“Not on Tyfar's! He is a right gallant young prince."
“Oh, he is. A good comrade. And that reminds me, Seg. The island of Pandahem. We have to settle that yet. How would you like to be a king in Pandahem?"
He gaped at me. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
“I was Kov of Falinur and look at the mess I made of that—"
“No! That I won't have. You did the right things—"
“And they failed. Turko will handle them more harshly, and that is probably what they want. As for me—a king? Anyway, the kingdoms in Pandahem are all spoken for."
“Precisely. We shall descend on the island and clear out all the slavers and mercenaries and the rulers will breathe easier again. It is in my mind that they could do with having an emperor to guide them, keep them from each other's throats. Somebody who is above their feuding. How does Seg Segutorio, Emperor of Pandahem, ring in your ears?"
He did not hesitate. “Like a passing bell on the way to the Ice Floes of Sicce.” He stopped and stared at me. “Dray! What are you thinking of?"
“It's all right, Seg. I'm not crazy and I haven't allowed megalomania to overtake me. Just that I think it would be useful all around. Anyway, it would give you something to do."
“I'm busily rebuilding the Kroveres of Iztar."
“That is more important than being an emperor, I grant you. But think about it, for my sake."
We walked on through the crowds and found our riding animals and mounted up, giving a silver sinver to the slave who had held them for us. They were hirvels, for we did not wish to attract attention. The silver might have done that, all things considered. Then we trotted slowly off back to the palace.
* * *
Chapter ten
The scorpion and The Scorpion
In the following period as the Peace Conference fell apart and the delegations from the Dawn Lands returned home and King Telmont gathered his strength and advanced and reports came in of a buildup in the adherents of Spikatur Hunting Sword, Prince Nedfar deliberated.
“For the sweet sake of Opaz, prince! And for the equally sweet sake of the poorest family trying to scrape a living in the fish stews! Make up your mind!"
Nedfar looked steadily back at me. “You are the Emperor of Vallia, Jak, and I have not recovered from the shock of that yet. I called you traitor. No wonder you studied in the map room. But—"
“Look, Nedfar. We're talking about your country. So I fooled you. I have had to do many things in my life ... You have never—I do not guess but am certain—never been slave."
“Of course not."
“I have. It is not nice. If this is your sticking point, I well understand that manumission will not come overnight."
“Slaves like to be slaves."
We talked and walked about, gesturing irritably, in a splendid room of the palace, the Hammabi el Lamma, on its artificial island in the River Havilthytus. Strong bodies of Djangs and Vallians guarded the palace. Nedfar had to be brought to the point, he had to accept the needle, and, as I said, “It's not as though you have to come to the fluttrell's vane, either.” Which is to say that this was not just making the best of a bad business. “Hamal needs you. By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno! I need you!"
“Ah! It is for Vallia—"
“Spare me,” I said, and stalked off to the side table where the flagons and bottles were ranked like a phalanx.
“The Emperor of Vallia,” he said, and shook his head. “And you were slave down the Moder."
“And other foul places. Look, Nedfar. You know how it is between your son Tyfar and my daughter Jaezila—"
“You mean, do you not, majister, Lela, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia?"
“I so do. But Jaezila has a sound to it that pleases us. And you do understand that Jaezila outweighs in my mind all this fancy talk of empires?"
He pursed up his lips. “I wonder—"
I did not roar out about whether he doubted my word and similar hot-tempered and rational retorts. I looked at him.
Now he was a great Prince of Hamal, well used to power and unthinkingly accepting instant obedience. He lowered his eyelids and turned his head away, and a stain flooded into his cheeks.
“By Havil! You are the devil men say you are."
Often, to that remark, I had replied in the cheap way: “Believe it!” Now I took up a goblet, a thing of gold and rubies, and filled it with a fine Jholaix and carried it across.
