From the susurrating wash of background noises, from the color-dripping sky, from the mingling scents and perfumes, past the thorn-ivy bush, from everywhere and from nowhere, a voice spoke to me. A voice spoke to me.
“Insolent onker! You are a mere mortal man — do not presume.”
I tried to bellow back, and merely wheezed.
I thought. I tried to hurl my thoughts; and the voice crashed down, masterful, dominating.
“I command you now, Dray Prescot. And I demand from you more than you have hitherto given -
more than you appear willing to give. But that more I will have.” The voice whined suddenly, and became incoherent. Then: “Hearken unto me!”
And, another voice, harsher, deeper: “The man is ours!”
“You do not use him to the full!”
“We use him as we see fit. He is, after all, but a mere mortal man.”
“And fit therefore to be driven-”
“He is often stubborn. He is not an easy man-”
“I would drive him! I would-” Again that acrid voice became incoherent. I listened, my mouth dry, my eyes fairly starting from my head, and my backside jabbed thick with the thorn-ivy needles. This could not be the Savanti, arguing with the Star Lords!
Could it?
The thorn-ivy needles jabbed me cruelly and I rolled away, cursing, feeling harsh rock and stones beneath me, broken twigs, the detritus of a wild animal’s lair.
Brittle bones crunched under my hands as I struggled to rise.
“We wish him-” continued the second voice.
The acid voice, the voice that had spoken first and so allowed me a listening post, illuminating with sound the black silent recesses, that voice that kept wavering as though the speaker strove to pierce through the tumult of a tempest, lashed back. “I shall run him now!”
“Not so! He works well — when he does work-”
“Does he know-?”
“Of course not! How could he? He is apim. Apim.”
“Then perhaps I shall let him know a little-” The bitter voice trailed. Suddenly I found myself urging the voice to return. He’d tell me what, the rast?
These were not Savanti. I held that conviction with sudden deep resolution. Star Lords. They were the Everoinye.
“He is still too soft. The knowledge might destroy him-”
“I am prepared to take that chance.”
I stood up at last and shook my fist at the gory viridian dance of colors against the sky. “You’d take the chance, you kleesh! With my hide! With my sanity!”
Well, that was a mistake.
Like a blind lashing up on a runaway roller, I opened my eyes anew, and stood up, and, lo! I stood on a wide and dusty plain, the thorn-ivy bush at my side, and before me men and women fought among themselves.
I took a breath of sweet Kregan air.
This was more like old times!
A quick glance aloft showed me blue sky — and a whorling diminishing struggle between the blue and the red. And — and! A long beautiful streak of yellow coiled and drifted away into laypom and lemon and so vanished into the clear blue vault of the sky. I let rip a great sob of thankfulness. The yellow, so fragile, creeping in, told me Zena Iztar was at last aware.
I knew I had been brought here — wherever here was — to rescue some wight among that struggling throng, to preserve him or her for the pleasure of the Everoinye. I had served the Star Lords in this fashion before.
Or, so I believed.
I took one step forward.
And blue radiance dropped about me, and I tumbled head over heels, gasping, falling upwards, and so stood with a thump upon a high rampart atop a lofty tower, with a great city spread beneath me. Boulevards and kyros, avenues and temples, spread out beneath the glitter of the suns. And the city burned. Dull wafts of brown smoke rose from the bright buildings. Hordes of crazed people fled in every direction, wildly, not caring where they fled. The smell of blood and fire cloaked the doomed city. From the air echelons of warriors, all steel and bronze and leather, flying their winged saddle-beasts of war, swooped mercilessly down, casting death before them. The beat of the wings sounded the death knell of the city. Fire, destruction, desolation — from that high tower I looked on the casting down of a city. Where, in all this violence, was I to find the wight I was to rescue? Or, failing to rescue, to find myself packed headlong back to Earth?
Again, I took one foolish step forward, and the light changed.
