Fires of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #29]

by Alan Burt Akers

  So now I watched that alert figure beside the trail. The man carried a bow. The bow was a Lohvian longbow. It was held in a certain way. I own it, although the superhuman Star Lords had shown me a picture of Seg and the others escaping safely from that deadly maze within the mountain, I had barely dared to believe. Now I believed.

  I pursed up my lips and fashioned a bird call. That bird would never be found in this jungle, here on the island of Pandahem, maybe; the call fluted across the space and the man beside the trail did not move, made no sign—but the return call whistled out, true and golden on the morning air.

  Presently, after a long space of waiting, unmoving, silent, watchful, we judged that no one spied on us. We met in the shadows of an aromatic bush whose small blue and white flowers brought back the memories.

  “What in a Herrelldrin Hell happened to you?"

  “And you! I found a tunnel which led to the jungle—"

  “As did we,” said Seg. He stared at me accusingly. “You were going back in there—"

  “It seems to me you were in front of me going back—"

  “Well, my old dom, I thought you were still in there somewhere."

  Seg's dark hair brustled up, it seemed aggressively, and his fey blue eyes looked wild. Tough, competent, kind-hearted, the best archer in all Kregen, as I devoutly believe, Seg Segutorio was not about to become maudlin over me. Rather, he'd take a deuced mocking line, and cut me down to size in no time.

  “So you were going back into that ghastly place to look for me.” I shook my head. “We're all maniacs, Seg, all of us, and I verily believe you are the biggest maniac of all."

  “Well, Dray—it seemed like a good idea at—"

  “Aye,” I said, dryly. “I don't doubt it."

  “The others are waiting farther along. I simply said I'd scout a little—"

  “The Lady Milsi?"

  “Fine. Still very quiet, of course, over the death of the queen. I think you saw how—"

  “Yes.” I knew that Seg and the Lady Milsi had, as they say on Kregen, been shafted by the same lightning bolt. I told him what Skort the Clawsang had told me. Seg looked thoughtful.

  “There is a power vacuum now, in this kingdom."

  “Well, Seg, I've told you. If you wish to become Emperor of Pandahem—now's your chance."

  “Cretin!"

  “Yes. I agree."

  “Which hole did you discover? I saw only the one, and we came through that one. You could not have done."

  I looked at Seg. We were blade comrades. Why should I not confide in him? I said: “There are things that I wish to tell you, Seg, and that you will not believe at first. When you get home to Vallia, ask Delia. She will confirm what I have to say."

  At once he was almost serious, and made only a few mocking remarks about the chuckle-heads. I told him that I was never born on Kregen, that I came from a planet called Earth and, moreover, a world that possessed only one little yellow sun and only one silver moon and only apims, Homo sapiens, without any of the splendid array of diffs that make of Kregen so wondrous a world.

  He shut his eyes and leaned back when I finished speaking.

  “I believe you, my old dom. You've always been more than a trifle apt to go flying mysteriously off somewhere. Next time you disappear, I refuse to worry my head about you. If you prefer one little yellow sun and one silver moon—"

  “No!"

  “—and only looking at people with faces like our own, then the best of Eos-Bakchi to you!"

  “The Star Lords constrain me, that is all."

  “That is all!"

  “No, Seg.” I made up my mind. As so often happens when confidences begin, others spurt out like a flood. “When I was up in Falinur of which at the time you were lord—"

  “Yes, I was the Kov of Falinur. I am glad I gave it up and let Turko take it on."

  “When you returned to us from your adventures, I met a man called Lol Polisto."

  “Oh, old Lol,” said Seg. “I knew him—only a little. Something to do with wanting to be a farmer and having nothing to do with politics or fighting. I marked him as a good likely man."

  I looked straight at Seg.

  “He is now married to Thelda. They have a fine child. His Thelda is—"

  Seg stared back. His expression stopped me.

  Then he said, “You are hard on a man, Dray. When I had that great wound in my back, then, was it?"

  “Aye."

