Scorpio Reborn

by Alan Burt Akers

  She bit her lip. Then: “But how?”

  “Tell me about Leotes, about Paol-ur-bliem, about the accursed.”

  She motioned me to follow her into an inner room. “They’ll be coming to take Leotes to his villa soon. We have time.” She threw herself on a chaise longue and stared up at me. “Now, cabbage, the story goes like this.” She was visibly tense, yet she spoke evenly. “Three thousand seasons or so ago the new-fangled religion following Tsung-Tan was making its way into these areas. This part of Loh is cut off from much of the bustle. Tsung is the godhead, his word was preached by a fanatic called Tan. When Tan died he was taken up to Gilium to become part of the godhead. These people believe absolutely and without a single doubt that after death they will go to Gilium, to paradise, if they deserve that good fortune.”

  “Otherwise they’ll wind up in the Death Jungles of Sichaz.”

  “Just let me tell you, cabbage — if you wish to hear.”

  I let her get on with it. Apparently, Tsung-Tan’s new religion had not swept all the old allegiances to other pantheons away; there had been some bloody battles. One particular god, Loctrux the Lame, had priests who motivated constant antagonism to Tsung-Tan. But, over the years, Tsung-Tan won over all the inhabitants and the last hard core of the Loctruxites was expelled.

  “Then an evil wizard whose name has been completely expunged from the records raised up treachery. He repudiated Tsung-Tan and demanded the return of Loctrux. He gathered followers and they committed many atrocities, acts of barbaric savagery. Well—” She broke off and then said: “Well, I understand that well enough from Sinnalix. In the end a great priest of Tsung-Tan called Lohrhiang conquered and saved the religion. There were one thousand and one people taken up as prisoners who rejected Tsung-Tan. The college pronounced sentence on them, confirmed by Lohrhiang in a miraculous appearance of the godhead, Tan, himself.

  “The one thousand and one were given a chance in the mercy of the god. Instead of being destroyed they were sentenced to live one hundred lives before being admitted to Gilium.”

  I closed my mouth. This was something like the situation I had expected; but not exactly so. By Krun, no! At last I’d worked out a simple reincarnation theory, given that paol referred to the terrestrial half of paol-vaol, and bliem is a word for life. Life on Kregen, reincarnated for a hundred times, as punishment before one could enter paradise! No, this was no simple reincarnation plot at all.

  “So Leotes knew he couldn’t be killed.”

  Very sharply, she said: “That does not make what he did any less brave!”

  “No. It would not have been nice.”

  “And the paol-ur-bliem, the accursed, can be killed so that they do not return in another body. That terrible knowledge is reserved to few.”

  That knowledge would be dangerous. I suspected it involved a ritual similar to those familiar on this Earth. Tribesmen cut off the heads of their enemies to stop their spirits haunting them. Here the ritual ensured your enemy did die and was not reincarnated.

  “You mean he goes straight down to hell, and no Gilium?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mishuro — the Diviners?”

  “They serve for a lifetime. You know, cabbage, these folk really do believe that the accursed are forced to return to this world, time after time, as a punishment. The Diviners are trained from youth to be able to detect in a newly born baby the spirit of the paol-ur-bliem who has recently died.”

  “It’s complicated, I suppose?”

  “Very. Yet it has power to move emotions of awe and reverence. You really do feel that San Tuong has arcane powers able to discern the personality of the dead in the body of the new born. It is uncanny.”

  She spoke with feeling, not looking at me, and her fingers twined like a fisherman’s net in her lap. I was not going to ask her if she believed.

  “And the Repositers? This rast Hargon?”

  “They are guardians. They live with the family, observing all that goes on. When the paol-ur-bliem dies and is reborn, the Repositer draws forth from the child’s mind memories of earlier lives.”

  I said: “More likely stuffs the kid’s head full for the first time.”

  She was pale. She nodded. “That interpretation of the Repositer’s function occurred also to me. I just do not know. Everyone is so — so intense about it all.”

  “So the baby next door is really Leotes. And you are going to wait for him to grow up?”

