Intrigue of Antares [Dray Prescot #44]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Also, a little breathlessly, she said: “And, Drajak! What do you think!”

  Smiling, for smiling came easily where young Tiri was concerned when dark thoughts of the horror in both our minds could be pushed aside, I said: “Well, young lady. What do I think?”

  “You can never guess. I saw Princess Nandisha!”

  “Oh,” I said, and remained dumb thereafter.

  “I did! She was as close as you are. It was strange, though. Her golden numim was there, as they passed by, and the princess I am sure was trying to conceal her face. It was most odd. Everybody likes her.”

  “You didn't happen to see a big Kildoi?”

  “No.”

  “Look, Tiri, you'll have to go out again and find Nandisha and then find Fweygo. Tell him what happened. All of it.”

  “But—?”

  “It'll be all right. You'll see.”

  Although I was not at all sure that, indeed, it would be all right, I sincerely hoped so. Fweygo would fathom a way around the problem.

  So, stuck in Tiri's bedroom, I waited. Some time elapsed. When at last she returned she waltzed in and, lo! in came Nandisha and Ranaj and Fweygo. They were not looking particularly overjoyed and relieved at finding the lost member of their party. Ranaj had a scowl all across his features. Fweygo, alone, look undisturbed.

  Before I'd even had a chance to get out a polite lahal, Ranaj started up: “Thanks to you, Drajak, and your onkerish behavior, the princess has had to reveal herself. Now—”

  “It isn't all that bad.” Nandisha sat in the only chair, looking far more relaxed than when we'd parted. “To obtain a lifter it would have been necessary, I suspect.”

  For my part, I suspected that now she was going to fly all the way to Oxonium, the capital, and safety, she felt the danger had passed.

  Fweygo said: “You should have seen the guards jump when the princess spoke to them. They fell over themselves to please. You're in the clear now, Drajak. Stikitches did that foul deed.”

  “What about Strom Nath B'Bensarm na Bharang?” I used the full name because it intrigued me.

  “He apologized for the over eagerness of his people.” Nandisha spoke graciously.

  Fweygo said: “I laughed.”

  I gave him a look. He sounded a likely partner.

  Nandisha stood up. “If we are all ready, then we must fly.” That was an unmistakable command.

  As we went out the door, Ranaj said: “All the same. I do not like the thought of the princess being known to have been in Bharang.”

  Fweygo glanced at me meaningfully. Both of us knew probably for sure what Ranaj only suspected. The peril encompassing the princess and her children had not passed. We were still here. The Star Lords had not released us from this contract.

  Just before we all walked out into the streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio, I said to the landlord, Olabal: “You'll find a blue silk lounging robe, a pair of curly slippers and a silver belt and dagger in the lady's bedroom. See they are returned to Jiktar Mogper at the city prison.”

  “Of course, master, of course. And thank you.”

  All his puffy chops lolling, all his four upper limbs working together, he kept on bowing to the princess. She nodded her head in that lofty regal way these grand folk of the world have. Oh, yes, every now and then even I, Dray Prescot, can relish the doors that influence can open!

  On the streets a busy traffic went on. There passed and re-passed the astonishing variety of peoples of Kregen, races as distinct and diverse one from another as chickens are different from cats. We walked steadily towards the voller park where everything would be ready waiting for us.

  A pastang of Undurkers marched past, their long borzoi faces high and most supercilious, their bows slung. Following, a pastang of Chuliks marched with their peculiar solidity of purpose, Yellow Tuskers, with long pigtails and shiny yellow skin, superb fighters and trained from birth for the mercenary trade.

  The fellow in charge of the voller park was a Xuntalese whose handsome black face with its chiseled features reminded me of Balass the Hawk. All his assistants came from the same island of Xuntal. They produced a nice little eight-place airboat with a narrow-framed cabin of varnished wood and real glass windows. The craft reminded me muchly of those dainty steamers that ply the lakes, tall of funnel and gleaming of brasswork, going ‘Toot-toot!’ at every opportunity. We all climbed in and Fweygo took the controls.

