Captive Scorpio dp-17

by Alan Burt Akers

  Chagrined at my own stupidity — more than chagrined — raging with a vicious intemperate self-scorn, I swung down from the roof and dropped into the street The town was practically deserted. Everyone had gone to mass in the wide space surrounding the temple. In that temple, that blasphemous Temple of Hockwafernes, that was where I should be.

  A passing Och halted as I called to him. His six limbs trembled under the weight of a sack, and he wore the gray breechclout.

  “What time does the ceremony begin, slave?”

  “Master — a bur after mid-”

  I jerked a thumb and he staggered off. My face must have scared him clean through. Time, then, for an errand. .

  That errand took me over the town wall contemptuous of the guards. One saw me and shouted, and I bellowed back a rigmarole about a message for Jiktar Haslam, and blast your eyes, you rast, and so ran fleetly across the dirt toward the leather tents. The quietness everywhere lay a strangeness over the camp. Not all the army by any means had been invited to attend the ceremony, even to stand outside the temple, for that would have been an impossibility given the numbers; but enough had gone to leave the rest feeling lackluster and out of it. They would partake of the good news to be bought by occult means, and so did not complain more than soldiers ordinarily do. Which is to say they grumbled and cursed most fearsomely.

  Nalgre and Dolan were not at their tent. The camp slave cringed back as I ripped out my gear. It was all there. I strapped on my weapons. I did not have a rapier and main gauche; all the rest I had and intended to use if need be. Then I hared off back to the town, having to dodge down a side avenue of tents as a search party ran past, no doubt alerted by the sentry on the walls I had shouted at. Gigantic gong notes began to reverberate from the temple.

  I had to hurry.

  The cape I swathed about myself attracted no attention, being similar to a thousand worn by the swods, and the cased bowstave easily passed for a spear. The crowds outside the temple moved like a cornfield in the breeze. The suns shone. A wind blew the dust. The noise susurrated like waves on pebbles. I pushed through, gently, gradually working my way toward the front. If this Opaz-forsaken temple was like most there would be a side way in. It would be guarded, of course. There was a small side door, and there was a guard.

  The door opened easily enough after the guard lay scattered about, and the door slammed harshly in the faces of the shocked men who had witnessed the fury of sudden destruction that had fallen on the guard detail.

  As I sprang four at a time up the spiral tower steps it occurred to me, wryly, that all my careful planning might as well have never taken place. So much for the good San Blarnoi. The stairs led onto a balcony and I peered between carved stones onto the scene below. This was not planned at all.

  The vibrant gong strokes rang still in the air. But the gong hung silent. Men moved below on the dais, men in garish costumes. I checked them all, swiftly, judging them to be priests or sorcerers engaged about their diabolical pastime, and raked my eyes over the gathered mass of people. Where was Dayra?

  Then, the destructive thought hit me, would I, could I, recognize her? A girl I’d never seen? Born when I was four hundred light years away from Kregen? I cursed the Star Lords then, and went on looking intently at the gathered people.

  The temple was, truly, a marvel of architecture. The people filled it tightly, so that not a speck of floor was visible. The dais stood high at the center, and incense rose, stinking. Grotesque carvings entwined obscene forms. A crystal ovoid lifted at the center of the dais, draped in black and purple hangings, with golden tassels. Bells were ringing now, bells twirling and clanging in the hands of girls, half naked, dancing and twirling around the catafalque.

  Like Bacchantes, with swirling hair and naked rosy limbs they danced and pranced, gyrating, ringing their bells, arousing everyone to a feverish anticipation.

  Trylon Udo stepped forward. His costume was a sumptuous blaze of jewels. He lifted his arms high into the air and the bells ceased their clanging and the nymphs ceased their gyrations, although as they stood they swayed rhythmically like fronds of seaweed.

  He began to speak in a high chanting voice.

  Someone would be doing something about the guard detail now; the locked door would be forced, more guards would pile up the spiral stairs. Other guards would block all the exits. I moved around the high balcony, and found half a dozen more sentries who died quickly and cleanly. Now I could see down onto the catafalque more clearly. Beside the trylon stood the Hawkwa necromancer, San Uzhiro. Clad all in purple with golden tassels, he presented a grave, chilling picture of absolute dedication to the occult forces beyond the bounds of normal human knowledge.

