Chieftain of Andor

by Andrew J Offutt

  CHIEFTAN OF ANDOR

  Andrew J. Offutt

  © Andrew J. Offutt 1976

  Andrew J. Offutt has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

  First published by in 1976 by Dell Publishing Co.

  This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  PART I

  Prologue - The Cleve of Earth

  1 - The Doralan of Doralan

  2 - The Clans of Elgain

  3 - The Throne of Mor

  4 - The Morgrof of Elgain

  5 - The Witch of Khoramor

  PART II

  6 - The River of No Memory

  7 - The River of Death

  8 - The Mermaid of Orisana

  9 - The Underground City of Orisana

  10 – The People in the Mountain

  11 - The Man of Two Worlds

  12 - The Plotters in the Mountain

  13 - The Tunnel to Oridorna

  14 - The Meat of Oridorna

  15 - The Keeper of the Rocklight

  16 - The Eyes of Oridorna

  17 - The Beast-Men of Orimora

  PART III

  18 - The Freedman of Sharne

  19 - The Slave of Sharne

  20 - The Witch of Sharne

  21 - The Memory of Doralan

  22 - The Dungeon of Sharne

  23 - The Spells of Sharne

  24 - The Fight in the Fog

  PART I

  Robert Cleve/Doralan Andrah

  Prologue - The Cleve of Earth

  “My name is Robert Cleve. I’ve come in response to your advertisement.”

  The bespectacled man in the brown suit nodded, smiled. “No ties, Mr. Cleve? None? No care for death?”

  Cleve shrugged; a tall man with icy gray eyes and a great pile of red-brown hair. “No ties. I have no intention of dying anyway soon, but I have no fear of death. I also possess a willingness, as you said, to face anything. What is it I must face?”

  The other man smiled. “That which is hardest to face, Robert Cleve: the Unknown. Be patient. One should never rush toward a tryst with possible death. We have processed the application you submitted three weeks ago, and we have investigated you. That is why you received a reply from us. We find that you are a highly intelligent man, impetuous, with a love of adventure. You exercise both your mind and your body, to keep them both in perfect condition, in accord with the ancient Greek concept. You also seem impervious to vanity … I do not mind telling you that you are our most distinguished applicant to date. We are delighted, Mr. Cleve. We have a need for you … or rather, someone has.”

  Robert Cleve pulled back the chair across the desk from the bespectacled man and sat in it. He crossed one long leg over the other. “Since you forgot to invite me to sit, Mr. Gordon, I felt sure you’d not mind my inviting myself.”

  “That sort of manner will serve you in good stead where you will go, Mr. Cleve, should you agree to join us. We learned that you have a tendency to sneer at civilized conventions.”

  Cleve shrugged again; shrugged, and did not trouble himself to answer. “What do you mean, someone has need of me?”

  Gordon smiled. “Well, not exactly of you, Mr. Cleve. Not of your body. Someone has a need for your mind.”

  Cleve looked about without apparent consternation, or indeed, any visible reaction. “Am I then in a hospital specializing in brain surgery? Am I to have my head cut from my shoulders, or merely my brain from my head?”

  “Neither, Robert Cleve.” Gordon’s smile had broadened. “Neither. But first, may I ask you to place your agreement in writing?” He bent slightly forward to place a piece of paper on his desk before Cleve. With his other hand he extended a pen.

  After gazing at him a moment, Cleve also bent slightly to examine the sheet of bond. It was a form; there were but a few lines printed upon it, with a space for his signature above the heavy black line.

  “Hm. I seem to be agreeing that I have no ties, that my death will discommode no one, that I have no fear of death, and absolve your organization of any responsibility or blame or lawsuit in the event of my demise.” He looked up, and the gray eyes were like ice in Arctic seas. “Either you are an ass, Mr. Gordon, or you must believe that I am. If I sign this now, without explanation, then you might well draw a pistol from a drawer of your desk and shoot me dead — with perfect impunity.”

  Gordon gazed at him, his eyes hugely magnified behind his round spectacles. He blinked, and he nodded. “Yes, sir. Quite right. Aside from the fact that I have no pistol in my desk drawer, I well might do just as you say. You refuse to sign it?”

