Warlord of Antares (3 page)

“No, majister. That is, yes, majister; but I did not want to kill Nath. If the knife had stuck him a little, I would not have sorrowed.”

Nath the Biceps, boiling up, broke out with: “I was only going to clip you side o’ the ear, you great fambly!”

“So the matter is settled.” I spoke like granite. “You must find another light o’ love, Larghos.”

“Indeed, yes, majister. Thank you, majister.”

“Thank you, majister,” chorused the other two.

I stared around the taproom by the light of the samphron oil lamps. A place like this would normally be lit by cheap mineral oil lamps. A thieves’ den, then.

I spoke forcefully.

“You have evidently not heard. I have renounced the crown of Vallia. I am no longer the emperor, nor is the divine Delia the empress. Our son and his bride now rule. Hai, Jikai, Drak and Silda, Emperor and Empress of Vallia!”

One or two of them called out a “Hai, Jikai.”

Others shuffled their feet. A lot had reason to turn their heads. I felt the puzzlement.

“What ails you, doms? Why do you not give the Hai, Jikai to our new emperor and empress?”

The lank-haired, three-toothed buffer piped up, speaking for all.

“We heard, majister, as my name is Orol the Wise. We scarcely credited that you would turn your back on Vallia and leave us, thieves though we be. For our sons and daughters have served you well. We have nothing against Prince Drak and Princess Silda. But you and the divine Delia are emperor and empress. Opaz knows that.”

I couldn’t very well ask them where I was. Well, I could, and they’d answer and most of them would think this merely another whim. But I fancied I didn’t need to ask. I thought I was in Vondium, the capital of Vallia. I thought I was in the old city, in Drak’s City, a place apart, a city within a city, the haunt of thieves and runaways, of disaffected folk and of assassins.

“Yes,” I said. “Your young men have served as kreutzin and have done prodigies. But all our loyalties go now to the new emperor and empress.”

“It’s not right,” spoke out a fellow with one eye and a scar to match.

I shook my head. Well, of course, this whole scene was farcical. Here was I arguing the rights and wrongs of empire with a bunch of cutthroats in an evil-smelling tavern. Yet the situation was serious. Was this the attitude of many of the citizenry of Vallia? If so, it portended ill for my lad Drak and his gorgeous bride Silda, the daughter of my blade-comrade Seg Segutorio.

So, in that lugubrious and squalid tavern I spoke up and told them somewhat of the dangers of the Shanks from over the curve of the world, how they raided us.

“These devilish Fish-heads burn and pillage and seize all. Now they will attack inland as well as our coasts, for they have fliers.”

At this there was a murmur of alarm and horror.

“Yes, doms, we in Vallia are in for it. All the lands of Paz must unite together to resist these Leem Lovers. If we fail to act together now, we will not have another chance.”

A fellow with a glint of silver at his throat, wearing a leather jack and with a scar across his jaw that gave his whole countenance a leering and lopsided look, shouldered up. He carried, I noticed, a drexer for a sword. In his left fist he held a tankard which slopped suds; but he was not intoxicated. His right fist rested on his broad lestenhide belt whose buckle looked to be gold. I say looked, the ways of these folk in Drak’s City are cunning in forgery and artifice.

“Emperor,” he cried. “Majister. We have fought for Vallia against the Hamalese, and against the Clansmen from Segesthes. We have fought the damned Pandaheem. Now you ask us to make friends with them, perhaps to kiss them on the cheek.”

“If necessary,” said I, speaking up. “If you care for a mouthful of whiskers, that is.”

That raised a few titters.

He was not to be deterred. He had darkish hair which grew low on his forehead, and darkish eyebrows which knit furiously together as he scowled.

“You say, majister, you are not the emperor any more. You are
our
emperor, and we have fought for you. I have never fought in any of Prince Drak’s armies.”

I had him to rights now. I didn’t know his name — well, even with the memory conferred upon me by the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, I couldn’t know the name of every swod in the army.

But he’d be one of the mercenaries who’d returned home from service overseas and would have been used as a drill-master for the young lads from Drak’s City who had been volunteered into the new Vallian army by the Aleygyn, the chief of the assassins of Drak’s City. He wore no rank markings; he’d be a Deldar at the least. I had not missed the silver glitter at his throat marking him for a mortpaktun, a renowned mercenary.

