Avenger of Antares (16 page)

I entered Rees’s house in a whirl, and Rashi, the tears dried upon her cheeks, and Roban, manfully clutching the main-gauche I had given him, and the slaves, walking small, looked at me in alarm.

Jiktar Horan, Rees’s guard commander, had just returned — to horror. He tried to get some sense out of me, and I began to put pieces together from what he told me. Jiktar Horan and a strong party of his men — lion-men all — had been decoyed away on a pretext, and the guard thus reduced had no chance against Vad Garnath’s stikitches (assassins). From Horan I learned something that redoubled, if that were possible, the anger consuming me. Rees’s own guards had gone on an errand similar to that when they had rescued me earlier, answering Nulty’s desperate plea. And Rees had said nothing! He had not reproached me! Clearly, he must have realized far too late it had been a trick. The anger that consumed me — how natural it must have been at the time, how human, and yet, looking back, how futile and shameful a thing it was.

I spoke rationally, as I thought, to Rashi. “Give me a small garment of Saffi’s.”

She thought a moment, then stammered, “A scarf, Hamun? One of Saffi’s scarves?”

“Excellent, Rashi. I will take it now.”

They all jumped as I said the word “now” — yet I thought I spoke most gently.

The scarf slipped sensually into my hands, sensil, that superfine form of silk, and with golden threads artfully woven into it so that it glittered. I tucked it down into my old scarlet breechclout, under my shirt.

They all clamored to know if I had found Saffi or a clue, and I said, again rationally, that I had not, but that I would find out before Far and Havil rose in the sky in the morning.

Then, with my weapons about me, I raced into the moonshot darkness. I headed directly for the massive pile of the palace on its artificial island in its artificial lake in the River Havilthytus. Directly for the queen’s palace of Hammabi el Lamma I ran, and I felt no sorrow for any who sought to bar my way.

A golden scarf serves destiny

The moons of Kregen cast down their pink-gold light upon the uprearing many-pinnacled bulk of Hammabi el Lamma. A soft night wind whispered among the towers and eaves, and ruffled the ocher waters of the River Havilthytus. I stared with intemperate and yet, thankfully, still calculating eyes upon the night scene along the waterfront. Most of Ruathytu’s commerce is carried on at night, with the huge, overloaded quoffa carts bringing in the produce of the countryside and taking out the refuse. Gangs of slaves work by the light of the moons repairing roads and bridges, cleaning the streets, seeing to it that when Far and Havil rise and cast down that glorious opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio the city is sweet and clean for the day — as demanded by the laws of Hamal.

I gripped my rapier hilt. In that evil palace ruled by the iron hand of tyranny lay the answer to my quest. The evil was certain, for Queen Thyllis ruled here. The answer was not so certain, and I begged Zair for help in my search. Nothing was certain, save that I must break into the palace before anything else might be done.

You who have listened to these tapes will by now have a fair-to-middling grasp of the layout of Ruathytu, and will know that not a single bridge connected the artificial island of the palace of Hammabi el Lamma to either bank of the river.

The rulers of Ruathytu preferred this system. A riotous mob would be put to some pains to take boats and row to attack the palace, whereas they would easily stream, shouting and raving, across the stones of a bridge.

Gangs of slaves in the gray slave breechclouts worked here; but easy though it might have been for me to have exchanged my clothes for theirs, and disguised myself and joined them, I did not want to enter the palace unarmed and disadvantaged.

With a quick thought to Zair — and, to be truthful, to Opaz and Djan, too — I lowered myself noiselessly and without a ripple into the water. I swam gently across the Havilthytus out of observation, to land on the island at its westerly point. Water dribbled from me as I cautiously prowled along the rocky foreshore, half in water, half hopping from rock to rock, to make my way to the wicket gate from which King Doghamrei had had his lackey Derson Ob-Eye carry me, drugged, to what both thought would be my death.

The wicket was closed fast.

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I said viciously. “I’ll rouse some rast within, else sink me!”

The Hamalese boots slung about my neck for the swim and the clamber along the rocks thudded against the door. After a bit I pulled them on and then kicked the door, hard.

“Come on! Come on!” I bellowed.

