Scorpio Ablaze

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Delia! Jak! Lahal all. The interference has ceased. Khe-Hi is off to perform our very necessary functions. But I Fear Mischief Here.”

  I said: “We were winning. Now we are losing.”

  The hush about the deck allowed the awful noises of the battle to racket in nauseatingly. Deb-Lu spread his fingers. “I see. Then he has placed all his kharrna into this single effort.”

  “Which,” growled out Seg, “looks like succeeding unless we nip him in the bud damn quick.”

  What the ordinary crewman, the ordinary swod, thought of sorcerers suddenly appearing might remain conjectural; I knew that if our mages failed us now, the arch demon Carazaar would triumph.

  Clearly, now, without a single doubt, he worked with or for the Shanks. Maybe, even, he controlled the Fish Faces.

  The merker from Kuong confirmed that Kirsty’s forces were being thrust back. Everywhere, on the ground, in the air, we were being beaten.

  “What can be done, Deb-Lu?”

  “Khe-Hi and I have formed a plan which—” He looked uneasy. “It is not certain. There is great danger.” He wouldn’t look at me, so I guessed that whatever he and Khe-Hi had hatched up demanded my presence. “The planes,” he went on. “They cannot be controlled by any single person.”

  “Something must be done,” rapped out Delia. “And done right now!”

  A shout ripped through the air from a lookout. What he screamed was incoherent. Everybody felt the force of terror in that wild shriek and we all looked up into the brightness of the sky.

  He sailed up there, the arch demon, sitting in his throne and peering down at us mortals below. The throne was as I had last seen it with its chained naked girls and savage beasts, with the glitter of gems and gold. A cloud suffused with yellow light swam beneath the throne and shards and sparks of fire, blue, green, yellow, spat like lightnings all about. The picture he presented was one of terror and of glory, of power and of punishment. A light shone from that awesome apparition and spread to encompass the city and the battling armies. Sparks spat from the chair in bolts of living flame. Everywhere the forces of the Shanks pressed on victoriously.

  Calmly, firm among all the terror, Seg lifted his bow.

  “Useless, Seg,” said Deb-Lu. “There is only one way.” He swung about and now he looked at me, long and low beneath his eyebrows.

  Delia abruptly clutched my arm and I felt her tremble against me. “Dray — are you prepared for the gamble?”

  “If it’s the only way,” I said, “then let’s do it!”

  Chapter twenty

  “Right,” said Seg. “Let us do it!”

  “Aye,” said Inch, very sharply.

  “Aye!” roared out from the lads gathered about.

  Deb-Lu shook his head and his turban fell off and rolled — and instantly vanished. Deb-Lu’s right side was illuminated by a samphron oil lamp. We were bathed in the rays of Luz and Walig.

  “No, no. Khe-Hi and I — One Only. We can manage only one.”

  “Me! Let me! No, me!” The cacophony burst up as everyone yelled their demands to be allowed to go to almost certain death.

  I didn’t want to go to death, certain, almost certain or otherwise. I glanced swiftly at Delia. She stood straight and lissom, holding herself erect, a faint flush along her cheekbones. She stared back at me, solemnly, her lustrous brown eyes full on me, weighing me, weighing the idiot who is Dray Prescot, knowing already, as I knew, the only outcome of this situation.

  I held up my hand.

  Instantly, stillness and quietness fell over the babble.

  “I am ready, san.”

  Deb-Lu glanced back, tilting his turbanless head so the red Lohvian hair gleamed in the samphron oil lamp’s beam. He said something we could not hear to someone further back in his room. When he turned back I sensed a freshness in him, a lightening to his spirit.

  “Jak! Khe-Hi has hit upon a Capital Scheme. Ling-Li also... It Will Work, I am Assured of it... Capital—”

  Still speaking, the phantom image of Deb-Lu-Quienyin vanished.

  I waited. We all waited, hushed, expectant. We stood motionlessly, held by the thrall of our beliefs.

  Nothing happened.

  Nothing happened, that is, on the decks of Shankjid. But a very great deal was happening down there in and around Taranjin.

