Secret Scorpio [Dray Prescot #15]

by Alan Burt Akers

  A trampling of iron-shod sandals in the corridor was followed by jocular remarks from the two guards to others of their ilk who passed, giving me a little time.

  “What a beauty! Treat her gently!"

  “Ah! Makfaril's girls will see to her!"

  “What I wouldn't give..."

  I waited until the guards passed. Apart from the old scarlet breechclout I was naked. Simplicity, that was the only way. Simpleness in plans can defeat the most cunning of experienced professionals.

  I leaned against the door and spoke through the iron bars. “Tell Makfaril I have vital information for him. Bratch!"

  When Makfaril came I'd fling everything into one wild lunge and so finish the cramph.

  But these two were incompetent professionals. One looked through the bars, saying, “How do we know you speak sooth?"

  “Fetch Makfaril and you will soon see."

  So, poor fools, they swung the door open to make sure of me. They were armed. I was naked. It made little difference.

  I stood up and slid the thraxter from its scabbard. I took the other one's short compound reflex bow and his quiver of arrows and slung them over my shoulder. A knife, too, would be useful ... The two masichieri slumbered on the floor. I shut the door on them and shot the bars and bolts.

  A short corridor lit by a single torch led onto a wider cellblock. Probably the sacrifices had been kept here in the old days. At the corner I halted as a screech of metal sounded. Cautiously, ready to fight or run—I was annoyed and did not wish to waste my strength on masichieri when Makfaril was here—I peered around the corner.

  The scene was arresting in its action and before I could sort it all out in the tricky light it was all over.

  A guard screamed and spun away from a door. I saw a girl drive a long thick poniard into his neck, saw her as a fleeting black-clad sprite, her long limbs splendid as she sprang to the door. The sheening black leather stood out against her white skin. Her mass of brown hair obscured her face, but she was not Delia. She was not Delia. The door opened to her quick fingers and a man staggered out, looking ghastly, with blood dried upon his face and his dark hair draggling with caked blood and his left arm all broken and dangling awry. Quickly the girl dragged him along, taking no notice of his broken arm. She moved with feline grace, like a hunting cat—all the old images sprang into my mind. Like a tiger-girl she dragged the shambling man along and together they vanished around the corner.

  I loped along the corridor and looked after them. The next set of cells lay dusty and deserted and of the panther-girl and the man she had rescued remained only a double line of footprints in the dust.

  I wished her well. But I had my own zhantil to saddle.

  Up. I must go up. Without doubt these cells for the sacrifices would be low down in this pestiferous place. So I hunted stairs and upward-sloping corridors, and only four guards died on the borrowed thraxter. The straight cut-and-thrust sword of Havilfar is keenly adapted to this work.

  At the end of a long corridor which by its width and height indicated I must be leaving the deeper warrens, the figure of a girl moved across from one side passage to another. For a single instant I thought she was the girl who had rescued the bloodied, broken man. But this girl's black clothes riffled with black feathers, and she carried a wide silver bowl steaming with fragrant water. She vanished and I padded on. That splendid girl who had used her poniard so ruthlessly, she reminded me of Sosie ti Drakanium, Delia's messenger. Her gleaming tanned white skin and her long lissom legs—yes, well, there had been a sight more skin than black leather on view. All the same, had I not disposed of the two guards at my cell door, of whom she could have had no knowledge, her rescue would have gone awry.

  Still, she could not know that.

  As I prowled on, very much like a leem among ponsho pens, the absence of people made me realize that the time was much later than I had thought. The palaces of Kregen—and there is an evocative phrase for you!—of which I had knowledge all contained runnels of secret passages and concealed doors. This ancient temple of abominations followed that pattern. I was perfectly confident I could find my way out to the surface and probably emerge through some hidden opening an ulm away from the ruined tower of Hjemur-Gebir, but I wanted to leave dragging a rascally priest of the Great Chyyan with me.

