The suns of Scorpio (16 page)

The older man scanned us in that streaming dying light, with the dead men and the blood between us. He took a step forward. He did not remove his hat, whose feather was black.

“Which of you,” he said in a harsh voice, at once metallic and flat, “is the man known as Dray Prescot?”

“Remberee, Pur Dray! Remberee!”

I was going home.

I was going home to a place I had never seen.

What was this Vallia like? This Vallia of the island empire, of the fabled opulence: the ocean-spanning shipping, the fleets of airboats, the wealth and power and beauty. What did it mean to me apart from my Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains?

I did not forget that my Delia was known as the Princess Majestrix of Vallia. Tharu of Vindelka, Kov, the older of the two Vallians, treated me with a grim distant courtesy that puzzled me. He was icily polite. When I asked him about Delia’s father, the emperor of Vallia, he rubbed a reflective thumbnail along a narrow scar on his jaw. “He is a mighty man, sudden, all-powerful unpredictable. His word is law.”

Tharu had made all the arrangements. Vomanus, his aide, was volatile in his enthusiasm for life with a fetching kind of swaggering arrogance. I gathered from Zolta that Vomanus had a love of love also, for my two rascals, Nath and Zolta, took Vomanus out on the town as a kind of way of saying thank you. Tharu of Vindelka ripped into Vomanus on the following morning. I had insisted that they stay at my villa in the best part of Sanurkazz, and I heard the grim rumbling tones rolling on remorselessly, and the dispirited replies from Vomanus, who badly needed a hatful of palines. We got down to business that very first morning.

Delia, Princess of Vallia had returned home immediately after an exhaustive search of the enclave of Strombor, all the rest of Zenicce that could be searched by parties of allied Houses, the Eward, the Reinmans, the Wickens, and the speediest airboats’ messages and inquiries to the Clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm. Of course I could not be found. By that time I was trying to explain why I was walking naked on a beach in Portugal, some four hundred light-years away.

“Now that we have found you, my Lord of Strombor,” said Tharu in his metallic voice, “we will sail at once for Pattelonia on the southeast coast of Proconia. I have an airboat waiting there. You know whereof I speak?”

I nodded. I could feel my pulses jumping, the blood surging through my veins. Delia had gone home to Vallia and had started a search operation to find me that had turned her world upside down. She had known — for how could she not so well understand? — that a mystery surrounded me. I had not told her of my origin, although I fully intended to. But she had shared with me that eerie experience of being flung in a gesture of contemptuous dismissal out of the sacred pool of baptism in far Aphrasöe, to find herself running on a beach in Segesthes. She must have reasoned that something similar had occurred again, and this time to me alone. So she had set herself to finding me. I heard from young Vomanus of the efforts that had been undertaken. He was very apologetic that he and Tharu had missed me before. I gathered that they had searched Magdag but in all that festering confusion of slaves and workers the discovery of a single man, who bore a name different from the one they sought, was well-nigh impossible and had defeated them. Chance had dictated that they had visited Sanurkazz when I was away at Zy. They had thought they had at last found the man their princess had instructed them to find, and they awaited my arrival, for they would not venture to the Grand Archboldship of the Order. They were thanked by me for waiting; they had almost certainly saved our necks.

“A message must be got back to Vallia as soon as is practicable,” said Tharu. “Then the Princess Majestrix may graciously consent to recalling all the hundreds of other envoys she has sent chasing all over the world in search of you.”

I didn’t much care for his tone.

I saw Vomanus casting an anxious look between us, and as I was conscious of my position vis-à-vis Vallia, I thought it expedient to say nothing. I told Nath and Zolta to take care of Vomanus: I thought he was a friend.

The coldness of Tharu of Vindelka’s attitude quickly made itself understandable as I talked with the Vallians. There, as everywhere, it seemed, intrigues flourished. There were parties of various shades of political opinion, for religion in Vallia was undergoing some kind of psychic upheaval and no one seemed anxious to talk on the subject, and the emperor was acting with his usual autocratic hauteur. I would have to face that man, Delia’s father, and tell him that I intended to marry his daughter no matter what he said or did. Tharu raged with anger that his party had not made the vital match with Delia, and he was forced to bottle all that frustrated resentment, for he acted under the orders, as he put it, of the Majestrix that no man may disobey. At that Vomanus pointed out that many men did disobey, and Tharu retired into that hard cold shell. He didn’t like me. He considered not only had he lost the chance to marry off his favorite son or nephew to Delia but that Delia was marrying far below her station. He was right, of course.

