Arena of Antares [Dray Prescot #7]

by Alan Burt Akers

  We soon passed down the steps and so came to the waiting carriages, and the zorcas and totrixes and sleeths. These amazing gas jets flared brightly and lit up the scene in garish colors, the red of the favors around us, the brilliant harnesses, the gems and gold and silver, the waving feathers, the eye-catching brightness of fresh colors everywhere. The waiting zorcas stamped their hooves, the sleeths scraped their claws, slaves in their gaudy liveries opening carriage doors and soothing impatient animals and folding up steps and whipping up their totrixes or zorcas, everything melded into a bright scene of splendour—but I could not see the stars or the moons of Kregen above me in the night sky.

  This was my chance to slip away. Strom Noran shouted some witty sally and cursed his slave hostler to hold the Havil-forsaken sleeth still. He mounted, drawing up a very tight rein. The reptile reared on its two powerful hind legs, its claws biting into the ground, its silly forepaws flailing the air. Its small wicked head flicked a forked tongue and hissed demonically. Strom Noran stuck in his spurs and yelled and the sleeth went bounding off in that ungainly two-legged waddle they have, which can cover the ground at a fair turn of speed, for all that. The sleeth is an uncomfortable mount, and one I do not much care for, nothing being preferable to the zorca or vove. But these racing reptiles were all the rage in Havilfar, and the youngbloods risked their foolish necks in buying and riding the fiercest of them. To me, riding a dinosaur-like sleeth carried too many overtones of the Phokaym.

  Now I was fairly out of the amphitheater and among the fashionable sporting crowd of Huringa and I noticed at once that almost no one was without a color favor. I chanced my arm and slipped between a gesticulating bunch of greens, hotly debating the very fight I had myself had this day, when the Rapa kaidur of the greens had fallen to my sword. They concealed me from Callimark and Aldy and the others. The last I saw was Dorval, very contemptuously mounting up on his zorca, and yelling at Callimark that he'd take him on his sleeth to the end of the boulevard, by Gaji's slit ears, for two hundred.

  To which Callimark, foolish fellow, yelled: “You're on, Dorval! And I'll lick you—"

  Sleeth and zorca sped off. I knew which one my money would be on. I let them go and cut away from the greens, who had come to no agreement why their great kaidur had failed against that kaidur of the reds, Drak the Sword, and so managed to slink off into an unlighted alleyway.

  I confess I knew little if anything of Huringa, and I learned precious little more that night.

  Once out of the glare of the gas jets I could look up and ease my eyes and see once again the glory of the stars and She of the Veils riding clouds high above. Colored lights festooned the sky up there, moving in long smooth arcs from horizon to horizon, dropping down and rising up. These were the riding lights of vollers. I watched where a group came to ground and set off walking. I went with care. My thraxter was loose in its sheath; and although I saw plenty of people coining and going about their business, and passed from torch-lit areas to other places of pitch-blackness, I was not molested.

  The flierdrome lay before me, blazing with lights, and the expenditure of oil must have been prodigious. Most of the lamps used a cheap mineral oil called rock oil, and not the more expensive, infinitely purer, and more beautiful samphron oil. I selected the voller I wanted. A four-place craft with a low rail, without a cabin and with fast lines, it would, I fancied, take me swiftly to Migla—or Valka.

  I vaulted the low drome rail, raced for the flier, leaped in and thrust the ascent lever hard over. The flier zoomed up in a graceful arc, and from the ground and dwindling in the rush of my passage, I heard the shouts and angry calls of the slave attendants. Their woes were not mine and although I felt sorry for them, for they might well be punished, this was just another of the burdens of Kregen I must bear—for a time.

  The night sky enfolded me. I set the course at west-southwest and cracked up to full speed. Huringa sped past below.

  I was free!

  And then—and then the black clouds boiled solidly before me and a mighty wind rushed upon my craft, spinning it end for end and the noise blasted into my ears, and I was falling ... falling ... falling into blackness...

