As I mounted higher into the palace, more and more people became evident, going about their never-ending business of keeping the queen's palace operating. Most were slaves, too busy with their work and their miseries to bother over me. I was not challenged by any of the slave-masters, and for this—for their sakes—I was glad.
In a rock cavern I saw three Katakis prodding and lashing a group of slaves about some groaning contrivance, and I frowned. I had no time to ponder the significance of this new phenomenon of Katakis, those evil master-slavers from the Shrouded Sea, venturing afield, for they usually keep close to the lands bordering the Shrouded Sea, as you know. Vad Garnath was the man for whose blood I was engaged, and he had employed a Kataki, this Chuktar Strom, to do his dirty business for him.
So I pressed on—my face set into a harsh and ugly mask of self-possessed fury, very proper for a high official of the queen's—and came at last to a corridor where the floor had been laid with blue and white mosaics, and the walls hung with cheap tapestries from Hennardrin. Here I recognized a large and repulsive statue of a warrior mounted on a totrix represented in the act of slashing his thraxter through the neck of a Chulik mercenary. I had passed this statue in its niche on my way from my cell to the rooms of Queen Thyllis. Anyway, the statue represented pure wishful thinking. Any Chulik mercenary worth his salt would have slipped that thraxter blow and sunk his weapon into the underbelly of the totrix and cut the rider down as he tumbled off.
A few paces down a corridor where the thin oil lamps glowed stood a female slave, clad in the gray slave breech-clout, with a silver-tissue bodice, and a rope of gilt chains about her shoulders and waist. She carried a wooden tray on which stood a fat purple bottle, three silver goblets, and a silver dish partly filled with palines, their bright yellow rotundity very reassuring. I beckoned to her.
“Yes, Notor,” she whispered, her head bent.
I took a paline, and chewed it. Each goblet contained the lees of wine. The bottle was empty.
“I seek Que-si-Rening, slave,” I said. I made myself speak with the contemptuous air of absolute authority the despicable slave-owners use to their human chattel. The girl was apim; her dark hair was drawn back and tied with a single strand of dried grass. She lifted her face to me, and I saw she had been weeping. Her problems were remote to me then, and I sorrow for that now. But there are many slaves on Kregen, and my duty lay to Saffi first, at that juncture. I knew that one day slavery would be abolished on Kregen, for I had sworn it; but, to my shame, that day was not yet, there in the tawdry glamour of the palace of Queen Thyllis.
“He sleeps, Notor."
“Show me his room."
She bowed her head again, meekly, for she had seen my rapier and knew I was of the nobility of Hamal. We went along the corridor, then into an intersecting one, and I took another paline, chewing with great satisfaction. We came to a low door, arched and cut from the living rock of the old island on which the artificial island had been reared.
The girl said, “Notor, this is his door."
“Be off with you, wench, about your business."
I knocked upon the door.
I made the knock light and respectful.
All the pent-up anguish at the thought of what was happening to Rees's daughter, Saffi, at this very moment boiled and bubbled in me, and yet I had to proceed with caution. I could understand why I felt so strongly about Saffi, whom I had met only so recently, for in her plight and in her beauty I was reminded of Delia and of what I had endured when I had for a space lost her. Truth to tell, during that dreadful time I might have been searching for the glorious Delia herself, my emotions engaged on her behalf for this golden lion-maid.
For all my prudence, however, after I had knocked thus respectfully, I did not wait for a summons to enter but pushed the door open and shouldered my way into the chamber.
The rock walls showed here and there, angular and harsh, beneath the tapestries. Again, these were cheap drapes from Hennardrin, that country in the extreme northwest of Havilfar where, I supposed, some fugitives from Walfarg had settled and given the inhabitants the thirst for if not the skill to produce the marvelous tapestries of old Walfarg. Well-upholstered sturm-wood furniture, and a mass of fleecy ponsho-skins scattered upon the carpeted floor, showed that Que-si-Rening valued his bones and liked his comfort. He sat up now in a massive winged armchair, a musty book open before him, and I saw in his eyes that distant drugged look that overtakes one who is deeply engrossed in the pages of a hyr-lif.