  Cleve stared. “Fascinating,” he said, slowly and quietly. “Mr. Gordon, I believe you are serious. Might I be favored with the answers to a few questions?”

  “Possibly,” Gordon said, just as quietly. “I cannot promise. Perhaps I can answer them before they are posed. You admit to boredom by answering our ad, and attest to it by your presence here. I assure you that if you sign that piece of paper, you will either face danger or flee from it, and worse danger by far than you faced on your safari in Africa or during your distinguished military service or on your recent tiger shoot in India. Perhaps we make too much mention of death. If you die, it will not be by my hand or through the machinations of this organization, for you shall first have agreed to where we wish to send you. If you die, it will be a fighting death, although the weapons will not be firearms. You will have adventures, Mr. Cleve — yes, plural, and in abundance. The opportunity for greatness — although your friends will never know of your achievements. And the opportunity to die. In which case your friends will never be certain. For once you agree, Robert Cleve — and that is a matter yet to be discussed, subsequent to your signing that paper — once you agree, you vanish from this world.”

  “We have a twofold agreement to make, then?”

  “Threefold. Further questions?”

  Robert Cleve pushed Gordon’s pen back at him, and for a brief moment the older man looked disappointed. But then Cleve was withdrawing a gold pen from his pocket, screwing out the point, and quickly signing the document. He pushed it across to Gordon without change in his facial expression or posture, which was rather stiffly erect.

  “The second, Gordon?”

  Gordon opened a drawer of his desk, without taking his eyes off Cleve’s face. He wiped the signed agreement into the drawer. “You did not flinch when I opened the drawer,” he said, and it was a question.

  Cleve did not reply. He raised one shoulder slightly in a shrug.

  “I am aware of your habit of ignoring statements and questions which you feel require no comment, Robert Cleve. But — please comment.”

  Cleve gazed steadily at him. “I did not expect you to withdraw a pistol, Mr. Gordon. I believed you. But — had you done so, you would have died first”

  “The pen?”

  “The pen.”

  “Highly illegal.”

  “Your investigation has undoubtedly uncovered the fact that I am what might be called an atavist, Mr. Gordon. I believe in personal justice. The swifter the better.”

  Gordon smiled again. “Yes,” he breathed, and his tone indicated he had received confirmation of that which he already knew. “You really don’t belong in our society.” He extended a second piece of paper, another almost-blank form.

  Cleve read it swiftly, shrugged, signed it. In doing so, he agreed that, should he refuse to carry on once he’d heard Gordon’s proposal, he would tell no one anything concerning the organization of which Gordon was a part.

  “State your proposition, Mr. Gordon.” Thus spoke the eyes of Robert Cleve; Cl
eve spoke not a word.

  “Believe what I will say, Mr. Cleve, or refuse to believe, as you wish. Your body will remain here, in a tank reduced to a temperature you would not believe, by liquid nitrogen. Your body, I say, will remain here. But your mind will not. If you agree, Robert Cleve, your mind will enter the body of Doralan Andrah of Andor.”

  “Who?”

  “Doralan Andrah, Mr. Cleve. His body is athletic, young, and in fine condition. Nor is he ill-favored, and he has position. You will be in sole control. He is in a position to render a great service to many people, to his world. But he cannot. He never will. He is dying. He has a brain tumor. It will never be diagnosed, much less cured, where he is. It is not surprising that you do not recognize the name Doralan Andrah. Nor, I assure you, have you ever heard of him. He is not of this planet.”

  Cleve gazed at the man across the glass-topped desk in the oak-paneled office behind a glass door. “You know, Gordon, you look like a sane man. Thus I cannot question your sanity, not yet, not aloud. But … you realize my thoughts. Somewhere, you are telling me, on another planet, is a man named Door-Alan Andruh. He is in a position to do some great deed or deeds, but will not, because he’s laid low of a brain tumor. It will not be diagnosed, you say, and I assume you mean that his planet has not progressed to the diagnosing of such a disorder. Also, you mentioned before that I should have no firearms. Because you are for some reason interested in Mr. Andruh or his success, you propose to place my body in a refrigerated sort of suspended animation — a sort of cryobiological stasis, isn’t it? — and hurl my — my brain across space to enter his body?”