  Udo’s words formed merely the prelude, in which he promised much and, chiefly, that his army would be invincible.

  Then San Uzhiro stepped forward upon the dais below the catafalque. With shocked gasps of surprise from the congregation, abrupt and brilliant bursts of flame and colored smoke shot up from the crystal ovoid. It glowed with an uncanny inner light, like torches seen through rain-spattered windows.

  “Behold!” thundered Uzhiro. Every word rang and vaulted in echoing clarity around the wide temple.

  “Behold the corpse of San Guiskwain! San Guiskwain the Witherer, San Guiskwain na Stackwamor. Behold and marvel. Behold and tremble.”

  The people trembled in all truth. This Guiskwain, a most highly remarked sorcerer of Vallia, had lived and died no man knew how long ago, but it was certainly more than two and a half thousand seasons. And here he was, perfectly preserved in his crystal ovoid, his form and features showing clear and clearer as the lights spurted up. Here was sorcery at its most dire.

  For Uzhiro waved his arms, sweating, chanting cadences of power, sprinkling dust, sending ripples of fear through the throng. We all knew what he was doing. The guards chasing me would have left off doing that; they would be transfixed by the awful powers being unleashed in this place. Everyone craned to see, barely breathing, as Uzhiro chanted on and the corpse within the crystal coffin upon the catafalque grew in clarity and all might see the thunderous expression on that lowering face. That was a mystery, how plainly the face was visible, even to me, high on the balcony. At that distance the other people’s faces were mere blurs. But the ancient sorcerer’s face glowed with supernatural tyranny.

  The foul stench of the incense puffed high into the interior of the temple. The dome opened, it seemed, onto infinity itself, although common sense said that the myriad specks of light were merely painted spots of mineral-glittering pigments. The long low moaning chants of the acolytes, the rooted swaying rhythms of the temple maidens, the cloying stinks of incense, all were calculated to tear away the senses from the brain, to impose false images, to induce a phantasmagoria of hallucinations. Did San Guiskwain the Witherer really open his eyes? Did he reach out a skeletal hand? Did a man dead two thousand five hundred seasons really return to life?

  San Uzhiro chanted and he had no doubts. His commands imposed themselves on the multitude, so that they saw with his eyes and heard with his ears.

  Guiskwain, dead yet alive, sat up in the crystal coffin and looked about, that skeletal arm raised admonishingly.

  No one fainted, no one passed out. All were transfixed, held scarcely breathing by the sheer occult power. And a sense of darkness gathered and coalesced under the dome. A brooding sense of power beyond the grave, of a stubborn life that two and half millennia could not quench, of perverse defiance of the natural order of life and death pervaded the temple and puffed upward in the rotting miasma of swamps and the fetid air of tombs sealed against the light.

  “He lives!” screamed Uzhiro. “San Guiskwain lives!”

  The cry was taken up in a tumultuous swelling cacophony of voices raised in rapture.

  “He lives!”

  Here was the miracle. Here the proof of the necromancer’s power.

  “Through Guiskwain the Witherer shall the army become invincible!” screeched Uzhiro, f
lailing his arms.

  “Through the greatest sorcerer dead yet living shall the Hawkwas gain all! Guiskwain lives!”

  The long moment of triumph hung fire. The darkest pits of a Kregan hell had been opened. Now all, everyone present, turned to gaze with rapt adoration upon the lowering, vindictive, ashen face of Guiskwain the Witherer.

  Transcendental, sublime, blasphemous — call it what you will. It was certain sure that all gathered here and held in this hallucinated trance believed with all their hearts. But — was this hallucination? Was this trickery? Or was a long-dead necromancer really revived, brought back to life, dragged once again into the light so as to destroy all I cared for in Vallia? Could the trick be no trick at all?

  Did Guiskwain the Witherer, dead two and a half millennia, live?

  Sixteen

  The Fight Below the Voller

  Whether he lived or was dead made no real difference.

  Whether he still moldered away in his crystal coffin or whether he had been blasphemously raised by necromantic power into a semblance of full-blooded life did not matter. What mattered was the belief, the impression, the effect.

  These people believed.

  The long low moaning shudder passed over them like a rashoon of the Eye of the World. They bowed. In a giant sighing rustle and the jangle of weapons and accoutrements they bowed their heads, crouched, extending their arms in swath after swath of ranked submission.

