Intrigue of Antares [Dray Prescot #44]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Tiri had dragged Fweygo a good distance off. Despite her attractive slimness she had muscles and was a tough young lady. She said—and I could not judge, could not judge at all, by Krun, what she was really saying, “I'd give you the jikai if I wasn't too busy dragging Fweygo off.”

  The blood fouling the sword blades could be wiped off on the ripped up shamlak. Not so easy, not so easy by a whole world of violence, by Krun, to wipe away the results of the taking of that blood. As if to ram home the somberness of my thoughts, Princess Nandisha called out.

  “Why didn't you kill it, Drajak?”

  “Yes,” I said, wiping the swords and walking up the slope towards the others. “Yes, he had only one eye left and was sore wounded. Perhaps it would have been more merciful to have slain him than to have let him live.”

  “A stalking Obachnin,” rumbled out Ranaj. “They terrorize the neighborhood. Better for them to die than live.”

  I bent to Tiri. “How is he?”

  “Oh, he'll live. He must have a skull as thick as a lenken door.”

  Together we carried Fweygo back up and made him comfortable and before we'd had time to fuss his eyelids fluttered and his musical voice, roughened by dryness, said: “Wha’ hoppon'd?”

  “Just lie still.” Tiri's youthful firmness was most impressive. The interesting fact here was that despite our predicament and all Fweygo's natural Kildoi assertiveness coupled with his race's aloof consciousness of self-value, he accepted the young madam's ministrations meekly, recognizing in this area her competence. I kept my black-fanged wine spout fast clamped shut.

  When at last we had settled our ruffled emotions down and rubbed some of Serinka's magic ointment on the children's bruises we took stock of our situation.

  “We're in the middle of nowhere here,” said Ranaj. Most of the countryside hereabouts tended to wildness between the centers of population. The highroads were kept in good condition. Other trails were merely tracks or non-existent. “Beasts like that Obachnin prowl where they can. We have a difficult march ahead.” Ranaj sounded not so much defeated as resigned to an unpleasant experience.

  Nandisha said: “Make a fire, will you, Ranaj.”

  At once the numim jumped up and then paused, as it were in mid-jump.

  Before his hesitation could be translated into words, the princess went on in what was a highly pettish voice for so exalted a lady: “There is plenty of firewood from the lifter.”

  “Ah,” said Fweygo as Ranaj said nothing. “Ah, princess, would that be wise? You might attract unwelcome visitors.”

  “The fire would frighten the stupid beasts away.”

  “I was not thinking of stupid beings.”

  “Oh!” she said, and put a hand to her breast. “Oh, I see.”

  At this latitude the night would not be cold. The Maiden with the Many Smiles would provide ample light. If it rained as it was likely to do we'd all get wet—well, Serinka would see the children were sheltered. We'd all had a busy day and were tired and so would sleep easily enough. Ranaj arranged watches. Fweygo and I wanted to talk to the lionman about those two deadly nails in the orbits of the flier.

  Our voices rumbled low as the others stretched out on the ground beginning to fall asleep. Ranaj expressed himself as horrified and then ferociously angry. He had the grace to apologize to Fweygo for calling the Kildoi an incompetent lifter pilot.

  “Who dunnit?” I said.

  Ranaj lifted his hand helplessly in the pink moonlight. “It is all of a piece. I felt the lifter that failed and dumped us in Amintin should not have done so, even allowing for their fractious ways. The friends of Princess Nandisha are determined to see her son Byrom nominated as the legal heir to the throne; but—”

  “But friends of other interested parties want their principals to be thus exalted.” Fweygo's words carried, at least to me, a strong note of cynical amusement, as though this were all a game. Well, in one very real sense it was. Fweygo's hint of sarcasm was perfectly justified in view of our task of keeping these folk alive. Beyond that, just who aspired to the throne was up to them and of no interest to Fweygo or me.

  Ranaj grunted a sullen assent. “Aye. Other blintzes think they have a right. But they have no right to try to kill us.”