  “Funny thing. I sensed there was more to your concern for my back than I could fathom—"

  “Look, Seg. If you'd gone rushing off up there—you'd have killed yourself—"

  “I wonder now—and this shocks me—I wonder if I would have gone rushing off. I thought Thelda must be dead. She was cut off in Evir; I had searched for her there.” He stopped speaking, and shook his head. Then, quickly, like a reptile striking: “She was happy with Lol Polisto?"

  “Very. She thought you dead. She would never have married Lol if her first husband was alive. You know that."

  “I loved Thelda, in a funny way. Then she was dead. And I stopped loving a corpse, a ghost, and merely cherished a memory. Now there is the Lady Milsi. And, as you know, she is the first..."

  “I know.” Then, to soften the stupid arrogance of presuming to know all of Seg's life, I added: “That you have told me of or that I have seen.” And then, in case Seg began to feel something of what I'd expected him to feel in this, and therefore to give him a chance to slang me, I said: “Anyway, a lot of folk predicted that you and Jilian would—"

  “Jilian? Jilian Sweet-tooth?"

  “That's right."

  “She's a bonny lass, what with her Whip and her Claw. But—not for me.” We sat more comfortably now under the leaves and we watched the trail both ways as we talked, and no one beyond three or four paces would have heard our voices. “And, I tell you, my old dom, I knocked out a fellow's teeth who linked your name with that of Jilian's—"

  “One expects that kind of foul-minded slander from the meaner sorts of intellect. You've probably heard many filthy rumors of Delia—"

  “So far,” said my blade comrade Seg Segutorio in a flat and neutral voice. “So far I have only had to kill four people who mentioned Delia in that connection."

  I was surprised. I stared at Seg.

  “Killed four!"

  “They were well rid of."

  Massive emotional overtones are not for Seg and me. But I knew. I swallowed. Good old Seg!

  But, all the same, four deaths for mere words...!

  If that is Kregen, as it is, it is, then, perhaps...?

  “If it was my wound,” said Seg, in a ruminative way. “But, why didn't you tell me?"

  “I guessed you'd say that."

  “Well, why?” He wanted to know why I had not told him that his wife Thelda was not dead but was married to another man and, apart from her mourning for Seg, was very happy with her new child. “Why?"

  “I could say I don't know why. That was true, once, after your wound had healed. But I'll tell you the truth."

  “Yes?"

  “I was frightened—"

  “Frightened? You, Dray Prescot, frightened!"

  “Too right, my old dom, too bloody right. I was frightened. Scared right through to the soles of my feet."

  He shook his head in amazement, a small gesture that would not be observed should hostile eyes be watching.

  Now Seg is a man of parts. No one with normal human emotions is going to remain unaffected under the impact of news such as had just hit Seg. He had suffered a shock. He had loved Thelda, and she had, he thought, died, and he had gotten over that, and now had found the Lady Milsi. Life was going to be exceedingly unpleasant for Seg in the next week or so, or for however long it took him to adjust. That his marriage to Thelda was now over admitted of no question. That Thelda was happy with Lol Polisto was important. That Seg might find happiness with Milsi was also important.

  I knew Seg would also consider as vitally important
the happiness of the Lady Milsi. She, he would say, must not suffer on account of Seg's past thrusting itself awkwardly into the present.

  Eventually he heaved up a sigh and said, “When I tell the Lady Milsi, I believe she will understand. I've already spoken to her of Thelda, and she has told me that her husband is dead. Opaz rest his ib."

  The mention of Opaz made him go on: “And this story of yours of a world with only one sun and one moon—that is blasphemy in the eyes of the religious. What of Opaz? What of the Invisible Twins made manifest in Opaz, in the glorious light of Zim and Genodras?” He squinted up. The red sun and the green sun shone refulgently, and the streaming opaz radiance poured down splendidly.

  I said, “Gods are not suns."

  “Agreed. But, all the same—"

  “All the same, we'll have to get back to the main party before they start after us and raise devils better left sleeping."

  Quickly, slurring details, I told him of the black sorcery within the mountain. “So we'd best be off. Nothing remains to detain us here."

