Savage Scorpio (16 page)

“Oh, yes. But few, I think, very few.”

“Once the emperor is seen to be fit and well the waverers will suddenly realize what side they are on. Anyway,” I went on with a rush of confidence, “this new Chief Pallan your father has brought forward to such power, this Kov Layco; he will keep things running while we are away. He has shown a misjudgment of character in appointing Ashti Melekhi — but that will be forgiven him, I daresay, if he is as skilled and clever as is said.”

“He is clever, no doubt of that. I try to like him.”

“Oh?”

“You are so often away, Dray. It is difficult. Once it is all settled you will tell me this dread secret that you feel will — will — I tremble to say it — will come to—”

“Do not say it, my heart. Nothing can destroy our love.” I believed it, passionately. “But I do fear to tell you. I feel — I feel the burden I shall impose on you is—” My thoughts were muddled. I had kept putting off and putting off telling Delia of my origins. To her, I was a savage clansman, with a strange underspirit that did not come from the plains of Segesthes. But — Earth! How could I tell her I came from a star in the sky she could barely make out? How could she possibly believe in a world which possessed only one sun? What sense was there in a world with only one moon! And, how could any sensible person of Kregen believe in a world that contained only apims as men and women, where diffs were unknown? My story would be taken as the ravings of a madman. I ploughed on somehow: “You will find it hard to believe me. But I shall tell the truth. I swear it. I swear it by Zair.”

“I shall believe—”

Turning for the arms rack I groped around and took up the scabbarded Krozair longsword with the plain strappings that would secure it to my back, the hilt comfortably jutting over my shoulder by the blue-fletched arrow shafts.

I remember, through the maze of impending agony through which I would have to go in trying to convince Delia and my family that I was not a raving lunatic, I sought a little tawdry comfort in thinking of ordinary things. I thought I would have to see about a proper supply of the rose-red feathers of the Zim korf for my Archers of Valka, and I also remember thinking I was growing far too accustomed to wearing the longsword sticking up over my back instead of jutting almost parallel with the ground at my left side. I was thinking I would like to see my new aerial cavalry of Valka mounted on flutduins performing against those rascally flutsmen. A torrent of vague thoughts poured through my mind.

So I turned again to pick up the superb shortsword Hap Loder had brought me, a present from the Clansmen of Viktrik, the new clan who had given me obi, a blade built in Zenicce to the very highest standards, a blade to shame any Genodder of the Eye of the World, and I took the chunkrah-hide and gold scabbard up into my hand and a red and brown scorpion, glinting, ran from under the arms rack.

I felt sick.

A scorpion!

Symbol of the forces of the Savanti or the Star Lords, symbol of those powers that could hurl me about Kregen or banish me back to Earth, contemptuously tossing me about like a puppet, that scorpion stood on its eight hairy legs, waving its vicious stinging tail at me in admonishing authority.

Not now! Please Zair! Not now!

But the blue haze dropped upon me, and I felt the coldness, striking through like the clammy hand of Death himself, and the scorpion grew and bloated, radiant with the blue fire, and everything spun away in two worlds, and engulfed in agony I fell into nothingness.

Chapter Twelve

Strife Among the Star Lords

This nothingness differed from those other nauseating nothingnesses in which I had suffered so often before.

Always, so it seemed to me, I had been snatched away by the blue-limned radiance of the scorpion, caught up, whirled through nothingness, spun through an achingly cold void, smashed down with a hint of the red fire of Antares, slapped head over heels, all naked like a newborn infant, sent toppling helplessly into a new world.

But, this time. . .

A difference.

I was stark naked, and that I expected.

I was no longer in the voller and that, too, I expected.

I tried to open my eyes and realized they were open. I could see and yet, seeing, see nothing.

The hint of echoes, as of the rushing of a distant torrent far below ground, pent between eon-old walls never opened to sunlight. . . The whisper of insane voices cackling over the edge of a world, pringling clammily against my skin. . . I felt the coldness touch me, and ebb, and return. I saw — I saw blue whorls of light gyrating, and, across them and irradiating them with wheels of crimson, red streaks of fire pulsating. The blue was a pale, luminescent blue, and the sharp blue and the crimson struggled for supremacy. And — green! An ominous tinge of green washed across the lower corner of the firmament, clashing with the struggling blue and crimson.