  The deserted stone corridors, the decayed barrenness of it all as I wound my way back to the giant cavern of the idol of the toad-thing, convinced me the first meeting was already being held. The other meetings for later on, one of which I had arranged to visit, now meant nothing. This meeting, here, was the vital one. For Makfaril would tell his assembled priests the date of the Day of the Black Feathers. The priests would return to their congregations all over Vallia. They would scatter like a loathsome pestilence all over Vallia and prepare their followers and, come the Black Day, they would strike!

  In the end the long ululations of a moaning, whining chant, a succession of weird cadences echoing through the dusty and deserted chambers, led me to the scene. I cautiously came out upon a high ledge of rock, drowned in shadow, and so could look out and down into the torchlit bowl of the cavern with the grotesquely evil idol crouching at the center on its ominous plinth. The black obsidian altar from which the long rusted streaks of dried blood cut corrosive swathes was covered by a wide-spread cloak of black feathers. The cloak was formed into the likeness of the four wings of a chyyan, covering the altar and what lay upon it.

  When I had looked down from the balcony that had collapsed in Autonne upon a gathering of the Black Feathers I had had an inkling of what might follow. And here was the reality! This gathering was far removed from that first one. Here the long ranks of the black-feathered priests droned out their chant in perfect rhythms. Tall candle flames flickered among the torchlights, casting gleams that winked back from weapons and armor. The black arms lifted in ritual observances. A knot of high priests upon a fallen block of stone to one side led the chanting. I gazed at the scene, ignoring everything save the gigantic form of a chyyan, chained with silver chains, fluttering its four wings above the toad idol.

  A real chyyan. Its rusty black feathers showed the true horror of the situation, as it clashed its wings and hissed viciously, its scarlet beak open and its scarlet claws striking wildly at the air.

  The horror lay in this: how could any sane man regard this feral killer of the skies as a god? What difference lay between the living and breathing chyyan and the decayed stone idol of the toad-thing?

  Half-naked girls partially clad in scraps of black feathers gyrated wildly. They swirled black-feathered fans. The stink of incense rose dizzyingly. The priests chanted, a long rigmarole of praises to the Great Chyyan and how he was immortally twinned in spirit with Makfaril. Staring down from the shadows of the ledge into the wild torchlights with the naked sprites dancing and the wafting coils of smoke and the chanting lines of priests, I felt the nausea well in me.

  The chyyan clashed his wings and tried to drag his head away from the chain around his neck. The chain ran down to a small windlass plugged to the stone floor. The chyyan was captive—aye!—captive to the odious desires of Makfaril.

  Captive the killer bird might be, but all the virulence of his nature showed itself in the venomous hissings and the violence of his movements. His scarlet beak gaped ready to rip and rend, his scarlet eyes gleamed like freshly spilled blood. The thunder of his wings and the hissings from the devilish beak clashed and blended with the sonorous chanting from the black-feathered ranks.

  The masichieri stood around the walls, standing well clear of the blasphemous rotting statues in their niches, watchful, on guard. What they guarded against, deep here in the vile depths below Vondium, I did not know. The place must have borne some resemblance to the dire evil of Cottmer's Caverns. I saw the guards, their black leather, their metal, the black feathers adorning them. I saw their thraxters and the oval shields they bore, their bows.

  When the chanting ceased a high priest stepped up o
nto the pedestal below the statue. He raised his arms. Above his head the chyyan hissed and spat and struck fiercely downward, his scarlet beak flashing above the priest's head.

  Himet the Mak and the knot of other high priests stood in a solid block of blackness at the side. The high priest began a shrill chanting harangue, promising everything, promising all Vallia would be turned over to pillage and plunder, promising that Makfaril would make of them all new men and women.

  “Behold, the Black Day dawns! Behold, Makfaril the beloved of the Great Chyyan will reveal to us the day chosen! On your knees, prostrate yourselves, perform the full incline for our leader, twinned spirit with the Great Chyyan! Makfaril! Makfaril!"

  In a sighing rustling of feathers the whole congregation prostrated itself. Each man performed the full incline. I stared, fascinated. Power was being exercised here, power I understood, power I had fought against time and again.

  The gargoyle head of the toad-thing moved. It lifted. The stone jaws gaped, wide and wider. The head lifted and the jaws gaped and a shaft of golden illumination sprang from the opening. A figure stood framed against that radiance, a tall strong figure silhouetted against the glow.