  There was little ceremony and absolutely no paperwork. Ranaj and his wife Serinka sat in the middle with the children occupying the central deck space and Nandisha and Tiri sat side-by-side in the stern. The princess and the dancing maiden had their heads inclined one to the other. It was perfectly clear they had struck up a new if unlikely friendship. I sat next to Fweygo.

  “A trim craft,” he said, and that was all.

  Up we soared into the fragrance of a bright Kregan day. I quite relished the sensations of once more flying through thin air under the suns. Fweygo turned our heading to the west, pushed the speed lever full forward and when we had reached a comfortable cruising height leveled off. We settled down to the journey to Oxonium.

  Presently Fweygo and I began a desultory conversation in tones low enough so that we could not be overheard. Anyway, the children were playing with one another in an unaffected way that indicated that for them, at any rate, the rank distinctions between princess and prince and retainers did not matter. Their noise effectively covered our talk.

  As I had guessed, Fweygo had gone cautiously at night time and I'd passed him somewhere when he'd been off the road. He repeated his delight at Strom Nath's discomfiture when the princess had spoken to him with her eyebrows raised. My gear was all present and correct and I wore the sword kept safely by Tiri. Then Fweygo said: “I've been working for You Know Who for some time now and my judgment is we're on an inheritance mission. The old king's son and grandson died some time ago and the great grandson was therefore called the king's son. He's just died, him and all his family in a wretched accident.”

  “And you think this Nandisha is in line for the throne?”

  Fweygo pursed up his lips. “Difficult to say. That's what all the fuss will be about. She's the daughter of a younger brother of the Prince Majister who's just died, Prince Nazrak, with all his family.”

  “So?”

  “Her father was Prince Vanner. Their sister, Princess Shirree, sister to Nazrak and Vanner, that is, is still alive and like them a direct descendant of the old king. Her son is in line.”

  I sensed an application of the Salic Law here. I said: “A woman cannot inherit the crown and throne?”

  “Right. By law.”

  “But the line can descend through a female?”

  Again Fweygo pursed his lips and started to whistle softly through his teeth before saying: “There's the rub. No one seems to know. There is argument.”

  “Well, if there's argument that must mean somewhere there is a descendant in the direct male line.”

  “Ha! Direct? That's what Hyr Kov Khonstanton would like everyone to believe. But, again, there is serious doubt about the legality of one of the unions in his ancestry. He comes down from a younger brother of the old king. That younger brother, Naghan, had a son and daughter. There was no chance of their inheriting whilst a direct male line existed from the old king. Now—”

  Fweygo checked and gently steered the voller around a mass of white cloud, drenched with rose and viridian glory, before he resumed.

  “The doubt is that whilst Khonstanton claims the son was his father, general opinion says that the daughter was.”

  “Um,” I said. “An interesting knot.”

  “Oh, there's more. There are other siblings queuing up in the wings.” He grimaced. “It is a knot, and you and me, Dray Prescot, are right in the middle of it!”

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  * * *

  Chapter eight

  There was much to dwell on in what Fweygo told me. At first glance the pr
esence of two kregoinyes assigned to protect this party must indicate the Star Lords wished one of Nandisha's children to succeed to the throne when the old king died. That was the way they operated.

  Nandisha and her children were in danger, their lives at stake. Ergo, someone was out to kill them and thus put them out of the running for the crown. With the catalogue of deaths and accidents mentioned by Fweygo in the royal family tree that someone had already been busily at work.

  Over the slipstream, for Fweygo had the flier cranked up to a fair old clip, and the racket of the children, Nandisha's voice cut clearly and sharply with that refined yet devastatingly puncturing regal voice. “Mabal and Matol are nearing the horizon, Ranaj. We will go down and eat and rest.”

  “At once, princess.” The numim growled at Fweygo: “Take the lifter down, Kildoi. Gently, now.”

  Fweygo didn't deign to respond. He put the voller's nose down and we started a long fast descent. He pulled back on the speed lever. We went on plummeting down. Fweygo gave the speed lever an impatient tug. Still, on we went in our headlong plunge.

