Armada of Antares (25 page)

“Yes,” I said. “Was it only the Pandaheem? Any other . . . ?”

“Oh, you’ve heard the tales, too, have you? Yes, they say there was an army out of Vallia. Rasts of Vallians! May Hanitcha harrow ’em to hell!” He chuckled and spat. “All smashed up. Tumbled back to a place they call Jholaix — they’re hiding out there now. All we’ve gotta do is go in and finish ’em.” He spat again. “I’ve heard of Jholaix, not that I’ve ever bin able to afford to drink of it, never not once in my whole life.”

Thus spoke Nath the Keys, my jailer and an enemy, yet just an ordinary man.

One of the most telling indictments of the gul Chaadur had been that he had pretended to be a Horter.

The official torturing was scheduled for three days away.

I could delay no longer. Rees and Chido, and the others who had known me in Ruathytu as the Amak of Paline Valley, must be called on. Hamun ham Farthytu must be used as an alias. I should not have delayed so long. The remnants of the armies of the countries of Pandahem, and my army of Vallia and Djanduin, were penned up in the extreme northeastern corner of Pandahem, in Jholaix. One final battle would destroy them utterly and put the whole island into the power of Hamal. My place was with my army.

Having reached that decision I called for Nath the Keys and he was there already at the cell door, swinging his lamp and jangling his keys.

“Stop your bawling, Chaadur! Your time has come, there’s no sense in kicking against it, lad. You did a foul murder and now you must pay the price.” Soldiers with iron chains stood with Nath the Keys.

“But,” I said stupidly, “there are three days.”

“Naw. Naw, lad. The Kov’s in a hurry, like. It’s now.”

They dragged me out and I fought, so they wrapped the iron chains around me and knocked me out. When I came to I was chained up to the stake in a small courtyard of the Hanitchik with an assembled party of gloating nobles and Horters, with the guards . . . and with the black- and red-robed tormentors.

Kov Ornol ham Feoste was in a jovial mood. He had brought a group of friends. He called out, “I have chosen well for you, Chaadur, murderer!”

They had gagged me so I couldn’t yell back. I glared in murderous fury on this miserable Kov, but I could not break the chains.

The fires banked red in their braziers, the hot irons glowing. The tongs, the knives, the scalpels, the screws, all were at hand. The Kov sat back on the front chair, upholstered in green brocade, and he lounged in fine style to enjoy the spectacle. Those with him, sitting on chairs placed in the spots reserved for them, perked up at the prospect of a bur or so of pleasure. I looked at them as the chief torturer advanced, holding a tiny knife. He wore a black hood and his eyes glittered at me from the holes cut in that ominously black material.

I looked at the assembled nobles and Horters of Hamal and I considered once more that the country was evil, that this glittering, decadent city of Ruathytu was evil, and that the greatest evil of all was Queen Thyllis herself. There were one or two men there I had seen during my days in Ruathytu; but not one I had known well enough to imagine he would recognize me as the Amak of Paline Valley. My position was such that I would joy in being recognized as someone — anyone — other than Chaadur, the condemned murdering gul.

My wish was so rapidly fulfilled I wondered if the Everoinye or the Savanti had a hand in it. But, apart from what I suspected they might have been doing lately, the Star Lords and the mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasöe left me strictly to my own devices on Kregen. They would let me be tortured and killed if they had no immediate need of my services.

Sitting two places away from Kov Ornol, a man lounged in his chair. I recognized him as my gaze passed along the nobles. He wore a natty costume of blue, gray, and black stitched into a hexagonal pattern very like the hide of a chavonth. He looked a lot like a sleek, treacherous chavonth lounging back, this man I had rescued from the snows of the Mountains of the North at the behest of the Star Lords.

So I stared at him as the little knife in the leprously white hand of the torturer sliced toward my skin for the first cut. I was stripped naked. My body glistened with sweat. The gag choked me. I know my eyes must have held all that old powerful look of the devil as I gazed at Naghan Furtway, he who had once been the Kov of Falinur.

Now my comrade Seg Segutorio was the Kov of Falinur, and this Naghan Furtway a fugitive from Vallia, a man who must be riddled with anger and resentment. Once before he had unmasked and betrayed me, there at The Dragon’s Bones.

Would he recognize me again?