  “Rise up, my people, and give thanks to the Great Chyyan!"

  The voice boomed and rolled about the cavernous chamber in eerie echoes.

  The figure stepped down from the blasphemous mouth of the toad. Clad all in black feathers, imitating a chyyan, the figure of Makfaril stood limned in the golden light.

  “Sink me!” I whispered, and slid the bow into my hands. “By Zim-Zair! I'll feather you, you rast, aye, and with a shaft fletched with your own damned black feathers!"

  The short compound reflex bow, a construction of laminates of wood and horn with a sinew backing, did not contain the supremely long powerful strike of a longbow, but it would serve. I took up an arrow and nocked it. I'd shoot the rast clean through his black heart. If it was Naghan Vanki then the treachery of the hostile territories would be avenged, although that was now the least of my concerns.

  I lifted the bow.

  Then I paused. There might be something to learn when the rast addressed these black priests of his.

  He spoke, gesturing widely, almost laughing, so commanding a figure and so completely in his power were these poor duped fools.

  “The Black Day dawns!” he bellowed in a roar. “Behold, the Day of the Black Feathers is at hand!"

  The congregation, prostrate, let fly a long wailing cry of delight.

  “Long and long have we waited. And to seal our compact, to prove to the Great Chyyan our love and devotion, we offer a sacrifice. We give a life into the Great Chyyan's keeping, earnest of our intention! We shall strike! Red will flow the blood! And all, my people, will be ours!"

  At a signal priests stepped forward, prominent among them Himet the Mak. They ripped away the black feathered cloak in the guise of four chyyan wings. They tore it away from the sacrifice spread-eagled upon that blasphemous obsidian slab.

  I stared.

  White and voluptuous and naked, thonged by wrists and ankles and yet still glaring up with blazing defiance, my Delia lay spread for the sacrifice.

  Redness, roaring, madness, blackness! They were winching down the chain, drawing the violently thrashing chyyan down by the neck. Its scarlet beak slashed the air above the altar, above the slab of sacrifice. Its scarlet eyes saw that superb white sacrifice spread out for it, and now it no longer fought the chain. Hungrily it darted its beaked head down to rip and tear and gorge upon that lovely flesh.

  The bow spat.

  The arrow winged true. The shaft gouged deeply into one scarlet eye and the chyyan screeched and thrashed and clashed its wings. Makfaril darted sideways with a ferocious leap and the second arrow splintered against the toad-thing where he had stood.

  As he leaped, the black chyyan cloak spun away from him. The black feathers floated free. And Makfaril stood revealed clad all in glittering armor, with thraxter and rapier and parrying-stick, a glorious golden numim, powerful, ferocious, bellowing savage commands.

  “By Vox, Rafik!” I said, and leaped.

  Headlong I leaped from the high ledge and crashed down onto the heads of the priests. They scattered and I felt bones crunch and break. There was no time for me to be winded. I was up and running and the sword in my hand cut left and cut right and there were dead men in a blood-soaked swath behind me and I scarcely heeded them. Only one thing I saw. Like a maniac I raged through the press and reached the slab of black obsidian.

  The screams and shouts roared in the cavern. Arrows splintered about me. I cut down two priests, saw Himet running away, shrieking, scrambled onto the plinth.

  Four slashes, four sure quick cuts, and Delia was free.

  The blood must be paining her cruelly, but she forced herself to stand beside me. Masichieri were running. If we were to die here then we would die. How we died would matter only to us. I did not forget my daughter Velia in those mad manic moments of blood. Death could touch me. I knew that.

  “My heart!"

  “They said you were safe!"

  “So I was, until Melow was wounded."

  I cut down the first of the masichieri. If I was exalted, if I was drunk on the red rage and the red blood of battle, then I admit it. I fought. My scarlet breechclout felt wet and sticky with blood and my body gleamed a single crimson flame of blood. But so far none of the blood was mine. Delia had a dagger, snatched from the severed hand of a mercenary. Then she had a thraxter. We fought off the dais and back past the toad-thing. An arrow nicked my left shoulder. I stumbled back and hacked a priest across the face, drove the point past the guard of a masichieri, past his oval shield, deeply into his neck.

