“We need to think more forcefully,” Gyss said. He spoke in his own downright way, direct and yet charming. “We must so organize the people who share our views that the government is attacked simultaneously on all sides. We must do this thing, for this evil queen is leaching the life-blood of the country away. I came over the road from Shander's End today, and the surface is not fit for troops to march, and the money for its upkeep was spent in Chem buying boloths for the arena. Is this the way to run a country?"
I tell you, you who listen to these tapes spinning through the recorder, I, Drak the Sword, kaidur, took more interest in that part of his speech wherein he mentioned that boloths had been purchased for the Jikhorkdun. I confess it. I sat up. The boloth can be best described by imagining four elephants affixed in such a way that there are eight tusks facing forward, eight legs a side down the body, and a tendrilous mass of whipping tails at the other end. Its hide is hard and gray like a rhinoceros along the back, a brilliant leaf-green along the sides, and yellow beneath. It is slow. But it can still gather enough speed from its sixteen legs to build pace sufficient for a few hundred yards to outrun a totrix. After that it must pause for some time to allow its three hearts to pump fresh oxygenated blood around that ponderous body.
As an afterthought—it has an underslung jaw that can gobble a strigicaw, all spitting and snarling, at a gulp.
When I got back, Nath the Arm was frantic. “The queen has sent for you, Drak, by Kaidun! You must go to her at once! By Havil the Green,” he said, lapsing into unfamiliar theistic regions for him. “Hurry, lad, hurry! Or all our heads will roll!"
“I will wash and dress myself in fresh clothes,” I said. “Nath, if any heads are removed they will all be mine."
As I prepared—for this summons from the queen came at an inconvenient time—I pondered what Orlan Mahmud had reported at the meeting. He claimed to have set ablaze two of the state manufactories for vollers. He said his men had burned not only fifty fliers, but the sheds and yards also. When I was ready I took up my thraxter and, with a last flick of her tail from Tilly, with Oby opening the door for me, I went up to see what Queen Fahia wanted of me.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
Of Rorton Gyss, Balass the Hawk, and wine
This time Queen Fahia received me in a low-ceiled intimate chamber high in the Chemzite Tower of her fortress of Hakal.
She reclined on a low couch strewn with zhantil pelts and furs, silks and sensils, propped on one white elbow. She knew she looked incredibly seductive, for the tall and unflickering candlelight gleamed in mellow warmth from her skin and hair and that soft haze concealed the lines of arrogant power stamped on her face. She wore semi-transparent billowing trousers, and a translucent jacket artfully half open, and their silk blazed a brilliant scarlet into the scented bower.
I was ushered in, my thraxter taken from me, and fifis already giggling to themselves showed me to a low stool beside the couch. Nearby stood a hurm-wood table loaded with golden goblets and glass bottles, the dust removed only from the labels, with many glass and porcelain dishes loaded with fruits and a golden dish upon which miscils lay ready to crumble into instant deliciousness upon the tongue.
“Drak the Sword! I have been waiting for you and fortunate you are that I had affairs of state to occupy me."
If this pantomime was to begin at all, I would start by laying down the ground rules myself. She was clearly bent upon complete conquest. I had evaded her, as I knew, before; this time the test had to be faced.
“Pour me wine, Drak.” She gestured vaguely at the table, and so, determined to please myself, I chose a bottle whose shape and color I recognized. The date on the label referred to the Vallian calendar, and it was, I saw, a damn long time ago this wine had been prepared. I poured carefully, and handed her the glass. She looked over the rim at me.
“Vela's Tears, Drak?"
“Aye, Queen. It is a wine of Valka. You have heard of Valka?"
“Friends of the cramphs of Hamal.” An old sore had been itched here. She was the queen, concerned for her country, for this moment her role as a seductive voluptuary momentarily forgotten. “The Emperor of Hamal supplies Vallia with vollers and the rasts of Vallia do not venture so far south as here to Hyrklana. Our vollers are as fine as those of Hamal. But the empire blocks our commerce."
As you may imagine, I drank this up with as much pleasure as I sipped that superb wine, Vela's Tears from my own Valka.