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  The neemus of Queen Fahia of Hyrklana

  Sparks and stars and planets and meteors shot and crackled about me. The airboat fell from the sky as though smashed in the paw of a gigantic leem. Whirled headlong the voller sliced through treetops and foliage whipped about my ears. No control was possible. That black maelstrom stirred the sky into a caldron. Other vollers there were being hurled pell-mell. I saw two smash together and the small frantic figures of jerking passengers fall through the storm to the ground.

  No need to ask by whose malign power this gale had been sent!

  Once again, as had happened before, I was being warned off by the Star Lords. They did not wish me to travel to Migla and they were giving me no chance to find out if I might travel to Valka, away to the north across the equator. This was no ordinary storm. The blackness, the massive billowing of the clouds, angry, lightning-shot, and violence of the wind and rain, all were supernormal. I clung to the gyrating voller and I cursed the Star Lords. Oh, yes, I cursed them blue!

  Another voller narrowly avoided crushing mine, for this craft that yawed away was a monster and I could see the deck covered with iron cages. Weight is of no consequence to a voller. In those cages, illuminated eerily by the flickering shards of lightning, wild beasts leaped and yowled and screeched. This was a flier bringing prize specimens for the arena.

  Both vollers hit the ground at the same time. Mine went somersaulting over a low brick wall, smashing a thatched roof, ripping through a loloo yard, came shudderingly to rest against a low thorn-ivy hedge. I scrambled out. I had no wish once again to go breeches first through a thorn-ivy hedge.

  The cages had burst on impact. Screams and yells, horrid in the uncertain light, created a bedlam. The aftercabin of the flier, a two-deck construction, had splintered to destruction, and costly silks and satins, mashcera and damask, floated and strewed the shattered house. Men and women were running in crazy circles. I saw Rhaclaws carrying torches and whips trying to round up some of the beasts—I saw a strigicaw tear the head off one and spit it out before racing for a second.

  In that incredible scene of confusion with maddened wild beasts, of a ferocity known only to Kregen, terrifying humans, halflings, and apims alike, I stood for a moment. I knew I must help but knew, also, I was likely to get killed in affording that help.

  Any hesitation was instantly banished as from the shattered wreckage of the cabin's upper deck the slim and half-naked form of a girl leaped and ran, screaming. Her hair blazed flame in the torchlight, by which I assumed she might hail from Loh. Now the thatch of the house was alight and in that curdling orange radiance I saw the low feline shape of a neemu racing after the slender white form of the girl.

  The neemu had been injured, for it ran favoring its off front foot. Four legs have the neemus, round and smooth their heads, with squat triangular ears, and wide slit eyes of a lambent smoky-gold. All black are neemus, sleek and deadly, their fur highly prized, their ways amoral and feral. Their red jaws and sharp white teeth love nothing better than closing upon rosy living flesh. Vaguely puma-like, the neemu, vicious and treacherous and utterly deadly.

  No thought was necessary.

  I leaped forward, drawing my sword.

  The girl cast me one terrified, appealing look, and collapsed, her foot twisting under her.

  I stepped forward and the neemu did not hesitate.

  It leaped.

  That long sinuous black body packed with muscle sprang and in that rounded smooth head the lambent golden eyes glittered at me with deadly intent.

  I slid the first lashing claw and because the beast was injured in its right paw was able to lean to my left and bring the thraxter around and down in a short and savagely chopping stroke at the neemu's neck. It screeched as it went past. It
landed short of the girl, who cowered back, one hand to her mouth, her eyes enormous. Without giving the neemu a chance to recover—for that blow, mighty as it had been and bringing a gout of blood from the gash in the beast's neck, had not killed it—I jumped in again. This time the sword cut and thrust as it was built to do and the neemu shrank back, hissing and screeching, its glossy black fur dappled with blood, and so rolled over, slumped, and died. It did not die easily. Seven lives, neemus have, so goes the old superstition. I gave it seven thrusts, and then seven more, just to make sure.

  The girl could not rise. She lay there, her gauzy scraps of clothing only partially covering her glowing body. She tried to speak, and I heard the whispered words “Hai Jikai!"

  And then rough and ungentle hands seized me, and a giant Rapa cunningly cast chains about my limbs, and his fellows, Rhaclaws, Rapas, Fristles, and apims, manacled and fettered me.

  “What are you about, you yetches!” I roared.

