Avenger of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  I could always point upward into the air and say I came from Earth. With that Drig-driven perfumed air about my head that word might be worth a giggle. Then I checked myself. I looked down on Bartak the Hyrshiv, the Brokelsh, and although I did not smile I think my face did not make him flinch back.

  “I am Dray Prescot, of Strombor,” I said.

  “Strombor. I do not know it, dom.” He took a breath. “But, wherever upon Kregen it may lie, it breeds men!”

  With that, and a last Remberee to Melow the Supple, I nudged the zorca and began my solitary march to Smerdislad and the cripples’ Jikai, to find Saffi, the golden lion-maid.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  My first encounter with the Wizard Phu-si-Yantong

  “As to Garnath, he will be here in good time, Quarnach. You need not fret so. He will fail to bring the lion-maid at his peril, for he has promised Phu-si-Yantong much.”

  “I admit I am anxious to see the Numim wench myself, Kov Numrais.” I slouched in the upholstered chair provided for the members of the hunt, and I simpered. “I hear the Numims provide capital sport.”

  “You are right, Quarnach.” This Kov Numrais pulled his black beard with a ringed hand. Thin and crafty and with a spine shattered in a fall so that his lower limbs were useless, he sat stiffly, his black eyes aglitter with the promise of rediscovering some of his vanished manhood in the Jikai. There were to be six cripples in the hunt. “Oh, yes, Quarnach,” said Kov Numrais, who owned a Kovnate called Neagron north of the Shrouded Sea. “There are too few spirited wenches to run, by Yskaroth! And the Numims are not a plentiful race of diffs, more’s the pity. We shall see a Great Jikai this day!”

  I did not rise and hit him. For one thing, I was now acting the part of Vad Quarnach, and was therefore chained to my chair. They had accepted my story without a question. I had begun with the truth, saying that the girl for the hunt had cast herself over the side of my airboat. We had landed to claim her. I embroidered here on what I thought these creatures would like to hear of the inflicted punishment. Then, I had said, we attracted the attention of reiving flutsmen and were set upon. Only the speed of my preysanys in running me into the trees saved me. All the rest of my suite and my airboat had been captured. Not a one of them commented on my thus fleeing and saving my own skin, while my people stayed and died or were taken up for slavery. That was what they would have done. They understood that.

  As for the missing girl, the Trylon of Thurkin had brought three, not being able to choose the fairest or more spirited, and so that was all right. All right! Had I not had my plan all neatly worked out in my head I do not think I could have sat still under this evil effrontery.

  That made three of us in the hunt. The fourth was Vad Garnath and I guessed he would be faking as was I, pretending to be a cripple and thus confined to his chair. The fifth was the famous Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong. The sixth was a woman, a Chulik woman from the Chulik islands off the east coast of Balintol. She called herself Chimula the Sumptuous, and although we took her to be a Kovneva, for she was carried in much state and with evident display of great riches, we did not believe she had given us her real name. It was of no consequence then, although after— Well, that is for a later place in these tapes.

  Sitting confined in a chair all day is a miserable way of life although most of those forced to do so manage to contrive the best out of it with great courage. I admit I fretted. To pass the time until the expected arrival of Garnath we played Jikaida. We played a large variant, with a hundred squares to a drin and with twelve drins to the board. There had been nothing else I could do but hire slaves with the money I had brought, for a man in a chair demands attentions. The slaves moved the bright pieces upon the board as we played. Kov Numrais na Neagron proved a cunning and devious player. In Jikaida the object is, as in most games of a like nature, to capture the opposing king, or check him. I marched my lines of swods up in fine style, using the vaulting technique to push on boldly, bringing up a powerful second division of zorcas and totrixes, for this was a cavalry game. There were also flyers, and these I flung in, in fine style. Numrais sucked me in, and then struck, surrounding a major force and making me commit my powerful pieces to my disadvantage. I fought hard, but my mind was not on the game.[7]

  Afterwards, we drank superb chilled spiced wine, and ate light pastries. The odd reflection crossed my mind that very soon I could as easily be thrusting a thraxter blade into this fellow and his companions as eating and drinking with them.