  “First, it would be ‘Mr. Doralan,’ not ‘Mr. Andrah.’ The first name is the patronymic, in most areas on Andor. Secondly, I am impressed with your remembering what I said before and keying it in. You are correct. No firearms, no medical science as we know it. Furthermore, there will never be firearms on Andor, unless they are carried in — there seems to be no saltpeter on the planet.” Gordon leaned back and took great care in fitting, precisely, the tips of his fingers together. “Despite your dubious tone, Mr. Cleve, you have stated it precisely. Shall I continue?”

  “Continue,” Robert Cleve said, leaning forward.

  1 - The Doralan of Doralan

  Robert Cleve awoke. For a moment he lay still, staring up at darkness.

  No, not darkness. A night sky, yes; but a sky alight with stars strewn like scintillant gems upon a jeweler’s case of black velvet. A sky lit further by three baubles much larger than the others, one rather greenish, the others pale and silver-glowing. Robert Cleve’s eyes rolled from one to the other.

  The stars were totally unfamiliar; nowhere was there any pattern or conformation he recognized. The larger jewels were … moons.

  Robert Cleve frowned. Robert Cleve? No. He was not Robert Cleve.

  He was Doralan Andrah, Grof ul rodan Doralan.

  And this was not Earth. This was Andor, a word meaning “home dirt,” as its reversed spelling, “rodan,” meant “home group” or “clan.” He lay on the ground, in a blanket, just beside a tent which he knew was in the Mountains of Mist in the land of Elgain, a short distance from the walled city of Mor: “High.”

  And Mor needed him. Elgain needed him.

  Robert Cleve, Doralan Andrah, pushed back the blankets and winced at the sudden chill, although it was a warm night. He rose, noticing that his coppery body was muscular, powerful, and hairless, although his Andoran memory told him he had hair aplenty on his head, black and glossy as polished coal. It was drawn back and bound with a band of silver into a single warrior’s club on his back. He noticed, too, that his body was stiff, cramped. He’d lain too long idle, and the fever had tensed and knotted his muscles. Well, the activity to come would soon get the kinks out!

  “Lord Andrah! You’re up!” The voice was excited, yet it did not rise above a whisper. The speaker was shorter, not so muscular, clad in a simple brown tunic and buskins cross-strapped to his knobby knees. He wore his hair in a bowl cut, and his black moustache drooped. Robert Cleve’s brain thought a smile; Doralan Andrah’s face smiled at the other man.

  “Of course I’m up. The fever has left me, Biyah, and the illness. I’m as well as you,” the man called grof, or lord chieftain, said. Doralan’s voice was firm, sonorous; Robert Cleve liked it. “How long have I lain thus?”

  While his memories were Andrah’s, the language had been fed into him via hypnotape, and he had a better vocabulary than his host. But — naturally — Doralan Andrah’s mind had no idea how long he’d lain ill — or dying.

  “Eleven days, O my lord,” Biyah said, so impressed and happy, he used the formalities he never bothered with. “But are ye sure you’re well?”

  “A little stiff, Biyah, only a little stiff. Yes, I am fully recovered.”

  “Oh, my lord! Daron be thanked — it’s a miracle!”

  Again the Earthman’s brain stretched the Andorite’s face into a grin. “Pai,” he said, using the affirmative word in Andran, the near-universal language on Andor. “You might indeed call it a miracle, old friend. A miracle is an occurrence whose explanation is beyond our ken, and I assure you, neither of us kens what has taken place within me! Very well, Biyah. I am hungry, and I must know what has happened in the past eleven days. Eleven days! Damn’s mercy! Food, Biyah, and talk. What of the clansmen, what of Mor, what of bloody Thran?”

  Hurriedly Biyah set out fruits and meat and brown bread and wine from the thick arbors of Valnyra.

  “The clansmen fret, Andrah. They are almost without heart and ready to disband. Restless they are, even fearful, with you ill. Kishen exhorts them, and both he and Shant claim leadership. And — ”

  “Couldn’t wait for me to be dead, much less cold, eh?” Grof Doralan Andrah spoke between savory mouthfuls of lor steak, roasted on a spit over an open fire.