  Fweygo opened his mouth, shook his head and clamped his lips firmly. I could guess his reaction. Right is what you make it, even within the strict parameters of a stern religious creed. Ranaj, for example, would claim the right to stop anyone trying to stop him. So we stood our watches and slept as well as we could and with the rising of Mabal and Matol took stock of this new day upon fair Kregen.

  Whilst Ranaj and Serinka busied themselves with their charges and prepared breakfast from provisions foraged from the scattered wreckage, I said to my companions: “We must find the silver boxes.”

  “Oh?” with two pairs of lifted eyebrows.

  “Of course. I'll build a new lifter. If the boxes are intact.”

  “Oh!” this time with two pairs of wide-open eyes.

  In the event Tiri found the vaol box and Fweygo the paol box. They were both unbroken. I heaved up a sigh of relief and a quick thank you to Opaz, and set to work.

  Construction of the hull was not difficult using the wreckage. All that was needed was a simple raft-like shape. The silver boxes would power the craft in lift and movement. The problem arose in their mounting. The balass, bronze and sturmwood orbits were a mere trash of splinters and distorted metal shapes. I could, of course, have held the boxes one in each hand and physically moved them up and down and around. The aura of effect operated in a kind of shroud about the boxes so that no one point had to sustain the weight of balance. Provided the boxes were fastened to the object they were lifting no heavy pressure bearings were required.

  Eventually I decided to construct a simple sliding arrangement of wooden struts to provide lift and forward momentum. There was no fancy operation possible. We would go up and forward. Fweygo whistled near-soundlessly through his teeth and nodded.

  “I can fly that.”

  The theory that there are areas of the human brain that lie as it were dark and unused has been challenged from time to time. Why did God provide them if they are of no use? Then, why did God provide an appendix? It has been suggested that once human beings could use telepathy, could teleport, use telekinetics, all the mysteries of psionics. Now we cannot and the dark areas of our brains are like the appendix. Again, it has been proposed that these dark areas are lying dormant waiting for the time when we have the knowledge to use them for such marvels as psionics. A further theory is that they are used and we simply do not have the knowledge or instruments to measure and discover what they do.

  Looking at the Kildoi as he worked on the wreckage to build a voller gave me an inkling that on Kregen at least some of those dark areas of the brain are in active use. Fweygo picked up a length of wood with his tail hand and passed it across to his hand to position it exactly where I told him it needed to go, holding it against the upright held there by his hand. He picked up a nail that Tiri had straightened and knocked it in with the hammer in his fist. A tail hand and four hands hard at work and all beautifully co-ordinated. His brain could control his limbs in ways that folk with no tail hand and only two arms must envy.

  How often has a poor girl with a brood of babies, the washing and ironing to do and the dinner to cook cried out: “Oh for another pair of hands!”

  So the jury-rigged airboat was completed. We all piled in and Fweygo lifted us off for Oxonium the capital and Opaz-alone knew what fresh perils we must face.

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  * * *

  Chapter nine

  “Well, I'm going,” said Tiri, her chin defiantly up. “I'm going right away. And that's final.”

  We stood, the young temple dancer and the two kregoinyes, on a high terrace of Nandisha's palace overlooking Oxonium. The princess and the children were in the inner apartments resting and recuperating after their ordeal. Fweygo glanced
sideways at me.

  “One of us must stay with the princess.”

  “I'll go with—” I started to say.

  Tiri cut in fiercely. “I am quite capable of going myself. I do not need to be nursemaided.”

  I looked out over the city bathed in the streaming mingled lights of the twin suns. Oxonium was an intriguing place, full of interest and contradictions. The inhabitants lived in some luxury and splendor on the flat tops of a number of steep-sided hills. In the runnels between the hills, some marshy, some drained and filled with the hovels of the poor and slaves, some allowing the rivers to flow to their conjunction by the grand central hill, the suns struck only around the hour of mid.