  Was my daughter down there now, one of that hypnotized host? Did Dayra bow her head and tremble with all the others at the sight and stink of a long-dead wizard raised from the grave?

  How in the name of Makki-Grodno’s disgusting diseased tripes could I know?

  I was shaking. Sweat ran down my forehead and stung into my eyes. I blinked, swallowed, cursed — all the actions of an idiot without a thought in his thick vosk skull of a head. A girl in the russets and armor of a Battle Maiden ran lightly up past the half-naked temple girls. She spoke rapidly to Udo. His head went up; he gestured to Uzhiro. They conferred. Then Uzhiro swung back and called for everyone to rise and stare upon the sublime face and form of Guiskwain. Trylon Udo stepped forward. He held up a hand. He spoke with tremendous emotion, forcefully, jolting these people.

  “Now are we invincible in battle. Now the potent force of San Guiskwain the Witherer is with us. He will waste away our enemies. Long and long have the Hawkwas waited for this time. And now it is here.”

  His lifted hand gripped into a fist. “There is more. The army from Hamal landed in the south of Vallia has gained a great victory. The hosts of the emperor are withered away, his warriors strew the ground in windrows, their blood waters the dirt. This is a further sign! Guiskwain is with us and nothing can stand in our path.”

  I had to stand peering through the stone bars of the balcony and listen, grinding down my nature that sought to burst out in bestial ferocity.

  So the cramphs had come from Hamal, the bitter foe of Vallia, and not from Pandahem. An armada of skyships had brought them; that was a safe conclusion. And the emperor, Delia’s father, had been worsted. Had his bodyguard, the Crimson Bowmen, bought and paid for in red gold, betrayed him?

  What of the men loyal to the emperor? What of the Blue Mountains, of Delphond, of my own Archers of Valka who had been sent for from Evir? What had happened down south?

  And Delia?

  Dayra. . Dayra. .

  I had selfishly sought out my daughter here, and in that space of time I had been away from Vondium the empire might have fallen. Udo was shouting again, flushed, triumphant, overweening.

  “Our own fleet of airboats will fly us south. We will join with our friends from Hamal. We will march upon Vondium and take that great city and utterly destroy all who stand in our path. All hail to San Guiskwain! All hail to the Hawkwas!”

  Here once again was the hand of Phu-si-Yantong. I was convinced of that. He had extended the tentacles of his authority through Hamal, manipulating the pallans around the Empress Thyllis. He had provided the money and the weapons and now a fleet of vollers for Trylon Udo to take and sack Vondium. And, when the time was ripe, Phu-si-Yantong’s tools, in the guise of Stromich Ranjal and Zankov, would strike down Udo and take all for the greatest puissance of Phu-si-Yantong. It must be so.

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “If you are alive, you necromantic kleesh, you’ll soon be dead again!”

  The bowstave hissed from the cover, it seemed to string itself of its own will. The blue-fletched arrow nocked and the bow bent in a long sinuous flow of motion. The steel pile glittered. I loosed. The shaft flew sweetly. Clear across that wide space under the dome the arrow sped, piercing through the winding veils of incense smoke, drove hard and savagely full into San Guiskwain’s breast. I saw it. I saw the arrow curve upward. It ricocheted up with a high singing note of steel against crystal. It curved to fall away and be lost among the gathered host.

  And San Guiskwain remained upright, unmoved, unharmed.

  “By Krun!” I shouted. “Sorcery and more sorcery. I’ll have you yet, you cramph.”

  Twice more I loosed and twice the sharp steel-tipped shafts caromed with that high crystal ringing from the unholy form of the dead wizard who yet lived.

  Guards boiled along the balcony toward me. They were men. If I had to fight I had to fight. But, for the last time, and even as I loosed knowing the gesture was futile and useless, I cast a last shaft at the blasphemous form of Guiskwain.

  Had I used the few brains I boast I should have shot at Uzhiro. Trylon Udo was a mere pawn. But my incensed fury was all directed at that towering, impregnable, loweringly obscene form of a living dead man.

  Then, after a handful of shafts into the first of the charging guards it was handstrokes along the high balcony.