A broad ship had been found by Shallan, my agent, that was sailing to Pattelonia with supplies for the upcoming expedition. I had a nasty interview with Zo, the king, and quite unable to explain why I was suddenly leaving my command, Sanurkazz, and him, I went out in what was in reality disgrace. It did not matter. I was shaking the water of the inner sea from my boots.

I will not dwell on the interview with Mayfwy. She had heard the news and had been crying, but she dried her tears and put up a brave front. I kissed her gently, kissed Fwymay, who was turning into a beauty like her mother, clasped hands with young Zorg.

The problem of Harknel of High Heysh I must, perforce, leave unfinished. My natural inclinations after his last attempt to kill me on the jetty had been to take my men, march to his villa and burn it to the ground, and to hell with the high admiral and Zo, the king. Those jolly fat men of the mobiles would no doubt have gathered round, bottles in hand, and might conceivably have helped toss a torch or two. But I could not do it. I could not risk a vile retribution from Harknel upon Felteraz. Felteraz was important. Very. I had to leave all this ferment in mid-boil. But I was glad to go. I understood what canker had been eating away at me as I went corsairing on the Eye of the World. Nath and Zolta were a problem — a pair of problems.

I asked them to stay with Mayfwy. She would have need of their long swords.

“What, Stylor? Leave you now, our oar comrade! Never!”

Tharu of Vindelka grumbled, but agreed that there would be room on the airboat for the two. Vomanus was openly delighted.

“Anyway,” said Zolta, “the Krozairs will never let harm befall Felteraz. And the king will also protect the citadel, for it holds his eastern flank. Do not fret, old vosk head.”

My good-bye to Pur Zazz, the Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy was formal, and then warmly fraternal. He did not seem at all perturbed that I was traveling better than a thousand dwaburs away.

“When the Krozairs have need of you, Pur Dray, and the brothers receive the summons, no matter where you are, I know you will come.”

I gripped the hilt of my long sword. I nodded. It was true.

“You will be traveling beyond Proconia, which commands all the eastern seaboard of the Eye of the World and extends her varied powers as far to the east as The Stratemsk. Those mountains are said to have no summits, they extend clear to the orange glory of Zim, and form a pathway for the spirit to the majesty of Zair.” He smiled and poured me more wine. “That is nonsense, of course, Pur Dray. But it tells eloquently of the fear and veneration in which men hold the Mountains of The Stratemsk.”

I was aware, of course, that educated men knew that both the green and the red suns were suns and not thinking beings. But many of the illiterate folk of all shades of opinion held that the suns in their majesties were entities in their own rights quite apart from being the abode of the deities of Grodno and Zair. Astronomy was a strange art, on Kregen, twisted by its special circumstances into byways unknown to astronomers on Earth. The astrological lore and amazingly accurate predictions achieved by the wizards of Loh astonished even me at a later date.

“Over the mountains you are going where no man can say.” Pur Zazz was as cultured and refined and intelligent a man as the inner sea might produce. Now he said: “Men say that beyond the mountains, in the hostile territory, there are whole tribes who fly on the backs of great beasts of the air.” He smiled at me again, not ironically, but with the seriousness these subjects merited in an oar-powered geography. “I would welcome news, Pur Dray, of your adventures, and the sights you encounter.”

“I will regard that as a first charge upon me, Pur Zazz.”

When I left him, straight and commanding in his white tunic and apron, with that blazing emblem of the hubless wheel within the circle upon his breast, and the long sword belted in the fighting-man’s way at his side, I half knew, then, I would never see him again.

“Remberee, Pur Dray.”

“Remberee, Pur Zazz.”

Saying good-bye to Zenkiren was not as easy. But I told him that a message to Strombor would always find me, and my vows to return would remain for as long as I lived.

I did not say that if the Star Lords or the Savanti decided otherwise I might not be in a position to return.