  But they struck me across the face and then gagged me, so that I could not yell the curses that boiled and spluttered in my head. What nonsense was this, that I should thus be chained?

  The answer to that bore down on me with all the old sense of injustice that festers in many parts of Kregen, as, indeed to our shame, it does on this Earth in the here and now. I was taken swiftly aboard another flier, for the storm inspired by the Star Lords had died as swiftly as it had begun, and with the passengers from the beast-carrying voller was carried with the utmost dispatch to the frowning fortress of Hakal, which dominates the city of Huringa in Hyrklana.

  In certain essentials one fortress is much like another, although in Valka I have made certain changes that make of the Valkan castles the finest and most impregnable in all of Kregen, or so I fondly believe. Almost all Kregan castles are comfortable, of course, for comfort and Kregan nobility are tolerably well acquainted. I was taken wrapped in my chains and bundled down into a cell, where sundry Rhaclaws picked me, a Rapa bit me (the Rapa beaks are notorious), and a Fristle flicked me across the face with his tail. Had my mouth not been gagged he, at least, would have regretted his conduct.

  I kicked a number of them where it would materially impair their mating instincts; but in the end I was beaten down and chained up. They used a great deal of solid iron chain on me so that, finally, I was helpless.

  After some time—time meant nothing among the nobility when dealing with their inferiors—I was hauled out and beaten again just to remind me. Then I was dragged helplessly up stone stairs and so through many back stairs and corridors into a low-ceiled room hung with many bright tapestries and furnished luxuriously with the wealth of empire, and flung down before Queen Fahia of Hyrklana.

  I was hungry.

  My chains chafed and my muscles were cramped and twisted. I had a headache and I was in the foulest of foul bad tempers.

  The queen sat in a simple curule-styled chair, a zhantil pelt strewn carelessly upon it. A Fristle girl hovered with ready goblets of wine, another with tidbits on golden platters. A giant Brokelsh, dressed up in ridiculous finery, waved a feathered fan above her head, for it was full day and the suns pouring in through the open windows gave heat as well as light to the chamber. I took a quick squint—for my eyes were adjusted to the darkness of prison cells and not the glory of Zim and Genodras—to see whether or not the scarlet and golden Gdoinye or the white dove of the Savanti might not be looking in and having a damned good chuckle at my predicament.

  “So this is the rast."

  The queen's voice might once have been musical and low, but years of undisputed authority had coarsened it. She looked very much like her twin sister, the Princess Lilah; but there hung that coarseness about her, that reddening of artery and vein, that thickening of the flesh of her neck and chin, that cluster of lines between her eyebrows no amount of careful exercise and cosmetics could clear. Her hair had been plaited and dressed into a magnificent golden pile upon her head, ablaze with gems. She wore a long green gown and over that a bodice that seemed to be made from a blaze of jewels. Her feet were clad in satin slippers. She took a goblet of wine from the fifi and sipped reflectively, gazing at me over the rim. She was a beautiful woman, who was slowly losing the battle against too rich food and too much wine and too little exercise. She was aware of her beauty, and, probably, not completely able to grasp that she was losing that glory.

  If I do not mention the lines of habitual cruelty that had sunk into her skin around her mouth and pinched her nose, I do so only out of pity for her. Zair knows, she had need of pity!

  Now, when I was thrown at her feet, chained and gagged and helpless, she was at the height of her powers. She completely dominated all of Hyrklana, having pushed the kingdom's bounds out to every part of the island, and in the continual nagging misunderstandings with Hamal, the giant neighbor country in the northeast of Havilfar, having quite a few notable successes. Surrounded as she was by subservient pallans and courtiers, her merest whim was unbreakable law. She might live in a dream world, but where that world impinged on the greater world without, the dream world of the Queen of Hyrklana would always prevail.

  Princess Lilah had said to me that she longed to return to her father's palace in Hyrklana. I was to learn that the old king still lived, in retirement, having abdicated in favor of his daughter Fahia. He had opposed this obsession with the Jikhorkdun, and Princess Lilah, also, had wanted no part of the arena scene. I remembered her horror at the idea of the Manhounds of Faol hunting people. The King's retirement had been engineered by his daughter Fahia. Fahia's husband, Rogan, the present king, was a mere cipher, a nonentity.

