Masks of Scorpio (3 page)

Each name was met with a cheer or a groan, a chorus of good-natured banter. The firelight glistened on flushed faces and whiskered cheeks, glittered in eyesockets, caught the rows of jagged teeth. Dayra and I stood together, a little in the background. She had brought the treasure to us, taken from the enemy led by Zankov; she would come into a handsome share.

“Gold,” she said. “Ha — the Little Sisters should be pleased.”

I did not inquire which particular set of Little Sisters she referred to.

I did say: “In your own time, Dayra, you would do well to return to the Sisters of the Rose. They would welcome you—”

“What do you know of them! You cannot tell me that!”

“I do not seek to uncover the sorority’s secrets, my girl. But you could do worse than seek their blessing once more.”

“I will think on it.”

Now the treasure was being divided. It had all been counted, every last silver piece. The men formed up, and the women took their places. Each one held out a sack, or a cap, a stout wooden box, and the coins were counted out by Rasnoli as Pompino, Captain Linson, Cap’n Murkizon and other of the more trustworthy members of the crew stood by. The process took time. No one minded that.

Gambling began at once, of course.

The slaves we had freed and who had fought with us were entitled to their share. Also we had agreed that the multitude of girl sacrifices we had rescued should also receive each one her share. There was a certain amount of self-serving in this, for as soon as we reached civilization we could unload the girls with a small fortune each. That was the general consensus of opinion. Dayra, I had told, and she had agreed, that I wanted to look out for these waifs more particularly. If they were simply cast adrift with a pocketful of gold they’d be dead or slave again in a twinkling.

The share-out went on. The principals, in which number Dayra and I were included, would receive their portions later. The amounts were known. This was not a scheme to defraud our shipmates, merely an example of the protocol in which Kregen abounds.

This amused me. Limki the Lame stomped past, his nose in a flour bag. The bag bulged with the shape of coins.

“By Llunyush the Juice!” he said, coming up for air, his face whitened in splotches. “As fine a sight as any honest man can hope to see!” We agreed. Cooks are important folk.

A vast amount of jollity broke out around the campfires. Wine passed freely. Every man felt himself a king and every woman a queen. There were quarrels. Inevitably so. One or two knives flashed; but it was noticeable that these were mainly gripped in the fists of the newcomers to our band, and the old stagers moved in swiftly to break up the disturbances.

Pockets bulging with gold coins, men and women strutted from the pay-out table to join in the celebrations. If trouble was to come, I was thinking, a few of us retained clear heads — I was thinking that when the lambent blue glow spread across the level sands by the water’s edge.

For two heartbeats, and two heartbeats only, I thought the Star Lords were sending their enormous blue Scorpion to snatch me away from this island beach and hurl me down all naked and defenseless on some other part of Kregen where I would sort out a problem for them. For two heartbeats only...

Other folk yelled. Some screamed. A panic movement away from the beach began and Rondas the Bold fell all sprawling on those yellow sands that were stained with the indigo fires spurting from the apparition.

This was not Mindi the Mad.

A face stared out at us from the center of the deep blue fire. A walnut-crevassed face surrounded by whiteness, a face sharp and piercing, a face of illuminated sorcery. Dayra took my arm. We stood, scarcely breathing, watching. And the hooded eyes in that grotesquerie of a face looked out in a gleam like summer lightning. Those eyes saw the beach and the campfires, the carousing people, the heaps of gold and silver, the broken open chests.

“D’you recognize her?”

“No,” Dayra answered, on a breath.

The spectral image of the witch remained hard and fiery edged, studying us. The outline of blue flames expanded. The woman’s body rose into view. She wore a white form-fitting gown after the fashion of the Ancient Egyptian women of our Earth, banded under her breasts, which were small and hard and cone-like. The gown emphasized the shape of her figure, the swell of her hips, the slight protuberance of her stomach. Around her neck a massive circlet of interlocked gold lozenges, studded with gems, stood out vividly against the mahogany-colored skin. Her hair was remarkable. Frizzed and fluffed in the Afro fashion, it surrounded her head in a sheen of chalk-whiteness — startling and yet in no way incongruous.