Where had I see blue and crimson before, recently? My head rang with soundless echoes. I struggled, and did not move.

The sky colors fought and writhed, waxed and waned.

Yellow! Where was the yellow of Zena Iztar?

I bellowed out: “Zena Iztar!” and only a dolorous croak passed my lips, my corded throat bursting with effort, a croak like a frog with hernia.

Blue of that brilliant beckoning luminosity was the color used by both the Savanti and the Star Lords when they sent the Scorpion after me. Yellow had been used triumphantly by Zena Iztar, as I believed, to save me. As for that mysterious woman, who on Earth called herself Madam Ivanovna, I knew nothing — or practically nothing. She came and went at her own whim. Glorious she was, aye, that is true. She showed no fear of the Star Lords or the Savanti; but if she worked for them or against them, or for one or the other, I did not know.

I fell.

As I fell I remembered — remembered Zena Iztar and the Kroveres of Iztar, and the crimson flag and the blue device.

I fell. All naked and bruised, I fell into a thorn-ivy bush and I cursed by the foul anatomy of Makki-Grodno. What was happening I had no idea; all I wanted to do was get back to the voller and Delia and go cure her father.

By an effort of will I had succeeded in erecting a kind of structure of deceits so as partially to mollify the anger of the Star Lords. I had managed to convince them I should stay on Kregen and not be dispatched to Earth. I had also, after some success along the way, like an onker resisted them, willfully, and so been banished to Earth for twenty-one horrendous years.

Resistance might once again cause another banishment.

What Maspero, my tutor in the Swinging City, had told me did make a kind of sense. He had said: “Only by the free exercise of your will can you contrive the journey.” That journey had taken me for the first time from Earth — I was literally up a tree at the time, being chased by savages — to sail my leaf boat down the sacred River Aph and after the welcome departure of the scorpion crew to discover a little of what life on Kregen was like and how I would measure up to it — and at last so reach Aphrasöe. Could the Savanti not draw me at will, then? Their monstrous creature in the sacred Pool of Baptism had flung me back to Earth, and it had been the Everoinye, the Star Lords, who had picked me to labor for them about their mysterious purposes on Kregen.

So I exerted my will.

I roared it out, and produced only a croaking sighing like a pair of bellows shot through by musketry. “I will stay on Kregen! I will rejoin my wife in the voller! You have no powers over me, Star Lords! Savanti — I would have worked joyously for you; but you disdained me! Why torture me now? Why?”

And, all the time, I looked for the welcome yellow to gush up among the gyrating colors staining the firmament, and no yellow came.

From the susurrating wash of background noises, from the color-dripping sky, from the mingling scents and perfumes, past the thorn-ivy bush, from everywhere and from nowhere, a voice spoke to me. A voice spoke to me.

“Insolent onker! You are a mere mortal man — do not presume.”

I tried to bellow back, and merely wheezed.

I thought. I tried to hurl my thoughts; and the voice crashed down, masterful, dominating.

“I command you now, Dray Prescot. And I demand from you more than you have hitherto given — more than you appear willing to give. But that more I will have.” The voice whined suddenly, and became incoherent. Then: “Hearken unto me!”

And, another voice, harsher, deeper: “The man is ours!”

“You do not use him to the full!”

“We use him as we see fit. He is, after all, but a mere mortal man.”

“And fit therefore to be driven—”

“He is often stubborn. He is not an easy man—”

“I would drive him! I would—” Again that acrid voice became incoherent. I listened, my mouth dry, my eyes fairly starting from my head, and my backside jabbed thick with the thorn-ivy needles.

This could not be the Savanti, arguing with the Star Lords!

Could it?

The thorn-ivy needles jabbed me cruelly and I rolled away, cursing, feeling harsh rock and stones beneath me, broken twigs, the detritus of a wild animal’s lair.

Brittle bones crunched under my hands as I struggled to rise.

“We wish him—” continued the second voice.

The acid voice, the voice that had spoken first and so allowed me a listening post, illuminating with sound the black silent recesses, that voice that kept wavering as though the speaker strove to pierce through the tumult of a tempest, lashed back. “I shall run him now!”

