Mazes of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  We talked on for a space, for the Pallan of the Buildings was a learned man, brought out of retirement. He had had nothing to do with mad Empress Thyllis, living quietly on his estates. He bustled off, cheerfully, and in came Nedfar.

  “Please tell me what you propose in respect of the regular regiments of Djangs still in Hamal, Dray. I value them. But some of the people — well, they—”

  “They don’t like to see foreign troops in their capital city. Well, that is more than understandable.”

  “It is not quite that. Of course, you are right; but it has more to do with the very ferocity and build of your Djangs.”

  I laughed.

  “My four-armed Djangs will take most foemen apart, yes, I agree. As for your damned stinking Kataki slaver, with his whiptail and bladed steel, Djangs rejoice to blatter Katakis.”

  “No one likes Katakis.”

  “They almost took over your country, Nedfar.”

  “Only through that mad wizard, Phu-Si-Yantong. Well, all that is gone, dust blown with the wind. We admire your Djangs. But we would feel happier if there were apims of Vallia to represent your presence.”

  “Very good, Nedfar. I’ll see to it.”

  “You had no fortune last night?”

  “No.” I told Emperor Nedfar what had happened in The Ruby Winespout. “I’m seeing my man today. He has to know more about Spikatur than he has told us so far.”

  “I could wish the business well away and gone.”

  “Like your Tyfar and my Jaezila. Is it true that no one knows where they had flown?”

  “Perfectly true, for my people. I have asked.”

  “So have I. When your son and my daughter take it into their heads to plan a little intrigue, all the pressures of Imrien would not pry the secret loose.”

  “No, by Krun!”

  “And,” I said, making my voice more courteous, tactful, “the princess Thefi—?”

  Nedfar’s fierce eyebrows drew down. He had developed as a man wonderfully since he had become emperor, and I was now convinced that the megalomania from which he might easily suffer would be resisted. I’d damned well see to it, if it was not. And, as you will readily perceive, there is the example of my own megalomania...

  “My daughter Thefi has been sent to a distant cousin, in the country, to take the fresh air, to recuperate, and to take stock. As for Lobur the Dagger, he is posted at once to a Hamalian Air Service patrol, and is out there over the Mountains of the West fighting the wild men.”

  “Poor Lobur!”

  “And if he can win through, then he may win Thefi. Now, Dray, to business. We must restock the vital arms, we need cavalry mounts, both land and air, we need full-scale production of arrows and varter bolts, we need the mergem process to be speeded up—”

  “In short, Nedfar, we need the complete arsenal of a major power in full deployment to beat these confounded Shanks. I agree. So, let us to it!”

  Two meal breaks later we surfaced. I said, “I have contracted to go and see Pallan Ortyg ham Hundral. He has found the plans of the Temple of Havil in Splendor—”

  Nedfar rubbed a finger along his chin.

  “I seem to remember a flying ship of the Djangs dropped buckets of combustibles on that Temple, Dray.”

  “So I am told. Katakis were shooting varters from it.”

  In the little ensuing silence we both, in our own ways, regretted the follies and extravagances of battle.

  The enormous continent of Havilfar, stretching below the equator, contained many countries and nations, the largest of which was the Empire of Hamal up in the northeast corner. The Kingdom of Djanduin, out in the west, was almost as large. Up above the equator to the north lay the island of Pandahem, divided up into various countries, and divided, also, east to west by a chain of mountains which altered completely the climate of Northern and Southern Pandahem. North of there lay Vallia... And, to the east of Vallia, Valka...

  Well, I own it, I sensed the feelings of the people of Hamal. We of Vallia and Valka and Djanduin, with friends from Hyrklana and the Dawn Lands, had rid the world of the mad Empress Thyllis and the arch-fiend, Phu-Si-Yantong. But, well and all, perhaps we’d be better off at home? We might be overstaying our welcome here. I sensed this, in the delicate way Nedfar talked, his graceful gestures, and the way those eyebrows manipulated the shadows over his face.

  “We must rebuild Hamal, Nedfar. We must be strong to face those devilish Shanks who raid us. But I think you know my feelings on having a country fight its own battles.”

  “Yes,” he said wryly. “I remember.”

  “And I am restless. I am asked this and that, I do this and that, and yet—”

  ‘The Empress Delia?”

  “By Zair, how I miss her!”

  “Well, my friend, you must go adventuring, as you love so well to do.”

  “But—”

  He smiled, and in his firmness of feature reminded me of his son, Tyfar, who was a blade comrade and who would, if all our friends could knock some sense into him and her, marry my daughter Jaezila.

  “Oh, yes, Dray,” said the Emperor of Hamal, “there are always buts.”

  Then Seg came in after knocking and I was able to dissimulate. By Krun! But Nedfar was right!

  “Seg!” I said, and I spoke so that my comrade swung instantly to face me, and I saw that quickly suppressed flick of his hand, ready to draw sword or bow. “Seg, my old dom. You and I are due for some roving again — we have nothing now to detain us here.”