“Drink, Nedfar. You will have to run Hamal with your own wits and resources, your own skills and statecraft. Do not misjudge the situation. We of Vallia will not be looking over your shoulder all the time, there will be no taint and no disgrace in this.” I finished that up most bitterly. “We in Vallia have our hands full repairing the mischief you lot from Hamal have caused us."
He took that splendid goblet and held it, his fingers lapped around the gems. The red of the rubies glowed. He lifted his head and stared at me, a hard, calculating, shrewd assessment. Then: “I would not be beholden to an enemy for a throne."
“Agreed. Am I your enemy? Have I ever been—truly?"
It was a nice point.
We talked on, this way and that, and he did agree that I had never borne him any ill will—even when I'd been slave. Then he said, “I have heard the stories of how you became Emperor of Vallia. You did this entirely on your own, for all your friends and cronies, for some unexplained reason, deserted you."
“Wrong on two counts, prince. My friends did not desert me. And no man or woman becomes emperor or empress without help."
“But you were a lone man—a strange figure—the stories are legion concerning Dray Prescot."
“And how many are true?"
“You know."
“I know that if Hamal and Vallia do not stand together and show this example to the rest of Paz, the damned thieving, raping, burning Shanks will ruin us all."
On that point, after hours of discussion, the decision pivoted. Nedfar was an honest man whose honor had got out of hand when he was faced with the realities of the situation. I convinced him at last that there was no dishonor in accepting the throne, and the bargain was struck. As we shook hands the bell hung by the door tinkled, and so I shouted and the doors opened and they all crowded in.
Well! The hullabaloo was expected and soothing for what it portended. Tyfar solemnly shook his father's hand. Jaezila kissed him. Kytun boomed and Ortyg squeaked. All of us were overjoyed—and I own my pleasure came from relief that the thing was done and seen to be done. I was even cynical enough to wonder if being an emperor would change Nedfar for the worse. And then I relented and allowed the pleasure to creep in. After all, emperors are not made every day—even on Kregen.
With all the experience of his short time as King of Hyrklana lighting up his face, Jaidur said, “Now we must get the whole of Hamal to support you, Nedfar. I would say that a treaty of friendship now exists between your country and mine."
“My hand on it!” exclaimed Nedfar.
Jaezila held Tyfar's arm. Kytun's hands were nowhere near his sword hilts. Ortyg brushed his whiskers. As I say, we were all very pleased with ourselves...
Every one of our loyal friends wanted to come up and congratulate Nedfar, and a sort of mini-reception was held. I heard Tyfar say to Jaezila, “I look forward to meeting your sister Dayra, Zila. You must miss her."
“I do.” Jaezila put a hand to her hair. “Yes, to be honest, I do. She was always a little minx. And she's done some things that are too terrible even to think about, let alone tell a prince of Hamal.” Jaezila laughed, and turned and saw me looking at her. The smile faltered through the laugh.
“I dearly wish to see Dayra again,” I said. “I love her, as you know, and if you should happen to see her, Jaezila, be sure you tell her that. I do not think she understands.” I looked over across the heads of the happily chattering throng. “Jaidur took long enough, Zair knows."
“I will tell Dayra, father,” said
Jaezila, and she was suddenly deadly serious. “She runs with bad company and there is a reckoning overdue for them. I will tell her."
The fear that clutched me then was that the overdue reckoning for the villains who had bedazzled Dayra would fall upon her also. She was a headlong, vivacious girl, known as Ros the Claw, and I found it well-nigh insupportable that her enmity for me so distressed her mother, Delia.
Nedfar still held the golden goblet studded with rubies. I believe he felt the same as did I, that this goblet formed a covenant between us, the act of drinking a sacrament to and for the future of our two countries.
The news spread and the gathering turned into a party and the party atmosphere permeated the palace and extended into the city so that Ruathytu exploded to the stars. Prince Nedfar was well-liked, and now that he was emperor people could look forward to getting back to normal after the war. Things would change, of course; but life could go on and folk could breathe a little easier. Hamalese nobles crowded in to swear their allegiance. I moved a little way apart—I confess I was looking for a piece of squish pie—and I saw a reddish brown scorpion peering at me over the lip of a chased silver bowl packed with palines.