  “And when you vanish in a puff of smoke, you'll be gallivanting about somewhere else on Kregen?"

  “Or Earth."

  “Aye."

  A lightness of spirits affected me now that I had told Seg. Two items of news had been dovetailed into a seeming one; and that economy pleased me in its use of emotional resources to the best advantage. Seg had killed to protect the honor of Delia, had filled a fellow's mouth with blood and broken teeth in defense of mine. Deplore the violence though I might, in hard times on a hard world, honor—that tawdry bauble—sometimes has to be upheld to the utmost.

  I'd do the same for Seg. That went without saying.

  We went along the backtrail like a couple of savage hunting beasts—no. No, as I have said before, we were not like a pair of savage hunting beasts. We were.

  Yet the chill conviction remained that against the dark sorcery within the tunnels of that gargoyle of a mountain, all our warrior skills would not prevail. We'd escaped, and had achieved a kind of victory. Now we had to make good our escape.

  Seg's reference to my disappearance in a puff of smoke was uncomfortably close to the truth. When the Star Lords sent their gigantic blue Scorpion to fetch me away from wherever I happened to be and plonked me down somewhere else it must in all seeming appear to any onlookers that I did vanish in a puff of blue smoke.

  The problems we faced immediately were simple. We had to get out of this pestiferous jungle and back to civilization. Seg had to see the Lady Milsi safely home. I wanted to return to Vallia and Delia. The Star Lords had shown me that she was safe and handling her problems—handling them! She's smashed the opposition that had enslaved her, and had taken command with all the imperial majesty and grace that makes her the supreme Empress of Vallia.

  So that although Delia was safe and well, I hankered to get back to my island empire of Vallia and try to unify the place and make the place a real empire again, as it had been in the old days before the Times of Troubles.

  “One sun, one moon,” Seg said to himself, half disgustedly, half with the pleased confrontation with a new idea that sounded impossible.

  “And no diffs."

  “I can't see how a world can have only apims like us. It is against nature."

  “Yet the apims of Earth might call the diffs of Kregen menagerie men—"

  “Bone-skulled idiots! Ask your pal Unmok the Nets about that. He's in the beast-catching business."

  “Probably,” I said, cautiously. Unmok the Nets would for a surety be on a dozen different schemes at once, if I knew him. A small animal broke cover ahead of us, and darted away to vanish into the greenery to our right. A thin screen shielded the lake here, the carved wall of the mountain lay to our rear, and ahead stretched the way we must go to win free.

  “You are a kov without a province to govern,” I said. “There are provinces in Vallia. Will you take the Lady Milsi there—if she wishes to go?"

  “If she wishes it—yes. I regard Vallia as my home."

  “As do I..."

  “But I shall have to fight for my province."

  “Would you wish it another way?"

  He heaved up another sigh and slapped his bow up and drew the arrow already nocked, and let fly. The rumbling bulk of the dinosaur that broke the screen of bushes and started for us took the shaft clear through one yellow eye.

  Before the enraged beast's bellow crashed out again a second shaft followed the first. Seg loosed a third time. Blinded, stuck through the pulsing skin of his throat, staggered, the dinosaur—all scales and fangs and claws—screeched and turned tail and blundered back into the bushes. A tremendous sloshing splash sounded. After that a succession of sucking noises, and splashes, and a screech or two, indicated where the denizens of the lake were feasting.

  “Quick,” I said.

  “No. The first shaft hit before I loosed the second."

  “True. Slow, then."

  “No. The third was in the air before the second struck."

  “True.” I cocked my head judiciously. “There was no wager on it, though. Had there been—"

  “One, two, three,” said Seg.

  And I laughed.

  More than one person had judged this little foible of ours—of gambling on the outcome of shots in battle—as degrading, decadent, altogether horrible. In truth, it was some of those things. But, also, it served a deeper and more fundamental purpose in the horror of battle. My daughter, Princess Majestrix of Vallia, the Princess Lela whom we called Jaezila out of love, had instantly perceived the inner truths we men so clumsily sought to express by this betting on shots.

