Scorpio Invasion (4 page)

Forcing the image out of my vision I raced into the shadows of the arcade.

The wall to my right was pierced by a few tall narrow doorways, all shuttered by solid iron-barred wooden doors. Overhead the roof curved from column to column. To my right the radiance of the Suns of Scorpio threw light as I reached the corner of the building and scampered across to the next series of arcades. The dusty square over on the left remained empty and I felt that however strange and foreign this city might be, one would expect more people than that. A distant murmur like summer bees from ahead, I felt sure, would explain the mystery.

Again I crossed the shafting mingled lights of a cross street. The noise increased. Two men and a woman ran out from a door, which slammed as they left, and raced on ahead. Little detective work was needed to deduce they were running to join the crowd making the noise. I followed on.

Soon other people joined in and I was going rapidly along in quite a little crowd. No one took any notice of me. The men wore strange and fanciful costumes, all draping scarves and tassels, and multi-colored feathers in their wide and floppy hats. A few men wore brilliantly colored loincloths with bare legs, and had swords swinging at their sides. The women all wore veils. These veils were larger and thicker than the flimsy seductive bits of flimsy worn by the girls in the harem. We all ran along to join the procession.

Debouching into a kyro of some size surrounded by the spiring buildings founded on their arcades, the procession wound around and around the square until everyone had joined in. I was near the stern of the mob.

This suited me. Whatever morsel of scent the werstings had picked up must be obliterated and lost in all this throng.

A woman climbed onto the pedestal of a statue of a Khibil holding a Lohvian longbow aloft. The statue was twice life size, one of a number dotted about the kyro. She raised her arms and with surprising promptitude the crowds fell silent. She began to speak in an impassioned haranguing way, all about the lost glories of Walfarg, of the ancient Empire of Walfarg which the barbarian people of the outer world called the Empire of Loh. “Just as,” she cried, shrieking, “the benighted fools call the accursed Wizards of Walfarg Wizards of Loh!”

I felt the shock of that. I felt a distinct shock, not to say a tremor of dire chill. By Vox! To call a Wizard of Loh accursed! I stared in fascination at this woman, half expecting to see her turned into a little green toad.

Her face was of that strong hard variety that, nevertheless, is womanly handsome. She could not be called pretty; her appeal came from her inner strengths. This reminded me of Mevancy, although the two were vastly different women in appearance and in the nature of their inner strengths. She wore fancy silken robes attached to her shoulders and trailing; but they were flung back to reveal the curved leather armor across her breast and the pteruges covering her upper thighs. Incongruously, her navel was bare. She wore two swords, a lynxter and a short sword of that type which is called a laiker in Loh. Both weapons had over-ornate hilts. Her feet I could not see for the heads of the crowds between us. Her head was uncovered and her bright red Lohvian hair gleamed in the radiance of the suns.

To say this woman intrigued me must be an overstatement. What she had said and why she had said it — that interested me, by Krun!

Now she was ranting on about the absence of life and energy in the land. People were slothful. People were all sinful. All they thought of were their bellies, their beds, their money. “We must rise up,” she declaimed. “Rise up and take back what once was ours!”

A few thin shouts of approval lifted. A few harsher voices of dissent growled away. Most of the crowd remained dumb or talking in undertones between themselves.

So, I reasoned, the people had not raised themselves from their lethargy to run and see and listen to this woman. Oh, no. They were here to see her brought low. If that was not done by a Wizard of Loh then no doubt the agents of the local police or watch would soon swoop. The crowds were looking forward to that pleasurable entertainment.

I felt disgusted with them.

Now she was delivering herself of pent up fury and resentment at the judgment of history. She was blaming the fall of the Empire of Walfarg on the Wizards of Loh and also on the incompetence of Walfargian military men. “We must have boats that sail through the thin air!” she screeched. “We must breed giant birds to carry us on their wings into battle to bring us the victory!” At this the catcalls spurted from the crowds. “We must have these things! We will have them! As I stand here, I, Mul-lu-Manting, swear it! By the Seven Arcades I swear!”

This was heavy metal. The Seven Arcades, whatever they were, were words on the lips of Wizards of Loh when impassioned or inflamed to rage. Maybe this girl was some kind of Witch of Loh, maybe she’d failed her exams or had been defrocked. That would account for her attack on the Lohvian mages.