  Delia slashed a fellow off my back and I withdrew and whirled back again and chopped the man trying to chop Delia.

  Like two blood-splashed phantasms, we hacked and hewed our way toward the back of the statue.

  We could not go on. There were just too many of them.

  The blood stood out in livid patches across Delia's skin.

  Black feathers swirled about me. Black chyyans painted on shields closed up and bore in.

  A golden gleam glinted at the back of the masichieri. A great numim voice bellowed: “Do not kill him!"

  As soon call off hunting dogs from the carcass of a kill when the hot madness is on them.

  I slashed and beat away the lunging points, slid the slashing blows. Delia was a brilliant form of red and white, of tanned skin and spilled blood. I snarled deeply and charged headlong at the clustering shields. No coherent thought was left to me now. Only the desire to slay Makfaril and thus avenge our deaths...

  Somewhere through the madness beating in my skull I heard Delia yell. “Dray! Keep your fool head down!"

  Through all the red roaring madness on me, through the thunder of blood in my head, the beat of blood about my body, the roar of warring multitudes in my brain, I heard my Delia. I dropped flat and squirmed about, and Delia was at my side, gasping and laughing, and a masichieri tumbled down on top of us with a long shaft feathered through him.

  Screams burst out from horror-stricken throats.

  From the walls, from the niches where the rotting idols slumbered, the Crimson Bowmen of Loh methodically swept the whole cavern with the arrow storm. That sleeting hail punctured skull and leather armor, struck through mail vest and oval shield alike. Among the Crimson Bowmen were the lithe and lissome forms of girls, all clad in trim rose-red tunics, slender and quick, shooting with a deftness to equal the men's.

  “The Sisters did not forget me, then, after all!"

  I looked for Seg as we shielded beneath a barrier of dead bodies, but I did not see him. This was the emperor's work. The Crimson Bowmen of Loh, and the Sisters of the Rose.

  The shrieks died down to moaning whimpers and soon a dread silence hung over that cavern of death. Slowly Delia and I stood up. I swirled a black feathered cape about her glowing blood-spattered loveliness, and so we waited
as Naghan Vanki walked slowly through the heaps of slain. The Bowmen had killed with that sleeting storm of clothyard shafts and not a priest or masichieri remained alive.

  “So you were not Makfaril, Vanki,” I said.

  His expressionless features, white and contained, did not reveal a single iota of himself as he said, “Had I been, you would surely be dead, Prince."

  Then, with cool insolence, he turned and bowed deeply to Delia. “Princess Majestrix,” he said in that flat and chilling voice. “The emperor my master will be overjoyed that you live."

  Delia is, after all, a princess, and knows how to conduct herself. She held out her hand. I saw the bloodstains.

  “Thank you, Naghan. You have proved yourself a loyal servant to my father today. And to me."

  “Always, my Princess, to you."

  So that solved that problem.

  Even then I still could not make up my mind how I regarded all those gallant men of Vallia who adored their princess and would gladly die for her—aye!—as so many did die and joy in the giving of their lives for that of my Delia.

  “And Makfaril?” I said in my surly, oafish clansman's way.

  “He ran back through the idol of Hjemur,” said Vanki. Then, waspishly, he added, “I had thought you would stop him, Prince."

  The cool effrontery of the man had no power to enrage me now. I felt amused. He served the emperor. He was the emperor's spy and, as I more than half-suspected then, the emperor's spy-master. Now girls crowded up and quickly more seemly clothes were found for the Princess Delia.

  We walked toward the exit, past the droves of dead bodies. I saw the Jiktar in command. He looked a little at a loss, for once Naghan Vanki's use for him was finished, Vanki lost all interest in him. I said, “Jiktar! Gather up all the arrows! Send search parties to comb out all the runnels. Have the dead disposed of and if you find any living, question them. Check all the cells.” Then, because I was the Prince Majister and these things are expected of simpletons in that position, I added: “And, Jiktar, you and your men are to be congratulated. You shot as I expect Bowmen of Loh to shoot. There are barrels to be broached tonight."