The crimson beat in, drowning the blue. In crimson flakes of fire I was borne up, whirled headlong about, sent crashing down. I felt the heaving deck of a swordship beneath me and saw the banks of sweating rowers pulling, saw the tangled heat of striped sails about the mainmast, the severed rigging, the varter bolts embedded in the wood of deck and bulwarks, the smashed and splintered scantlings where varter-flung rocks had wreaked their destruction. Up in the bows both below and above the fore-platform where the varter lay scattered in useless shattered timbers and sinews, the frenzied struggle battered on between men who cut and hacked and slipped in blood and shrieked and died, their weapons fouled and glistening in the opaz radiance of Antares. A varter bolt flew past my ear. Fierce bearded men with golden rings in their ears and tall golden-feathered helmets, their eyes alight with the joy of killing, their scale armor glittering, bore down howling on me. Whom to rescue on the command of the Star Lords? I bent to snatch up a fallen sword — and the crimson light trembled, and faded, and gushed deeply, and was gone and the yellow light limned me, drenching me in golden glory, and I tumbled full length into that damned thorn-ivy bush. Bellowing aloud that Makki-Grodno’s diseased intestines would provide a capital sleeping bag for Star Lord, for Savanti, for whomever sought to drag me away from the voller and Delia, I pulled out of the thorn-ivy bush, stung to blazes.
The struggling mass of people had vanished from the dusty plain. The doomed city no longer existed. The swordship had gone.
I stood alone upon that dusty arid plain, stark naked, prickled by sharp thorn-ivy spines, and I looked about on nothing save dust.
“By Zair!” I roared, shaking my fist at the sky. And then I could not think of anything relevant to say. There was too much pent up within me. I had no real idea of what had been going on. I turned three hundred and sixty degrees and saw nothing save that dusty plain and the thorn-ivy bush. So I stood, fuming, filled with an enormous baffled rage — and, also fully aware of my ridiculous position.
A voice ghosted in from nowhere, from everywhere, riding the radiance, ringing sweetly from the distant sky, fading.
“Go north, Dray Prescot! North. This is all I could contrive, all I can do. . The voice of Zena Iztar! Yes, I knew that voice. That mysterious woman who could charm men and animals to a magic sleep, that woman of whom I hoped for much, that woman who seemed to offer sanity in a universe of madness; well, she was trying to help. I felt sure of that. But. .
“By Vox, Krun, Djan and Kaidun!” I bellowed. I stamped my foot. “What an infernal waste of time!”
“Fight, Dray Prescot. Go North. Jikai, Ver Dray! There is nothing else. .”
The sweet voice faded and was gone and I stood alone under the opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio.
Useless to pretend I had not been profoundly shaken by that unearthly experience. Unearthly -
Unkregan! I had been a witness to a titanic struggle among superhumans, seeing a tiny corner of the veil of mystery lifted. All was not sweetness and light among the Star Lords, then. . Maybe an old paktun rogue like Dray Prescot could use that information. Yes, I thought, where werstings squabble the gyp gets the bone.
I stuck my old beak of a nose into the north, pulled a last spine from my rump, and set off on my bare feet.
The more I thought about these recent occurrences the more I fancied the Savanti were not involved. They were mere mortal men, superhuman, admitted; but men. They were the tiny remnant of the Sunset People who had once dominated Kregen. Their buildings lay in ruination in many lands. They it was wh
o had constructed the Dam of Days and built the Grand Canal. Now they lived in the Swinging City and sought to train Savapims to work for the betterment of Kregen. No, I did not think the Savanti had been involved in that cosmic struggle.
I plodded on.
The air remained warm, the suns shone, a few birds wheeled about above and you may be sure I favored them with a close scrutiny although their presence comforted me. They would not fly about here if there were no game to hunt. Mind you, I might be the Sunday dinner they had in mind; but I was used to that, and by certain signs near the thorn-ivy bushes I knew small animals lived in this waste that appeared a wilderness but was not to those who knew how to survive. So I trundled on northward, trying to be philosophical.
