Omens of Kregen (13 page)

“Certainly, Jak. Without a doubt.”

“If I’d had you to train up,” said Nath the Impenitent, “you’d have been a Hikdar in no time, and a kampeon to boot.”

Once again Mistress Tlima had furnished us with the simple clothes of these people to replace our own burned and ruined garments. We had paid her, and this time in Vallian gold. She had made no comment. We approached that famous stoop leading up to The Dragon’s Roost.

“Leave,” I told the other two, “the talking to Seg.”

“Aye, Jak,” and: “Aye, Jak.”

“Remember, we are not from Vallia. Oh, we hail from North Pandahem. They don’t much care for those folk down here; but they don’t hate them as much as they do Vallians or Hamalese.”

“It’s all Pandrite here, remember. And Armipand if you want to throw a curse at someone.” Seg sniffed and said: “Squish pie.”

“Excellent. Now if—”

“But he isn’t, and we are, and here is the inn.”

So into The Dragon’s Roost we trooped.

At the far end of the wooden stoop, bowered in greenery against the heat of the suns and the hiss of the rains, loud voices raised in argument. Two men, big and burly, stood there slanging each other rotten.

“By Krun!” in a high nasal whine. “You call yourself a lord! You’re nothing better than a clodhopper with his nose forever in the mud.”

“You are a kov,” came the answer in thick and impassioned tones that cut through like whetted steel. “And I, too, am a kov. That you are from Hamal causes me wonder.”

“Wonder, clod-hopper? Wonder that a noble of so great a nation should set foot upon this stinking island?”

“No, Kov Hurngal ham Hortang. Wonder that my rapier has not already sought your backbone through your guts.”

“You presume too much.” The nasal whine thickened. “I shall have to teach you a lesson, you Pandaheem yetch.”

We stood quietly, waiting and watching. If these two idiots slew each other, what did that matter to us?

I’d be interested to see how this Hamalese kov, named Hurngal ham Hortang, acquitted himself against Kov Loriman the Hunter.

For, that was who it was, standing bulky and impassioned, wrangling with a hated noble from Hamal.

Their right hands crossed their bodies, swathed only in light clothing for the weather, and fastened on rapier hilts. Their left hands gripped the hilts of their main gauches. If Kov Loriman was killed, should I bother? He had been one of the leading lights of our trip down into the horrors of the Moder in the Humped Land where we had found monsters and magic, and some fabulous treasures that evaporated in the clear light of day. His passion was hunting. He sought out locations where he might test himself and his swordarm against monsters. That, I thought then, was why he was here about to go up against the terrors of the Coup Blag. I was wrong.

I wondered with little interest if he would recognize me, let alone remember me. What did I care? He was here, so therefore why should not I be also? I could brazen out a story.

A rich, silken-smooth golden voice called: “Why, notors! I do declare you quarrel just to spite me.”

The woman stepped lithely and with a voluptuous swing of her hips out onto the stoop. She was clad in a sheer gown of sliding green silk, clinging to her body, and her form was amply rewarding to anyone with an eye for plastic female beauty. Her face remained in shadow. Her hair sheened, caught up in a net of pearls.

She addressed these two nobles as notor, the term for noble in Hamal and Havilfar. Here in Pandahem the word was pantor, as in Vallia it is jen. I watched fascinated as she set her arts of coquetry to chasten these two blowhards.

Kov Loriman did not put her down as I had seen him insultingly dismiss another fine lady. He turned and bowed.

“My Lady Hebe. I maintain my honor—”

“Of course, and I admire you so much for it, notor. But, then, so does Kov Hurngal, does he not?”

“What does he know of—”

She stepped to Loriman’s side and put her hand, surprisingly brown in so fine a lady, upon his arm.

“Now, now, kov! This quarrel is over a nothing, and does credit to — well—” and here she laughed that throaty delicious laugh. “Credit to what, I ask you?”

Simmering like a volcano about to blow, Loriman glared upon the Hamalese. For his part, Hurngal glared malevolently upon Loriman. I admired the way this Lady Hebe handled the situation, for very soon she had both of them eating out of her hand. Whatever the cause of this quarrel, though, I fancied the animosity in these two ran so deep that it would not be slaked until they fought the duel they both so manifestly craved.

Well, it was no business of mine. Seg stepped up.

“Llahal, pantors!” he cried in his open cheery way. “Llahal, my lady.”