  Kirsty’s forces were now just about on the verge of breaking and that would be followed by a full scale rout. Masses of black smoke swept across the city obscuring buildings and streets. The noise spurted up as though a cavern of maniacal giants forged weapons for the gods. Whatever the Vallian forces were doing, they were certainly not putting pressure on the Shanks driving forward against Kirsty. In the air Shank vollers span and twisted and Hamalese and Vallian vollers fought back stubbornly. For a moment — a moment only and not a heartbeat longer — I fancied our aerial fleet would hold the Schtarkins. They still had not yet fathomed a way of countering the flutduins who tormented them so, even with the thaumaturgical assistance of Carazaar.

  And that arch demon?

  His cloud-supported throne hung above the town. Sparks and bolts of light flamed from it. Scintillant dots of fire broke away like molten gold, dripping and dropping in curtains of flame.

  Whatever he was up to, he was swinging the battle in favor of the Fish Faces. Unless our Wizards of Loh could counter Carazaar’s thaumaturgy very quickly, the battle was lost.

  The stink and taste of the conflict gagged in my throat. The flat raw stench of burning clogged nostrils and coated tongues. And my Guard Corps stood there, and now they were shifting from foot to foot impatiently, and the coughing to attract attention broke like waves upon a rocky shore.

  They would not be held much longer.

  Yet if I gave the word and sent them joyously down into the battle, the slaughter and the carnage, how could they triumph against sorcery of so potent a power as that against which we now strove?

  Where in a Herrelldrin Hell were Deb-Lu and Khe-Hi?

  Delia still held my arm, and I felt her firm grip as a solid comfort. Seg breathed evenly and lightly and Inch was running his fingers up and down the haft of his great Saxon pattern axe. Just to the rear of Delia stood some of her Jikai Vuvushis, and these Battle Maidens, as she had told me, were not all from the Sisters of the Rose. As I turned my head to look back to follow Carazaar’s hectic career across the heavens, his cloud-supported, flame-encrusted throne swooped down and out of sight below. My gaze, following him, was arrested by the group of women.

  Clad in fighting gear, lissom and strong, firm of feature, they presented a picture that could only be described as noble. About to turn back I halted as one Jikai Vuvushi spoke to her companion. She was a Hikdar, and although I was a mere man, I knew she was a member of the Sisters of Voxyra. Her face was very pale under the tan and two globules of sweat trickled down her temples from under her helmet. She leaned closer to the Hikdar at her side, and although she intended a whisper, I did not doubt, her words reached me clearly.

  “I knew ill would come of it, Scanda, when the prayer-idol of Our Lady Zunida the Laudable was stolen—”

  “Hush, Merle,” whispered back Hikdar Scanda. “Our Lady will still protect us.”

  “Oh, yes. But I still wish I knew who had stolen her prayer-idol.”

  This tiny fragment of conversation, caught and held like a stray fish in a net, lasted only for a heartbeat or so, and then I was back with the pressing disasters of the moment. There was time for me to wonder who would wish to steal a prayer-idol of a minor and semi-secret religious sect of whom I had heard no ill word.

  Seg growled out: “We’ll have to go down, my old dom.”

  “Aye,” said Inch, meaningfully.

  The chiefs of my Guard Corps, assembled on the deck of Shankjid, clearly shared that pragmatic view.

  Stonily, I spoke in a loud voice so that all might hear. “Give San Quienyin and San Bjanching a little more time.”

  A little sigh like a summer breeze across
a cornfield rippled across the crowded deck. The barrage of coughing lessened. I said, speaking curtly: “Go see where that devil in his flying throne has got to.”

  I was surprised to see Cadet Nalgre ti Mornlad come racing back with the information. He must have smuggled himself aboard from Dovad Daisy, probably with Sternum’s help. He yelped: “He’s going up again!”

  With that the coruscating throne skittered into view on the other beam and swung in a wide arc over us. Carazaar was watching us, ready to counter any move we might make.

  “By Ngrozyan the Axe!” snarled Inch. “I’d like to—”

  “Quite, dear,” said Sasha, staring venomously at the glittering glory of evil flying high over us.

  “Is there nothing we can do?” demanded Milsi, furiously.

  Seg lifted and lowered that famous Lohvian longbow. “It’s wizard’s work now, my heart.”

  “And have they migrated to Cottmer’s Caverns?” Delia fairly ripped it out. “By Vox! We must do something!”