  “I—” She stopped herself, and swallowed. “I do not believe I gave an undertaking that would bind me. Leotes and I—” Again she stopped herself. Finally, rising to her feet, she said: “If you hang about here much longer—”

  “Yes, yes. Look, pigeon, I have a plan. I’m going to—”

  “Cabbage! I plan around here. You know that.”

  “I’m going to disguise myself and join Mishuro’s bodyguard. When I turn up to be signed on, make sure you urge the san to take me on.”

  She was white to the lips.

  She said in a choked voice: “The Everoinye—”

  “You are quite right, pigeon. I don’t intend to hang around here.” I crossed to the window and then remembered another important reason for my visit. “I’m negotiating to buy a bow. I need some more gold.”

  Her head was held so far back I thought her Adam’s Apple would pop.

  “Why don’t you take it out of your mercenary’s pay from San Tuong?”

  I felt my lips rick into a smile. She was, in truth, a hoity-toity lady! I said: “That’s the chicken and the egg.”

  “Yes, I quite see that.” Her color was returning and her breathing steadying. She put a hand to her breast. “I suppose I shall give you the gold.”

  Quite sincerely I thanked her as I shoveled the mings into my pouch.

  I had compassion enough to add: “It will serve us better if I am engaged as a bowman rather than a spearman.”

  “Yes. Now you had better—”

  “I’m going. Oh, and pigeon, if you allow yourself to be killed when I’m not around I shall be wroth, most wroth indeed. Dernun?”

  And with that rather impolite demanding question hanging in the air between us, I wriggled through the window and took myself off.

  The name given to the secret ritual which ensured that a person was truly dead and on the way to the Death Jungles of Sichaz was Kaopan. I was cynical enough to believe that any of these one thousand and one folk condemned to live a hundred lifetimes would prefer that punishment to being shuffled off to dance a measure with the ghostly syatras of the Death Jungles. Anyway, didn’t this explain how wealth would accumulate! Hargon now ran Leotes’s villa and estates, all his people and slaves, controlled his treasury. This had been going on for generation after generation. Power would centralize. The queen was probably a paol-ur-bliem, was almost certainly so.

  She would also be, I had no need to guess, a genuine Lohvian Queen of Pain.

  Another daughter served refreshments this time as Twang and I sat in courteous converse, discussing this and that, and in particular, bows.

  “I do not decry the crossbow, as so many do,” said Twang. “It has its uses.”

  I said: “I would have thought the queen might employ a few crossbowmen.”

  He pursed up his lips. “She holds to the traditions.”

  The refreshments being finished and the bow packed, spare strings placed in their waterproof pouch and a score of arrows fletched pale red in their quiver, I handed over the gold. Arrows stood in vases about the shop like banks of brightly colored flowers. Twang’s daughters would dye your fletchings any color you wished. The queen’s bodyguards, I learned, always used yellow feathers.

  “Remberee, Master Twang.”

  “Remberee, Walfger Chaadur.”

  So I went off with a new face to seek employment as a mercenary with San Tuong Mishuro.

  Mishuro’s fat and sweaty cadade, a fellow hight Chiako the Gut, grumbled away to himself as the slaves hauled open the big front door
.

  “All these new men. Anyone would think the san needed them.”

  It was quite clear he’d grown used to the easy life and did not relish any end to the quiet time. I said: “It will be an honor to serve the san.”

  “Well, we really don’t need you.”

  I moved forward into the courtyard. A few plants drooped in pots and the outside stairs looked colorful with hanging rugs. Mevancy walked out from a door under the stairs talking to Mishuro. Looking across the yard she saw what was happening. At once she started across, with Mishuro, looking amused, following. Mevancy hauled up before me and the captain of the guard.

  “No, we do not need you, dom. I have a new man coming in this afternoon.”

  Mishuro gave me a searching scrutiny. I’d no idea if he recognized me.

  “He looks useful, Mevancy. I’m sure we can find a place for him.”

  “Very well, San Tuong. But we do need this new man this afternoon.”

  “Of course.”

  Mevancy hadn’t taken any notice of the clothes, for they were like anyone else’s. The bow was new to her. The rapier was hidden. The lynxter she had given me, a serviceable weapon, was, again, unremarkable. No, there was no reason she would recognize the face I wore as that of Drajak.

  Did I feel a pang of disappointment?