  “The thing's jammed,” he said in a disgusted voice. “Take a look at the silver boxes.”

  “Right. Perhaps you had better—?”

  “Naturally.” He hauled back on the height lever.

  There was no difference in our rate of descent. We were plunging towards the rapidly closing surface of the world, helpless to cut our speed or check our height.

  Without wasting a second I ripped open the cover to the black box compartment housing the lifting mechanism. A vivid memory of the first time I had done this flooded into my mind. Delia and I, drifting over the Great Plains of Segesthes, and she, the mischievous minx, letting us drift and both of us sick with love one for the other and with no way to express our tumultuous emotions—oh, yes, I remembered!

  In the intervening seasons refinements had taken place in airboat construction, for technology in Paz on Kregen is not stagnant. The controls were more elegant, more precise these days. The problem was immediately identifiable.

  A sharp nail had been driven into the balass orbit so that when the sturmwood carrying frame passed over it, there was no obstruction. When the frame was brought back the bent over pointed-head of the nail stuck into the wood and prevented the silver boxes from being drawn apart. The second nail in the speed orbits stopped the boxes revolving each about its own axis. The arrangement in this voller, what these folk called a lifter, was somewhat different from that found in the vollers built in Hamal and Hyrklana. I understood the system. The boxes were positioned one abaft the other, fore and aft. Drawn close together the flier lifted, pulled apart she sank. Each box tilted around its own axis so that when they were horizontal the speed built up to rapid. When they revolved and assumed a ninety-degree position, upright, all forward motion ceased. The whole mechanism was encircled by the orbit that revolved laterally to change direction larboard or starboard.

  “Hurry!” called Fweygo at the control levers above me. “The ground is coming up fast and it looks hard.”

  Somewhere in the background I heard high excited voices raised in alarm. I bent to the task, taking out the heavy knife I'd possessed at the scene of the massacre. There was no way I was going to lever the nails out.

  “Ease forward,” I shouted up. “Release the orbit, a nail is sticking in it.”

  He understood at once and the orbit inched forward, and with my help pushing, the sharpened nail-head came free. Now, using the point of a knife for this kind of work is a sure recipe for breaking off the knife's tip. That had no meaning now. I forced the blade under the bent over head of the nail stuck in the lifting orbit. That, first!

  Levering with a desperation fuelled by the grim thought of the ground leaping up to smash us to firewood, I bent the nail up and then smashed it flat the other way. I didn't wait for Fweygo to pull the silver boxes apart. As I had done with Delia over the Great Plains of Segesthes, although then there had been no confounded treacherous nail in the way, I smashed the boxes apart. The wood checked and I felt the resistance, then I used my shoulders and strained and the sturmwood orbit slid over the balass, over the nail.

  Whether or not our mad descent was checked enough I didn't know, nor did I stop to find out. The knife point was under the second nail and I heaved, the knife tip broke off and we hit the ground.

  Everything flew to flinders.

  Head over heels, with a cracking smack of shoulder against a control lever, up I flew. Up, over and over, and so down splat! flat on my back in damned stinging nettles and thorns tearing at my flesh.

  I just lay there, winded, gasping for breath and if all the Bells of Beng Kishi were not ringing in my head, then, by Vox, most of them were donging away like a crazed collection of insane monks all tolling and clanging the end of the world.

  Somebody sounding like Nandisha was screaming away and Ranaj was forcibly expressing himself on his opinion of clumsy, onkerish, useless Kildoi lifter pilots. I rolled out of the thorns and I did not say a word. The little numim girl, Rofi, was just sitting up close by. Her dainty lion maiden face expressed alarm and she pushed herself to her feet and ran off to the side. Thank Opaz at least one passenger was unharmed. I stood up to see Rofi helping the little princess, Nisha, to stagger up, gripping the numim girl. Ranaj stopped yelling and Nandisha stopped screaming. Serinka was cradling the princess to her bosom and making soothing noises. So that left the two lads, Fweygo, and Tiri.

