He smashed into me, and he cursed as more bodies dropped down after. The quick-witted among the Leem-Lovers desperate to escape the zhantil-masked killers had not missed this chance. In a bunch we ran along the murky corridor.
Naghan must have given strict instructions to his two agents. They would have had me under observation all the time, discreetly shadowing my movements. Just how far into the cult were they? They knew their way about what had been the Playhouse of the Singing Lotus. The cellars wound about confusingly and we had to backtrack at one point where the roof had fallen in, a mass of blazing timber. In the lurid orange light I saw the Leem-Lovers with us. Two men and a girl, quick and active figures, swinging around at once and retreating and then waiting for Tipp and Monsi to take up the lead. These were survivors, that was clear.
Gobbets of flaming wood tumbled about our ears as the floor above burned through.
One of the Leem-Lovers gave Monsi a savage thrust, shrieking: “Get on, you cramph, if you know the way out! Hurry!"
This behavior was normal for the Lemmites. Monsi stumbled and the girl cried out in terror. I caught Monsi about her waist—surprisingly slender for so large a woman—and took the Leem-Lover by the arm. I bent a trifle to him.
“Ill-treat this woman again and you go headfirst into the flames."
His silver mask ran with ruddy highlights. He tried to hit me and I threw him away, one-handed, and then hustled on with Monsi. “Shall I carry the girl?"
“I can manage, I thank you."
We did not use names.
As I say, the sequence confused. One moment we were hurrying along the cellar passageway, the next the whole roof collapsed. Monsi sprawled forward and the girl, her legs flailing, rolled over and over. Tipp screamed and jumped.
The woman Leem-Lover fell on top of me. The others were mere contorted shadows, writhing in the smoke and turmoil. I struggled to rise, pushing a burning bulk of timber away. I hauled the female Lemmite up and she sprang to her feet, lithe and lissom, swinging instantly to the help of her male companion. The way ahead was blocked. The three of us were cut off, walled in by flames.
“Which way?” shrieked the man.
“Any way so long as it is up,” said the girl.
Again the sequence confuses. We tried more than one of the cellar passageways and boltholes, and we passed gagging through the space where, behind bars of solid iron, the leems were caged. No one thought of releasing them, poor dumb brutes though they were, in the common parlance, for the whole section of roof and wall collapsed into the thunder of an inferno as we shielded ourselves and ran on.
The girl had to drag the man past a tongue of flame that scorched across a narrow alleyway. I jumped through when it was my turn, and the Furnace Fires of Inshurfraz were no doubt hotter, but not by much, by Krun!
Beyond that point the girl sniffed out a way where fresh air was drawn in. We bundled along, colliding with the old worn projections of walls, barely seeing where we were going, finding steps with their treads hollowed into half moons, panting up, pushing desperately at the wooden trapdoor above.
The two halves of the trap flapped back. There was an impression of the night sky speckled with stars, a cool night breeze. Blocky silhouettes moved against the stars. A hoarse voice shouted: “Here are more!"
And the answer, begun: “Hit them gently for—” and a blurred shadow in the corner of my eye and the black cloak of Notor Zan swooped down and engulfed me.
As I must repeat, the sequence blurs.
Looking back at that frightful period I think I must have made an attempt to fight, so they hit me again, perhaps they hit me many times. My memory, which in the normal course of events, because of the immersion in the sacred Pool of Baptism, is well-nigh perfect, fails me in this. When exactly the dark cloak of Notor Zan enfolded me is open to conjecture. I recall nothing with clarity after that brief glimpse of the stars of Kregen, for I remember nothing of any internal stars in my old vosk-skull of a head. A pain in my wrists kept pricking at me, and I couldn't move my feet, and I felt awful, and my head hung down.
They'd hung us up in a row on hooks against the wall.
A hoarse voice croaked out: “By Lem! They'll pay for this."
The girl's voice, next to me and from the same direction, on my right: “Who will make them pay?"