Naghan Furtway had once held enormous power as a Kov of Vallia. His passion for Jikaida had been inordinate; I had played him enough times in the Mountains of the North, waiting for him and his nephew Tyr Jenbar to regain their strength and for Genal the Ice to take his icy load down the mountains, to know he played as he lived, hard, ruthlessly, without mercy.

Yet he had raged at the cramphs of Havilfar for selling us defective airboats. Clearly his disgrace and flight had changed his mind. He was here in Ruathytu for no good purpose. He had become a renegade.

The knife pricked my skin, slid, cut, and withdrew with a sparkle of my blood on the tip. This would take a long time.

I watched Naghan Furtway.

The knife cut again, cunningly, painfully.

Naghan Furtway stood up, drawing that chavonth-patterned cape back, resting his hand on the hilt of his rapier. The knife licked out and the pain stung. Soon that pain would coalesce from many tiny pains into an insupportable agony.

Kov Ornol looked up, frowning.

“Sit down, Horter Furtway. There is much to come.”

So they knew, here in Hamal, who Furtway was.

“I think not, Kov.”

“What in Havil’s name do you mean! As Malahak is my witness, Horter Furtway, this cramph of a Chaadur suffers torment to my orders before he dies.”

“I think not, Kov. This man’s name is not Chaadur.”

Kov Ornol spluttered. “That is what he says, the lying rast! You believe his story?”

“No. For I know him, aye, I know him well.”

“That is nothing to me. He murdered my wife and has been adjudged guilty. I will have what the law allows—”

“I have the ear of the Queen. I think she will not be pleased if you persist, Kov Ornol.”

That was threat enough to make any man think twice.

Between these two, the Kov and the ex-Kov, there was a great gulf. For all his bluster, cruelty, and evil, Kov Ornol ham Feoste was a mere blunderer, an oaf, compared with the refinement of cunning and calculation of purpose of Naghan Furtway. The sheer hardness of the man in the chavonth-patterned clothes blunted all Kov Ornol’s bluster.

“The Queen must be informed at once.” Furtway was looking at me much as a leem stares at a ponsho. “If you persist, Kov Ornol, the Queen will order done to you what you do to this man.”

“You cannot speak to me like that! I am a Kov of Hamal! I know—”

“You know nothing, Kov. The situation between Hamal and Vallia is what concerns us here.”

“You are a Vallian disgraced and thrown out of your own country!” Ornol blustered on, very plum-colored of face, struggling to rise and confront Naghan Furtway.

“So I know what I am saying.”

The tormentor and his little knife withdrew, thankfully. He wasn’t going to commit himself until the argument was settled.

Ornol ham Feoste gestured with irritated anger at the torturer. “Get on with it! Take no notice of this fool of a man who thinks he is a Kov still! Cut him!”

“I will tell you, Kov Ornol, since you are bent on running headfirst into mortal danger. The Queen will want to deal with this man herself, personally. She will excuse no one who balks her of that. I tell you, you foolish man, and you will not listen.”

Kov Ornol puffed himself up and half drew his thraxter.

If he set to with Furtway the latter’s rapier would spit him before he could call on Malahak as a witness.

“Guards!” bawled the Kov of Apulad, this foolish, incensed, half-demented Ornol ham Feoste.

“Then you will have to know and see the truth, and the error you fall into Kov Ornol. And once I tell you, the guards must seal this yard and the Queen must be told. At once! There is great danger here for us all.”

“What in a Herrelldrin Hell are you talking about?”

“This man, this murderer you call Chaadur, is a man the Queen will give great riches for. And I am the man — remember that, Kov Ornol, and you who sit here — remember, I am the man who brought this rast to justice.” He swung around, the chavonth cape flaring. He pointed at me, evil triumph lending him a spurious but frightening dignity.

“That man is Dray Prescot, the Prince Majister of Vallia!”

Empress Thyllis takes me for a stroll through Ruathytu

King Doghamrei slashed me across the face and screeched: “You lie, cramph, you lie!”

Queen Thyllis sat forward on her crystal throne, with the golden steps, the zhantil pelts, the Chail Sheom chained in their golden chains, and the manhounds lolling fearsomely below her. She propped her chin on one white hand and regarded me with those slanting emerald eyes.

“Bagor ti Hemlad!” she said. “What you say cannot be believed, for you could not have survived.”