They swung about as though one of Csitra’s plagues had stung them up their rears.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded Kov Hurngal. “We have a private party here.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Seg in that soft way which could send shivers down the backs of those who knew him. “We have come to guide you to the Coup Blag.”

Well, after that it was a matter of the Llahals and then the Lahals, and we were invited in and so we sat down in that corner alcove window seat with the polished sturmwood tables loaded with jugs and flagons. We ignored all the insults. Loriman did not recognize me. We explained that we had been to the Coup Blag and wished to return to bring away more treasure.

“Gambling, you see,” said Seg, “is a vice.”

They guffawed at this and relaxed and were agog to hear all we could tell them. We attenuated the true story. I fancied if they knew it all they’d think on about going and then turn tail and run as far and as fast from this place as they could.

The voller, inevitably, belonged to Kov Hurngal.

He had ridden roughshod over the locals’ detestation of Hamalese, and had distributed much gold, so that he was tolerated.

That toleration might end with a knife between his ribs if the balance of the party did not soon arrive so that we might depart.

He and Loriman treated us with the casual, unthinking near-contempt of one kind of noble. We were pantors, and vouched for by the people of the town; we were not in their class and therefore were of value only as tools.

That we had been accepted as nobles was perfectly understandable to young Ortyg Thingol. Nath the Impenitent merely assumed we were a couple of young lords with the Vallian expedition. He appeared completely adjusted to his position in the situation. I summed him up as a doughty fighting man, one of Vallia’s finest. More than once I had to nudge him to halt the habitual: “By Vox!”

“By Pandrite,” I said. And then, out of deviltry, I added: “Or ‘By Chusto!’ or, even, ‘By Chozputz.’ Brave oaths, both.”

These were oaths I had invented when Dayra, Ros the Claw, and I had adventured together with Pompino in North Pandahem.

“Very well, Jak. Outlandish place, this.”

“Aye. It’ll get more outlandish.”

Trying how the new oaths rolled on his tongue, Nath the Impenitent burped out: “By Chusto, Jak! I look forward to it to enliven the tedium of the days.”

Any expedition of delvers exploring ancient ruins where they suspect treasure is buried, any expedition with plain common sense, come to that, must include in its company some form of wizard or witch. That goes without saying.

Seg and I decided that we four should stay at Mistress Tlima’s rather than The Dragon’s Roost. This we felt would ease friction. Mistress Tlima’s husband, a quiet, obliging man, was far better company than the bunch at the grander inn.

Seg was creating merry hell that there was not a decent longbow in the town. He bought a short bow and looked at it with his mobile lips twisted up, so that I had to smile.

“The thing is, Seg, we know that Csitra took over Spikatur Hunting Sword.” SHS had been a mysterious organization dedicated to the destruction of Hamal. Well, all that was over; but now the adherents of Spikatur simply assassinated anybody who took their fancy, or so it seemed, and burned property that did not please them. Csitra had assumed control of the SHS and was using it for her own dark ends.

“My guess,” said Seg, “is that Spikatur has served its purpose for the witch.”

“I tend to agree.”

Now I’d regaled my comrades with tales of the Moder when we’d spend roistering evenings in that wonderful fortress palace I called home, Esser Rarioch in Valka. They’d listened fascinated to Deb-Lu and my scary adventures down the Moder of the Moder-lord Ungovich. The Humped Land, Moderdrin, the Land of the Fifth Note, lay far away in the center of Havilfar.

“So,” I said. “Is Loriman here solely for that hunting? He was of Spikatur. There is no doubt of that.”

Seg gave me a look as he went on carefully polishing up that little bow.

“You mean, is Loriman a tool of the witch’s?”

“Aye.”

“Instead of coming here as a member of Spikatur Hunting Sword?”

“Aye.”

“Either way a shaft in his guts might solve the problem.”

“He’s a useful man in a tight corner. I think I’ll test him out and gauge his reaction.”

Soon after that, having brought in supplies and prepared ourselves as best we could, and with the rest of the expedition joining, we all observed the fantamyrrh as we stepped into Kov Hurngal’s voller. Up from that small speck of civilization in the wilderness of the jungle we flew, slanting up into the mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio.

With the speed lever hard over we pelted full speed ahead for the Coup Blag.

Chapter twelve

Over the Snarly Hills

Over the Snarly Hills we flew swift and straight as a lance stroke.