  As I might have expected, the numim lad, Rolan, was attending to the young prince Byrom and calming him down. I let out a breath. Where had Fweygo got to? Inspecting the interior of Cottmer's Caverns, perhaps? Or, the thought occurred darkly to me, on the long road down to the Ice Floes of Sicce? And the young madam? Was she smashed like the voller?

  Looking about in a state of more alarm than I cared for, I saw we'd crashed into the side of a valley sloping down to a stream. No buildings were in sight and the ground was rough moorland. The last long rays of the suns spread ruby and emerald shadows among the trees by the river.

  “Fweygo!” I bellowed in the old foretop hailing voice. “Tiri!”

  No answer.

  Bits and pieces of varnished wood lay about in confusion. Shards of glass lay like emerald and ruby daggers along the ground. I looked every which way, growing more and more apprehensive. The lightly-built lifter had blown to pieces like a child's toy under a careless adult foot.

  We'd come to grief on the slope down to the river and that incline had saved us, appreciably lessening our angle of impact. Wreckage strewed itself downslope among the trees towards the river as though a giant had emptied his rubbish bin haphazardly. Once, twice, three times I screwed my head around in the fast-fading light looking away from the trees and along the moorland slopes and back again. And I yelled. Oh yes, I yelled. “Fweygo! Tiri!”

  Ranaj looked across and snapped angrily: “Stop that noise, apim, you'll arouse Tolaar knows what.”

  I went on shouting and scouting downslope.

  The thought crossed my mind with the speed a shiftik pounces on a flying insect and is gone that the splendid golden numim Ranaj could go shove his orders where they'd do the most good. My comrades could be lying dead or injured. A few lusty shouts were most definitely in order. The generous thought then occurred that the lionman was only doing his duty to the princess as he saw it. I went on bellowing.

  A whole deck section had been hurled into the branches of a tree. Further on more deck and planking and broken glass in a fantail downslope looked pathetic in the gathering gloom. Three spots of fire popped into existence about fifty paces down. Lambent yellow, in a triangular form point uppermost, they suddenly appeared and hung man height in the dimness beneath the trees. I stopped and shut my mouth.

  Ranaj, then, had been right, confound the numim.

  Ahead between the spots of light and me the trees thinned out and as I stopped the lights advanced. They moved gently up and down and grew larger and brighter and then in the ve
ry first of the pink rays of The Maiden with the Many Smiles illuminating that small clearing, revealed themselves as three eyes set in a countenance from hell.

  What the thing was I didn't know. It looked big and unhealthy. It walked on four clawed legs and it waved four clawed forelimbs about before that nightmarish head where the three eyes glowed. And, in that selfsame instant as the moon's beams brightened between the trees a slender figure rose up like a shadowy wisp and there was Tiri, standing over a formless lump on the ground.

  My bow had been snapped in the crash and had vanished somewhere. I drew both swords. I ran down like a madman to hurl myself before Tiri. She said in a simple small voice: “I didn't want to shout because of that. Fweygo is not dead.”

  “Can you drag him away?” I snarled it over my shoulder.

  “I will try.” The calmness in her had a steadying effect on me.

  I set myself. There have been many times on Kregen when Dray Prescot has had to fight monsters and techniques have, as you know, been developed. I whirled the swords so that the moonlight flashed. The thing advanced remorselessly. It moved in silence. That was an unnerving experience, I can tell you, a great ugly monster with claws and fangs advancing soundlessly towards me in the moonlight.

  Unpleasant to relate combats with animals, however ferocious they really are and however terminal their intentions. He had his way of life and things to do to eat and live. I had friends to protect, a mission to perform—and I had to stay alive for the sake of Delia. So, I fought the poor thing, and cut him up, and took my lumps—a long grazing slash of claws that left a red welt along my side ruining the new shamlak—until thankfully he turned away. By then he was missing two eyes and blood spattered over his hide and a forelimb dangled loosely. I lifted the strom's sword in salute as he lumbered off.