By Vox! But it was hard. What were my people doing now? How was Delia reacting to my disappearance from the voller? She would shake her head and sigh, and say, no doubt, more or less: “So he’s off again.” I thought of the gaudy array of weaponry I had been in the act of belting on. By Krun! I could do with some of those edged and pointed weapons now. Particularly, I needed a bow. The bow I had intended to take had been a good greenwood bow of Erthyrdrin, its manufacture superintended by Seg. Although a kov he would indulge his passion for creating better and better bowstaves, working with his hands. The stave, like any bowstave, looked lumpy and sullen, following the grain of the wood, cunningly built to avoid any weakness. But it looked marvelous in the eyes of a bowman. Bows that look flashy and wonderful do not always work as well as those that follow the grain; they never do. With that bow, six feet six inches, a yard in the pull, I could cast an arrow and fetch up my supper with no trouble.
So, perforce, I stomped along in a foul humor and picked up a sharp stone and carried the thing in my fist and looked about with a fine predatory eye.
The ravening monsters of the air and land that ringed and protected the central mass of mountains would scarcely allow a naked unarmed man to pass. Thought had to be taken.
A black dot on the horizon almost directly on the back track attracted my immediate suspicious attention. I stopped moving at once and crouched beside a thorn-ivy bush. I watched. The black lump came on, growing in size, pirouetting with the heat devils, lumping and parting, coalescing, gradually drawing nearer.
Soon I made out a riding animal carrying two persons.
The beast looked to be some kind of member of the trix family in that it had a blunt wicked head, six legs and a coat of coarse grayish hair. The riders — I whistled. The man was a numim lad, a lion-man, well built, glorious in the numim way with his great golden mane, hardy. The girl was a Fristle fifi, delicate, beautifully formed, charming, her slanted eyes and frolicsome tail eloquent of all that is best about the cat-people. They sat close together on the uncomfortable back of the six-legged animal and they were totally engrossed in each other.
Now numims and Fristles may sometimes get on well together, seeing that they are both of feline stock; and sometimes they spit and snarl and rick back their lips and tear great chunks out of each other. I had an inkling of what was going on here and although I did not smile — I did not forget the indignity and the sheer awful frustration of my predicament — I felt a little lift of my flinty old heart. It has been my experience on Kregen that a man must make what he can of the situation in which he finds himself. Until I could rejoin Delia and my comrades I must work and fight to stay alive, and take an interest in all that occurred, trying to use events to my own advantage. So, feeling an intruder, I stood up from the thorn-ivy bush and shouted: “Llahal, dom, domni. Llahal.”
The stux whipped up in the lad’s hand.
“Llahal, dom. You are apim. I bear you no grudge.”
“Nor I, you.”
“Shall we make pappattu?”
“Assuredly.”
“I am Naghan-” Then, his manners catching up with him, he stuttered and started over. “You have the honor to be in the presence of Fimi Shemillifey. I am Naghan Mennelo ti Sakersmot.”
“I am Dray Prescot.”
“Now that we have made pappattu-” and here he put up his stux, so that he could finish the pappattu, which means, as you know, more than a mere formal introduction. “I would ask you why you wander alone and naked in these perilous parts.”
The answer was glib. “My caravan was set upon by drikingers. And you?”
“We elope-” And then he stopped himself, and Fimi, his little Fristle fifi, giggled, and so I attempted to scrape up a smile. So wrapped up were they in their brave and foolhardy solution to their problem they barely heeded my own thin story.
“If you wish, we may continue our journey together.” My eyes regarded his water bottle. He shook his head. “As to the companionship, right gladly I welcome it, even though you have no weapons, for you look a fighting man and the Khirrs prowl hereabouts. But, as to the water. . “ He shook the bottle. The confounded thing was nearly as dry as my throat.
“As Oxkalin the Blind Spirit chances,” I said, resigned.
“Oh, for a long cool drink of parclear!” sighed Fimi.
Naghan chided her. “When we reach Great Aunt Melimni she will welcome us and you may drink all the parclear in Ba-Domek.”
Incautiously, always a garrulous onker, I said: “Ba-Domek?”
“Why,” says this Naghan ti Sakersmot. “Do not tell me you do not know where you are?”
If the twin suns had fallen from the sky upon my foolish head I do not think I could have been more shattered. Of course I had assumed without thinking that I was still on the island of Aphrasoe. And, instead, I was somewhere else on the surface of Kregen! I felt my face going red and my eyes must have betrayed all the killing passion in me. This Naghan ti Sakersmot reined up, smartly, flinching, staring down at me, starting back.