I stood stock still.
His body-segments glistened. His stinger lifted, hard and black. He stared at me. I guessed no one else in the lofty chamber could see this scorpion but me.
His feelers and his stinger waved. They moved commandingly. Still gripping my goblet of best Jholaix, I walked slowly to the nearest door and went out into the corridor and turned along past two Valkan sentries, who managed to hide their smiles and who saluted with stiff and ridiculous punctilio. The scorpion appeared ahead, along the corridor, and with a quiet word to the sentries, I followed him. The carpet muffled my footsteps. The air was close and hot and spiced with scents. The scorpion led me into a small room where two slave girls, stark naked, lay asleep on a truckle bed locked in each other's arms. They were Sylvies. I took my gaze away from them, saw the domestic cleaning gear in the room, looked at the scorpion, wondering who had money to waste in buying seductive Sylvies to use as palace maids.
Blue radiance dropped about me.
The little reddish-brown scorpion vanished. In his place and glowing with the blue radiance of unimaginable distance, swelling and bloating over me, the immense form of The Scorpion told me I was summoned to the presence of the Star Lords. Huge, that phantom Scorpion, encompassing a crushing bulk far larger than could possibly be confined in this small room. The coldness swept over me.
The naked girls dwindled away. The room spun. I was falling and spinning, wrapped in the coldness of ice.
Winds tore at me, buffeting, roaring. Spinning end over end and still clutching the goblet, I whirled away into the vasty deeps of darkness.
* * *
Chapter eleven
The Star Lords—Allies?
The cold lingered and clung chill, and then went away and I could breathe again.
Insubstantial tremors, gossamer strokings, thistledown brushings confused my senses; I stood on grass soft underfoot and strode granite floorings, and cavorted through blustery winds high in the air. Gasping with a shudder I made no attempt to suppress, I opened my eyes.
Silver-gray veils shot through with rainbow colors like butterflies’ wings hung before me. Each hung alternately from right and left, curving gracefully to the center. Reaching out a hand I saw the insubstantial material lift away like a curtain before I touched it, rising to reveal a curtain beyond hanging from the opposite corner. As I advanced, each curtain lifted up and away to the side in turn, on and on. Do not ask why I did not look about me. The lifting veils ahead, innumerable veils, mesmerized me.
As though advancing along a corridor filled with veil after veil, I walked on, and beneath my feet the floor pulsed and banked like morning mist.
As if unraveling a tangled ball, I continued.
The beckoning veils drew away silently. The first chamber opened out ahead and on either side, walled in crimson light, floored with crimson tiles and roofed with crimson radiance. I walked on. Vague forms drifted at the edges of vision, to coalesce and glide apart again like phantom underwater fronds undulating in unfelt currents. The veils closed about like the wings of moths, soft and furred. So I went on.
The next chamber breathed a subdued greenness composed of spring grass and jungle fronds, damp and dewy, and the moss underfoot darkened with each footprint and faded as I passed along.
The third chamber after innumerable opening veils proved as I expected it to be.
All of yellow, golden amber yellows, bright brilliant yellows, light and sunshine and airiness, and that chamber passed and I went on following the opening way ahead.
In a myriad glittering lights like the eyes of dragonflies I stepped past the ultimate veil and put that curtain away and stood forth in massive silence into a chamber robed in ebon.
Here I stopped.
I looked about.
On the right hand wall of blackness three pictures were arranged in a horizontal row. They were oval in shape, thickly framed in silver, and each showed a painting of a world set against darkness, a world I recognized as Kregen, with the continents and islands of Paz clearly visible between bands and streaks of whiteness. I looked at the three pictures, and away to the other side of the chamber where the lights pirouetted. Perhaps a shape moved there; perhaps there was only a flicker of light upon shadow in my own eyes.
