The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels Read Free Page A

tears ran into the Prince’s smile as she pulled him away from the dais, and then with what dignity was possible, through the Main Gate. Soldiers forced a way for them, and others carried the God. Pretty Flower and her women hurried the Prince to where the nurses took him and bore him and his tears out of sight. Then she and her women disappeared too.
    A procession met the God in the forecourt as if it had been prepared for just this occasion. There was a couch borne by six men. There was a man in a leopard’s skin and one—if he was a man—with the head of a jackal. They were led by a tall man much older than Great House, who wore a long robe of white linen. The sun winked from his shaven head. The Liar reached him first, still talking.
    “Terrible, terrible, Head Man—and so unnecessary—that is, I mean—terrible! How could you have known? How could you guess?”
    The Head Man smiled.
    “It was a possibility.”
    “Remember I have no claim—no claim whatsoever!”
    The Head Man smiled down at him benignly.
    “Come now, my dear Liar. You undervalue yourself.”
    The Liar leapt as if a soldier had pricked him with a spear.
    “Oh no, no! Believe me, I have no more to give!”
    The God was on the couch. The procession moved towards the Great House. The Head Man watched it leave.
    “He likes to hear your lies again and again.”
    The Liar stopped him before the entrance, holding him by the robe.
    “He’s heard them so often he could remember them himself—or get someone to make pictures of them!”
    Turned half-back, the old man looked at him.
    “That’s not what He said yesterday.”
    “Indeed I assure you, I’m not in the least necessary!”
    The old man turned right round, looked down, and laid a hand on the Liar’s shoulder.
    “Tell me, Liar—as a matter of interest—why do you avoid life?”
    But the young man was not listening. He was peering past the old man into the Great House.
    “He will, won’t he?”
    “Will what?”
    “Run again! He was tripped. He will won’t he?”
    The old man examined him with a profound professional interest.
    “I don’t think so,” he murmured gently. “In fact I’m sure he won’t.”
    He walked to the Great House alone. The Liar stayed on the steps, jerking, trembling, and tugging at the pallor round his mouth.
     
    Pretty Flower took most of it out on the Prince. In the comparative privacy of the Great House, she sent him off with a slap on the cheek that made up—as he had known it would—for all the affection on the dais. He went to bed whimpering, as the sun set.
    The Liar was not disposed of so easily. He caught her alone in a dark corridor and seized her by the wrist.
    “Unhand me!”
    “I haven’t handed you yet,” he whispered. “Can’t you think of anything else but sex?”
    “After what you did——”
    “I did? We did, you mean!”
    “I won’t think of it——”
    “You’d better not. You’d better succeed. You’d better keep your mind on it!”
    She slumped against him,
    “I’m so tired—so confused—I wish—I don’t know what I wish.”
    His arm crept round and patted her shoulder.
    “There, there. There, there.”
    “You’re trembling.”
    “Why shouldn’t I tremble? I’m in deadly danger—I’ve been in it before; but never like this. So you’d better succeed. Understand?”
    She stood away from him and drew herself up.
    “You want me to be good? You?”
    “Good? No—oh, yes! What you call good. Be very good!”
    She moved past him, stately and pacing.
    “Very well, then.”
    A whisper pursued her down the corridor and floated to her ear.
    “For my sake!”
    She shivered in the hot air and kept her eyes averted from the dim figures looming from the high walls. There was a noise now to hide any whispering—a confused sound, from the banqueting hall, of voices and music. She passed the hall to the farther end and drew aside a curtain. Here a space had been curtained off and lit with many lamps; and here her