The strong red wine suited my fancy. Usually I frowned on this drinking of unmixed wine, for that is a fool's trade; but I fancied I needed the assistance the alcohol would give me in dealing with this wanton woman, for if she became a trifle fuddled I could then slip away and leave her to sleep it off. So I drank sparingly, and replenished her glass.
“Two of my manufactories were burned, Drak. Many fine vollers are ashes; but they may be rebuilt. But the yards and sheds are gone, and the tools—when I lay my hands on the yetches responsible I will deal with them!” She was panting, and the color flooded her cheeks. Candlelight flamed in her hair and glittered from her jewels. She held out a hand to me.
“I need a strong man, Drak. A man to make me forget my cares and worries.” She was smiling now, her moist red mouth open and inviting. “A hyr-kaidur, Drak! One who knows what a sword is for."
Into that appealing hand I placed a fresh glass. This time the wine I had poured for her was a brilliant green concoction from eastern Loh, crushed from the fruit of the pimpim tree, thick and cloying on the tongue, overly sweet—and strong!
She continued to look at me as she drank. I merely touched the tip of my tongue to the pungent liquid.
“You speak of swords. When am I to receive that great sword—?"
She drank, and swallowed, and interrupted me. “You saw Hork the Dorvengur?"
“I did. He was brave, but a fool."
Hork the Dorvengur had been a hyr-kaidur of the green. He felt a personal slight that I had performed a great Kaidur with this strange sword and with a leem and had sought to do likewise. The leem had ripped him to shreds.
“If I give you the sword, it may be to face a foe far worse than a leem."
“There are many more dangerous foes than leems, although few as vicious, and, even, if your treasury can afford it, you might buy larger and stronger cats. There are risslacas. There are the boloths you have just bought, and the volleems which destroyed the Chulik coys. And there are many many more hideous horrors in this world of Kregen you might buy and send against me in the arena. But, I think—"
Again she interrupted. “You think that with that monstrous sword you would stand a chance?"
“Better than with a djangir, at all events."
She laughed. “I love to see the bosks running with their heads down, their long horns outstretched; it is a great Kaidur against the shortsword."
With some amusement I noticed that of all subjects we had got on to, the one consuming her passions was the one most calculated to make her forget why she had invited me up here. We talked Jikhorkdun for some time, and she drank steadily as I pressed her. Her knowledge of the arena was prodigious. She had the great feats of the past off by rote, dates and times and states of play, and all the records of the color champions for many seasons past. She knew so many names of hyr-kaidurs that she made me feel very small beer indeed—which was a most useful ploy, as I discovered.
By careful and callous manipulation of Jikhorkdun talk and of wine I jollied her along as the night wore on. She was in reality a cruel and evil woman; but she was also aging and losing her beauty, and a trifle drunk and maudlin, and, I judged, more lonely than any person should be condemned to be. After a time she slobbered after me; but I laughed—I did!—and gave her more wine, and started on about how she had never allowed neemus into the arena, and so diverted her attention to areas in which she felt far more passion.
“Never, Drak-ak the Sword! Neemus are a part of me! They are so sleek and slender and all the female se
cret things a man will never understand.” A tear cut its way through the powder on her cheeks. Her flush was now wine-red, startling against the cosmetics.
I might never understand women's wiles and secrets, but this case was too plain. She was the twin sister of Princess Lilah. Lilah although cold and aloof had been slender and beautiful and young. This Queen Fahia, the same age, was growing fat, her face was lined, her bones and sinews, as I guessed, feeling creaking and old. Yes, evil as she was, one could find a pity in one's heart that was not put there through mere duty and form to any of the better creeds of Earth or of Kregen.
She hiccupped again, and knocked a goblet over, and laughed shrilly, and Oxkalin the Blind Spirit guided me as I said: “I fight tomorrow, Fahia. You are exceedingly lovely, but the husband your king ... I must leave you.” I deliberately did not phrase that in the usual way in requesting permission to leave. I stood up. I had guessed that for at least the opening sessions of the night's business she had had eyes spying on us. A golden bell stood on a lenken stand. If she struck that, once, probably, armed men would pour in. I wondered if she struck it twice the eyes would withdraw.
“You fight tomorrow, Drak the Sword? Then I will cancel the combat—cancel combat—fight tomorrow..."
