Mazes of Scorpio (23 page)

The long golden hair she had worn as part of her disguise, when I had forced on her, by my assumption, the identity of Queen Mab, lay abandoned. Her own shining black hair, peaked over her forehead, sweeping tightly past her ears, suited her better. Her beauty remained; but now in a strange and, indeed, frightening way, the artificiality had vanished. She was herself, Csitra, and the depth of terror was — she looked and was the better favored for that.

“What do you mean?”

“Mother! Waste no more time. The tormentors await and I must slake my just vengeance first!”

Her head rolled from side to side. Her voice faltered. “Phunik! Wait, wait — there is more here—”

“The man is mortal, he is Dray Prescot, and he is doomed!
Queyd-arn-tung
!”

That means no more need be said, but more did need to be said, and said damned quick.

I found that voice speaking again. “Since when does a mother, even a witch, sit still under insults from her own child? I have not insulted you. I treated you with courtesy—”

“You slew my wizard!”

“That,” said the voice, “was before I met you.”

“Do you know, Dray Prescot, what you are saying?”

A shrewd question. I did not. But I was in no condition to argue. I went on with that voice issuing from my mouth: “I have known very few Witches of Loh. I detest braggarts, pushy people, the vainglorious of the world. Perhaps had I known you were a Witch of Loh, and not a mere queen, I would have understood. Do you, Csitra the Witch, understand that?”

I, myself, was under no delusions. I was fighting for my life. Instead of cold steel, I used a voice and a tongue that welled up from some unsuspected source of deceit deep within me. And, anyway, of what use a warrior’s sword against a witch’s spell?

“
Mother
!”

Her green gaze left me and centered on the palanquin.

“Wait, my uhu, wait.”

So, now, I understood what the creature in the palanquin was. Uhu — a hermaphrodite, half man, half woman, a person cursed or blessed with androgynous characteristics that could make its, hers or his life a heaven or a hell — uhu.

“Why, mother, why?”

“Because I say so!”

And the green eyes blazed with an awful occult power.

Asinine, my remark — rather, the remark of the voice issuing from my mouth. “Young, the uhu?”

“Yes, Dray Prescot. Young and unformed, a coy among wizardly witches. But able to destroy you — if I please.”

“But why —
now
— should that please you? You see I do not prevaricate. I am what I am, what the gods fashioned me. I mistook you. That was a mistake, but an understandable one. What is past is past. Even a witch cannot alter that.”

“You think so?”

I refused to rise to that bait.

I felt the cold in me. I was shivering. If talk could keep me alive, I’d talk the four hind legs off a vove.

She looked at me as though I were a frog’s leg, to be dissected. “How can I trust you?”

I breathed a shaky breath. Those words told me I had won a small space, a tiny moment of time in which to operate.

The uhu from the palanquin spat out vicious, tumbling words, adding up to a demand that I be handed over — instantly.

“Phunik,” said Csitra the Witch. “A flyer remains unsaddled.” Which is to say that there is unfinished business. “Leave me. Go and play with your creatures. I will call when I have decided—”

“Mother!”

“Go, my uhu, go.”

She turned her shoulder to the palanquin and the retinue of grotesque and ghastly retainers mingled with the chained slave girls and the warrior guards.

The moment hung charged with tensions that I, a mere mortal man, would never comprehend. It seemed to me the crystal chandeliers twined together and rushed upon me. The sweetly scented air cloyed and tried to suffocate me. The very floor rolled like a leaky seventy-four after four years’ blockade off Brest. I saw the people staring at the palanquin, at the witch, and at me. I thought I would fall from the clamor in my head.

After three or four centuries of black emptiness, the tiny golden bells began to tinkle, and the procession turned around, and the Womoxes lifted the palanquin. Sheened in red-gold, glittering, and yet black with an indrawn power, the palanquin bearing the uhu, Phunik, the child of Phu-Si-Yantong and the Witch of Loh, Csitra, moved away out of my sight. I saw it go. I did not believe it had gone, not really; but the witch and I were left alone with her own people.

“Now, Dray Prescot, I think you must prove to me in deeds what you say in words.”

Overcoming the first spell of allurement she had placed on me had been accomplished only through my Delia, and the scorpion, and my own wits. Could I hope to defeat a second and far stronger spell?