  With a slight nod Mishuro walked off and Mevancy followed.

  “Right, dom,” I said to the cadade. “Where—?”

  He interrupted in a splashy, frothy torrent of words. All they boiled down to was: “You call me Jiktar! Dernun?”

  Jiktar, captain of a company, in this case captain of the guard, was a hard won position. I nodded. “Quidang, Jik!”

  He shut his mouth and breathed out hard through his nose; but he said no more. I marched off to the guard barracks built against the wall and found a straw pallet I could claim. Well, it is a humdrum life, that of a guard. I’ve done it enough times, Opaz knows, and no doubt will do it again — many times.

  They issued me with a spear from stores. Not a strangdja. This was a normal custom; any lord would have a store of spears for people he employed. Their other weapons were their own responsibility. So I, a bowman, stood guard at stairways and gateways with the spear at the correct vertical.

  I yawned.

  Then I stopped very quickly as down the inner stairway came walking the fat jewel-smothered man I’d seen previously talking to Mishuro. This time he was gesticulating excitedly, his face sheened with sweat.

  “But, Tuong, she is determined on it!”

  “Then you are, also, Yoshi. I understand. All the same, my view is unaltered. Vad Leotes did not commit suicide.”

  “Then how else did he fall? The woman was found hanging from the man. I hesitate to suggest they murdered Leotes, as you have taken them into your house.” The sweat glistened from ridges of fat in his neck. “But what else is there?”

  Mishuro stopped with his back to me. He spoke with measured force.

  “The woman and the man did not murder Leotes. He did not commit suicide. He is fully entitled to the deduction of one life from his sentence of paol-ur-bliem.”

  This fat fellow, Yoshi, shifted from one foot to the other.

  “If they did not kill him and it was not suicide, then it was an accident.”

  “It was not an accident, Yoshi.”

  The man made a gesture, his palm up and fingers spread. “You are telling me someone murdered Leotes? You have hinted at this before, Tuong.”

  By this time I felt that Mishuro had divined who it was lurking behind the face of his new bodyguard called Chaadur. He’d stopped here to have this conversation so I could overhear. I quite saw that if Leotes committed suicide, that wouldn’t count as a life against his punishment of one hundred lifetimes. Immediately, many schemes for cheating the dikasters’ in their surveillance of the sentence occurred to me.

  Every one had been thought of and countered, as I discovered.

  Yoshi rubbed his roseate nose. “Well, the man is being hunted by Hargon.” He smiled. “He won’t get far.”

  I formed the conclusion that if the fat woman controlled this Yoshi, Yoshi was being paid off by Hargon. From things that had been said, positions taken, from a knowledge of human nature, by intuitive leaps, I began to sense a pattern to the plot. I could now see the likely course of events here. What I didn’t know — and that was the most important item in the whole shooting match, by Zair! — was why the Star Lords were involved.

  That was a detail that Mevancy and I would have to work out PDQ.

  Chapter eighteen

  What I needed at this juncture was to sit down quietly and think about the situation and try to decide what to do. What I got, by Makki Grodno’s pendulous pustular nose, was red-roaring bloody action.

  I’d just relieved old Nath the Lump, named for a monstrous growth on his neck. He’d worked for Mishuro for many seasons, standing guard, for whilst the person of the Diviner might be sacrosanct, his property was not. Thieves would have found rich pickings in the villa had they been allowed a free run. The gate whose watch we shared stood at the back of the villa in a brick wall covered with a pretty pale yellow flower that yielded sweet fruit later in the season, sweet rispas, and the guards watched the fruit as well come the time.

  A fellow with a seamed face lounged up along the narrow alleyway separating this property from the next. He wore the usual fawn cloak, slung casually over his shoulder, and his left fist rested on the hilt of his sword. As he approached I sniffed. I’d been enjoying the perfume of the flowers; now this fellow exuded a stink I couldn’t place.

  “Hai, dom,” he said in a surly tone. “We bear you no ill will, so stand aside.”

  I didn’t bother to answer him. Two more ruffians appeared and strolled up. One carried a strangdja.

  “Come on, come on, shint!” rasped the first. “And you can tell us where the bitch is. We don’t have all day.”

  Again I did not reply.