A stir in the crowd near me and the unmistakable tramp of iron-shod feet heralded the expected fun and games. There was no chance that I could intervene to help this woman. I felt that, had I the opportunity to do so, I would. The mass of people shrank away from the guards, clanking along. By the time they were within reach of the statue of the Khibil with the upraised bow, Mul-lu-Manting was long gone from the pedestal.

“The incompetent fools!” A shrewish little woman was scolding the miserable looking man at her side as though he were responsible. “The vile blasphemer, she got away from them. Now if I had her here—”

“Yes?” questioned a deep, resonant voice at my side. “And, lady, you would do exactly what?”

I sized up the speaker. He was muffled up in a light silken cloak, and his flat, floppy hat hung down around his ears and forehead. His eyes were bright and sharp enough. Before the shrewish woman could answer, her husband piped up: “This is no business of yours, walfger—”
[1]

The woman shut him up with a rattled-out string of nastiness. Then she snapped: “Why, I’d teach her to mind her tongue and her manners!”

The slim figure of a girl in light draperies pushed forward and grasped the arm of the owner of the deep mellifluous voice. He was about to launch into what anyone could recognize as a sermon. The girl spoke swiftly. “It is no use, san. Come away, please, come away now.”

He turned his head to regard her and I saw more of his face — a drawn, ascetic countenance, with the harsh lines of suffering etched around the mouth and eyes. “Yes, Xinthe, I suppose you are right. But have I not told you time and again about calling me san?”

The shrewish woman was lapping this up. Now she burst out: “You are one of those dreadful supporters of the witch Mul-lu-Manting. Call the guards! Help, help!”

Moving with enough speed to get there without loss of time I stepped up behind this unpleasant, little lady and placed my fingers on her neck at precisely the right spot. My other arm encircled a waist more pudgy than pleasant as she toppled unconscious. I pushed her at her husband — if indeed he was that unfortunate person.

“The lady has fainted,” I said. I spoke to him as an overseer might speak to a slave. “Take her home before she is injured.”

“Yes, yes, master,” he gabbled and dragged her off, heels draggling. I wished him well of her.

The girl in the flowing draperies gasped. “I saw that!”

I let my head nod in the briefest of bows. “Better all around, my lady. Now let us take this walfger to a safer spot.”

She gave me a hard shrewd look from bright hazel eyes. Her face was of the sort described as elfin; but there were the first faint traces of the lines of responsibility upon her forehead. She came to a decision.

“Very well. I thank you. Now we must get away before the guards find us.”

As she spoke I heard that hateful howling of the wersting pack.

We three moved smoothly and without undue haste away from the crowds, and avoiding the further series of arcades struck down a side street. The mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio flamed into my eyes. Shadows lay to our rear, not overlong shadows, for here in Walfarg we were not too far north of the Equator. The heat was appreciably lessening as the afternoon turned into evening.

“And not a Llahal between us,” observed the man.

“Llahal,” I said at once. “My name is Drajak,” giving the name I’d used most recently down south in Tsungfaril. “Drajak ti Zamran.”

“Lahal, walfger Drajak. I am Wanlicheng, Ornol Wanlicheng once of Paramdan and now a wandering scholar—”

“Oh, San Ornol! You are a great teacher,” burst out the girl, Xinthe. “Yes,” she went on, half scolding half laughing in resignation, “and well you know it!”

“And this,” said Ornol Wanlicheng in his mellifluous voice, “is, as you can see, my strict but patient student, Xinthe.”

“Lahal, Wr Drajak.
[2]
Now, I think it best if we hurried,” and she urged Wanlicheng along. With that fearful howling following us I needed no urging to scamper on with them.

Then the obvious and unpleasant thought occurred to me. If the werstings were still on my scent — and I really felt that now to be unlikely — they would follow this couple. I’d be bringing a wersting pack down on San Ornol Wanlicheng and on Lady Xinthe. I felt that to be something Dray Prescot would not do. So I told them I’d been followed by a wersting pack.

Xinthe, still hurrying on, shuddered. “They are terrible when aroused. Although the puppies are sweet.”