A tiara of blinding light crowned her forehead against that chalk-white mass of hair. The sound of a multitude of tiny tinkling bells shivered in the night air.

In the fashion of many ladies of Kregen she wore a glittery linked chain from a bracelet on her left wrist.

But the other end of the chain did not attach to a necklet on some friendly furry little creature, a doted-on pet, a warm cuddly bundle — oh, no. That necklet fastened up a winged, fanged, scaled reptile of hideous appearance, who yawned widely, revealing a scarlet mouth and serrated teeth and a forked tongue that licked wickedly this way and that.

The witch gazed upon us on the beach and we stood, petrified after the first frantic moments of panic.

Not a sound disturbed the night except the tinny tintinnabulations of the silver bells.

As though an artist wiped a chalk mark clean with a single swipe of a wet cloth — the sorceress vanished.

No one had the strength to speak.

We trembled in the night air as the sounds of the crackling fires, night insects, the gentle susurration of the sea, returned to the normal world. An after-scent of musk hung in the air. I felt Dayra’s fingers gripping my arm.

I’d made no move to put my hand on hers, to give her that physical comfort, for I felt sure she would not welcome that, regarding it rather as a patronizing gesture. But I did look at her, and as I turned my head a man yelled down by the beach, and then another shrieked in agony, and a chorus of agonized howls burst out.

Dayra jumped.

“The devil! Vomer the Vile take it!”

She clawed frantically at her tunic, tearing at her pocket. I smelled burning. She had to rip the tunic off and hurl it down and jump on it to extinguish the blaze.

All over the beach men and women were leaping about, yelling blue bloody murder, ripping off burning clothes. I saw Limki the Lame’s flour bag burst into flames and a lava stream of blazing gold run swiftly across the sand, molten, to hiss in eruptions of steam into the sea.

So, of course, we understood what had happened.

All the treasure had turned molten.

Gold and silver alike, it melted into puddles and then wisped and shrank and vanished. We were left, dazed, smelling the stinks of scorched flesh and burned clothing, left with not a single coin of all that marvelous treasure.

Dayra said it.

“By Chusto!” she said, her eyes bright. “That gold soon burnt a hole in our pockets!”

“She may have been a Gonell, for they have white hair they do not cut off.”

“She suffered from chivrel—”

“Powdered with flour—”

“The witch! I’d like to powder her with hot coals!”

“With red honey and let the ants—”

Oh, yes, as you can see, the company of
Tuscurs Maiden
was not at all enamored of the witch who had so summarily reduced our worldly wealth, whoever or whatever she might be.

We sat moodily around the decaying fires as the Suns rose. Someone would have to stand guard and the rest would try to sleep. No one felt like doing anything. We were in all truth a most depressed bunch of desperadoes...

“Well,” declared Dayra. “I never expected to be rich in this life.”

“But that is always an objective, a dream, something one can yearn for,” protested Pompino. “Although, mind you, I own my disappointment is in not seeing my dear lady wife’s face when I emptied the gold chest before her.”

It was in my mind that I ought to do something about the Lady Scaura Pompina, just to give my comrade the sight for which he yearned. But then, being a haughty Khibil, he’d resent at once the implication that he was accepting charity.

That reminded me of something I had to tell Dayra. I drew her a little off and we sat down as Pompino selected off the unfortunates to take the watch.

“Well,” she said. “I am disappointed. But, at least, the enemies of Vallia do not have the gold. They cannot pay their soldiers or for their ships to invade us at home.”

“True. There is something that may make you smile, although I am always heartsick when I recall—”

“What?” She cut into my maundering. I braced up.

“Barty Vessler—”

“Oh.
Him
!”

I felt the rage mounting, and quelled it. Barty Vessler was one of your true koters of Vallia, a gentleman in every sense, filled with notions of honor and duty and with a sense of proportion in everything except risking his own neck. Delia and I had both liked him immensely, for he was upright and honest and if foolhardy of his own person in pursuit of his ideas of honor was always considerate of those with whom he came into contact.

“Barty was a fine—” I began.