I opened my mouth.
“Everoinye! Star Lords!"
For three heartbeats the echo of my voice rang in the chamber.
Then—
“Dray Prescot, onker of onkers, prince of onkers."
“Yes,” I shouted. “I am stupid, an onker, and I own it. And you—what are you?"
The rustling voice expanded within my head as well as around me in the warmed and scented air.
“We are the Everoinye."
I cocked my head to the side in a silly instinctive gesture. Was there the faintest ghost-echo of humor in the voice, a tiny trace of mirth, like the last bubble in a forgotten glass of champagne? The Star Lords?
“You, Dray Prescot, are much changed. You were the blow-hard, the rough, tough warrior who swore and cursed and reviled us even when you faced what you imagined to be death or worse than death, even when you were slave. Now you are an emperor who makes emperors and kings, and you speak softly, owning to your state of onkerishness. Have you anything to say?"
The latter-day change in the character I ascribed to the Star Lords amazed me. They had treated me in the past not so much with contempt as with indifference. I carried out their missions for them or I was banished back to Earth. That, clearly, was a situation that had suffered change.
The black wall opposite the three pictures of Kregen was no wall as I looked broodingly in that direction, wondering what to say to the Everoinye that would convince them I was, indeed, the sober, sensible emperor and not the roaring tearaway I had been, still was, and no doubt would continue to be ... That wall was an emptiness, a void, a gulf. At least, I thought it was, for it seemed, as I looked, to extend beyond the confines of infinity, if such a thought be possible, and the flickering motes of light danced and danced like fireflies in the evening.
“Say, Star Lords? Only that I have work to do on Kregen and you interfere with that work, as you have—” I stopped.
“As we have always done?"
“If you say it."
The hollow voice sharpened and struck with a return of an ancient vigor. “Do not attempt to dissemble. We are privy to what you desire."
“Then you must know what lies before me."
“The continuation of our plans for Paz."
I sucked in a breath.
And then, in that fog of bewilderment, I suddenly realized I still held the goblet of wine. It lay in my grip, hard and polished and real. I lifted the goblet, and drank, and emptied it, and so looked about—most ostentatiously—for a table whereon to place the precious thing.
<
br /> Like a speeded-up growth, a mushroom-shaped table sprouted from the ebon floor.
So close it was, so quick, it nearly caught me betwixt wind and water. I looked up.
“And, had it done so, Everoinye—would you have laughed?"
The voice ghosted in on a sigh I heard with an amazing clarity.
“We were once mortal men like you, Dray Prescot. We have not forgotten how to laugh, but there is no occasion for that these days. You say you have work to do. We must warn you—"
I opened my mouth; my fists were gripped on the goblet, I opened my black-fanged winespout and I almost bellowed in the old intemperate Dray Prescot way. And then I closed my mouth and clamped my teeth, and waited.
“—warn you that your work has just begun."
I waited.
“The Shanks."
“They have many unpleasant names and that seems a popular one. I do not care for the results of their operations. Their hobbies are not to my taste. My people fight them. And you?"
If I expected the transformation of the Star Lords to encompass their rising to that bait, I was mistaken.
“You will fight them, Dray Prescot, for that is what we wish."
A sudden, anguished, intolerable horror prostrated me. Was I to be hurled all naked and unarmed among the Shanks, the fish-heads, the Leem-Lovers? No, by Zair, that I couldn't bear...
The all-pervading voice of the Everoinye encased me in words like spider-silk.
“We are old, Dray Prescot, old beyond anything even you with a thousand years of life could comprehend. There are objectives we must accomplish in due time. You have proved of value to us. We do not deny this. It is strange—as you would say, passing strange—that this should be so, for you are a harum-scarum miscreant, a rogue with delusions of grandeur, an emperor with charisma who can bring a whole world to do your bidding. And we understand the causes of your present meekness and level-headed tolerance. We approve and are not deceived."
Allies of Antares [Dray Prescot #26] Page 10