His vision cleared quickly enough when he saw me.
Ready for him to cry out or attempt to blast me with a blood-curdling curse, I had no need to leap forward to silence him.
He eyed me with no surprise beyond a faint quiver of his left eyebrow.
“You are unceremonious about your entrances, Bagor ti Hemlad."
“Aye, San,” I said, “for I come upon a pressing business."
This man had to be handled with care.
He gestured me to the chair facing his own. His long, mournful face with its betraying yellowish cast emphasized by two thin black moustaches curving down past his rat-trap of a mouth gave no impression of offense or of condemnation. His black boot-button eyes shone in the samphron-lamp's glow, half concealed by his heavy, drooping eyelids. His presence was a tangible thing in the chamber, and his silk gown with its maze of arcane symbols and embroidered runes heightened the eerie effect that would have intimidated any slave bold enough to push in here.
The credulous of Kregen credit these Wizards of Loh with phenomenal powers, believing in their occult authority and in their capacity to blast with a curse or a spell. For myself, I own, by Zair, that there is a great deal more to be learned of the Wizards of Loh before the final verdict may safely be given.
“You did not expect to see me, San.” I made of this either a question or a statement, and sat back for him to pick up what end of the stick he cared. He might not know that I had been drugged and spirited away from here, to be tossed overboard from a skyship, drugged, chained, and in flames. If he did know, I fancied he itched to comprehend how the devil I had clawed my way back from the Ice Floes of Sicce!
“Does the Queen know you visit me, Bagor?"
“No,” I said. Bagor ti Hemlad was the name by which I was known to this Wizard of Loh. I went on before he could reply. “I once knew a famed Wizard, San, as I told you, and for a service I was able to render him he went into lupu for me, and was able to see at a distance."
Rening nodded his head. “This is so.” The lamplight gleamed from his bright red Lohvian hair. “If you wish me to perform a similar service for you, what have you done to requite me?"
I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed.
“You know King Doghamrei. You understood the purpose of his questions when he had you sound me out. Well, I fancy my service to you will be handsomely rendered in the future, and not too far off, at that."
We had set up a kind of mute alliance, this wizard and I, when that nurdling blunderer King Doghamrei had attempted to find out the queen's intentions toward me. I was counting on that friendship now.
“You believe, then, Bagor, that a Wizard of Loh may look into the future?"
Careful! I had to tread warily here. I leaned forward.
“As to that, San, I do not profess to know. This famed wizard of whom I speak went into lupu and told me of the whereabouts and the fortunes of a woman at a distance."
He nodded. “It can be done. But she was known to him, I daresay."
“He knew of one close to her."
“Do I know the person?"
I took out Saffi's silk scarf. “If you do not, this is her scarf. I ask of you, San, tell me where she is!"
For a moment I thought he would refuse. But I think he caught something of my urgency, though I had myself well under control now. He stood up and stretched, and I swear his old bones creaked, and he looked down at me, pondering.
“Very well, Bagor ti Hemlad. For the future,
then."
This business of going into lupu both fascinated and repelled me. I had seen the wizard Lu-si-Yuong do this thing in the Hostile Territories of distant Turismond. Images of Lilah, a Queen of Pain of Loh, and Seg Segutorio, my good friend, ghosted up in my mind. Then I came back to the present as Que-si-Rening went through his ritual.
Squatting down on a ponsho-skin and covering his eyes with his hands, Que-si-Rening threw his head back and sat silent and unmoving. The samphron-oil lamp glistened its light across his red hair. This is the first stage of lupu, when the ib is rendered powerful and the cords binding the immaterial to the material attenuate.