“That is quite all right, Drajak. I have that which will remedy the situation.” Wanlicheng spoke quite casually, as though the problem were both simple and academic.

Apart from the central square where the buildings had been reasonably open and impressive, this town appeared to consist of a maze of twisting alleys sometimes bordered by arcades, more often the further we went on bordered only by tall blank walls. Shadows slanted across the bricks from the opposite wall. I would not care to say I saw the top of a single tree over any wall. Careful, then, these townsfolk.

The doorways were universally tall and thin and the doors of solid iron-banded and studded wood. The door which Xinthe unlocked and opened had once been painted blue; now it was mostly back to bare wood, dry and cracked. We went into the courtyard and Xinthe, after a look back, went to close the door. Wanlicheng stopped her.

“Just a moment, my dear, let me place a simple Seal of Passing.” He moved out into the alleyway again and Xinthe obstructed my view of what Wanlicheng was doing. “There, that should suffice.” He came back into the courtyard and Xinthe slammed the door.

Whether the werstings had missed my trail or whether Wanlicheng’s Seal of Passing did the trick I couldn’t then have said. Whichever, we were not troubled by a visit from the wersting pack or their Hikdar.

The courtyard was surrounded by buildings, all with mean little windows. Directly ahead an arched opening clearly led to the inner courtyard. To the right lay the stables, with the usual litter scattered about. There was about this courtyard a miserable, dingy feeling.

Wanlicheng led off through the arched opening into the inner courtyard. If I expected a blaze of color from gardens, spirited fountains, statuary, I was singularly disappointed. The inner courtyard was just a bigger version of the outer. Certainly, the windows were a fraction larger. Wanlicheng waited whilst Xinthe unlocked one of the narrow wooden doors in the row of doors all around the courtyard and we all went in and immediately climbed a blackwood stair in gloom made darker by our abrupt entrance from the last of the sunslight. At the top lay a chamber spartan in simplicity, furnished as a living room. I did not see a single cushion. The bentwood chairs looked hard and uninviting.

“Pray make yourself at home, Drajak. Xinthe, my dear, would you?”

“Red, white, or rosé, or your usual?”

“My usual for myself, I think. Drajak, your preference?”

“It makes no difference, San Ornol; but red would be nice.”

“Ornol, please. I regard the word san as a vulgar form of ostentation, along with princes and kovs and the like. I do admit they sometimes have their uses, in the right place and the right time. But Walfarg has suffered too much from her sans and her Queens of Pain.”

I could quite see his point. The once great and puissant Empire of Loh, ruled ruthlessly by the famous Queens of Pain, was now gone and crumbled away, blown like smoke in the wind. If the people, as that screaming girl Mul-lu-Manting had said, blamed the Wizards of Loh and their own rulers for the catastrophe, then they wouldn’t much care for sans and queens.

Xinthe brought the wine in pottery jugs and readying myself for a tart and vinegary concoction I was pleasantly surprised to taste a smooth and bracing red. Wanlicheng observed my reactions. He smiled, that austere face breaking amazingly into an attractive beam. “Yes, I believe that wine and blood have an affinity, and therefore a good quality is essential.”

“A sound principle,” I observed, and drank.

Xinthe disappeared and I assumed she was preparing the meal.

Etiquette was more likely than not to be entirely different here. Using what little conversational skills I have I quickly established that Xinthe stood as student, nurse and cook to Wanlicheng and that, thank you, walfger, you may assist with the washing up.

The meal was simple, good, perhaps a trifle too frugal for my taste; but then, an old sailorman like me is used to drawing in his belt buckle.

Wanlicheng, when we had finished eating and the washing up had been placed in its wooden racks, said: “Now, Xinthe, the preparation for the tenth corner.”

“Yes, master — which Path do you mean?”

“Impudence!” His thin lips curved into a smile as he spoke. “You well know, tikshvu.”

I felt a jolt at his joking use of that word tikshvu, which I have previously translated as missy. Usually it threatens and cows a young girl who has been rebellious. These people made their own rules, it seemed.

She spread her hands in her lap and nodded. “The Path of the Ib.”

That is to say, the Path of the Spirit or Soul. Wanlicheng pursed his lips. “In the Path of the Ib, the tenth corner holds a special significance. It is similar to the importance of the seventh corner in the Path of the World.”