Ungluing my eyes may not have been as painful as the uproar clanging away in my head; it was agony enough. I could see my feet, bound together, and the rough stone of the floor below, with an air gap between. I could see my legs, and the scarlet breechclout which I had, when I'd dressed myself up for the evening's entertainment, donned without a thought that this might be the outcome. Scarlet. Well, I'd chosen the brave old color out of sentiment, and because we struck a blow which might aid Vallia. So they'd stripped us of clothes. Yet they'd left the silver leem masks on, and the reason for this was made at once clear by another voice, harshly dominating, that broke across the girl's pointed question.
“Aye, you rast. The girl is right. It is you who will pay when our master arrives. Your masks are the badges of your shame and I spit on them and you!"
I swiveled my eyeballs and squinted at the fellow who spoke. That I shared his sentiments would not be believed. He wore bulky armor, and the yellow tuft of feathers in his helmet, and his zhantil mask glittered golden in the light of the becketed torches.
Just so we were kept alive until this fellow's master arrived ... I was so sure that master had to be Pando I had already fathomed out his whole scheme, and approved, and wished I'd thought of it, and determined to put it to the best use of which I was capable as soon as I could.
There were four or five of the zhantil-masked guards and they began an argument among themselves whether or not the leem masks should stay on or come off the captives. I managed to get my eyeballs to swivel to my right and saw the girl hanging as I was hanging, her arms spread out and hooked to the wall by leather thongs. Her body, stripped to a breechclout, as was mine, arched in an instinctive and futile struggle to free herself. She, like me, wore a red breechclout and this—I confess—amused me. It seemed odd. As for the fellow beyond, the glimpse I could catch of him showed a wiry body and a green breechclout. In other circumstances if it came to a fight, my natural ally would be the red and my natural foe would be the green; here they were both Leem Lovers, Lemmites, as the word was, and they could both go hang.
As, by Vox, would I!
Eventually the zhantilman who wanted to keep the leem masks on was overruled. One of his companions, a potbellied individual, said: “I'll jump up and down on ‘em!"
Another one—and, in the nature of these things he was thin and quick—said swiftly: “Aye, dom, you do that. And when you're finished I'll melt ‘em down. They'll fetch a fair price down the Boulevard of Silversmiths."
Thick fingers reached out to unlatch the leem masks, the thin quick fellow merely slashed my latchings away so that the mask fell into his clawed hand. He laughed, a hollow rattle behind his own mask.
I blinked.
With the skills taught me by Deb-Lu I managed to fashion a gyp-face; but it stung like the devil, and I guessed the repeated knocks on the head had done me no good at all. I'd recover fully, thanks to the Sacred Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe, but right now I was still muzzy, not quite in command of myself, and feeling as though I'd been in a fight with a leem...
My head hanging, I watched dully as the guards, chuckling over their booty, left the cell. The door clanged.
There seemed little chance that this dungeon cell was in the Zhantil Palace. Probably Pando had set up his headquarters for his zhantil masks in a safe house in Port Marsilus. The quicker he got here the better, for I surmised his delay had been caused by the arrangements for this sort of exercise. The problem from his point of view was that the Vadni Dafni, whom he had been trying to rescue, was already rescued.
The fellow in the green breechclout started a long complaining monologue, filled with imprecations and obscene curs
es and threats. He would have his powerful friends carve up the zhantil faces. His sorcerous friend would blast them into black cinders. He would scatter their ashes across the Sea of Opaz, and glee as each cinder fell. He did not sound at all pleasant, and with the Bells of Beng Kishi ringing and clanging away in my head I found him tiresome. Also, muzzy as I was, I thought I knew that voice.
The girl said: “Do leave off! Think of a way to get out of here, by Vox!"
Jolted, I said: “If you're a Vallian they'll kill you twice over here.” My head hung down, and I was too shattered to open my eyes against the sparking glitter of the torches.
The man said in his shrill hiss: “Vallia is doomed! The great enterprise will most certainly destroy all that proud and haughty land!"
And the girl, in her hard yet modulated voice, said: “The battle is not yet won, Zankov, and if we're dead before it begins, where is the profit in that?"
Zankov!
The bastard was hanging up helplessly—and so was I.
And this girl...
I opened my eyes against the sting and squinted.