Saffi's golden scarf lay draped across his bent bony knees, a glittering gossamer wisp of beauty. Presently the wizard began to tremble. His thin body shuddered so that his ornate silken robes shook. Slowly he drew down his hands from before his face. His eyeballs were turned up, all but invisible, the whites twin crescents eating at an onlooker's sanity. His clawlike hands fell to the scarf, began to stroke it, pulling through one fist and then the other.
An eerie, funereal cry broke chillingly from Rening.
Tottering, he stood up, his arms widespread, and he began to gyrate, faster and faster, like a whirling Dervish, spinning around and around. As he reeled Saffi's scarf whirled about him, golden and streaming in the oil-lamp's gleam.
Abruptly, Que-si-Rening sank to the ground, placed both hands flat against the ponsho-fleece, and, throwing back his head, stared at me with his eyes wide and drugged and knowing.
The wise men who study the literature of Kregen often divide the sprawling confused mass of myth and legend into three distinct classes. One class consists of those great stories known all over that marvelous world: fables like The Quest of Tyr Nath and Canticles of the Rose City. Another brings together the local legends applicable to certain areas of the planet, song-cycles of tongues attributable to localities, of which The Triumph of the Gods from Djanduin is a fair example. But all classes of myth and legend possess a sub-classification: the legends in which a Wizard of Loh figures always command a special and respectful place in the tally of Kregan lore.
Despite my pragmatic adherence to known facts, I had to concede that this wizard, looking at me so shrewdly, knew.
“What do you see, San?"
If I spoke more roughly than a Wizard of Loh might expect, Que-si-Rening understood, for he himself had been subjected to indignity enough in this forced exile from his homeland to recognize another in the same straits. He must, I considered, know enough about this uncouth Bagor ti Hemlad to understand he was no ordinary slave, no ordinary Horter or noble. For a Wizard of Loh, these distinctions verged on the hazy line of indifference.
He handed me the scarf.
“I have seen the person who had worn this scarf. I recognized two of her companions."
I did not speak.
“Vad Garnath. I saw him standing with the wind in his face, the stars above, the great wastes burning beneath. And with him stood that evil Kataki with the bladed tail."
I waited.
“They fly north."
I said nothing.
“They take the girl for their own purposes far to the northwest. There is more I cannot tell you of, for it lies between Phu-si-Yantong and me. The girl is of no importance, a cipher. She is being sold to the masters of the Manhounds of Faol as a mere bargaining piece."
* * *
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Flutsmen guard the skies
The Manhounds of Antares!
Saffi would be callously driven through the jungles and the plains in a vain pathetic effort to outrun the jiklos and the hunters who sought their pleasure in this vicious sport. The Manhounds of Faol with their jagged fangs and sharp claws would rend her soft golden body, and the quarrels from the crossbows of the mighty hunters would plunge bloodily—No! I would not allow Saffi to be used as human quarry for the Manhounds of Antares.
I wrenched the door open not knowing how I had crossed the carpeted floor before Que-si-Rening spoke again.
“Bagor!” He stretched out his hand as I glanced back. “Take care. The Queen keeps me secret. If you betray me it will be the Heavenly Mines for us both."
“What do you know of the Heavenly Mines?"
“Enough to know I would prefer to die torn to pieces in the Jikhorkdun than labor in the Heavenly Mines."
“Then you are a wise man."
There was no more time for talk. Much must be done, and at once. I did remember to thank the Wizard of Loh. When I prowled back down past the sleazy lower levels of the palace, which supported in the physical and laboring senses the sumptuous and decadent magnificence aloft, I had scarcely a care for whomever I might meet. I have no recollection of slaying a soul, and of sending only one overpompous and inquisitive slave overseer to sleep. I tapped him on the skull with great moderation, I believe. But my next coherent memory is of dragging myself up out of the water of the Havilthytus and, hitching up my rapier and pulling my boots on, of racing through the paling light toward Rees's villa.
They let me in as the twin suns fully cleared the city skyline.
The news must be told, no matter how cruel and bitter.
Rashi shrieked and fainted away into the arms of her maids.
