The Enchantress of World's End

The Red Queen was a magnificent woman, nearly naked, her splendid body adorned with flashing gems and plaques of precious metals, a plumed tiara glittering upon her brow. At the height of a good seven feet, she stood very nearly as tall as Ganelon himself. She was built to scale, with powerful though feminine arms, bare shoulders and long, sleek, well-muscled but shapely legs.

The most remarkable thing about her was, of course, her famous coloration, from whence she derived her sobriquet. That is to say, the Red Enchantress was really red. Her entire body was colored a brilliant, not unattractive shade of crimson; her long waving tresses and arched, sardonic brows were also crimson, but of a shade slightly darker than the rest of her. Her eyes were of a red so dark as to be almost, but not quite, black. Her lips and the protuberant nipples of her superb breasts were of a darker red, almost plum-purple. When she smiled, Ganelon discovered that even her teeth were red, as were the whites of her eyes.

She was superb! Queenly, imperious, she towered head and shoulders above most of the men at her court, with a magnificent bosom, bare beneath glittering ropes of diamonds, a narrow waist and full, swelling hips and thighs. Tiny jewelled slippers clung to her feet and an immense cut diamond the size of a walnut flashed in her navel. When she spoke, as she did now, her voice was a low, liquid murmur, purring and seductive, but with a man’s deep-chested timbre in it, and the steely ring of command, too.

It was the sort of voice that was accustomed to being obeyed.

With a dramatic gesture, she rose suddenly to her feet, towering above them all. The mumble of low-voiced conversation in the hall ceased instantly and silence stretched taut.

Then she came swaying down the tier of steps to his level, extending one hand whose crimson fingers .dazzled with diamonds.

“Ganelon Silvermane! Be you welcome to the court of Shai. Consider yourself, not my prisoner, but—my guest!”

The Illusionist of Nerelon would have been flabbergasted at what Ganelon did next. For, summoning from within himself a courtliness none could have guessed him to possess, the young giant bowed and, taking her long fingers in his own, brushed the backs of her fingers with his lips. She smiled a delighted, warm smile, her full, lush lips curving.

“Seat yourself here,” she said, gesturing to a cushion upon the lower steps, “in the place that is reserved for heroes. And join our lunar festival, with honor and welcome!”

Ganelon nodded, sat tailor-fashion on the silken pillow and let himself be served by one of the Automatons who stalked on clanking feet among the courtiers, refilling a goblet here and presenting platters of food there.

Deliberately turning his attention from the Enchantress, he feigned interest in the other guests, who were seated on cushions in rows before long, low tabourets of dark wood. They were certainly a motley crew, thought he: among them he spied a Voormish clansman in his long burnoose, one or two of the Tigermen of Karjixia, a rather glum and lumpish-looking creature that seemed to be one of the Halfmen of Thaad, and a Horxite ecclesiastic or two in black robes and gilt-paper headdress. There were also Quentishmen and Ixlanders, a few visiting dignitaries from Oryx, Pergamoy and Sabdon in the Hegemony (or so their tartan sashes suggested), and a horde chieftain from the Dominions of Akoob Khan in the far east, to say nothing of a painted savage in feather-robes who could only have come from the Kakkawakka Islands. Beyond these, a lone, now-homeless Airmaster in glittering blue tights with winged crystal helm, and a couple of woeful-looking, long-nosed and stilt-legged Quaylies, the remainder of the Queen’s guests and courtiers originated in lands whereof he knew nothing.

For the most part, this variegated company ate, drank, dozed, chatted or caroused, ogled the dancing girls and flirted. They paid Ganelon very little attention beyond an occasional oblique and cunning glance of surreptitious appraisal. Few, if any, seemed to know who or what he was; it was probably taken for granted that he was a newcomer to the ranks of royal favorites.

The Horxite priest sat stiffly and did not deign to look in his direction, and the two Tigermen, a scruffy duo with the look of outlawry about them, ignored everyone else and devoted themselves to the meat-platters on the tabouret before them. Seated quite far from all the others sat a Death Dwarf, considerably larger, burlier and more intelligent-looking than the ones which had attacked Silvermane’ on the slopes of the Vanishing Mountains. This creature was clad in linked plates of shining steel and wore a coronet of iron spikes upon his wart-studded bald brows. Ganelon learned later that he was Drng, chieftain of the tribes subservient to Zelmarine. Ganelon looked at the platter of broken glass and the thick ceramic goblet of bubbling acid from which the little horror imbibed gluttonously, and shuddered: no wonder he was not seated with the other guests!