I could remember her only as a grown woman. All the time she had been growing up, as a little child in her white dress with her toys—her dolls and beads and daggers—I'd been on Earth. I'd seen her as Ros the Claw, fighting splendidly for what she believed in. She had tried to slash my eyes out. I'd carpeted her, and carried her out of a pit of evil. She had, when she understood that—at last and so late, like any cretin—I knew who she was, she had withheld her blow. She had not slashed her lethal Claw and taken off half my face.
Confident that Pando would soon be here, light-headed with the blows I'd taken, muzzy, I cast all thoughts of caution aside.
So few words I'd spoken to her, so few, and now the important ones had to be of death...
“Dayra,” I said. “That fellow Zankov, hanging next to you, killed your grandfather. He slew your mother's father, not me."
In the silence, the torches spat and crackled.
She turned to look at me. The gyp-face was gone, smoke blown with the wind.
Yes—she was my daughter Dayra. That face, passionate, willful, stubborn, beautiful in a way that her mother Delia was beautiful and yet with an added darkness that—to my despair—I knew must come from me, that face that had haunted me now regarded me with a look I could not comprehend.
Then she said, in a whisper: “So you continue to lie and cheat and betray! How typical of you—the man I most loathe in all the world!"
My old head was going up and down like a swifter in a rashoon. I swallowed down the sick. I couldn't shake my head for fear of the consequences.
I said: “You are willful, and also a fool. Zankov betrayed you, more than once, and plotted to take the crown and throne and to kill me—which might not be altogether a bad thing—and to kill all the family. He tricked you at the Sakkora Stones—your mother was chained up, and he would have slain her. Barty Vessler—"
Zankov's thin bitter voice cut in, hatefully.
“Do not believe this kleesh! He lies! It is clear he lies!"
“I do not lie. You have betrayed Dayra too many times—"
“Perjurer!"
“There is no need for me to lie. What I say can be tested by witnesses—"
“Foul cramphs like yourself!"
The whole dungeon spun about me and the heavy blows inside my head beat and reverberated. For a space I could not say any more, only dwell agonizingly upon the bitter memories, while these two hung up beside me spoke in fierce, staccato whispers I barely heard, let alone comprehended.
Odd words spurted out, as they do from vaguely heard conversations. “Great enterprise.” “Argenters.” “Galleons.” “Delphond.” “Gold.” The word gold spat out, more than once, something about the treasure and its safekeeping in trust.
Why didn't Dayra ask this bastard Zankov? Why was I so useless? Zankov had killed the emperor, slain him before witnesses including the Lord Farris and others, chief among whom was Delia. Delia! Hanging there in my agony I thought of her, and—as always, as always, thanks be to Zair and to Opaz and Djan—her presence in my life, whether beside me or on the other side of the world, uplifted me and strengthened me, gave a spark of courage to go on.
“Ask him!” I bellowed out and my words husked like a dry broom sweeping a gutter in the stews. “Ask him why your mother was hung up as we are hung up now, and he with a dagger in his fist. Ask him how Barty Vessler was slain! Ask him to his face, and let him deny that he killed the emperor your grandfather!"
“Hold your tongue, you stupid old fool!” came that bitter venomous voice. “Dayra knows who her friends are."
Desperately, reaching out with all the willpower I could muster, I said: “Dayra—you know your mother. I plead for myself in a despicable way, now, I admit. But—but, Dayra, do you think she would remain with me if I had killed her father?"
Her face turned to me and I saw that she was far more troubled and disturbed than I had thought, imagining her hard and brittle, and hating me so. “I—have wondered. Mother would not tolerate ... No ... I have not seen her since—"
“Since that cur-dog there tried to kill her!"
“Do not listen to him, Dayra!"
“Your mother and I miss you sorely—I own to my misdeeds. If you spoke to her, you would learn the truth—"
Zankov spluttered out in his staccato way: “Your mother believes this rogue, of course! She is easily duped. No doubt she lusts after him as a—"
“Zankov!"
But he rattled on, letting all the bile spill out, conscious of his own illegitimate ancestry and the deviltry to which he had resorted to place the crown of Vallia upon his own head. He'd had the help of the arch-Wizard of Loh, Phu-Si-Yantong, the Hyr Notor, who was now—thank Opaz—dead and gone. He had the aid of many enemies of mine.