  Perhaps the most striking facet of Oxonium had to be found in the interconnecting lines of cable cars running from hill to hill. The cables were supported at intervals across the valleys and at my softly-voiced query: “Why don't the poor or slaves who hate the rich burn the supports down?” the answer was a simple and brutal: “Because we would go down there and burn and destroy their hovels with them inside.”

  A balance was thus formed, as is often the case over Kregen.

  A few lifters, not many, flew over the city. By far the larger number of airboats sailed past with their multicolored sails agleam in the suns light. Hooking keels of ethero-magnetic forces into that mysterious substratum of power furnished by five of the minerals in the silver boxes, these ovverers could lift up into the air. Lacking the remaining four minerals of the powered lifters they had no forward motion apart from that provided by the breeze. The ovverers sailed on their courses over the sinuous lengths of the cables from hill to hill and they came and went over the walls and rivers in a busy commerce. The whole panorama at once delighted and intrigued. There were many questions raised by the different systems of transport on display.

  Fweygo said: “I think it wise for Drajak to accompany you, Tiri.”

  She pouted. “All I have to do is take a calimer.” She referred to a cable car. “It will cost a few coppers, that is all. I do not even have to change cars, for the princess's palace is right next door to the grand central. I am not a child.”

  “Cymbaro forfend!” I said, and I own, humbly, that I did, in truth, half mock her. She flushed up.

  Had she been my kregoinye comrade Mevancy, that flush would have rivaled the sunset glow of Zim and she'd have said: “Oh, you!”

  Tiri did say: “If you insist on going with me, have the courtesy to remember I am a lady.”

  Fweygo whistled softly through his teeth and said nothing. I said, instantly: “Then as a lady accept a gentleman's honorable escort.”

  It was all petty and pretty and irrelevant—or so I thought.

  She nodded. “Very well. Let us get started.”

  I took a great interest in the cable car system. The winding mechanism was situated in a small structure on the edge of the cliff. Where I had half-expected to see a gaggle of sorry-looking slaves being whipped to work, with the hateful cry of ‘Grak!’ in their ears, I found instead a neat brick-paved circle where calsanys moved endlessly around the windlass. A few people waited as the car climbed up the graceful curve of the cable towards us. The impression of height was conveyed vividly. The car clunked into its retaining slot as a car at the far end exactly balanced it. There were two other calimers spaced along the cables, both going and coming. Everything looked to be functional and efficient. We stepped aboard and the aerial trip began.

  The experience was delightful. We soared out over the squalid collections of huts and hovels below, like favelas, and at that height the stinks down there did not reach us. The wheels ran smoothly and almost soundlessly and a little breeze swayed us just a trifle from side to side.

  Grand central was indeed grand. This hill, the largest in Oxonium, contained the palace of the king, temples and courts, grandiose buildings serving a busy and important capital city. The cables themselves, so I was told, were fabricated from immensely long and tough vines strengthened by windings of treated reeds from the Lakes of Thrushness to the north of the country. In addition, strands of strung bronze further reinforced the cables. Breakages were rarer than snow in the Yellow Deserts of Caneldrin, the country to the north.

  Like any gallant gentleman squiring a lady I carried Tiri's embroidered bag in my left hand. I could not help noticing that from time to time she would absently put up her hand to her shoulder and, just for an instant before she remembered, make gentle stroking movements. Oh, yes, young Tirivenswatha had undeniably lost more of her youth over the recent horrific occurrences than the death of her pet mili-milu, Bandi, yet that was the one horror that must have struck the keenest. That, despite all the other terrible deaths and the blood.

  The young temple dancer shared with me the deep conviction that the death of innocence is just about the most dreadful of all deaths.

  The terminus where we alighted was carved more elaborately than that on the hill where Nandisha's palace had been built. A paved open kyro extended before us, flanked by imposing buildings. People moved everywhere. The square buzzed with activity. The gorgeous array of Kregish diffs passed and repassed. Slaves slipped in and out of the crowds as slaves do on errands for those who own them. Many of them instead of wearing the almost universal—and hateful—gray, wore dingy brown.