“What regiment?” I said.

“Fourth Emperor’s Yellow Jackets, majister.”

“A right hairy bunch. I know of your deeds. Your name?”

“Ord-Deldar Yomin the Clis, majister.”

“Very well, Deldar. I tell you in Opaz’s twinned truth, I have renounced the crown and throne of Vallia, I have abdicated, and the divine Delia, also. The Emperor Drak and the Empress Silda are now your lawful lords and lady. It is to them we all owe our duty.”

Those ferocious eyebrows of his twisted about at this. Then a sudden and cunning expression turned his face into a veritable mask of shrewdness.

He flung up his right hand, excited with his own discovery.

“Listen, doms!” he bellowed. “I have riddled it! I see it all! All the lands of Paz must unite and we all know there is only one person who can perform that prodigious task.”

“Aye!” they cackled it out, laughing at their own access of understanding. “Aye! Only one man!”

“Of course Dray Prescot and the divine Delia must have someone else on the throne of Vallia, for they are to lead all Paz! It is sooth. Hai, Dray Prescot! Hai, Delia!
Emperor of Emperors and Empress of Empresses
! Hai, Jikai! Hai, Jikai!”

So they all took it up, caterwauling it out, over and over, and a fine show they made of flashing wicked-looking knives and cudgels and coshes in the air. What a rapscallion bunch!

And I stood there, like a loon, like the fallible fool I was. I, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy — and various other bodies besides — was now to add to my burden of titles a fresh load of responsibility hung on me by a pack of rogues in a dissolute tavern!

It was enough to make a plain old sailorman snatch off his hat and throw it on the ground and jump on it, by Zair!

The pandemonium hullabalooed on and it might have gone on until the Ice Floes of Sicce went up in steam for all I knew. But a blueness swept in and I felt the cold and the wind and I began that long fall upward into the giant blue form of the Scorpion, huge and ghostly and radiantly blue above me.

What that plug ugly bunch in the tavern thought I didn’t know. They’d just put this flashy vanishment down to another of those fabulous Dray Prescot tricks, to be repeated in story and song and regaled to one and all around the hearth, around the campfires, in hall and hovel alike all over Vallia.

Around me the blueness swelled and bloated with that phantom form of the Scorpion. The red flush spread across my vision and there was not a single spark of golden yellow or, thankfully, of acrid green.

As I whirled up through the void so I realized all my anger against the Star Lords had evaporated. I couldn’t sustain that juvenile emotion under the stress of sheer continued existence. Emperor of Emperors? I didn’t want to be an Emperor of bloody Emperors!

So, out of the blueness I somersaulted and so crashed down thump into a room into which I had never been before. I knew I was about to speak with the Star Lords, and anyone who spoke to
them
needed to think long and deeply on what he said. Long and deeply, by Zair.

Chapter three

I treat with the Star Lords

Mind you, I
ought
still to be angry with the Star Lords.

Their information had told me the damned Shanks were attacking Mehzta, hundreds of dwaburs away to the east. The conquest of the island would take them some time. We could not send our own troops because of the troubles through which we were going. You have time, the Everoinye had told me, you have time to settle affairs in Vallia and to prepare Paz for the Shank invasion.

And the fishy-headed devils had turned up to attack us in Pandahem, just south of here.

Not only that, the Shanks used airboats, fliers that sailed through the air and fought us with fire. Yes, the Star Lords should have warned of that.

That was the bone of contention I had with them.

The room, oval in shape and with curved cornices, held a cool mild light which came from a source I could not identify. It simply permeated all the space. There was a single chair, with arms, a back and with deep upholstery in an ivory color. There was a table with a single central leg. On the table — a flagon and a glass.

This time I did not hesitate. I crossed to the table, poured a full glass of the wine, a light yellow, and then sat down in the chair.

All this, mark you, without so much as a by your leave.

The walls had been done out in intricate curlicues of flowers and leaves, of grasses and ferns, all in natural colors, and the effect was soothing. A white rectangle against the wall facing the chair rather spoiled the effect.