“This is not,” I got out in a strangled voice. “This is not the island of Aphrasoe?”
At this both young people shrieked and clapped their hands over their ears. Their young faces expressed extreme horror.
“Do not say that!” screeched Naghan. “Never! We have not heard! As I love Fimi — I shall cut you down!”
“Brace up, lad!” I bellowed. “If you do not tell me where I am or what is going on — for I admit I am lost — how can I know? Tell me of Ba-Domek.”
Relief at their reaction to my use of the name Aphrasoe made me weak. I had thought — what a horror that would have been!
“Why,” Naghan said, cautiously taking his hands from his ears and the imp had heard me clearly, right enough. “Why, this is Ba-Domek. The city of which you speak is a place forbidden.”
Of course. Trust the Savanti to spread a little ghoulish rumor about the Swinging City. I would not press this young couple; but I felt sure they could retail grisly stories about the goings-on in Aphrasoe. So I was still on the island. Zena Iztar had managed to keep me here, at the least. I swallowed down, dry as a bone, for I could not spit.
“So you ride together. In that direction.” My arm sliced down toward the north.
“Only for a ways. Then we turn off down the Valley of the Twin Spires. I feel confident of the way,” he said, eagerly. “Even though I have ridden it but once before. Always, the way was through the River Feron’s lowlands. This is a dangerous route.”
“This city of which we do not speak. Where away lies that?”
“Down the other River,” he said. That made sense.
Now I had to find where the river began — or where I could join it. I didn’t care if it was the Aph or the Zelph.
In answer to my query he looked around the featureless horizon, undecided. He squinted up at the suns. He frowned.
Then: “I think, dom, I think — that away.”
He pointed due north.
Chapter Thirteen
How Fimi Obtained Her Wedding Portion
For a space then, our ways would lie together.
The six-legged saddle animal, a gnutrix, walked along with that awkward swaying gait of the six-legged, and I tramped on alongside. The two yo
ung people made nothing of my nakedness and, partly, I suppose, that was because I was apim and they diff.
Their story was soon told. Miscegenation is not the true word for this kind of marriage across diff-boundaries, where the people in question are closely related. All the same, their own people were not happy; a chance meeting at a fair, the growing realization that a genuine love existed between them, the hostility of their families and, finally, elopement, all added up to this flight across the barren land to the sanctuary of Great Aunt Melimni’s house — a fine villa with fountains and arbors, Naghan confided with pride — situated in the best district of Lowerinsmot. This town, he said with just the hint of doubt, was situated perhaps a little too close to — and here he paused, and ran a hand around his collar. I asked more questions in a general way, and gathered that Naghan knew a fair amount of the geography of this part of Ba-Domek, being a traveling salesman of a sort. I gathered as much from what he did not say as the information he parted with that Aphrasoe did indeed lie at the center of the island surrounded by the ring of sheltering mountains. He confirmed that the island swarmed with animals and birds and diffs. There were few apims. No city of Homo sapiens like me was known. And, of course, of those within the Swinging City itself, nothing would induce Naghan to venture there. He knew what apims were, of course, and regarded me with a lively interest as the representative of a strange and exotic breed. Always before when I had been summoned by the scorpion and been flung head over heels pell-mell to Kregen I had awakened stark naked, faced with the immediate problem of rescuing someone or other from pressing peril. So, this time, I kept an eye on these two elopers. I did not think I had been dragged from the voller for nothing; equally, I was aware that the circumstances this time were greatly different from anything that had gone before.
“As soon as you reach Lowerinsmot all our troubles will be over.” Fimi clung to Naghan, speaking with perfect confidence.
They wore simple tunics of a flaxen color, and Fimi’s was trimmed and hemmed with bright embroidery. They had a satchel with dried meats and fruits. Their only weapon, apart from a bronze knife, was the stux, and he handled the spear smartly enough but not, I judged, as a warrior. Traveling salesmen, he said his family were, going from village and town around the countryside. Sometimes there were fights; but few people like to pick a quarrel with a numim.
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