  Tiri marched on, head high, a pace or so in front of me. This pleased and amused me enormously.

  Had she dragged along astern I'd have been worried about her state of mind. Of course, she could still just be putting up a brave front that would collapse the instant she was safely in the shrine.

  Enquiries of Ranaj earlier had informed me that the laws relating to weapons were lax to the point of non-existence. Men and women wore all manner of racial and national weapons. With the constant frictions of the frontiers leading to open warfare at distressingly frequent intervals, folk tended to be well-equipped in the arsenal department.

  As in Bharang, among the many and splendid varieties of diffs in Oxonium there were large numbers of Chuliks, Undurkers and Xuntalese.

  Although most of the hills of Oxonium were flat-topped, either natural configurations or the patient handiwork of laborers over the seasons, some were more hilly. In the center of Grand Central reared the hill bearing the royal palace. This was the ancestral seat of the T'Tolin family. The name was hallowed. Nandisha's husband, Nath, now dead, when he'd married into the royal family had naturally taken the name T'Tolin and regarded that as the singular favor it was.

  What Fweygo and I assumed was that we were here to assist Nandisha in her claim for her son Byrom to sit on the throne of the T'Tolin palace.

  Yet, despite all this bustle and glitter of a busy day on Kregen, one great difference stood out starkly.

  From flagstaffs protruding from every roof and balcony, from poles erected at intersections, flew somber drapes. The flags were white, with a white center surrounded by a black ring. This flag is the kaotresh, the flag of death. Around my arm I wore a white band containing that black ring encircling the white center, the symbol of death.

  The whole city was in mourning. Had not the king's son just died?

  The people we passed may not have been laughing and cheerful; all the same they were not weeping openly, devastated by this news. Life had to go on. The old king would choose a new successor and in the fullness of time, when the old king went on his long last journey down to the Ice Floes of Sicce, why, then a new king would wear the crown. For my own part I did not care who that was, Byrom or any other of the contenders. I have seen far too much bloodshed over royal successions. Still, even so, it did appear Fweygo and I were pitchforked into the middle of the controversy surrounding the rightful heir. Oh, well, I said to myself as we rounded a corner of the Kyro of the Fanciers, the old king would make that decision.

  Nandisha's people had found fresh clothes for me, a smart dark blue shamlak with black broidery and loops. Tiri had a new dress, a pale shamlak of pale blue broidered in silver. She looked very nice.
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  A Rapa with canary yellow feathers had been hanging about the landing stage as our cable car docked, and as we turned the corner I caught a glimpse of him slipping along in our wake. He wore an arsenal of weapons girded around his olive green shamlak and his feet were cased in cracked sandals. I kept a weather eye out for him.

  Thinking about the moil in which we two kregoinyes found ourselves, I was just recalling a more somber saying of San Blarnoi, when Tiri spoke up. San Blarnoi's words are: “That the governance of a country should be left to blind heredity!” Tiri said: “Don't look back now. There's a villainous-looking Rapa following us.”

  The yellow-feathered beaky? Aye.”

  “You knew!”

  “If you wish to stay alive you have to know these things.”

  “Yes, well.”

  Further along we passed the overly ornate facade of a temple whose massiveness could not make up for its overall lack of taste. Tiri's head went up even higher as we walked past and she hurried her steps. Her sweet young face was set in rigid lines of distaste. I said nothing and at last, when we had put some distance between us and the dominating pile she burst out with: “They worship the false idol Dokerty.”

  I glanced back in time to see a small procession of priests entering the portico up the wide shallow steps. They carried no flags or emblems. They walked two by two. They were clad all in deep somber red.

  Soho! I said to myself. They have this grandiose temple on Grand Central of the capital city; why then do they need to skulk about secretly in ruins?

  “I thought Tolaar was the religion—”

  “There are many faiths. Tolaar is probably the largest.” Tiri spoke in a tight, hard voice. “There is always trouble between them. Sometimes there are fights. It is ugly.”