A voice from thin air spoke and I couldn’t understand half the words, even with the genetic language pill the Savanti had given me. I sat still, sipped the wine, and said nothing.

I was, if the truth be told, rather husbanding a growing resentment. Those damned Shanks in their airboats! The Star Lords should have warned me.

The voice spoke again, and this time testily.

“Look at the picture and think of what you wish to see.”

“What picture?”

A sigh. “The white rectangle, onker.”

So I looked and I thought.

Far below there was jungle. It smoked hot and harshly green into the glare of the Suns of Scorpio. The fliers streamed on in perfect formation. My viewpoint moved in dazzlingly to the lead ship, that superb voller called
Pride of Vondium
.

She stood quite alone right up in the prow, magnificent, glorious, the suns catching those outrageous auburn tints in her hair and burnishing them to bronze. She was clad for war, girt with swords, and with a bow in her fist. She stood peering ahead and down, searching, searching.

My heart called out to her, called despairingly and forlornly, for she could not hear me, could not know I gazed upon her with such longing.

“Delia,” I cried. “My Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.”

Was it just coincidence?

As I thus cried out in that mystic chamber among the Star Lords, so Delia started, and looked up and then about her. Her face — glorious, glorious! — turned so that she looked, as it were, full upon me.

Like any fool I held out my arms.

She smiled, suddenly, dazzlingly, so that I felt the shock of it.

My Delia smiled, and I felt the comfort of that, sundered from her by unimaginable gulfs.

The picture misted and died.

Wild and chaotic thoughts clashed and jumbled in my skull. What a foolish useless lump of a husband I was! How my Delia seemed always condemned to search for me. And yet — I shivered at the thought that if that splendid armada from Vallia found what they looked for, if they discovered the Coup Blag they would find also the Witch of Loh, Csitra, secreted inside like a spider at the center of her web.

She had lost her child, certainly, and her power was much reduced. But her malignancy continued unabated. She would do all she could to harm Vallia in her insane pursuit of me.

There was comfort to be found in the presence with Delia of the Witch and Wizard of Loh who were our loyal companions. Their combined powers should be enough to counter the kharrna of Csitra.

There was no time for more thought as the thin voice from empty air spoke again.

“Think again, Dray Prescot.”

This time Seg Segutorio jumped into the picture, almost as though he was there in the room with me. Good old Seg! His wild black hair and fey blue eyes, his bowman’s shoulders, all filled the screen with his presence. His handsome face was wrought into a scowl and he was telling someone I could not see to jump. There was no mistaking that.

He looked still to be in the bewildering mazes of the Coup Blag, and yet I’d thought he’d scrambled free through the hole in the roof. Well, I’d find that out soon enough, I did not doubt.

If Seg really still wandered about in the maze, then no doubt Nath the Impenitent remained with him. Perhaps also Loriman the Hunter was there. Maybe they hadn’t made it through that split in the roof of the chamber as it collapsed and fell about our ears. They remained therefore in deadly danger.

The fleet from Vallia led on by Delia had clearly been searching. Yet the Mages from Loh knew where the maze was, for they had succored me there and fought and destroyed the uhu Phunik, Csitra’s child.

Therefore — and the revelation struck me once again with the power of the Everoinye — therefore my friends searched for me.

The Star Lords manipulated authority in so terrible a fashion that the Wizards of Loh were as puny mewling mortals in their grip. For all their mystical mastery, the Lohvian sorcerers could not scry my whereabouts when the Everoinye had me in their grasp.

The next item at which I chose to look would have raised the blood pressure of any honest seaman of Paz.

The ocean sparkled in a ruffle of blue-green and white. I could not smell that tangy sea breeze there in that secret room; but in my imagination I could snuff up the ozone and the seaweed and the fresh riot of air as the breeze blustered past.

Three ships burned upon the bright face of the sea.

From the little that remained I took them to be argenters, broad-beamed merchant craft. Above them circled the hateful black-hulled fliers of the Shanks. The airboats with their brightly-painted squared-off upperworks had given the three ships of Paz no chance. Fire pots had rained down. It was now all over, and had I been there instead of watching that terrible scene from an unknown distance I could have achieved little more.