The night scent of moon-blooms wafted down from dirt-filled crevices in the rocks. The water at my back gurgled and splashed as it ran past to the sea. The moons shed light enough to see the raised venous wood of the door, and the iron bolt-heads, lacquered against rust. I kicked again, shouting.

The door groaned.

This postern was heavily defended by murdering holes let into the overhang of rock above. A crack of light shafted out past the edge of the door. I took the lenk into my hands and pulled. The cautiously pushing guard gasped as he was yanked forward by the door.

“Rast!” I bellowed, swirling my cape. “Must the Queen’s merker wait for offal like you?”

He cringed. The torch quivered in his hand, producing distorted shadows.

“I crave indulgence, Notor—” he began.

“You will hear more of this, onker,” I said, and I strode past. I made of my words and of my striding imperious gestures, for this was the way I planned to return and I must impress the guard.

I brushed past him, seeing the thraxter naked in his right hand, the torch uplifted in his left. Over the slimy stones I strode where I had once waited, drugged and paralyzed, for King Doghamrei to give his last evil orders to Derson Ob-Eye. Up the flang-infested corridors, where streamers like Spanish moss caught and clung, I barged on with absolute confidence until I rounded a corner of the stairs. Then I paused to consider. I had only the vaguest idea of directions. A merker, as you know, is a Kregan messenger who travels swiftly through the air astride a fluttclepper or volclepper. It was not too outrageous for such a one to use this quiet postern gate. If the guard gave a thought to the absence of a saddle-bird and my wet clothes he would put two and two together and snigger at the thought I had fallen off into the river.

As I mounted higher into the palace, more and more people became evident, going about their never-ending business of keeping the queen’s palace operating. Most were slaves, too busy with their work and their miseries to bother over me. I was not challenged by any of the slave-masters, and for this — for their sakes — I was glad.

In a rock cavern I saw three Katakis prodding and lashing a group of slaves about some groaning contrivance, and I frowned. I had no time to ponder the significance of this new phenomenon of Katakis, those evil master-slavers from the Shrouded Sea, venturing afield, for they usually keep close to the lands bordering the Shrouded Sea, as you know. Vad Garnath was the man for whose blood I was engaged, and he had employed a Kataki, this Chuktar Strom, to do his dirty business for him.

So I pressed on — my face set into a harsh and ugly mask of self-possessed fury, very proper for a high official of the queen’s — and came at last to a corridor where the floor had been laid with blue and white mosaics, and the walls hung with cheap tapestries from Hennardrin. Here I recognized a large and repulsive statue of a warrior mounted on a totrix represented in the act of slashing his thraxter through the neck of a Chulik mercenary. I had passed this statue in its niche on my way from my cell to the rooms of Queen Thyllis. Anyway, the statue represented pure wishful thinking. Any Chulik mercenary worth his salt would have slipped that thraxter blow and sunk his weapon into the underbelly of the totrix and cut the rider down as he tumbled off.

A few paces down a corridor where the thin oil lamps glowed stood a female slave, clad in the gray slave breech-clout, with a silver-tissue bodice, and a rope of gilt chains about her shoulders and waist. She carried a wooden tray on which stood a fat purple bottle, three silver goblets, and a silver dish partly filled with palines, their bright yellow rotundity very reassuring. I beckoned to her.

“Yes, Notor,” she whispered, her head bent.

I took a paline, and chewed it. Each goblet contained the lees of wine. The bottle was empty.

“I seek Que-si-Rening, slave,” I said. I made myself speak with the contemptuous air of absolute authority the despicable slave-owners use to their human chattel. The girl was apim; her dark hair was drawn back and tied with a single strand of dried grass. She lifted her face to me, and I saw she had been weeping. Her problems were remote to me then, and I sorrow for that now. But there are many slaves on Kregen, and my duty lay to Saffi first, at that juncture. I knew that one day slavery would be abolished on Kregen, for I had sworn it; but, to my shame, that day was not yet, there in the tawdry glamour of the palace of Queen Thyllis.

“He sleeps, Notor.”

“Show me his room.”