  We had gone adventuring across the face of Kregen, Jaezila and I. Now, as Seg and I walked along the path leading to the camp where the rest of the party waited for us, I reflected that I was like to do much more of this adventuring than of ruling as an emperor. And, I would have it this way. My son Drak, the Prince Majister, would run the Empire of Vallia, and run it well. We had superb advisers, men and women we could trust.

  Echoing my thoughts, Seg said: “So we'll be off adventuring again, then?"

  “We will, Seg, if the Star Lords do not demand some fresh service from me. There is no way, as yet, that I can stand against them, for they are superhuman. But I am working on some few ways of attempting to resist them. One day, I hope, I shall be able to take charge of my own destiny."

  The smell of woodsmoke reached us. In daylight, away from the jungle, the air was freer, we could talk, and not feel the pressures of instant destruction all about us.

  Seg laughed. “It seems to me you've run your destiny pretty much as you willed it. By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! Look what you've accomplished!"

  “Titles, ranks, some property here and there. They mean little, all save one. I count as far more important the family and our blade comrades."

  Pursuing his thoughts, Seg said: “And you've no idea where you will be sent by the Everoinye?” He used the word Everoinye, Kregish equivalent to the Star Lords.

  “None whatsoever. If I disappear, do not think harshly of me. Just remember I do all in my power to rejoin my family and friends."

  “There is a great deal still to be done in Vallia—"

  “Yes. But the Star Lords pursue their interests over all of Paz, over all of this side of the world. To them, Vallia is no more important than this island of Pandahem, of the continent of Havilfar, or any of the others."

  “They must be a right weird lot. And you've never seen them?"

  “Not one. They are superhuman. But not, I judge, immortal."

  “I wish,” said Seg, “I wish they'd take me along with you—"

  “So do I!"

  “A scorpion, did you say?” Seg pointed. “Look!"

  He strutted out from a rock beside the path, reddish brown, glitteringly black, his stinger held arrogantly aloft, waving from side to side—waving at me.

  I felt the familiar constriction in my throat.

  The sc
orpion of the Star Lords—would he herald the Scorpion, the phantom blue Scorpion so huge he encompassed the world?

  He did.

  Blueness caught me up in a chill embrace. Unseen winds howled. I was falling. End over end, stark naked, winded, I was seized up by the Everoinye, tossed end over end and dumped down blinded and gasping upon some other part of Kregen to sort out a problem for the inscrutable purposes of the Star Lords.

  If ... if they had not contemptuously tossed me back through four hundred light-years of space to the planet of my birth.

  * * *

  Chapter two

  Of the donning of a Silver Mask

  The sea bellowed and roared less than a hundred paces off across a sandy beach, spuming in white foam fountains against jagged rocks that stuck out into the surf like the teeth of a Clawsang. Inland the jungle began where the beach ended, its greenery lush and profuse and deadly. Was I, then, still on the island of Pandahem?

  The Star Lords make no great fuss over the people they select to do their dirty work for them. As usual, I was stark naked. The scarlet breechclout and the Krozair longsword were gone. No doubt Seg was even now stooping to pick them up, bewildered by my disappearance. Well, now he knew who had taken me up and why I was gone...

  Farther along the beach a headland walled off what lay beyond and the jungle dripped over the beach. In the shadows lay an upturned ship.

  She was an argenter, a broad comfortable trading vessel, and clearly she had been there some time. Her upper works were vanished away—I did not think they extended down into the sand—and her keel was well-covered with green growing things. A group of people clad in brown robes hurried toward the ship and vanished into the dark opening cut into her side.

  Feeling exposed, I ran swiftly up the beach into the treeline. The vegetation here based on sand was sparse; I wondered which would win this eternal natural battle, the sand or the jungle.

  A pathway opened out onto the beach a few paces along and a further group of people walked out from the trees into the radiance of the suns shine. They talked together quite naturally, their voices a mere rumble, so that I judged they had no fear either of hostile denizens of the jungle or of enemies lying in wait for them.