  I had left the brown bristling growth on my chin, and had further enhanced its shadow with a brown berry stain. Quarnach had his own selection of masks and dominoes, like any noble, for many of them choose to mingle in places where they do not wish their faces to be seen. Almost all were fashioned from dudinter. I wore one with diamond-rimmed eye-sockets; a scarron chain of those marvelous scarlet jewels outlined the whole domino. No one was curious, but I let slip that my accident had marked my face.

  We sat in a chamber high in the city of Smerdislad with extensive views across the jungles. The greenery out there with the mingled rays of the Suns of Scorpio lighting up the whole scene and picking out the blazing colors of flowers blooming lavishly in the upper terraces could not fail to move me. To be chained to a chair, unable to stride out, expanding the chest, filling it with Zair’s good air! Well, a surrogate had been found by these people. What Nalgre the slave-master had said was correct. Smerdislad was the Kov’s fortress. From those lofting dark walls that kept the jungle at bay, the place rose through tiered levels, circular, arcaded, terraced, rising until at the very pinnacle a scintillating tower of white rock crowned the edifice. This was done, I surmised, in imitation of the natural wonder of the White Rock of Gilmoy. In the chambers and warrens below crowded the slaves. The Horters had their lodgings higher up. The nobles lived at the topmost levels, and the visiting hunters who could pay the enormous fees demanded for these special services of Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol. Most hunts took place from the caves, as I well knew.

  The whole pile was built upon a dome of rock. It broke from the jungle like a boil. Clothed with buildings, the rock possessed a hollow heart, lit by many cunning light and ventilation slots. In the very heart of the fortress of Smerdislad were held the extra special hunts.

  As to sustenance for the city, that came from the unceasing toil of slaves in cleared areas, from much trade by vollers which landed and took off from flying platforms, and all this activity was paid for by hunters’ fees. Truly, Encar Capela must fancy himself a fine rich noble, living high on the vosk, I said to myself, sipping my wine, my mind evil with plans to change the ways of Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol.

  Capela entered then, swearing, slashing a thin rattan against his armored legs. He was a febrile, energetic man, with dark hair cropped short, a fierce black moustache, and a body hard and fit from much exercise. His nose had been broken and badly reset, and his lips were that paradox often seen in hard men of action who yet love the hedonistic life: they were thick and sensual and yet could tighten into a cruel thin line when the man’s passions were aroused to maim and kill.

  “By the Foul Fernal himself!” he bellowed. “Where is the yetch Garnath?” He saw us looking at him, and he banged his rattan onto the table, making the Jikaida men jump with a rattle. “I owe you an apology, sirs and lady. But we shall make this Garnath pay — oh, yes!”

  And then, following the Kov of Faol, entered a man of whom I shall have much to say when the time is ripe. For now I mention merely that I looked at him with some attention. For this was the notorious Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong. His litter swayed rhythmically from side to side, and tiny golden bells about it tingled and tinkled in a way that should have been most cheerful, but that, instead, sent out a most dread alarm. His bearers were Womoxes, those huge, shaggy horned men from an island off the west coast of my own Vallia — and that gave me to think, I can tell you. Each massive hunk of Womox muscle was clothed in a shining black tabard-like garment, cinctured at
the waist by an equally shining belt of green lizard-skin. Each massive Womox carried slung from his belt the Womox shortsword, that pattern of blade somewhat thicker and heavier than a thraxter. They padded barefoot. Their heads thrust down, bulky like a ram between the shoulder blades, and their ferocious horns were all gilded, every one.

  Phu-si-Yantong had brought with him a large and glittering retinue, of Relt stylors, of Chail Sheom, of guards and slaves and free servants. I will not detail them all here, for I own I looked most at his Womoxes.

  The cloth-of-gold curtains were half drawn in his palanquin so that he appeared as a mere black shadow propped upon cushions of cloth-of-gold. Their dark gleam, all sliding red-gold and purple-black, repelled me, in a flash, so that I drew back. I think my splendid diamond-and-scarron-dudinter domino must have caught the light of the suns and flashed, for I saw the dark shadow within the palanquin turn, as though an old weak neck swiveled creakily. I looked away, deliberately, at the Chulika, who was sitting up eagerly in her chair, staring out brazenly upon the new arrivals.

  A voice spoke. “Where is Vad Garnath ham Hestan?” The tone of that voice! I felt a prickle of unease shiver up my spine, at that thin, ghostly, harshly echoing voice, as though this Phu-si-Yantong spoke softly in a cavern of vampire bats.