  Yet we all knew there was nothing sensible we could do until our comrade Wizards of Loh had completed their thaumaturgy.

  Nalgre the Erkensator walked across with a pewter tray loaded with goblets of sazz. Delia snapped out: “See that everyone has a drink, Nalgre, please. It’s going to be thirsty work soon.”

  “Quidang, jes.”

  The sazz was flavored with blackcurrant and tickled my throat going down. Carazaar carried out another circle, flaming like a comet across the heavens. The lads shifted from foot to foot, and managed to remain steady. What was going on aboard the other ships of the fleet I hated to imagine. They were all flying flags that implored action.

  Without any rush of displaced air — for he was not really there at all — Deb-Lu appeared once more on the deck before me.

  His wise old face looked haggard. “It Is Accomplished, Jak.” He swallowed. “Khe-Hi calls down the blessings and the protection of the Seven Arcades upon your head. Go with Opaz.”

  I was standing on a yellow soft surface that undulated like a cranky boat in a seaway. Tall twisting smoke pillars rose ahead and the sky was a mere yellow shell of fire. A breeze blew into my face bringing the stinks of the charnel house, yet the wind did not disturb my hair or bend the rising columns of smoke. All about me hung a yellow luminosity.

  Out from the opening between the smoke columns waddled a creature of nightmare. Two scaled and stunted legs supported a torso and a flat squamous head, its eyes filled with malice below naked bone ridges. Four tentacular arms weaved patterns in the air before the thing, and each arm bore a round head with twin eyes alongside a wide and fang-filled mouth. I’d had a mouthful of arm scrunched off by one of those heads, and I’d lopped the four of them, and thrust my sword into the thing’s guts. But it had not been killed. Oh, no. For this was Arzuriel, Carazaar’s pet horror.

  Arzuriel waddled directly towards me and I leaped forward.

  Before, he and his master had delayed me long enough to prevent me saving the life of San Tuong Mishuro. Now they were trying to delay me so that the Fish Faces could complete their victory over us.

  The Krozair brand switched up and sideways and down and across four times. Four round furiously snapping heads rolled upon the yellow cloud.

  Hurdling the collapsing body I recognized well enough that this was not the end of Arzuriel, for he was a multi-dimensional creature.

  The ground swayed and I judged it to be a cloud, the same damned cloud Carazaar and his confounded throne chair were riding upon!

  Through the pillars of smoke I leaped and heat smote me. Just ahead a wall of smoke and flame broke up, blindingly, streaking all my vision with black tears. I didn’t think. I just put my head down and went blindly hurtling on. I crashed through the wall of fire. Scorching heat stung my body. I felt the breath burning my lungs. Then I was through and there he was, there he was, the arch devil himself!

  Instantly a long Lohvian black-fletched arrow spat viciously past my left ear.

  The keening hissing voice said: “Stand, Dray Prescot. Stand still!”

  That was N’gil, the little leech-like miscegenation of fish and some other unholy offspring. The red gash of his mouth opened across the corpse-gray of his face. “Your forces suffer destruction!”

  Now was this little unhealthy lot still an apparition? I did not think so. I realized then as I plunged on just what Deb-Lu and Khe-Hi had accomplished.

  Another arrow zinged in and this time it was aimed to strike. Remembering my previous doleful thoughts concerning these Bowmaids of Loh’s possible ability to shoot magical shafts that I could not deflect, I dodged aside and ran on. Another arrow flew.

  This time I had to knock it aside with the longsword. The feel and sound as the brand struck the shaft aside came most sweetly to me.

  “Stop, Dray Prescot!” The wheezing voice of Carazaar came like a freezing breath from the Ice Floes of Sicce. “You do ill here!”

  The footing across the yellow cloud might be treacherous. I’d learned to hold a balance running out along the yardarm on a dirty night. I fairly flew along, and now I was knocking shafts out of the air with contemptuous ease. I was wrought up. I admit that. This stinking devil in his throne stood for all the things I and my friends were combating in Paz on Kregen. He would drag us all down and see us all slain or enslaved just so his friends the Shanks could ride triumphant over us. Well, I’d have him! Oh, yes, I admit it, I admit it, I, Dray Prescot, went plunging headlong on, in as furious a frame a mind as I’d ever been in.