If it does not sound too bombastically pompous, too egomaniacal, they were the enemies of Vallia, also...
If I reiterate that the blows on my head interfered with my thoughts, turned my brains into a sludgy puddle, I do so, I believe, as much to explain the fogginess of my perceptions as the lacunae in my memories. Head hanging, a thread of blood running down from scalp to ear and so dripping drop by drop upon the stone floor, I persisted in this petulant obsession—why did not Dayra question this bastard? The grayness swirled about my eyes; yet my ears picked up drifts and snatches of their words—and, yes, Dayra did question him, I hoped, and his answers, at first convincing, gradually became more incoherent, more shrill, so that he ended by simple blasphemies and kept harping on the enterprise against Vallia and his ambitions and the great treasure. He was greatly concerned about the treasure.
“...damned treasure,” said Dayra. I strained to hear in a lucid moment, only to have the sounds in the cell swirl away as though caught in a silent storm. When I could hear again, Dayra was saying: “...you and everyone said my father was a ninny, a puffed-up propaganda hero of a prince. Yet I found out differently, when he fought under the voller and escaped you all."
“Tricks, Roz, tricks only!"
“Because of you and our friends I tried to kill my own father! By Opaz—” and here her voice shook with more than the pulse of blood in my own ears. “You've never properly explained why mother was treated so cruelly at the Sakkora Stones—"
“We had to convince her! You know that!"
“So you told me and so I believed. But chained up—"
Then the grayness returned and when I could take stock of what was going on again they spoke more harshly, one to the other, with more bitterness.
“I wish Hyr Brun was with me,” and Dayra spoke passionately of the yellow-haired giant who was her faithful bodyguard.
I croaked out: “I hope Hyr Brun is not dead, Dayra, for he is a good man, and the child, Vaxnik, also, a brave proud spirit—"
“They live. They are not here. Had they been—"
“Thanks to Opaz they are alive—and I hope the girl sacrifice I sought to
rescue is safe, also..."
“Who cares for a slave girl bought for the glory of Lem!” Zankov spoke as any worshipper of Lem the Silver Leem.
Stung, I said, “Dayra—I am disappointed, I find it hard to believe—how could you descend to this evil nonsense of Lem the Silver Leem—?"
“And you! You wore the silver mask! You are a Leem Lover! That damns you, that causes me to distrust and hate you—” She did not go on. Banal words, but spoken with a fire that scorched.
So—I took heart!
“Listen, daughter, and mark me well. I and my friends oppose Lem. We set fire to the temple tonight. Aye! My comrades burn the stinking temples to Lem. I wore the silver mask only so that I would have the chance to rescue the girl sacrifice..."
“How can I believe!"
“He lies, Ros, he lies!"
Then Zankov stopped his shouting, abruptly. Dayra spoke slowly. “If he lies, then ... And if speaks the truth, then..."
Zankov was caught both ways. He blustered and raged, swearing most vilely. I kept silent, head hanging, feeling awful. How I had contemplated this meeting with my daughter, the Princess Dayra, known as Ros the Claw ... How often I had imagined its circumstances. How could I have foreseen that it would be like this—with Dayra hanging like a Rose between two thorns!
Their voices blended, one shrill and bitter and loaded with invective, the other hard and growing harder, suspicious, horrified. I'd started this adventure with a simple objective, as Pompino had said, but that had been deflected by a greater urgency, and I was now in a peril so great as to cause me to tremble, me, Dray Prescot, father of this girl who was troubled out of her wits ... Bad advice, no advice, bad example and no example ... Her life, despite the connotations and her connection with the Sisters of the Rose, had been no bed of roses ... She deserved more from me than I could repay.
I do not think any words of mine—the stupid, stumbling, feeble words—tipped the balance. Dayra had been misled, deceived; but she was not a stupid girl—how could she be, how could any daughter of Delia's be stupid? She must have harbored doubts. That she had rationalized the sight of her mother hanging in chains must have caused her intense agony; doubts persisted, engendered despite all the wily and malevolent advice heaped upon her by her friends.
Talons of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #30] Page 17