  Without question the other occupants of the high room in the fortress-city of Smerdislad were powerfully affected by that whispering breathy voice speaking in the accents of doom. Well, Phu-si-Yantong was an evil man, as everyone who knew him said. Looking back on that bright colorful scene of greenery and garden blossoms, jewels and gold and silver, feathers and silks, how little I understood what dark dramas and stark terrors this wizard was to bring me in the seasons yet unborn!

  A Rapa guard, heavily armed, wearing a black and green harness, dragged forward a young girl, a Fristle fifi, half swooning with fear. The Rapa uncoiled the lash with evident satisfaction, for his crest engorged and grew brilliant. That lash was much like a Russian knout, or a sjambok, a long tapering vileness of thick animal-skin. If he hit the girl with that she would be dead or maimed; at the very least, if he hit her gently she would be severely pained.

  “What do you do, San?” said the Kov of Faol.

  “I wish to show my girls the True Path of Obedience.”

  The Rapa lifted the whip and as it snapped forward, obscenely black in the brilliant rays of the suns, I saw he struck in the pain-ways. The fifi screamed. Her soft fur leaped under the blow. Three times the Rapa struck, and three times I, Dray Prescot, forced myself to remain in that damned seat. I sat, and the girl was struck three blows, and she fell unconscious. Slaves carried her away.

  “The True Path is Obedience to the Master,” said Yantong in that eerie double-echoing voice, so soft and slurred and yet so penetrating that all in the room heard without difficulty.

  Encar Capela laughed.

  “You have the right of it, San. And Vad Garnath has been sighted. See!” And Capela pointed through the arcaded opening out into the brilliant sky. We all peered to look. A merker spun toward the fortress, and in his hand a lighted torch streamed a long trailing spume of black smoke. “See, the signal! The lion-maid will soon be with us.”

  “That is good,” said Kov Numrais na Neagron. “Had the Rapa attempted to strike her pain-ways she would have had his manhood off or his eyes out. Hai! I look forward to this Jikai, by Yskaroth!”

  I have told you of this scene and now I must say that my thoughts, as we waited for Vad Garnath to arrive, cannot possibly be repeated. I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, had sat on my backside in a chair and watched a Rapa lash a girl! So impossible did this thing seem to me, so much at variance with the tenor of my life upon this cruel world of Kregen, that I dare not repeat my thoughts to anyone — least of all to Delia, my Delia of Delphond.

  A baby neemu, all soft and cuddly, let out a meow from where it wriggled on the knees of the Trylon Thurkin. He was an insignificant fellow, this Trylon, with a lopsided look to his face and a large squashy nose. He had been born with useless legs. At least, by his efforts to retain his father’s Trylonate, he proved both that he was much more than he looked and that it was possible for a crippled man to make his way upon Kregen, which is a task to daunt the most stouthearted.

  Attended to by the slaves, eating and drinking and talking, we waited until, with something of an entrance, Garnath ham Hestan, Vad of Middle Nalem, was carried into the room followed by his retinue, among whom strutted the Kataki, Rosil na Morcray.

  I looked intently among his people for that glorious golden form of Saffi the lion-maid. She was not there. She had not been brought here into this upper chamber. Like all the other girls to be used in the hunt, she was under close guard below, being readied for this Great Jikai.

  I tightly gripped the arms of the chair and took my necessary part in the pappattu. This Kataki looked an interesting rast. Someone had made a passing reference to my palanquin, for as I have said Quarnach had had much of it overlaid with ivory. This was real true ivory from Chem, as I could see, for it possessed that creamy color and soft smooth texture, unlike the ivory from Northern Havilfar, which is altogether a sharper white, chalky, and coarse textured.

  “Very pretty,” said the Kataki, Strom Rosil. He carried a true rank in the Hamalese army as a Chuktar. He passed his dark hand over the ivory. “My men would imperil their ibs to prize this loose after a battle.”

