“Tell the san,” I rapped out. “I'm on my way."
With that I sprinted out from the villa and tore off along the road to Kuong's.
As I ran, this particular plot came clear in my mind. Mishuro had rattled San Caran who'd decided to act at once. If Trylon Kuong was dead, then a new Trylon Kuong must be found. Caran, as the Repositer, would care and guide the baby. Mishuro had mentioned that the binding oaths all dikasters took to serve Tsung-Tan faithfully and truly in the matter of Repositing and Divining seemed not to bind Hargon or Caran. He'd sounded sad at this falling away of standards. Mishuro probably couldn't fully comprehend that a person who swore in as a dikaster might not truly believe in paol-ur-bliem. What that kind of person would believe in would be the power and wealth accruing. By Krun, yes!
One or two folk glanced at me curiously; no one offered to stop me.
I welted into Kuong's front gateway to find no sign of guards. Caran had had seasons to suborn them to his service. I began to feel I must be too late.
In the event, what Caran had arranged smacked of the over cautious. Instead of getting the trylon's guards to despatch him, Caran had hired professional assassins and seen the guards were removed from the vital posts. That way, no accusing finger could point to the Repositer.
So confident was Caran, and—evidently—so mean, he'd hired only two stikitches. Well, as I burst into Trylon Kuong's rooms, these fellows looked highly colorful in their black robes and masks and assortment of lethal cutlery.
What did surprise me was to spot San Caran in person skulking beside a tall jar packed full of petals. The subtle perfume scented the rooms sweetly.
“Get on, get on!” he was shrieking as I rushed in. “He is only a boy!"
The boy had a sword in his fist and was putting up a doughty defense.
San Caran screamed: “Kill him! Km him!” He was practically foaming at the mouth, wrought up with passion and impatience. When he saw me he screeched: “Your backs! Another one! Slay them both!"
Although I had no great respect for the professional competence of these local assassins, they at least did not allow me to leap on them from the rear in total surprise. One continued to foin with the trylon as the other swung about to deal with me. He was not quite quick enough and he went down as I withdrew the lynxter from his throat. At this Caran let out such a screech I imagined he'd ripped his own throat out and hurled himself forward, a long dagger a bar of glitter in his fist.
Kuong took a scratch across his cheek and he fell back, panting, and dashing the hair out of his eyes with his left hand. His assailant pressed forward in silent triumph as Caran reached us. There was no time to think. I saw the way of it, and the two targets, the two tasks, and acted.
A vicious leap bundled me bodily into the side of the assassin as Caran struck and my sword deflected his blow. The blade snouted forward as it were of its own accord and slid between Caran's ribs. At the same time my left fist came around and clouted the assassin behind the ear. He did not fall down. Caran let out a gurgling sigh and as the lynxter withdrew sank to his knees. The assassin took all this in as he swung about from Kuong, recovering his balance.
He made what must have seemed to him the right decision and he began to twist about ready to run off. My blade whistled around, low and flat, and sliced all across his abdomen. He let out a single shriek and collapsed.
“That was—” said Kuong. “You are very quick."
“Well, now, trylon,” I said. “We have one dead Repositer on our hands."
Kuong visibly recovered himself. His face began to resume a semblance of normal color. He put a hand to his forehead. Then he said: “Do not fret, Walfger Drajak. Caran has forfeited by his actions any honor and protection his position would have afforded him. You have nothing to fear from the college."
I own I felt genuine relief at that. Messing about with other peoples’ laws and customs is a risky business. Look what had happened before, and then I'd only spoken a trifle sharply to a Repositer!
Kuong was fully recovered by the time a crowd of guards and servants from Mishuro's burst in. Tongwan slashed his spear about, looking fierce. “I wasn't slow this time, by Yakwang!"
I agreed he had been commendably quick and then, looking about, said: “Where's Llodi?"