  “They were little different when you were well, Andrah. Both want command. Kishen’s family is what it is, and of course Shant’s sister is a witch. They may present more of a problem now that you are thus weakened. Why don’t we keep the miracle of your recovery secret for a few days, Andrah, until you’ve all your strength back?”

  “No time, Biyah. I didn’t ask about jackals. I want to know about the clans, about Mor.”

  Biyah squatted beside the man he’d grown up with in Doralan Keep and served for years; the chieftain, now that his father was dead, of the Clan Doralan: Grof ul rodan Doralan. And now chieftain of the allied dans: Doralan, Starinor, Molderan, and — parts of — Khoramor. He’d been dying, Biyah was certain, of the same cursed brain-evil that had killed the old Doralan. But by some miracle, here hunkered Doralan Andrah before him, those gray Doralan eyes fixed on him, the black clutch of hair stirring between the shoulder blades almost invisible in his broad, thick back. He still wore the short, ungirt sleep tunic with its slanting closure. On the right sleeve of the gray garment Biyah had sewn, with his own hands, the black square and silver bhur of Doralan. It was strange, seeing Doralan Andrah in sleeves; sleeves bound his powerful arms, and he disliked them. He wore sleeveless jerkins, with the clan patch high on his left chest — when he wore clothing above the waist at all. The young Doralan favored a padded leather harness that left bare most of his torso.

  “Of the clansmen, Andrah, there are more. Several more of Clan Khoramor, and even a few Solanans, poor, leaderless vagabonds. Oh, and Khoramor Shansi is here. Hard it’s been to keep her from you, with her sorceries. Perhaps she could have cured you as she said, Andrah. But — I trust no sister of Khoramor Shant!”

  Cleve/Doralan nodded. His eyes remained on Biyah. As usual, he had eaten heartily; as usual, he drank but little of the pale wine of neighboring Valnyra. No comment was necessary. Biyah spoke sense. But he had been twice asked about Mor, and he had not yet answered, and his grof waited.

  ‘Half the Clan Doralan is in Mor, Andrah. A third of the Morites know; we believe we can be sure of another third. Rumors only has King Thran heard; he’s not so much a
s doubled the guard.”

  “Don’t call that murderer ‘king’ in my presence, Biyah.” Then Doralan Andrah’s face smiled. “Fat idiot! Smug in his new kingdom he is, smug on his bloody, stolen throne. Well, we’ll soon topple him from it! My harness and boots, Biyah, and a leather kirtle — and the Doralan cloak.”

  “Please, Andrah. Wait at least until mom.”

  The only reply the freeservant received was a steady gaze from those pale eyes. They belonged to the son as they had to the father; ’twas said old Doralan Doralan had skewered more than one foeman with them, freezing him while the Doralan ax swung up and then down to freeze the man forever in his own curdled blood. Biyah believed it not, for the old chieftain had possessed no magic save that of this world, his mind and strength; though truly the eyes had been fearful. Now the son’s identical gray ones seemed even firmer, even more piercing than they had been before he’d fallen ill with the brain fever. And Andrah spoke with more ease. Surely it was a miracle; holy Daron favored Doralan!

  Biyah rose and hurried into the black-and-silver tent. He was back in moments, to find his young lord naked, the sleep tunic in a pile at his feet. Andrah was performing some strange rite; he had clenched his hands together and seemed to be striving to pull them apart, so that his biceps bunched.

  He swung the padded harness about himself: a huge, silver-bossed baldric that passed over his right shoulder and fastened on the left to the thick leather belt slung low on his hips. Both belts secured with silver buckles big as Biyah’s palm. The clansman’s bhur swung in its thick leather scabbard from Andrah’s left hip, a needle-pointed sword long as his arm, with a serrated edge. From the harness depended a strip of leather, decorated and armored with silver bosses, wide as Andrah’s hand and nearly as thick. It provided loin armor even for a naked man; in the old days a warrior had had to snatch harness and fling himself into battle, clothed or not, or the clans of Elgain would not exist. But Andrah swung the leather kirtle about his hips, buckling it on the right so that it was split all up that side, affording him maximum facility of movement. He drew on the boots as Bi-yah whirled about him the silver-lined black cloak. Its padded side covered his left arm, and the silver bhur patch of Clan Doralan gleamed there, near his shoulder.