In which Fain faces execution
After trudging through the desert for two days, Fain spotted a broad-backed animal with a flat head, near the gentle rise of a hill. Cart-sized and lizard-like, it was trolling along and looking cute as it inspected the ground. ‘This thing looks pretty harmless,’ Fain thought, and retrieved the rope from his pack. Looping this into a simple bit harness, he approached the quiet creature from behind and leapt onto its back, throwing the harness over its head so that it wedged between its jaws. The creature seemed startled but was soon conveying Fain across the jet salt plains.
He soon approached a walled city. The entrance was a keyhole two hundred feet high, without a door. Fain made his triumphal entry to find himself in a city foresquare. At its centre was a solid glass blue obelisk a hundred feet tall in which was suspended the body of an insect the size of a man, and around this thronged a colourful market with citizens selling snow, blue sugar, paradice, tamarinds, alligator pears and another fruit like the hardened teardrops of a giant. As these citizens turned to stare at Fain, he noticed that they were all giant lizards like the one he was riding. The entire square fell silent.
Fain awoke in pain, standing chained in some sort of royal court. What he at first thought a gong nearby was in fact a massive coin bearing the form of a coiled lizard. Groggily he regarded the reptile which sat in the chunky golden throne before him. A web-throated official was reading from a scrolled decree. ‘And for the heinous crime of harnessing and riding upon our Royal Sovereign as He strolled the Royal Garden, Fain the Sorcerer shall hereby be beheaded in the public square.’
Fain tried to jump several days back, but nothing happened. ‘They put a special band around your neck,’ a small voice quailed into his left ear. It was Hex, the gecko. ‘You bragged of your gifts immediately, just before twenty-nine of these reptiles knocked you down and started breaking your bones. The band binds your powers. But they can’t see me—tee hee!’
But when the guards roughly turned Fain to lead him away for execution, Hex sprang alarmed from his shoulder and landed on the arm of the King’s throne, flushing through with the gold of his background. The King and his court gasped.
‘Wait!’ called the King, halting the guards. ‘Remember Draak’s prophecy!’ He gestured with a paddle-like claw to the huge disc portraying a gold lizard whorled about itself. ‘The Golden Salamander will bring transformation to our city!’
Fain immediately urged Hex to stay where he was.
For the next few days, Hex and Fain were treated like gods. Fain confirmed that Hex was the golden salamander, thankful that nobody could see he had not capitalised the remark. So long as Hex stayed on the throne he was safe. Freed from the binding ring, Fain had become friendly with the Lizard King and, accepting a grape from a scaly maiden, asked him the significance of the obelisk in the town square, the plinth beneath it bearing beneath the legend WHEN THE COWARD HAS CAUSE. ‘We were once regularly besieged by the swarm-race of insects which dwell in the hive dunes to the east,’ the King told him. ‘But a sorcerer called Draak captured their King and suspended him in that obelisk. The blue glass is magicked in such a way that a cowardly scream of sufficient pitch would shatter it and release the Insect King. Look close at the city wall and you will see an insect lookout always observing the square. Through Draak’s manoeuvre all is held in suspension. The insects are held in abeyance while we hold their king and might harm him. And we are held strong by the threat of the Insect King’s release were we to fail in courage. There are still huge insects to the east that grow to resemble our children crucified, specifically to draw us close enough to snare and digest. They are creatures who know so little about their own motivations we have to fill it all in ourselves—but how does that help anything, if none of the thought processes we used to work it out, are happening in their minds when they do it? If it derives from incoherence?’
As a lizard maiden offered purple sugar on a hand like a lilypad, Fain expressed surprise that a race of giant lizards had any trouble defeating insects. ‘We used to eat them en masse,’ said the King, ‘but gorged so much we couldn’t stand those crunchy bastards any more. Our tongues, which were once whiplike and prehensile, have atrophied, look.’ And he let his tongue dangle out like a rope.
‘Still,’ said Fain, ‘you could squash them with those paddle-hands of yours—like that!’
And by way of demonstration he slapped his hand down on the throne’s arm-rest, forgetting that the golden Hex crouched there. The lizard saved himself by springing away and landed on the ground, becoming instantly grey. Before he knew what was happening, Fain felt the magic-binding ring clamp around his neck again.
Five minutes later Fain was walking up some wooden steps to a platform in the city square. The executioner had an axe but didn’t seem unhappy to see him. ‘You’d better start killing me, headsman,’ Fain squeaked, ‘or I’ll be asnore on the block. Credit the next neck?’
The green axeman ignored his bluff, roping Hex to the back of Fain’s neck. He pushed Fain’s face sideways against the rough, gravelly block so that Fain could see the lizard crowd and the King on a bier nearby.
‘Imposter, even if we do not execute you,’ the King called, ‘uniformity and procedures will kill you, in a way.’
Hearing the axe-head zing as the executioner picked it up, Fain released the most cowardly scream to have been heard in centuries. The glass obelisk shattered, releasing the form trapped inside. Unblurred and unsupported, the insectile body collapsed and was something else. Its bug-eyed head was a washbasin, a couple of sieves and some bulrushes. Its many legs were branches. Its abdomen was a barrel tipped with a spike helmet and its wings were large fans stolen from the imperial palace. A sibilant cry of cheated rage thrilled from the insect lookout on the city wall.
A thundering vibrated through the hard-caked earth and, within moments, thousands of massive brown insects poured into the city like a river of swords.
Three minutes later Fain escaped into the desert, riding on the Lizard King.
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