Roban brandished the main-gauche and swore to accompany me.
I said to Jiktar Horan: “See that this imp remains safely indoors, Jiktar."
“Aye, Notor.” This Horan, a ferociously maned Numim, pulled his golden ruff of hair. “But the manhounds are a bad business. We will need a larger voller than any here."
“No time for that, Jiktar. I am leaving now. I will take provisions.” I bent my eye upon the slave who had been appointed overseer, and he ducked his head and caused a great scuffle among the others as they ran to provision Rees's small flier. This voller would take me, and me alone. He travels fastest who travels alone. That is not always true, but, by Zim-Zair, it would be true now.
I gave Jiktar Horan precise information on the island of Faol and of the whereabouts of the infamous manhounds. This so-called sport of hunting humans is kept veiled, half hinted at, not openly discussed in Havilfar. Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol, still remained a mystery to me, for I had never met him. I promised myself a much needed meeting one of these fine days. This Capela held a fanatical pride in his packs of bloodthirsty jiklos, and, as I well knew, the rich from all Havilfar patronized his devilishly planned hunting expeditions. I told Horan that if he ran into trouble he could do worse than seek assistance from the Trylon of South Faol, below the river, for this Trylon—and I did not know if he was truly aware of what went on in North Faol across the river—held himself and his people aloof from Encar Capela.
“I have heard whispers, sniggers, obscene hints about this hunt they call the Great Jikai,” said Jiktar Horan. “This nulsh of a Kov of North Faol requires to see his head jumping about on the floor, by Krun!"
'Tm with you in that, Horan."
Among the provisions piled into the little voller were crossbows, sheaves of quarrels, thraxters, shields, stuxes, so that when I took off and shouted down Remberee I felt I sailed into action with a veritable arsenal about me. This was no mere fad, no stupid overkill; every weapon might be essential. On that beautiful yet harsh and cruel world of Kregen a man's weapons stand between him and ever-present death.
My course lay northwest across Hamal until I reached the southernmost limit of Skull Bay, where I would turn almost due west with just enough northing in my flight to take me over the jungles and past Hennardrin to the island of Faol. This route avoided the difficult passage of the Mountains of the West, where even now the armies of Hamal clashed with the wild men from the wastelands beyond. The voller would carry me to the north of Paline Valley.
Thrusting the speed lever fully forward I let the flier pelt ahead through the thin air. The magical power contained in the silver boxes hurtling me on was the secret that had brought me to Hamal. I had willfully neglected that duty. I do no
t think I spent a pleasant flight, but I managed to doze off from time to time, for I had not slept for many burs. By the time I reached Gilmoy and saw again that fantastic finger of scintillating white rock thrusting upward stark into the air I had regained some little grasp on sanity.
The White Rock of Gilmoy, famed throughout Havilfar, passed away below and I headed directly for the foul dens of the Manhounds of Faol.
It took me a complete Kregan day and night to fly from Ruathytu to Faol, and I admit I pressed the voller harshly, the speed lever over to the full all the way.
It was a handful of burs into the morning when I slanted down over the river separating Urn Faol from Thoth Faol. I flew on more carefully now, on the lookout for fliers above and riders below.
Below me were those places where I had run with screaming panic-stricken people about me, helpless quarry for the vicious fangs of the jiklos, sport for the rich hunters in their Great Jikai. But there was no time now to think of all those people, and what had become of them. Now I had to make my way into the barred cages and caves where the people to be used as quarry were kept, and seek out Saffi, and somehow bring her out safely.
Was that arrogant slave-master, Nalgre, still lording it over the miserable people he organized into parties to be hunted to death? Him and his jiklo pet, the lascivious female jiklo with the red bolero jacket and the blonde crusted hair—these two symbolized the horrific power of the Jikai that used manhounds to scent the prey, and that prey as human as the hunters, as human as the jiklos themselves!
Avenger of Antares [Dray Prescot #10] Page 13