The chamber with its dangling chandeliers spun about me. I felt the nausea rising. I fell down. I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, fell down in a faint. Well, to be honest, I performed the fainting act well; but that act needed little assistance, by Krun! Like any poor unfortunate girl cramped into too-tight clothes and paying the penalty for fashion, I fainted away.

As I toppled to the ground, I remember thinking that the girls who fainted to order were rather cleverer than stupid...

Cold logic — now — makes me sweat in retrospect. She could so easily have thrown a spell of true cognizance upon me and so suspected that I but shammed. Her slaves lifted me up and bore me off, and she cooed and aahed over me, with my poor lamb this and my poor dove that as to make the nausea rise almost uncontrollably in my guts. But I held fast, and was carted off.

In my struggle against Phu-Si-Yantong I had always imagined and hoped that there was in the wizard a streak of goodness. I had found it difficult to believe that any man, Wizard of Loh or not, could be entirely evil. So, now, I fancied that in this witch-woman, Csitra, some tenderness for others than herself or the objects of her desire must exist.

I profoundly hoped so.

All the same, until I had been revived I was of no use to her. She called for someone named Pamantisho the Beauty, and heard an answering shout of joy and the quick patter of feet. That would be the pretty boy who had passed me with so sullen an expression. Csitra the Witch would be occupied for a bur or two, then...

No doubt the length of time I had to plan and execute my escape depended on pretty boy Pamantisho’s staying power.

Having had no orders either to bind me or knock me about a bit, the guards just dumped my lax body onto a pile of cushions in a corner. They talked among themselves, and I gathered they were not happy here, and those few from Loh wanted to get back there very quickly. They said they were going for some booze — their words were highly colorful — and then they might hunt up some fun elsewhere. Guards in a witch’s retinue ought to be superfluous. What their fun would be I did not care to guess.

I cracked an eyelid open.

It goes without saying that when a warrior falls down in a faint he will grip tenaciously onto what he is holding. The guards had passed a few uncomplimentary remarks about the longsword; but it was still there, and someone had tucked it down into the scabbard. I did not think this merited any comment on the quality of guards Csitra employed; they did their job and no doubt were paid, and they had seen the witch’s powers, and the way she and I had, at the end, got on.

Now I was about to test the witch’s powers again...

The guards began some of the usual warrior nonsense down at the wine tables, and others shouted at them to shut up, Shastum! and then someone shied an empty goblet at a chandelier.

This appeared a typical scene. For me, it represented just about the only chance I’d get.

So, now, I had to stand up, get out of here — and run.

By Krun!

I wanted to lie there. Just to lie there and rest. My body felt as though a sixteen-ton weight had rolled back and forth along the length of my spine. My eyes were red raw. My mouth was like — well like some disgusting part of some disgusting creature’s anatomy. I just wanted to lie there and go to sleep.

Metaphorically, the snowflakes whirled about me and the deep snow formed my couch and pillow, and I could close my eyes and drift off, peacefully and gently and wonderfully.

No. Not good enough, not for a craggy old Krozair of Zy who had comrades to think of, and a world to save, and Delia at the end... My joints sounded like frozen twigs going bang bang bang under the iron hooves of horses. I stood up. I nearly fell down. And then, somehow, I was in at the back of a hanging arras, and breathing dust and cobwebs, and feeling my way along the rough stone wall.

By this time there was just me, a scarlet breechclout and a Krozair longsword. All the rest of my gaudy trappings had vanished.

With a scarlet breechclout and a Krozair brand a fellow is as well dressed and equipped as he needs to be, save at the poles, on that marvelous and terrifying world of Kregen.

Along corridors and passageways, avoiding traps, stumbling across rooms where specters gibbered, climbing stairs where the decomposing corpses of unfortunates told of sprung traps, hauling myself along by willpower, I dragged a painful way. Do not ask me if I would have escaped. I try not to boast, for, as I had told Csitra, I do detest the braggarts and pushy people of two worlds. Perhaps I would have been caught and moldered away in a fiendish trap, or been melted down in an acid bath, or been chewed up in the fangs of a monstrous beast from nightmare.

But, somehow or other, there is in my thick old vosk-skull of a head the fixed idea that I would have escaped.