“Oh, yes. He told me he loved me and I believed him, I think. But he was so — so — and, anyway, he wouldn’t come out with the companions and—”

“Smash up a few taverns? Terrorize a few innkeepers?”

“And so?” she flared. “Life was so
boring
!”

I wasn’t going to get into the strict parent bit at this stage. I held on doggedly to what I wanted to say.

“I shall speak of your antics later, my girl. Now I must tell you what Barty has done for you—”

“Done for me? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

I felt the pang.

“Aye. Barty’s dead. When your mother was hung up in chains by that rast Zankov, Barty roared in to the rescue. Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham killed Barty, treacherously stabbed him in the back. It was...” I held my breath for a moment and Dayra had the sense to say nothing. Then I went on heavily. “Jilian Sweet-tooth has a personal score to settle with Mogper. I believe she has come here to Pandahem—”

“Jilian in Pandahem!”

“We are hardly likely to meet up with her. The island is as large as Vallia.”

“I have had words with Jilian. You know her well?”

“We have fought shoulder to shoulder — but she is her own woman and your mother’s good friend.

Now, Barty said in his Will that you were to have his stromnate of Calimbrev—”

“He did!” She stared at me in genuine surprise. “Barty Vessler left me his stromnate! But — but there must be relations to claim the title and the lands, surely?”

“No.”

“But I was not there. You know that tenure must be established. Inheritance has to be fought for.”

“I know. I sent good men there to hold Calimbrev for you.”

“Oh, yes, I can see that.” She tossed her head. “The great high and mighty Emperor of Vallia would send an army to gain land for his family.”

“Yes,” I said.

She looked away.

“So — you are the Stromni of Calimbrev, Dayra.”

“You won’t be calling me Stromni here — and do you forget I am Ros Delphor?”

“No—”

“I suppose you are so accustomed to being the emperor now that grandfather is dead. No doubt you are majister this and majister that — it makes one sick—”

This, clearly, was a part of what had gnawed away at Dayra when she was younger. I said: “My friends at the palace usually just call me majis. And there’s an interesting development in the services, where they’re using jis to address superiors.” I couldn’t say that this use of jis was similar to our Earthly use of sir in that context. Some time would have to elapse before Dayra learned her father had never been born on Kregen, but on a funny little world four hundred light years off with only one yellow sun and one silver moon and not a diff in sight.

We spoke on for a space and the hurt in Dayra hurt me, also. I hewed to my purpose. Tsleetha-tsleethi, softly-softly, as the saying goes.

Pompino came across looking put out, as he had every right to be.

“This is a fine mess! By Horato the Potent, Jak! I believe the gods have aligned themselves against us.”

“Not the gods, Pompino. Just a witch.”

“Just a witch!”

“I’d like to know her interest in all this.”

“I,” said Pompino the Iarvin, “am not often wrong in anything. But I own that when I said this would be simple, I erred.”

I didn’t laugh; but you had to hand it to my comrade.

“You said, if I recall, that we would recruit a fine gang of rascally fellows, go across and bash Strom Murgon, burn all the temples to Lem the Silver Leem, sort out who married who, and then go home.” I counted off the points on my fingers. “We have a few fine fellows; we could do with more. Strom Murgon more bashed us than the contrary. We have burned one temple here, and there are more hungry for the flames. And as for who marries who—”

“Tell me,” said Dayra, “about that.”

“Oh,” said Pompino. “Kov Pando and Strom Murgon both lust after the same girl, the Vadni Dafni Harlstam. Both want her estates. There are the Mytham twins, Poldo who himself yearns for Dafni, and Pynsi who wants Pando to marry her.” He gave his whiskers a fierce upward brushing movement. “It is all very simple, as I said.”

Dayra put a finger to her lips and regarded Pompino calculatingly. “Simple?”

“Of course.”

“And the rest of it. You really do go around burning temples of the Silver Wonder?”

“The quicker they are all burned the sooner the air will smell sweeter.”

I made a small sound, a hesitant beginning to an expression of my personal doubts that burning the temples of the evil cult would change the minds of the worshipers.

Pompino glared. “Oh, yes, Jak, I know your views! But if there are no temples—”

“They will build more,” said Dayra.