  That demonic frame of mind would easily encompass the destruction of the Bowmaids of Loh. They worked for this devil; ergo, they must be obliterated with him, along with his pets.

  He was no apparition. My Krozair brand would slice through his body and bring the blood spurting out. The sharp point would burst his heart. The keen edge would slit his throat. I knew if I once hit him I would not stop until he was ripped and torn into tiny pieces.

  Carazaar’s devilish face, scraped white, pinched, reflected a sudden, new and shocking concept. His eyes of that elusive blue-black hue with the mad glare of rhodopsin, smoky red, glared hotly upon me. Over the yellow cloud I raced on. I was nearer now, nearer than he could ever have expected. A hissing snarl of warning spat from N’gil.

  I quite expected Carazaar to lift the double-handed axe, double-bitted, and step down from his throne to challenge me.

  Some hope!

  He cursed at the Bowmaids, and their leader answered tartly. I braced myself. His sorcery was very great. It is a nonsense to imagine a simple fighting man with his sword can take on and successfully defeat a wizard in full possession of his magical skills. All this now was taking place only because sorcery was acting against sorcery.

  From the figure of Carazaar in the throne a figure of Carazaar picked up the axe and stepped down onto the yellow cloud. Carazaar sat in his throne surrounded by his pets, his chail sheom, his creatures, and Carazaar strutted before me, axe cocked over his shoulder, smoldering eyes boring into mine, ready to fight!

  Had, I wondered, Deb-Lu and Khe-Hi foreseen this?

  Which of these two devils was real, which was the apparition?

  With a snarl as vicious as his own I hurtled on. There was only one way to find out now!

  Abruptly, shockingly, just before I reached him — there were two Carazaars before me, and the third laughing in the throne!

  A two-handed axe against a two-handed sword.

  It all depends on skill.

  Perhaps this bastard for all his cleverness and sorcery was not aware of what a Krozair longsword was capable of. He pressed on — both of him pressed on — confidently. I used a neat and subtle twin-attack devised by Pur Zanath na Zenrik three hundred seasons ago. The Krozair brand sliced left and spilled one set of guts through the scale mail, then, without halting, checked the sweep of the second axe and so drove the point into the second set of guts.

  I stepped back.

  The two bodies vanished before they
hit the yellow cloud.

  There was no sign of the Bowmaids.

  N’gil was shrieking unintelligibly.

  The little scaled creature by his right boot jumped up and down in a frenzy against his chains.

  The two naked girls, one with streaming yellow hair, the other with short dark hair, stirred, and turned, and looked at me. I saw the entreaty in their eyes. I leaned forward with a snarl.

  The Krozair blade, darkly stained, lifted. It slashed down.

  That superb sword sliced empty air.

  Carazaar and his minions were gone. The smoke wafted away. The yellow cloud thinned and dissipated. I was falling.

  Clutching with the grip of death onto the hilt of my sword I fell. Down and down I plummeted and all about me the bright air rang and resounded with the awful din of battle.

  That hell-spawned hell-hound of evil had escaped!

  I turned over slowly in the air and saw below me the city spread out and the smoke and flame, the battling hordes caught in the frenzy of combat. The ships carrying my Guard Corps were landing, row after row. A change had overtaken the fight. No longer were Kirsty’s people running. No longer were the forces of Paz reeling back. Now they were advancing, pressing on, grimly determined to clinch the victory.

  Carazaar’s baleful influence had been banished.

  That was most satisfactory. As for me — well, I was like to hit the ground so hard I’d drill a personal hole right down to Cottmer’s Caverns.

  A feather-light touch held me. I was still descending. But now I was going down slowly, gently, and when I hit the ground I’d feel no more than if I’d jumped off the back of a zorca.

  “Good old Deb-Lu and Khe-Hi!” I said aloud.

  They had successfully placed me on the same plane as that occupied by Carazaar. Rightly, they had foreseen dangers. As I saw it, Carazaar’s nerve had failed. There was no doubt at all in my mind that he could have summoned up demons, monsters of unspeakable horror. He had chosen to test me himself — even if he’d cheated and used two facsimiles. The very swiftness of my Krozair attack and the sudden double destruction in the midst of his own self-assurance had undone him. And bad cess to him!