She bowed her head again, meekly, for she had seen my rapier and knew I was of the nobility of Hamal. We went along the corridor, then into an intersecting one, and I took another paline, chewing with great satisfaction. We came to a low door, arched and cut from the living rock of the old island on which the artificial island had been reared.

The girl said, “Notor, this is his door.”

“Be off with you, wench, about your business.”

I knocked upon the door.

I made the knock light and respectful.

All the pent-up anguish at the thought of what was happening to Rees’s daughter, Saffi, at this very moment boiled and bubbled in me, and yet I had to proceed with caution. I could understand why I felt so strongly about Saffi, whom I had met only so recently, for in her plight and in her beauty I was reminded of Delia and of what I had endured when I had for a space lost her. Truth to tell, during that dreadful time I might have been searching for the glorious Delia herself, my emotions engaged on her behalf for this golden lion-maid.

For all my prudence, however, after I had knocked thus respectfully, I did not wait for a summons to enter but pushed the door open and shouldered my way into the chamber.

The rock walls showed here and there, angular and harsh, beneath the tapestries. Again, these were cheap drapes from Hennardrin, that country in the extreme northwest of Havilfar where, I supposed, some fugitives from Walfarg had settled and given the inhabitants the thirst for if not the skill to produce the marvelous tapestries of old Walfarg. Well-upholstered sturm-wood furniture, and a mass of fleecy ponsho-skins scattered upon the carpeted floor, showed that Que-si-Rening valued his bones and liked his comfort. He sat up now in a massive winged armchair, a musty book open before him, and I saw in his eyes that distant drugged look that overtakes one who is deeply engrossed in the pages of a hyr-lif.

His vision cleared quickly enough when he saw me.

Ready for him to cry out or attempt to blast me with a blood-curdling curse, I had no need to leap forward to silence him.

He eyed me with no surprise beyond a faint quiver of his left eyebrow.

“You are unceremonious about your entrances, Bagor ti Hemlad.”

“Aye, San,” I said, “for I come upon a pressing business.”

This man had to be handled with care.

He gestured me to the chair facing his own. His long, mournful face with its betraying yellowish cast emphasized by two thin black moustaches curving down past his rat-trap of a mouth gave no impression of offense or of condemnation. His black boot-button eyes shone in the samphron-lamp’s glow, half concealed by his heavy, drooping eyelids. His presence was a tangible thing in the chamber, and his silk gown with its maze of arcane symbols and embroidered runes heightened the eerie effect that would have intimidated any slave bold enough to push in here.

The credulous of Kregen credit these Wizards of Loh with phenomenal powers, believing in their occult authority and in their capacity to blast with a curse or a spell. For myself, I own, by Zair, that there is a great deal more to be learned of the Wizards of Loh before the final verdict may safely be given.

“You did not expect to see me, San.” I made of this either a question or a statement, and sat back for him to pick up what end of the stick he cared. He might not know that I had been drugged and spirited away from here, to be tossed overboard from a skyship, drugged, chained, and in flames. If he did know, I fancied he itched to comprehend how the devil I had clawed my way back from the Ice Floes of Sicce!

“Does the Queen know you visit me, Bagor?”

“No,” I said. Bagor ti Hemlad was the name by which I was known to this Wizard of Loh. I went on before he could reply. “I once knew a famed Wizard, San, as I told you, and for a service I was able to render him he went into lupu for me, and was able to see at a distance.”

Rening nodded his head. “This is so.” The lamplight gleamed from his bright red Lohvian hair. “If you wish me to perform a similar service for you, what have you done to requite me?”

I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed.

“You know King Doghamrei. You understood the purpose of his questions when he had you sound me out. Well, I fancy my service to you will be handsomely rendered in the future, and not too far off, at that.”

We had set up a kind of mute alliance, this wizard and I, when that nurdling blunderer King Doghamrei had attempted to find out the queen’s intentions toward me. I was counting on that friendship now.

“You believe, then, Bagor, that a Wizard of Loh may look into the future?”

Careful! I had to tread warily here. I leaned forward.

“As to that, San, I do not profess to know. This famed wizard of whom I speak went into lupu and told me of the whereabouts and the fortunes of a woman at a distance.”

He nodded. “It can be done. But she was known to him, I daresay.”

“He knew of one close to her.”