Below us the rain forest and the jungle reeled past. Those frightful hills up which we had toiled and then struggled down only to clamber up again, passed like models in a child’s playroom. High above those clearings we soared where the pools of water, oily with poison, reflected light in a queasy way. The last pool in its clearing also carried that betraying sheen of evil. The Slaptra, the plant that struck lethally at sound, flattening the ground around the pool and gouging deep spadelike depressions in the mud — the Slaptra was gone.

“Someone’s been doing a spot of gardening,” observed Seg.

Before I could reply, San Aramplo said in his haughty Khibil way: “There is evil in the water. I sense it most clearly.”

“The poison killed the plants growing in the water. They were Slaptras.”

“Of course. A sensible arrangement.”

When Seg and I had discovered that the sorcerer going with us was a Khibil, Seg had given me such a comical look of despair I’d almost burst out laughing. A sorcerer is always high and mighty. Any Khibil regards him — or her — self as a member of the most superior race in all of Kregen, noses in the air, all hoity-toity, Khibils. Their fox-featured faces, with those arrogant reddish whiskers, their sharp eyes, their cutting ways, were very familiar to me.

This wizard, San Aramplo, was a member of the Thaumaturges of Thagramond. They were a small cult, widely spread, and reputed, as so many of Kregen’s varied assortment of sorcerers are, to wield real and supernatural powers. They were not, of course, in the same class as any Wizard of Loh.

This foxy-faced Khibil mage had sensed the poison in the water, and the evil of it, as Fregeff, the Fristle wizard, had done before him. So San Aramplo had some genuine powers.

We all just hoped he would be able to handle the magics of the maze we were about to penetrate.

When he went into the purple-curtained opening to his private cabin, Nath the Impenitent gave a rolling wriggle to his heavy shoulders, and said, “Sorcerers. Never could abide ’em.”

“Ah, but,” piped up Ortyg Thingol, “they are not all the same. San Bjanching was very helpful when I couldn’t understand my mathematics lessons.”

This was news to me, and I listened with lively interest. It seemed Khe-Hi was helping out in the education of the youngsters training up. Very good!

“They’re all too big for their boots,” said Nath. “Sorcerers, nobles, lords and ladies. They don’t have time for us common folk.”

Ortyg yelped: “Oh, come on, Nath! It’s not as bad as that!”

“I’ve seen life, my lad.”

There was little Ortyg could say to that, except a lame reply that, well, and, by Vox, he was going to see life too!

“By the Veiled Froyvil, Nath! You may not like the fellow; but he is going to be invaluable to us, believe you me.”

No one commented that, if Seg and I were pantors down here in Pandahem, and as we were Vallians, then we were jens in Vallia. That put us in the bad graces of Nath the Impenitent; yet he treated us with unfailing courtesy, and we imagined he recognized in Seg and me fellow kampeons, fellow adventurers in the face of this life he so detested.

We flew at a moderate height and despite the wind of our passage we could smell the raw rank stink of the jungle below.

This voller of Kov Hurngal’s flew well enough, and we suspected she’d been fitted with brand new silver boxes for the expedition. Her name was
Hanitcha Triumph
. She was capacious enough to take upward of a hundred souls as passengers, and was reasonably well-provided with varters and catapults. She had but the one fighting top and her lower fighting galleries were on the narrow side. Still, painted bright blue and green, with a quantity of gimcrack work and gilding, she looked pretty enough. She was, without the shadow of a doubt, far far better than marching through the Snarly Hills, by Krun!

Vainly, as we bore on, I kept a lookout for other fliers in the air, hoping to see some of our Vallian comrades continuing our interrupted expedition.

The idea of actually flying right up to the Coup Blag and landing before that fantastically sculptured cliff face and then marching in, somehow did not seem smart to me.

“We ought,” I said to Seg, “to land a little way off and march the rest.”

“Aye. You’re right.”

From the cabin opening hung with golden drapes stepped the Lady Hebe. She appeared to affect a net of pearls for her hair at all times. Her gown was of blue, shorter, and girded with a broad golden belt. Her sandals were marvels of nothingness. As for her face, well, she had widely spaced eyes, dark under level brows. Her forehead was broad and tinged with that darker tone I had noticed in her hands. Her nose was short and her mouth full. She was a lady who knew her own mind, strong-willed, and quite able, as we had observed, to stoop to coquetry to gain her ends. She was a vadni, so in the pecking order of nobility she was one rung below a kovneva. And she was proud, no doubt of that. Also, I thought she was sad.