  “The dikaster’s employing the deaf and dumb,” observed one of the newcomers. “Keeps his secrets safe.”

  “Naw, Lefty,” said the first. “This rast is insulting me.”

  The one with the strangdja grunted out: “Chop the cramph and get on!”

  He slashed the vicious weapon at my ribs, clearly intending to finish me off with a single blow.

  The sidestep I made was quick — well, by Krun, it needed to be!

  I stepped in closer and the spear went through his ribs.

  The other two roared in fury and ripped out their swords. The first one took the withdrawn spear through his ribs as his blade cleared scabbard. Lefty tried to be clever.

  He circled around and then flashed his lynxter and slid sideways and slashed back. I caught the blade on the spear and twisted and Lefty, open-handed, received the full force of the spear butt, like a quarterstaff, on the forehead. I’d intended to knock him unconscious so he might be questioned. But the knowledge they’d come especially for Mevancy must have nerved my muscles, for the spear butt smashed the fellow’s head in like a fruit under a boot heel.

  Looking down at them, I felt the disgust. What a life! What a way to earn a living! All the same, the threat from Hargon, and by implication Strom Hangol, was now far too serious for us to be stupid about it.

  I remembered the little promise I’d made Hargon.

  Well, boasting has never been my game. Now, I would have to honor that promise.

  Some of Mishuro’s tame slaves cleared away the bodies and I growled at the poor devils to cart the rubbish into the yard and dump it until the master had decided what to do.

  When I was relieved, early, by Tongwan the Slow, I was called before San Tuong Mishuro to explain what had occurred. I told him, simply, without frills.

  “We have not heard the last of this,” he said, uneasily. Mevancy stood at his elbow. Her face was shadowed, and I didn’t like the lines creasing down her forehead.

  “I have to leave the city, in any case,” sh
e said. “Something has to be done about San Hargon, I agree. But if I am not here for a time—”

  He gave no indication in his heavy Buddha-like face that this news meant anything particular to him. But to me, by Zair, it meant a great deal!

  “You will always be welcome here,” he said.

  “And I thank you, san, deeply.” Her voice sharpened. “If only my cabbage was here now. He could be useful, even though he’s a bit of a hulu.”[3]

  “Oh, I expect he’ll hear, wherever he is.”

  The heavy crescent-shaped lids lowered over the eyes and he did not look at me. I was convinced he recognized me now.

  I said: “San. May I leave now, please?”

  Mishuro waved me away and I took myself off. This time I made enough alterations in the way I wore the ubiquitous fawn cloak and robes to differentiate the paktun Chaadur from the paktun Drajak. I wore the rapier outside and took off the massy white turban-hat. Then I put on my own face and went back in.

  “Cabbage!”

  “You are welcome, Walfger Drajak. But I cannot protect you for very long against the just demands of the law. Your return is fortuitous.”

  I swear he was laughing at me.

  “I am glad to see you well, san.” I nodded my head to him.

  “It’s just as well you’ve come back, cabbage. I’ve been waiting for you. What happened to your wonderful plan?”

  “I — uh — I was delayed.”

  “Well, we have to go to the Springs of Benga Annorpha.”

  I managed to stop myself from snapping out: “Why?”

  I suppose she must have seen something of that in my face, which I tried to smooth out, for she said: “Nanji and Floria. That’s where they’re going.”

  I couldn’t help it. “They’re not important!” I brayed. “You know—”

  Well, she just cut me down with a look. All these first person pronouns I’d been flinging about put me in entirely the wrong light. If she really thought Nanji and Floria were the people the Star Lords wished us to protect, then quite apart from seeing her point of view I felt I had to support her. Looked at calmly, Mishuro, although the obvious and important person to protect, was already protected by his profession of Diviner. I thought back to the conversation after the funeral, and felt I could have overreacted. Mishuro had confidence his life was not in danger through the habits of a lifetime. It would have been easy for me, an old fighting-man, to misconstrue his words. Even the idea that he’d countenance an attack on Hargon in retaliation, now, seemed in retrospect most unlikely. Mind you, he had blown hot and cold. If Mevancy was right, Mishuro had nothing to fear and therefore no need of our protection; if she was wrong, then — well, then, I refused to contemplate that.