With her mouth open and her eyes slowly closing, she sank back on the couch, breathing in rapid shallow breaths that slowed and drew out to a deeper rhythm. I lifted her naked feet up into a comfortable position on the couch. I looked about at the table with the wreckage of the night's drinking. I popped a handful of palines into my mouth and saw the second bottle of Vela's Tears, untouched. About to pick it up, I paused.
Those eyes...
I picked up the bottle. I held it in my left hand, even in that moment relishing the feel of something that had been born in my Valka, and I picked up in my right hand the small mahogany-handled gold-headed hammer and I struck the golden bell.
The chamber filled with armed men.
Their Hikdar stared about, at the sleeping queen, at the golden hammer in my hand, the golden bell still quivering. He commanded a detail of armed and armored men and halflings, and he stared at me like a loon.
I held up the bottle of wine.
“Have you a clean glass, Hikdar?” I said. “The queen and I have used up all that were here."
Queen Fahia gave a little snore just then, and mumbled her lips about, and dribbled a trifle.
The Hikdar's chest swelled. His eyes threatened to pop like overripe squishes. He could barely turn his neck in the iron collar of his corselet for its swelling.
“Deldar Ropan! A glass for the kaidur! And jump!"
Dear Zair! How I plagued those guardsmen!
That was the first time we had a cozy tête-à-tête, Queen Fahia and I.
She would give me no sensible answer about the Krozair longsword. Other kaidurs made the gallant attempt to use it in the arena and most were slain, although a fighter from the blues, surprisingly, bested his opponent, a strigicaw, and so scored a notable triumph for the sapphire graint. The queen insisted that the longsword be returned immediately after every bout. It hung among a splendid display of arms in her trophy chamber, magnificently decorated and appointed, in a great hall of the high fortress of Hakal.
Balass the Hawk was only too pleased to give me the benefit of his assistance and contacts when I made a certain request of him. Shortly thereafter, in exchange for a boskskin bag containing quite enough golden deldys, I received a small dark purple glass vial of a curious shape, heavily stoppered.
“One drop, Drak,” said Balass, chuckling. “Guaranteed to knock over a dermiflon."
That blue-skinned, ten-legged, idiot-headed monster grew so fat and ungainly that it could barely waddle and only its sinuous and massively barbed and spiked tail saved it from extinction at the claws and fangs of strigicaw or chavonth. To say anything would knock over a dermiflon was guarantee enough.
So, armed with my secret purple vial with its drop-by-drop dermiflon guarantee, I could face those ultimate little drinking nights with Queen Fahia with greater equanimity. She did say, and more than once, that my company was very soothing to her in her great worries and problems, for she always slept well after I had visited her.
Poor soul!
But she could wield as much power as an absolute despot ever can over his or her subjects, and my head was still a-rattling between my shoulders.
I often wondered what the results for the island of Hyrklana would have been had the fifteen-minute interval that separated Fahia's and Lilah's entrances onto the stage of Kregen witnessed a reversal, so that Lilah had been the elder.
You will forgive me, I know, in my cynicism, if I suggested to myself that Queen Lilah would have been little different from what Queen Fahia in reality was. If the Star Lords truly had commanded me to a work here, I must also be aware that the realities of the situation, in political terms, could never obscure the greater human realities.
Only those people who have had to sign another person's death warrant can truly know the realities, the miseries, the agonies, of power.[4]
[4 At this point occurs another of these annoying breaks in the Tapes from Rio de Janeiro. Prescot has just begun a fresh cassette. There is a sound of a door opening in the background. Then a voice calls in Portuguese: “Dray, my friend. The cars are waiting. Leave those infernal recordings of yours!” And, distantly, there is the sound of a girl laughing. Then follows merely a muddle of noises, and the tape itself is badly creased within the cassette. This has been straightened; but quite clearly Prescot picks up the story after a gap of some time in his sojourn in Huringa in Hyrklana. What is missing we, of course, do not know. However, I think the gladiatorial life was by this time palling on him, and the disappearance of Nath the Arm from the story also offers substance to that theory. A.B.A.]
* * * *
“...once and for all that evil queen! Drak—it must be you who slays her! You are the chosen one!"