  At the queen's side, reclining in a low couch wide enough for six, lay four beautiful girls. They were diaphanously clad and smothered with feathers and gems. One of them was the flame-haired girl I had rescued from the wounded neemu.

  She looked at me now so piteously that I cursed my gag and bonds afresh, for I judged she blamed herself for my position, and I would have comforted her.

  The gaunt figure of a pallan now moved forward. He wore a long robe of blue, girt with the symbols of his authority, and a face much like his must have promised hellfire to many an unbeliever before the fire consumed him utterly.

  This was Pallan Ord Mahmud nal Yrmcelt. He was so addressed by the Deldar of the guard. My ears pricked.

  The queen stared down at me as she sipped her wine. Then, in a gesture she might imagine to be regal but which was, in all truth, merely pretty, she flung the dregs in my face.

  “Yetch! You destroyed my neemu!"

  The flame-haired girl gasped.

  It was quite unnecessary for the queen to spell out my crime. From the moment I had entered this luxurious chamber I had understood. For tied by silver chains, one on each side of that curule chair, the feral black forms of two neemus were pulling toward me. They yawned to reveal their blood-red mouths and their sharp white fangs. She liked to tickle them now and then with a golden tickler a Fristle fifi had charge of, and when the queen commanded the girl would hand the golden feather-tipped rod across and the queen would stroke and tickle her pets and they would purr like enormous black cats. I knew how deadly they were. But these possessed themselves, partially trained, I had no doubt, willing to be fussed and petted by a human woman in return for a warm spot to sleep and much milk and meat.

  The neemus regarded me with their baleful golden slit eyes, and yawned, and the queen tickled them and they purred.

  “Take his gag off!"

  The gag was roughly removed. I worked my aching jaws, but I did not speak. I stared up evilly at this gorgeous golden woman with her jewels and her feathers and her sleek black neemus and her slaves. I stared at that whole barbaric picture and I thought that perhaps I did not have long to live.

  “You have not been put to the question yet, yetch, for you have been gagged, and so have had no opportunity to lie. I shall ask you questions. You would do well to tell the truth."

  I waited. Now I had to think. The Dray Prescot of only
a few seasons ago would have rolled in his chains toward this woman and caught her leg and so dragged her down and hoped her head might be chewed off by one of her pet neemus. The Dray Prescot who would have done that had been almighty lucky to have survived. The Dray Prescot who had come so far on Kregen had learned—a little, not much, as you shall hear.

  “What is your name, cramph?"

  This was the obvious question. To tell them I was a kaidur in their arena would mean I was markedly inferior, nothing better than a pampered slave, and so marked for destruction. To claim a spurious ancestry and say I was Varko of Hakkinostoling would be merely foolish. But, if I was a lord, a Kov—even a prince—I might stand some chance.

  I said, “I am Dray Prescot, Pr—” and was immediately interrupted.

  “You slaughtered one of my neemus, a prize, a hyr-neemu I had paid for and had sent from a far distance. Your crime is a heinous one."

  I knew she was playing with me, as her neemus might play with a woflo; but the test was yet to come.

  So far I had concentrated all my attention on her and her immediate surroundings. There were others in the chamber, of course, high dignitaries and nobles, pallans of the realm. I ignored them. Dare I bring in the flame-haired girl? My eyes flickered toward her, and her pale face whitened more.

  The queen fairly snarled at me.

  “You look at my handmaiden Shirli! Perhaps you two have a criminal liaison? Perhaps you plot together against me?"

  I shook my head, and those damned famous bells of Beng-Kishi clanged resonantly inside my skull. “Not so, Majestrix, not so. I have never seen the girl before the neemu would have killed her—"

  “And if I believe you, does that give you the right to slaughter my glorious neemu so wantonly?"

  “But the beast was about to devour the girl!"

  “You yetch! Is that any reason to slay it? Of what value is a shishi compared with a glorious neemu, so black, so velvety, so smooth? You shall be slaughtered yourself, in a way that shall make you regret your criminal act! Oh, yes!"