  He stood there, blocky, dark, and forbidding like any damned Kataki. His low brow above the flaring nostrils and gape-jawed mouth, his wide-spaced eyes, narrow, and brilliant, and cold, his cocky attitude, his arrogantly upflung bladed tail, all vividly brought back to me my first meeting with diffs of his race, down in the south in the village of Podia on a forgotten island of the Shrouded Sea. These Katakis, aragorn and slave-masters by profession and nature, were truly evil. With that whiplike tail with a glittering curved blade strapped to its tip, the Kataki presented a stark and brutal figure of sheer power.

  The vultures were gathering, and of them all I calculated that this Kataki, this Chuktar Strom, would be the most formidable. Well, in that I made a profound mistake, for then I did not know the Wizard Phu-si-Yantong. But in all else, I think, I was right.

  Strom Rosil wore a smart Hamalese uniform. But his helmet was pure Kataki: small, round, close-fitting, without crest or feather. That was so he might lash his tail about freely, giving full play to that terrible weapon. As a paktun, that is, a notorious mercenary, he had risen in the service of Hamal, commanding brigades of the army. Now, with the urgings of Vad Garnath hardly necessary, he had reverted to his ancestral way of life and masterminded the capture of Saffi, so as to further the plans of Garnath. I did not know what the plans were, or how they were affected by Yantong; all I knew now was that Saffi was here, in this place, and so was I. I could shilly-shally no longer.

  These people were here on a hunting holiday. It was all to be fun and games, drinking, singing, and hunting beautiful young girls to the death.

  “You do not speak, Vad Quarnach.” The Chuktar Strom tried to see into my palanquin. “Have you a shishi there with you occupying your tongue?” And he gave a dark self-satisfied chuckle and put his hands on the curtains by my face.

  I said, “If you draw the curtains, Kataki, your tail will rot and fall off.”

  He jerked back, outraged. Oh, yes, I could almost hear his thoughts churning away: This fellow is a Vad, and therefore important. But I am a Kataki and a Strom and a Chuktar! So he put his hand on the curtain to draw it back; Zair knows what would have happened next if Vad Garnath had not called across.

  “It seems we are late, Rosil. Bear me witness it was no fault of ours.”

  As the Kataki turned back, letting the curtain fall, Garnath went on, his voice rising: “And, anyway, Kov Encar, we are here, the lion-maid is here; so what harm is there?”

  What answer the Kov of Faol might have made was chopped off by the soft, whispery voice of the wizard.

  “You have kept
us waiting, Vad Garnath. For that we forgive you. But our forgiveness is not bought cheaply.”

  The Kataki stood by Garnath’s litter now, facing the wizard’s palanquin, and I saw clearly in them both the fear and the sick terror. I marveled. For I did not know this Phu-si-Yantong then, did not know him at all.

  They had a good excuse for their lateness (true or not I did not know), and if flutsmen had attacked them it gave color to my own story. I was concerned over Saffi only.

  Toilet facilities, of course, were provided within the palanquin and it was the unenviable task of a little slave girl to empty the basins. I leaned a little sideways and said to this poor creature, one hired from the Kov of Faol, “It is necessary for me to retire for a moment. Tell the bearers to take me out.”

  The bearers were Fristles; at the slave girl’s words they began to carry me away.

  “What, Quarnach! We are about to begin!”

  “You must excuse me, Kov. I will join you presently.”

  Encar Capela nodded, not ill pleased. If one of his customers, and moreover one who had not brought a girl for quarry, chose to miss the beginning of the Jikai, then all the more sport for his other guests.

  But Kov Numrais, thin and crafty though he was, must have found a liking for Vad Quarnach in him after the victory at Jikaida, for he sang out: “Oh, come now, Encar! Let us wait a few murs. It is little enough, Yskaroth knows!”

  Sometimes well-meaning people, even people who go on hunts to shoot young girls can be well-meaning, create the most devilish problems. I had thought it would be simple: Just slide out of the chair, take up my weapons, and dealing with any nurdling rasts who got in the way, seek out Saffi, free her, and take a voller out to the tomb of Imbis Frolhan the Ship Merchant.

  Now, it was clear, I was fated to accompany these rasts to the huge cavern within the rock-dome. I did not want to be with them in the arched gallery running all around the dome. Nor did I wish to be in the artificial jungle — we had been told Capela had arranged a crystal jungle, this time, for our special benefit — at the center. I wanted to get in among the passageways and readying rooms, where the slaves and guards and animal-handlers and manhounds were kept or stabled. There, I knew, I would find Saffi.