  The shortsword, built by Naghan the Gnat to specifications drawn up from careful measurement of the deadly shortsword of my Clansmen of Segesthes, chunked in gleaming silver and ripped out gleaming red. I put my shoulder down and bashed into the guards, anxious to carve a way through them and reach the outside air. The notion of finding Dayra in all this hullabaloo had still not left me, although I was having to face the fact that with all my plans gone wrong I was hardly likely to find her now. Four Rapas tried to work as a team and do for me. No doubt they were accustomed to quick victory utilizing their intricate teamwork on the battlefield or in camp brawls. But a fighting man must tailor his work to circumstances. The balcony was narrow. Even as the first Rapa prepared to open the gambit and feint away I slashed his beak off, burst past him, sank the blade into the next one — just far enough

  — ducked a wild clanxer swipe and so chunked left, right, and felled the other two. They couldn’t know, of course — but anyone who did would understand why the shortsword gleamed in my fist and the deadly Krozair longsword snugged still in its scabbard. The guards expected me to go one way, and so I went the other. A narrow slot opened in the wall, one of the many runnels all these huge old buildings possess, crevices between facing walls, cavities under domes, tunnels left for the maintenance that must unceasingly go on to stop the whole fabric from toppling to destruction. With a last flicker of the shortsword I ducked down the slot. The first fall was some ten feet and I hit with a thump. On my feet in an instant I padded between rough brick courses, a thread of light wanly illuminating the patches of damp and the mold. The way led via wooden ladders and dusty passages downward. The sounds of pursuit followed me. I stepped past a skeleton — it had been a plump wallpitix, poisoned by the temple caretakers, and crept away here to die

  — and pushed on boldly. Wherever the way led I was sure to meet guards. Brittle bones crunched underfoot. A whole nest of wallpitixes, those furry, bright-eyed household scavengers, had died here. Beyond them and around a harsh masonry corner where the dirt had been cobbled over, a lenken door, banded with bronze, barred the way. I gave the door a look and put my shoulder to it.

  With a creak like some poor soul being crushed between millstones, it grated open. Red an
d green light flooded in. Cautiously, I poked my head out, the blade raised, ready to defend myself. Around me stretched the ranked arcades of stone coffins. Some had toppled over and a detritus of bones and skulls littered the stone-flagged floor. I had penetrated below the temple and entered the crypt. That seemed apt at the time. Thoughtfully, I closed the door and shot the massive iron bolts, turning the heads over with a succession of sharp and satisfactory snaps. That took care of the bloodthirsty soldiers at my back. Now for the no-less bloodthirsty warriors in front.

  The light streamed from tinted fireglass crystals set in niches along the coves. I guessed San Uzhiro had been down here earlier, needing light, to fetch out the crystal coffin of Guiskwain the Witherer. There were telltale marks in the dust. A skull rolled away as I marched across the flags. The eerie effects of witnessing a corpse brought back to life began to wear off. I found I was thinking again.

  I have always said that if you can’t join them, beat them. As a principle of life on Kregen, I think that well-exemplified in the account of what befell Dray Prescot there. But, now, it would be convenient to join them for a space.

  The fusty smell in the crypt led by way of the almost imperceptible wash of fresher air to the outer door. By its configuration I judged it stood at the bottom of a flight of steps cut into the earth leading up to ground level. Carefully, easing the door open a whisker at a time, I peered out. No matter how many times I tangle with guards, I am forced to fight sentries, hide from or dispatch watchmen, I can never think of them as mere lay figures. Guards on duty face a thankless task. At times it seems they are there merely to be slain by the princes and captains who seek to go where they should not. But a guard is a man, doing a rotten job, and glad when his duty is over and he can traipse off to the guardroom and take off at least a little of his equipment and put his feet up for a time, until he is due to roust out again.

  Guards stand in gaudy uniforms with ornate spears and are ripe targets. No — I do not devalue guards, no matter that I have been forced to deal harshly with them in my time. The guards at the top of the steps were Chuliks. This complicated matters from the point of view of joining them, and made the physical exertion of dealing with them that much more hazardous. Chuliks are not apims. They are diffs. They are powerful, ferocious warriors, trained from the earliest age in the manipulation of weapons, lacking in the lighter side of humanity, abhorred except as mercenary warriors. This, at the time and, I admit, to my shame, made the moral side of the problem that much easier of resolution.