I think that being a Krozair of Zy played a major part in that thinking. Poor old Phu-Si-Yantong — he’d come unstuck before against a Krozair Brother. It was quite clear that no Brother of any Order of Krozairs had been through this maze before.

But the people of Spikatur Hunting Sword had.

Down low on the corner of a doorway the sign, cut into the stone, showed the heart pierced by a line. That line not only showed direction, it was the sword, the sword piercing the heart that was the sign of Spikatur Hunting Sword.

Staggering, making a sketchy attempt to prod the floor with my own sword, and glaring up with bloodshot eyes at the roof and around the walls, I tottered on. I followed the sign, the sign of Spikatur, and I followed it back the way we had come.

How long would it be before the uhu, Phunik, tired of playing with his creatures? How long before Csitra wearied of her amorous sport? Then they could go into lupu and descry objects at a distance. They could use the signomants they must have located in the corridors and tunnels. Then they would see me. Their vengeance would be swift.

Stumbling, I staggered on through rooms I recognized.

The carved doorway through which we had entered could not now be far off.

With great caution I entered a circular chamber. There were twelve doors, paneled and colored. Halfway around the chamber lay the mummified corpses of two werstings and two strigicaws with slit throats. Opposite them, near a splay of bones and skulls, the body of a Chulik sat propped against the wall. Of the hellhounds and the Pachak there was no sign.

I breathed with an open mouth, panting, my eyes wild, my hair falling over my forehead, gulping for breath. The Krozair longsword in my fist trembled.

The streaming mingled lights of Zim and Genodras, the Twin Suns of Scorpio, never reached down into this subterranean gloom. The crystal shed its radiance upon the scene. Under the Suns the Wizards of Kregen flourish, and are of many kinds. Some pretend to powers they yearn for and may never attain. Others make little show and can blast you where you stand. Some are not yet in possession of the secrets of thaumaturgical art they will later acquire. I had known Wizards of Loh who had been successfully kept prisoner by barbarians, by maniacal lords, probably because those Wizards of Loh did not number among their arcane arts those of blasting and destruction. Some, whom I had rescued, had later learned the awful secrets.

Most Wizards of Loh could go into lupu and see at a distance. I sweated and gazed about, seeking the doorway through which our party had first entered here. The feeling of unseen eyes watching me oppressed me with a palpable weight.

We had uncovered the mystery of Spikatur. Originally formed to combat the crazed schemes of Hamal in the person of poor old mad Empress Thyllis, Spikatur would have ceased to exist once Hamal had been defeated and was now being reconstructed. The conspiracy had been taken over and given a new and darker impetus. Once powerful forces containing our own wizards came to the Coup Blag, this place would no longer support those who directed Spikatur Hunting Sword. By Sasco, no!

In those whirling moments of darkness as I stumbled across the chamber, heading for a way out and into the light of day, I felt the absolute conviction that Seg Segutorio would win through. He would not lose his life down here. He would succeed. Good old Seg!

I could see the door I wanted. The sword piercing the heart wavered as my gaze faltered. Everything was going up and down. I staggered on.

The door opened.

Things rushed through, a crazed cloud of kaotim, Undead, decomposed corpses shedding their grave wrappings, skeletons clicking and clanking, beasts and half-beasts, risen from the tomb to sink their spectral fangs into me.

Shuddering, I threw the longsword up before my face.

If this was to be the last fight, it would be a fight, by Zair...

Without waiting for the revolting mass of Undead to reach me, I let rip a long ululating scream and raced forward, sword flaming, ripped into them in a wild surge of fury and despair.

Yet, despair? That charge was wild and ferocious, an onslaught of murderous precision. The Krozair brand sliced and hacked, bits and pieces of corpse flew, bones sundered and crunched to powder. The things whirled about me. Yet, fiendish though it was in sheer blattering headlong fury, my charge was aimed. Hacking a way through, I did not stop. I cut and slashed and went on, unstoppable, heading for the door I needed.

There was no slaughter here, for these foul creatures were already dead. In that breakneck onset I merely sent them back to where they had shambled from. Strange, too, to witness the superb Krozair longsword slicing and cutting and bursting gross bodies asunder and remaining steel-bright and unsullied. Yellow bones cracked and flew into spouting chips. Sere skulls gaped emptily at me, and cracked open as one cracks an egg open with a spoon, and nothingness gusted out...