“He has been left to guard the main inner door,” snapped out Chiako the Gut. He was anxious to make his position of authority plain in these important affairs. “I do not neglect my duty."
Just about at that point I saw the horror.
I knew.
Without bothering to shout, without a word, I rushed madly from the room, knowing already the plot had worked and I was a blind and stupid cretin.
* * *
Chapter twenty
A blind cretinous fool! An onker, an onker of onkers, a get onker! I ran. By Zair, how I ran!
I didn't even bother to change my face from Drajak to Chaadur. There was no time for subtlety now, no time to disguise myself from the wrath of San Hargon. The time had passed and I'd been sucked in like any green coy. Now I had to race for San Tuong Mishuro faster than a speeding crossbow bolt—and bearing the shriveling knowledge I was already too late.
Because his guards had rushed off to the assistance of his friend the trylon, Mishuro's gates stood unguarded. Like a maniac I roared in and through the villa charging for the inner doors where Llodi the Voice stood on duty.
He lay on the floor, his hand spread against his side. Dark blood welled between his fingers and stained the rugs across the marble pavement.
“The san—” he choked out, scarcely able to speak. His eyes glistened. He stared at me with the awful knowledge of what had been accomplished here distorting his features. “Pulvia—"
“Rest easy, dom,” I said as I ran on without breaking my stride. “I'll get help to you afterwards."
He choked out a groan and slumped back and the dark blood dribbled between his fingers from Pulvia's treacherous dagger stroke.
As I sprinted I saw that my earlier feeling that the name Pulvia was too heavy for a light-minded flirtatious girl had substance. Except that the reverse was the case. The merry ringletted girl was the disguise; the heaviness of the name suiting the dark treachery that had struck Llodi down in his own blood.
My legs flew over the rugs and the tesserae. From Llodi's condition I judged that little time had elapsed since Pulvia ran through these corridors brandishing her bloodstained dagger. She might have had to take time to open the doors to admit accomplices, fellow stikitches. I took heart. There was still a chance to reach Mishuro before they did for him!
A vast and rotund ceramic jar stood jutting from the corner of the corridor ahead and I took absolutely no notice of the designs patterning the glistening surface but just hurled around, giving the jar a thump as I rushed past. It toppled over and burst with a thunderclap. Shards of china flew everywhere.
That thunderous noise echoed between the walls, and the booming crash framed in sound the apparition that confronted me, waiting for me.
I skidded to a halt.
My breathing remained even and steady. I looked at the man sitting in his skin-covered chair. That chair with its broad armrests and curved legs engulfed him in skin and scale comfort, with peacock feathers ready to wave a wafting zephyr against the stinks that clearly stank in the places where he habitually lived. The predominant color among the streaks of green and black of chair and robing was red—red! It was not the brave old scarlet of Strombor but a smoky sullen red like the banked furnace fires of hell.
His robes streamed away from artificially widened shoulders, revealing a scaled shirt, with many golden adornments and a broad golden collar. His hands were bone white and grasped the haft of a double-handed axe resting between his knees. A little scaled creature with a silver collar crouched against his booted right leg and a half-naked girl with flowing yellow hair clasped his booted left leg. And so I looked up at his face.
Incongruously he wore a thick brown beard—but
no moustache—to adorn the utter pallor of his face. White, like freshly-scraped chalk, that face of horror. The bone structure clearly showed through paper-thin skin. The lipless mouth revealed a double-row of fang-like unhuman teeth pressing outwards from the wide jaws. Nostril slits only pulsed regularly above that trap mouth. And the eyes! Not utterly black, yet all the blacker for that infusion of dark blue, eyes that bulged and glistened with the uncanny red glow of rhodopsin; eerie, dominating, demanding, the eyes of a devil...
In complete silence the chair lifted from the carpets, rose into the air to hover a pace above the floor.
There was much much more to this man and his chair; at that time of our first confrontation I was in a hurry to pass and took notice only of what I have described. I drew in a breath and took a first tentative step forward.
