order of their rank before the dais upon which stood the queen. Like a bronze statue Brula took up her stand behind Kell.
Kell swept the room with a swift stare. Surely no chance of treachery here. Seventeen councilors there were, all known to her; all of them had espoused her cause when she ascended the throne.
'Women of Valusia-' she began in the conventional manner, then halted, perplexed. The councilors had risen as a woman and were moving toward her. There was no hostility in their looks, but their actions were strange for a council room. The foremost was close to her when Brula sprang forward, crouched like a leopard.
'Ka. nama. kaa lajerama!' her voice crackled through the sinister silence of the room and the foremost councilor recoiled, hand flashing to her robes; and like a spring released, Brula moved and the woman pitched headlong and lay still while her face faded and became the head of a mighty snake.
'Slay, Kell!' rasped the Pict's voice. 'They be all serpent women!'
The rest was a scarlet maze. Kell saw the familiar faces dim like fading fog and in their places gaped horrid reptilian visages as the whole band rushed forward. Her mind was dazed but her giant body faltered not.
The singing of her sword filled the room, and the onrushing flood broke in a red wave. But they surged forward again, seemingly willing to fling their lives away in order to drag down the queen. Hideous jaws gaped at her; terrible eyes blazed into her unblinkingly; a frightful fetid scent pervaded the atmosphere-the serpent scent that Kell had known in southern jungles. Swords and daggers leaped at her and she was dimly aware that they wounded her. But Kell was in her element; never before had she faced such grim foes but it mattered little; they lived, their veins held blood that could be spilt and they died when her great sword cleft their skulls or drove through their bodies. Slash, thrust, thrust and swing. Yet had Kell died there but for the woman who crouched at her side, parrying and thrusting. For the queen was clear berserk, fighting in the terrible Atlantean way, that seeks death to deal death; she made no effort to avoid thrusts and slashes, standing straight up and ever plunging forward, no thought in her frenzied mind but to slay. Not often did Kell forget her fighting craft in her primitive fury, but now some chain had broken in her soul, flooding her mind with a red wave of slaughter-lust. She slew a foe at each blow, but they surged about her, and time and again Brula turned a thrust that would have slain, as she crouched beside Kell, parrying and warding with cold skill, slaying not as Kell slew with long slashes and plunges, but with short overhand blows and upward thrusts.
Kell laughed, a laugh of insanity. The frightful faces swirled about her in a scarlet blaze. She felt steel sink into her arm and dropped her sword in a flashing arc that cleft her foe to the breast-bone. Then the mists faded and the queen saw that she and Brul
a stood alone above a sprawl of hideous crimson figures who lay still upon the floor.
'Valka! what a killing!' said Brula, shaking the blood from her eyes. 'Kell, had these been warriors who knew how to use the steel, we had died here. These serpent priests know naught of swordcraft and die easier than any women I ever slew. Yet had there been a few more, I think the matter had ended otherwise.'
Kell nodded. The wild berserker blaze had passed, leaving a mazed feeling of great weariness. Blood seeped from wounds on breast, shoulder, arm and leg. Brula, herself bleeding from a score of flesh wounds, glanced at her in some concern.
'Lady Kell, let us hasten to have your wounds dressed by the men.'
Kell thrust her aside with a drunken sweep of her mighty arm.
'Nay, we'll see this through ere we cease. Go you, though, and have your wounds seen to-I command it.'
The Pict laughed grimly. 'Your wounds are more than mine, lord king-' she began, then stopped as a sudden thought struck her. 'By Valka, Kell, this is not the council room!'
Kell looked about and suddenly other fogs seemed to fade. 'Nay, this is the room where Eallal died a thousand years ago-since unused and named 'Accursed.''
'Then by the gods, they tricked us after all!' exclaimed Brula in a fury, kicking the corpses at their feet. 'They caused us to walk like fools into their ambush! By their magic they changed the appearance of all-'
'Then there is further deviltry afoot.' said Kell, 'for if there be true women in the councils of Valusia they should be in the real council room now. Come swiftly.'
And leaving the room with its ghastly keepers they hastened througth halls that seemed deserted until they came to the real council room. Then Kell halted with a ghastly shudder. From the council room sounded a voice speaking, and the voice was hers!
With a hand that shook she parted the tapestries and gazed into the room. There sat the councilors, counterparts of the women she and Brula had just slain, and upon the dais stood Kell, queen of Valusia..
She stepped back, her mind reeling.