“Remberee, Pur Dray, Lord of Strombor.”

“Remberee, Pur Zenkiren.”

We clasped hands the final time, and I went down to my barge.

Nath and Zolta, very subdued, saw to getting us under way.

The hurt looks on the faces of my friends, looks they had tried to conceal, would haunt me for a very long time to come.

Two men had arrived from another world, another place across the outer oceans, mysterious and strange and with nothing to do with the Eye of the World, and I had upped and run panting like a dog running to its master. Who was this strange remote Princess Majestrix who called the foremost corsair captain of the inner sea? This is what they were saying.

But — they did not know Delia, my Delia of Delphond.

* * * *

The broad ship sailed like a bathtub. I endured. I would far rather have preferred to make this little voyage into seas I had never scoured before aboard a swifter, but I was no longer in the employment of the king, no longer in his service.

The Magdaggian caught us as the twin suns, very close together, were sinking in the west and setting long shadows across the placid sea. She pulled toward us, all oars in neat parallel lines, churning the sea, and we could not escape.

“By Zantristar!” I yelled, hauling out my long sword. “They won’t take us without a fight!”

The sailors were running, milling. Nath and Zolta, their long swords flaming brands in the dying light, tried to beat them into a resistance. But the merchantman stood no chance. She carried perhaps thirty crew, with little stomach for a fight they knew they could not win. They were launching a longboat and clearly they anticipated rowing to a nearby island, where we had intended to lay up for the night, and from which the Magdag corsair, lying in wait, had pulled with such sudden ferocity.

“My orders, from the Princess Majestrix herself,” Tharu told me in his flat voice, “are to bring you safely back to Vallia. Put up your sword.”

“You fool!” I said. “I am Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, the man the heretics from Magdag will give most to have in their clutches. There is no captivity for me!”

“It is a fight you cannot win,” said Vomanus. He was fingering his rapier, and the look on his lean reckless face told me he would dearly love to join in.

“We are neutral.” Tharu spoke impatiently, abruptly. “The barbarians from Magdag would not dare to harm us. They may kill all their enemies from Sanurkazz, but they will not touch me, nor Vomanus here

— nor you, Dray Prescot.”

“Why?”

The galley’s long bronze ram curled the seas away in a long creaming bow wave that roiled down her sides where her oars flashed down and up, down and up, like the white wings of a gull. She was a hundred-and-twentyswifter, double-banked, fast. I could see the men on her beak ready to board us and others at her bow varters. Her sails had been furled, but her single mast had not been struck. Tharu of Vindelka moved to the rail so that I turned to face him. Nath and Zolta below were frantic in their despairing efforts to rouse the crew. Vomanus walked quietly aft. The longboat was in the water and an oar splintered against the broad ship’s side in the panicky haste.

“They will not take you, Dray Prescot.”

“Why? What will it matter to them that I know the Princess Delia of Delphond? That my every thought is of her? I have never seen Delphond, Tharu, nor the Blue Mountains. But I regard them as my home.”

He let that square, hard face of his relax. I did not think he was smiling.

“My duty is clear, Dray Prescot, who is intended to be Prince of Delphond.” A grimace clouded his face with his inner resentments. “Rather, I think you had best be a Chuktar — no, on reflection, the dignity of a Kov is better suited. It will impress the Magdaggians more. I am, you should know, a Kov myself, although of a somewhat more ancient lineage.”

I stared at him. I as yet did not know quite what he was talking about or where he was driving. Then I heard a light scrape of foot on the deck to my rear. I am quick. The blow almost missed. But it sledged down on the back of my head and dazed me and drove me down, and the second blow put out the lights.

When I regained consciousness I was aboard a Magdag swifter and I was dressed in the buff coat and black boots of a Vallian, a rapier swinging at my side was complemented by a dagger, and I was, so I gathered, an honored guest of Magdag. My name, I was told by Tharu, was Drak, the Kov of Delphond.

The Princess Susheeng meets Drak, Kov of Delphond

Because the vessels of the inner sea almost invariably put either into port or were dragged up onto a convenient beach at night they were seldom provided with bunks or hammocks. I was lying on a kind of hard wooden settle covered with a ponsho fleece dyed green.