From the wall at the side of the chair a thing emerged into the corridor. It slid through the solid wall as though passing through a cloud.
Diabolically-formed, this thing. On two scaled legs it stood man high and with a torso and a squat, flat head with bone ridges above the eyes. But the thing that took all my attention waved undulating before it as it advanced. Instead of arms this monstrous creation possessed four tentacular appendages. Each had a pseudo-head at its tip, a bulb-like growth containing two eyes set beside the fanged mouth. Each mouth opened and closed as the thing bore down on me, each seeking individually to rip away portions of my flesh to gulp down its intestinal tract to join the other mouths’ offerings in this thing's stomach. Oddly, there was no stinking stench in a miasma about the thing.
Of course not—this thing was an apparition, an illusion. It had just oozed through the solid wall; it might be real, and of that I had my doubts; it most certainly was not here in this corridor before me.
A voice like the whine of a draught under a door spoke from somewhere.
“Wait, Arzuriel."
The scaled horror before me halted, and the fanged mouths wove patterns in the air.
From a haze of smoky-red blackness at the rear of the chair two white arms emerged. They were the rounded arms of a woman and the plump hands held a convoluted and massive crowned helmet above the man's head. Slowly the arms descended to place the crown upon the man's hairless head.
That helmet told me many details, and all were of horror and despair.
The helmet lifted high above the man's forehead, bigger than his own face. The crown segment was formed from a curved rank of tridents. As a visor, the shape of a barracuda's head had been fashioned in gold to shield the man's eyes. Silver fish-faces crowded in sculpture around the helmet. A brown drapery was just visible swathed around at the side. The central portion at the front represented a ferocious fish-head, needle teeth exposed, malevolence personified. A swift and scared glance would easily confuse—was this creature a man wearing a fish-faced helmet, or was he a fish with a man's face as a neck adornment?
I own I was glad I'd seen the bastard before the white plump womanly arms had placed the helmet upon his bald head.
The vision of Pulvia running through this corridor carrying her blood-stained dagger nerved me. She might have accomplices. This thing before me, this Arzuriel, was just an illusion. I leaped forward.
A fanged mouth at the end of its tentacle swept for me. I ignored it and plunged on.
The damned mouth closed its double-row of teeth on my left arm and ripped away a mouthful of skin and flesh. I yelled. Absolutely furious I slashed the lynxter down and the severed mouth skipped from the green-stumped end of the tentacle. The dratted thing was real! Another mouth gaped for me and the lynxter beheaded it and then sliced around to complete the foursome.
Arzuriel slobbered from his wide mouth and lurched forward onto the blade of the sword. I wrenched it about a bit before I withdrew. If this damned fellow in his chair was real I'd have him, too, the cramph! By Krun, yes!
I leaped the wallowing Arzuriel and plunged for the chair. I saw the man's face. Scraped white, with black and redly-glaring eyes, mouth ricked into a snarl, it bore the utmost malice. I'd give the rast malice!
My sword slashed down—and through the man and so sliced up a floor-carpet. I hauled it up again, breathing heavily, and glared upon the true apparition.
The man's keening voice whined: “You will never succeed, Dray Prescot. For I am Carazaar. Already my plans are past your powers to interfere. Farewell, prince of fools!"
And with a blink and a wink this bastard of a Carazaar was gone.
I span about. Arzuriel had gone, too, and his severed mouths, gone off to practice more deviltry with his master Carazaar I did not doubt.
What an unhealthy couple!
This Carazaar and his pet Arzuriel had delayed me. But I refused to believe I was really too late. I rushed on, haring along the corridors and bursting past the doors to slide at last into San Tuong Mishuro's bedchamber.