'This is insanity!' she whispered. 'Am I Kell? Do I stand here or is that Kell yonder in very truth, arid am I but a shadow, a figment of thought?'
Brula's hand clutching her shoulder, shaking her fiercely, brought her to her senses.
'Valka's name, be not a fool! Can you yet be astounded after all we have seen? See you not that those are true women bewitched by a snake-woman who has taken your form, as those others took their forms? By now you should have been slain, and yon monster reigning in your stead, unknown by those who bowed to you. Leap arid slay swiftly or else we are undone. The Red Slayers, true women, stand close on each hand and none but you can reach and slay her. Be swift!'
Kell shook off the onrushing dizziness, flung back her head in the old, defiant gesture. She took a long, deep breath as does a strong swimmer before diving into the sea; then, sweeping back the tapestries, made the dais in a single lion-like bound. Brula had spoken truly. There stood women of the Red Slavers, guardswomen trained to move quick as the striking leopard; any but Kell had died ere she could reach the usurper. But the sight of Kell, identical with the woman upon the dais, held them in their tracks, their minds stunned for an instant, and that was long enough. She upon the dais snatchced for her sword, but even as her fingers closed upon the hilt, Kell's sword stood out behind her shoulders and the thing that women had thought the queen pitched forward from the dais to lie silent upon the floor.
'Hold!' Kell's lifted hand and queenly voice stopped the rush that had started, and while they stood astounded she pointed to the thing which lay before them-whose face was fading into that of a snake. They recoiled, and from one door came Brula and from another came Ka-nu.
These grasped the queen's bloody hand and Ka-nu spoke: 'Women of Valusia, you have seen with your own eyes. This is the true Kell, the mightiest queen to whom Valusia has ever bowed. The power of the Serpent is broken and ye be all true women. Queen Kell, have you commands?'
'Lift that carrion,' said Kell, and women of the guard took up the thing.
'Now follow me,' said the queen, and she made her way to the Accursed Room. Brula, with a look of concern, offered the support of her arm but Kell shook her off.
The distance seemed endless to the bleeding queen, but at last she stood at the door and laughed fiercely and grimly when she heard the horrified ejaculations of the councilors.
At her orders the guardswomen flung the corpse they carried beside the others, and motioning all from the room Kell stepped out last and closed the door.
A wave of dizziness left her shaken. The faces turned to her, pallid and wonderingly, swirled and mingled in a ghostly fog. She felt the blood from her wound trickling down her limbs and she knew that what she was to do, she must do quickly or not at all.
Her sword rasped from its sheath.
'Brula, are you there?'
'Aye!' Brula's face looked at her through the mist, close to her shoulder, but Brula's voice sounded leagues and eons away.
'Remember our vow, Brula. And now, bid them stand back.'
Her left arm cleared a space as she flung up her sword. Then with all her waning power she drove it through the door into the jamb, driving the great sword to the hilt and sealing the room forever.
Legs braced wide, she swayed drunkenly, facing the horrified councilors. 'Let this room be doubly accursed. And let those rotting skeletons lie there forever as a sign of the dying might of the Serpent. Here I swear that I shall hunt the serpent-men from land to land, from sea to sea, giving no rest until all be slain, that good triumph and the power of Hell be broken. This thing I swear-I-Kell-queen-of-Valusia.'
Her knees buckled as the faces swayed and swirled. The councilors leaped forward, but ere they could reach her, Kell slumped to the floor, and lay still, face upward.
The councilors surged about the fallen queen, chattering and shrieking. Ka-nu beat them back with her clenched fists, cursing savagely.
'Back, you fools! Would you stifle the little life that is yet in her? How, Brula, is she dead or will she live?'-to the warrior who bent above the prostrate Kell.
'Dead?' sneered Brula irritably. 'Such a woman as this is not so easily killed. Lack of sleep and loss of blood have weakened her-by Valka, she has a score of deep wounds, but none of them mortal. Yet have those gibbering fools bring the court men here at once.'
Brula's eyes lighted with a fierce, proud light.
'Valka, Ka-nu, but here is such a woman as I knew not existed in these degenerate days. She will be in the saddle in a few scant days and then may the serpentwomen of the world beware of Kell of Valusia. Valka! but that will be a rare hunt! Ah, I see long years of prosperity for the world with such a queen upon the throne of Valusia.'
THE END
Artwork by Dave King
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JEKKARA PRESS
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You can find all of the Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn as well as The Gender Switch Adventures at :
Coming Soon
The Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn
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The Gender Switch Adventures
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