I’d felt pretty rough, I can tell you. This cramph Doghamrei had drugged me and had me thrown burning from a skyship, as I have told you, and I suppose it was natural that Queen Thyllis should not believe that. She was far too wily a bird to believe what King Doghamrei said. She had that onker’s card marked. He was the King of Hirrume, a moderately sized kingdom within the Empire of Hamal, and he hankered after getting rid of the Queen’s husband, the King who was a mere cipher and a friend of Rees, and then King Doghamrei planned to marry the Queen and settle himself in comfortably as Emperor. I fancied that Thyllis, with her intuitive grasp of affairs, kept her husband under strict control as a counter to this idiot Doghamrei, who still had adherents and men who would cry for him.

So, feeling weak, I lolled against the guards and used them to prop me upright. The torturer and his knives had done no real damage; my weariness came from many sources of punishment over the past sennights. I’d bellowed to the Queen what Doghamrei had done when I was being played with by the Queen, and she, not really finding it possible to believe what I said, while certainly not believing what Doghamrei said, chose a middle course and beckoned to Naghan Furtway.

Furtway approached the golden steps. The slanting emerald eyes regarded him, and before she spoke the white pointed teeth bit onto a full moist lip.

“So you claim Bagor ti Hemlad is the Prince Majister of Vallia?”

“I know nothing of this Bagor, Majestrix.” Furtway spoke up. “But this is Dray Prescot. I know.”

“Majestrix!” brayed Ornol ham Feoste, struggling forward. “The cramph is Chaadur, the murderer of my wife!”

The Queen regarded the two of them in turn, and then looked at me. “So the man who is Bagor ti Hemlad, and with whom I have an account still open, is Chaadur and also the Prince Rast of Vallia, hey?”

The situation would have brought that marvelously delightful tinkle of laughter to my Delia’s lips. Even I could see the humor of it, and I was pig in the middle. They were debating here in the great hall of the palace, debating on a man who had three names, and all wishing to claim him as theirs. The Hammabi el Lamma contained many a dark secret and many a hideous story; I doubted if the stinking place had witnessed such a farce before. I had acted like a great onker here once, dressed in ridiculous and humiliating clothes. I had been hairy them. My beard now, although nowhere near as long, presented the Queen with strong memories of Bagor ti Hemlad, that was sure.

Across the shining marble lay the slab covering the hole beneath which grew the leprous-white syatra. Men and women who made mistakes and displeased the Queen were popped down there . . .

All these people knew they plotted on the knife-edge of disaster.

So, as I glared up at the Queen and pondered if I slew her now would that materially assist Vallia, I was aware that my Delia would laugh in amusement at the situation, but would feel absolute horror at the plight of her husband. Thank Zair, she was safe in Valka, in Esser Rarioch, and her women would be readying the layette. Doctor Nath the Needle and Thelda would be there, and Aunt Katri, also . . .

“Bagor! Do you wish to feed the syatra?”

“No, Queen.”

“Are you Chaadur?”

One lie was as good as another.

“No.”

“Are you Dray Prescot?”

I stared up at her. Could I deny it? I saw the green glitter of her eyes, the corner of her lip caught between her teeth, the way she leaned to look at me, the betraying movement of the golden bodice. And I saw that she already knew the answer. Other men besides Naghan Furtway must have come to Hamal, fugitives from Vallia. There was his nephew Jenbar for a start. Possibly Nath Larghos, who had been Trylon of the Black Mountains, was here. I’d knocked his eye out and maybe he was dead. Anyway, Inch was now Kov of the Black Mountains. There must be others of the third party who had escaped. They were hatching a plot here, that was certain; but more immediately they could identify me. I was sure they already had. That would be Queen Thyllis’ way.

So I stared up at her and pushed myself upright from the guards, plunking my chained fists on my hips. She saw my face. She did not flinch back, but — and I admit now I enjoyed it — her eyebrows drew down as though in sudden pain, and her teeth bit so hard she drew blood from that ripe lip.

“You stupid onker,” I said. “Queen Thyllis. Vallia has thrown out these rasts, and now you plot with them. They are failures, and so are you. Your evil Empire of Hamal is doomed. Vallia will crush you like a fly.”

I was not too happy with the fustian this time. It had not boomed and rolled out. It did not convince me.

Thyllis was offended, but she was not convinced either.

“So you are the Prince Majister of Vallia!”

“Aye!”

“And you think I shall ransom you? Demand a huge sum from that evil Emperor, so you can sail home to plot against me?”