“But, Orlan—to kill a woman, like that—I care nothing that she is a queen—"
“It is a deed done for all Hyrklana!"
“But I am not of Hyrklana."
At this Rorton Gyss lowered his wine glass and stared at me. Always charming and courteous, the Trylon of Kritdrin now spoke in a smooth sensible way that admitted of no argument.
“You may not be of Hyrklana originally, Drak the Sword. But you are a hyr-kaidur, of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa, and that does make you indisputably of Hyrklana. Whether you will it or not, my friend, it is so."
“Maybe. But there are armed guards she can summon instantly."
“We know. But, Drak"—Orlan looked with a sickly smile at me, at which I pondered how much he really cared for the queen—"you are a kaidur. When you caress her, and bend over her, your arms about her, kissing her. Then you may place your hands upon her neck, so, and twist, so, and she will go quietly, and you may lay her, so, upon the couch."
And Orlan Mahmud placed upon the table the two halves of the ripe fruit he had twisted apart.
We all looked at the two halves of that rich fruit as its juices seeped onto the sturm-wood. It was a shonage fruit, I remember, larger than a grapefruit, as red as a tomato, crammed with rich flesh and sweet juices. No one spoke.
The little secret meeting room hidden in the rear of a hovel in a dingy portion of Huringa had never seemed more remote, clandestine, and filled with dark menace. I could do to Queen Fahia what Orlan Mahmud had done to the shonage; and I could do it silently and shielding the deed with my body from the alert gaze of the watchers outside the queen's chamber. I could.
I doubted if I would.
I said to Orlan Mahmud nal Yrmcelt: “You know the queen's chamber in the Chemzite Tower. You have perhaps been there yourself?"
His young face flushed and that sickly smile returned to his features. “I have. Once."
Before I could push any further the Trylon of Kritdrin interposed, smiling, charming, forceful. He had seen how it stood with me, I think, fo
r he was a shrewd man. “Let us leave this portion of the plan for now, comrades. We will return to it when we are sure the quarters will rise."
On that the treasonable business of the meeting could be concluded and we could get down to aspects more agreeable to me, the drinking and singing. If I give the impression that I drank a lot or was some kind of drunkard, this is not so. Water of most of Kregen is drinkable except where fouled by men, and the varieties of fruit juices are immense and wonderful. Also, I always prefer Kregan tea. The cover, that we were a drinking club, had to be maintained. So, singing, rolling along, our arms across one another's shoulders, we staggered happily back into the street and so wended our merry way toward the south boulevard which led to the Jikhorkdun. Before we reached it, in an alley where a torch threw lurid gleams across the stones of the walls, and with Orlan hanging on to me and roaring out about ‘Tyr Korgan and the Mermaid,” Rorton Gyss leaned across and whispered fiercely in my ear.
“We are followed, Drak! A thin little rast in brown."
Trust Gyss to have his eyes and ears open in this wicked world.
I looked back. It was the same man. I had forgotten him; now I remembered. He wore a djangir, and he looked mean, and he hovered at a corner where the stones had been grooved by the centuries of wear from the iron-rimmed wheels of passing quoffa carts. Hyrklana is rich in iron.
He hung back there, waiting for us to pass beyond the torch before following. Orlan stopped singing, just where Tyr Korgan takes his third great breath of air and dives to inspect the Mermaid in wonder. He was not so far gone as to call on Opaz as he halted, all wine-flushed.
“What is it, in Havil's name?"
“Hush, Orlan!"
Some genuinely staggering, some shamming, the conspirators turned to look back. The spy realized he had been discovered. He took to his heels at once. With a wild whooping the whole bunch pelted after him.
Only Gyss and I remained standing beneath the torch.
“Onkers!” said Gyss.
I knew what he meant. “I doubt he is a queen's man, for she would have already struck.” I told him of seeing this man on the day I had become a hyr-kaidur. He frowned. “It is inconvenient. We must tread cautiously, leave for the country for a time. The day of wrath is postponed.” He added, without rhetoric or bombast, false to his nature as they would have been: “But it will come, Drak the Sword. The day of judgment will come."
Arena of Antares [Dray Prescot #7] Page 17