“Not so! He works well — when he does work—”

“Does he know—?”

“Of course not! How could he? He is apim. Apim.”

“Then perhaps I shall let him know a little—” The bitter voice trailed. Suddenly I found myself urging the voice to return. He’d tell me what, the rast?

These were not Savanti. I held that conviction with sudden deep resolution. Star Lords. They were the Everoinye.

“He is still too soft. The knowledge might destroy him—”

“I am prepared to take that chance.”

I stood up at last and shook my fist at the gory viridian dance of colors against the sky. “You’d take the chance, you kleesh! With my hide! With my sanity!”

Well, that was a mistake.

Like a blind lashing up on a runaway roller, I opened my eyes anew, and stood up, and, lo! I stood on a wide and dusty plain, the thorn-ivy bush at my side, and before me men and women fought among themselves.

I took a breath of sweet Kregan air.

This was more like old times!

A quick glance aloft showed me blue sky — and a whorling diminishing struggle between the blue and the red. And — and! A long beautiful streak of yellow coiled and drifted away into laypom and lemon and so vanished into the clear blue vault of the sky. I let rip a great sob of thankfulness. The yellow, so fragile, creeping in, told me Zena Iztar was at last aware.

I knew I had been brought here — wherever here was — to rescue some wight among that struggling throng, to preserve him or her for the pleasure of the Everoinye. I had served the Star Lords in this fashion before.

Or, so I believed.

I took one step forward.

And blue radiance dropped about me, and I tumbled head over heels, gasping, falling upwards, and so stood with a thump upon a high rampart atop a lofty tower, with a great city spread beneath me. Boulevards and kyros, avenues and temples, spread out beneath the glitter of the suns. And the city burned. Dull wafts of brown smoke rose from the bright buildings. Hordes of crazed people fled in every direction, wildly, not caring where they fled. The smell of blood and fire cloaked the doomed city. From the air echelons of warriors, all steel and bronze and leather, flying their winged saddle-beasts of war, swooped mercilessly down, casting death before them. The beat of the wings sounded the death knell of the city. Fire, destruction, desolation — from that high tower I looked on the casting down of a city.

Where, in all this violence, was I to find the wight I was to rescue? Or, failing to rescue, to find myself packed headlong back to Earth?

Again, I took one foolish step forward, and the light changed.

The crimson beat in, drowning the blue. In crimson flakes of fire I was borne up, whirled headlong about, sent crashing down. I felt the heaving deck of a swordship beneath me and saw the banks of sweating rowers pulling, saw the tangled heat of striped sails about the mainmast, the severed rigging, the varter bolts embedded in the wood of deck and bulwarks, the smashed and splintered scantlings where varter-flung rocks had wreaked their destruction. Up in the bows both below and above the fore-platform where the varter lay scattered in useless shattered timbers and sinews, the frenzied struggle battered on between men who cut and hacked and slipped in blood and shrieked and died, their weapons fouled and glistening in the opaz radiance of Antares. A varter bolt flew past my ear. Fierce bearded men with golden rings in their ears and tall golden-feathered helmets, their eyes alight with the joy of killing, their scale armor glittering, bore down howling on me.

Whom to rescue on the command of the Star Lords? I bent to snatch up a fallen sword — and the crimson light trembled, and faded, and gushed deeply, and was gone and the yellow light limned me, drenching me in golden glory, and I tumbled full length into that damned thorn-ivy bush.

Bellowing aloud that Makki-Grodno’s diseased intestines would provide a capital sleeping bag for Star Lord, for Savanti, for whomever sought to drag me away from the voller and Delia, I pulled out of the thorn-ivy bush, stung to blazes.

The struggling mass of people had vanished from the dusty plain. The doomed city no longer existed. The swordship had gone.

I stood alone upon that dusty arid plain, stark naked, prickled by sharp thorn-ivy spines, and I looked about on nothing save dust.

“By Zair!” I roared, shaking my fist at the sky. And then I could not think of anything relevant to say. There was too much pent up within me. I had no real idea of what had been going on. I turned three hundred and sixty degrees and saw nothing save that dusty plain and the thorn-ivy bush.