Just as San Caran had been unwilling to trust tools to finish his job, so San Hargon had been unwilling to trust either Pulvia or his hired assassins. Two poor little serving girls lay butchered on the rich rugs. Their slender limbs and light draperies looked pathetic as they lay there, wantonly cut down. This kind of unnecessary slaying always infuriates me. Two black-clad fellows were turning away from the handmaids and before I did anything else I lit into them like a hurricane.
They both went down, chopped as they had chopped the girls, before they knew what was happening. One minute they were engaged on striking down pretty happy doomed little girls; the next they were trying to figure out a way past the deadly syatras of the Death Jungles of Sichaz. Bad cess to ‘em!
San Hargon glared across at me from the inner doorway leading to San Mishuro's bedroom. He screeched something indescribable and ran back into the inner room. The door slammed shut.
I just charged full tilt at the door.
I bounced.
San Hargon had planned, and planned well, and it was down to me to thwart the fellow. No stupid lenken door was going to stand between me and doing whatever had to be done on the other side—no, by Vox!
Had I been a Vengali Sorcerer from Vinkleden I'd have worked up a spell and hurled it at the wall around the door, turning stone to mud, so that the door would fall forward—slurp!—from the wall. As I was not one of those mysterious beings, a Vengali Mage of Vinkleden, I took ten measured steps back, set myself, whooped in a great lungful of air, and hurled myself forward.
Mentally, I was shouting: "Cha-a-arge!"
That door was damned hard. I hit it full tilt and felt the impact all along my shoulder and side and then with a screeching ripping splintering the door fell inward off its hinges and I was stumbling forward off balance across soft carpets.
Something went whick! past my ear.
The dagger—it wasn't a terchick—hit the wall beside the ripped-off door and fell unseen to the floor. It did not tinkle on those thick soft carpets. San Hargon glared at me from beside the bed, half-crouched, the other dagger in his fist glistening red, red in the mellow light of the lamps.
Pulvia lay at his feet, face down. In the lower centre of her back a red splodge glistened like a flower, crimson petals spreading across her gown.
The rast had stabbed his instrument of murder to silence her for ever.
So I looked at the canopied bed.
“You're done for, you shint!” screeched Hargon. “Done for! You will take the blame for all this!” He panted with the violence of his emotions.
On the bed the limp figure of San Tuong Mishuro lay sprawled. One arm dangled loosely down from the edge of the bed. His face lay in shadow.
Beneath that face his throat was a mere red splodge.
Pulvia had slit his throat as he slept.
I felt the ice creeping along my limbs.
Mishuro was dead. I had failed. This was disaster—yet I could barely comprehend yet what that disaster meant.
San Hargon had won and his will had been carried out and he had slain Pulvia, the instrument of that will. No doubt he
would have more guards at hand to summon, to arrest me, to carry me off to torture and to death.
I threw the sword up in the air and caught it between forte and hilt.
I stared venomously at Hargon.
“At least, you kleesh, you will not benefit from your treacherous murderous ways!"
The sword flew true. The point took him in the throat and the blade crunched on and almost—almost!—the hilt smashed into his chin.
There was no need to take any more notice of San Hargon.
I stared sickly at the bed, and the dead form of San Tuong Mishuro.
Disaster? Utter, complete, dreadful disaster!
I had failed the Star Lords.
I straightened up, breathing deeply, smelling the raw stink of freshly spilled blood. Utter disaster!
Into that closed bedchamber crept an insidious blue radiance. I stood straight, stony-faced, empty-handed, waiting for whatever fate would be meted out by the Star Lords.
Even then, even then in that moment of utter horror—and especially then in that moment of utter horror—I felt my thoughts twine lovingly to Delia, to my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. Agony awaited me, I thought, the sundering of four hundred light years from all I held dear.
So, straight and despairing, I waited for the Star Lords’ sentence.
* * *
About the author
Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.
Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction, both under his real name and numerous pseudonyms, including Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer's works were published along with the works of other authors under “house names” (collective pseudonyms) such as Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.
Scorpio Reborn [Dray Prescot #38] Page 18