  “That is true. I have the Kroveres of Iztar, but we are busily recruiting and things go passably well—”

  “We will visit Vallia and Valka—”

  “Visit?”

  Nedfar saw what Seg meant.

  “Can you visit your home?”

  For me, an Earthman transited across four hundred light-years of emptiness to a marvelous and wonderful new world — to such a one — where did home lie? With Delia, yes. But she was off adventuring, driven by compulsions a mere mortal man was not allowed to share. Home? Yes, Valka was my home, up there in the high fortress castle of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium and the bay. And, too, the gorgeous enclave city of Zenicce was home to me, and so were the tents of my ferocious Clansmen of Segesthes. And, too, so was the windy city of Djanguraj in my Kingdom of Djanduin. I have many homes, many I have not spoken of. But I think in the end a fellow’s true home is what he carries in his head. Where his thoughts lie, that is home.

  Another knock sounded and the two guards opened the doors with a quick check of the fellow they admitted.

  Protocol, at least for the Emperor of Vallia, was deliberately relaxed.

  One of the guards, old whiskery Rubin who could sink a stoup of ale without pause and who had been in one or another of my regiments for a long long time, opened his mouth and bellowed: “Majister! Andoth Hardle, the Spy, craves audience!”

  I did not burst out laughing. But, by Vox, I own my craggy old beakhead split into a most ferocious smile of pleasure. Good old Rubin. Spies, like anyone else, had to be announced to the emperor unless they were personal friends.

  “He,” observed Seg, “won’t be a spy for long if Rubin shouts any louder.”

  “Send him in, Rubin,” I said

  “Quidang!”

  And so my latest spy, Andoth Hardle, trotted in.

  Trotted. Well, he was small and lithe and wore a chin beard, and was deft and inconspicuous, quick with a dagger, and wearing link mesh under his tunic. He bowed.

  “Majister.”

  “Sit down, Andoth, and take a glass. Your news?”

  “The woman with the coiled hair has been taken up.”

  “What!” exclaimed Seg. “So easily?”

  Andoth Hardle sat in the chair that did not stand next to my desk, and he delicately filled the glass on the side table with parclear. He put the jug down and rearranged the linen cover. He lifted the glass and the parclear sparkled.

  One does not ordinarily toast in parclear. />
  “Taken up, Kov Seg. She was discovered lying in the gutter, drunk and stupid.”

  At once Seg and I believed we understood.

  “Poor soul,” said Seg, and he spoke softly.

  Nedfar, too, caught the drift.

  “Yet, she was an enemy, and would have destroyed us.”

  “True.”

  “You will see her, majister?” Hardle drank and wiped his lips daintily with lace-trimmed linen from his sleeve.

  “I will see her, Andoth.”

  Seg looked in my direction, and I nodded. Of course.

  Then I said, “Andoth. This is good news. But, before I see her, make sure she is sober and cleaned up, given fresh clothes if necessary, fed and cared for.”

  “I understand, majister. It shall be as you command.”

  “Does she give a name?”

  Hardle twisted his head sideways. “She is not, majister, the Lady Helvia. At least, she says her name is Pancresta.”

  “I see. Send for Hamdi the Yenakker. Have him study this woman, and do not let her see him. I feel there is a great deal we can learn from her.”

  So that was how it was arranged. But privately I wondered just how much we would ever learn about Spikatur Hunting Sword.

  Chapter three

  Questions for Spikatur

  The corridors, sculpted from rock, trimmed with rock, arched and groined with rock, loomed grim and forbidding. The walls ran with moisture. Torches hurled sharp sparks from glittering particles embedded in the walls. The floor slimed slippery underfoot. These were dungeons.

  Yet the woman Pancresta had been placed in a room furnished with some comfort, with carpets and wall hangings, with tables and chairs, and a brazier against the underground damp and chill. Her room would not have shamed a middle-class hotel.

  She stood up as we entered.

  Her coiled hair was neatly arranged. She wore a long blue robe, and the hems were trimmed with fur. A cheap fur, perhaps, but soft and warm. Her face was pale.

  While that was natural, the paleness was more a habitual absence of high color than a result of her capture, her present predicament. This, I felt strongly.

  Her face was of the long, plain, strong type, with prominent cheekbones, and a tight mouth. She had worn armor, and a sword belted around those lean hips. She would be mean in a fight, and mean elsewhere, and now she was filled with a vindictive desire to revenge herself for the death of her lover.

  I said, “Mistress Pancresta?”

  She inclined that hard face, and the coiled hair caught the light.

  “You will not believe me, Mistress Pancresta, if I express sorrow for the deaths of your companions. But it is so. Needless death offends me.”

  “Death is not needless when it is such as you who should die.”

  Seg opened his mouth, and I said, and I think I surprised her, “Why?”

  “Why?”

  She opened her eyes fully. They were dark with pain.

  “Yes. Why is it needful that I die?”

  “Because you are one of the lordly ones.”

  I laughed.

  “I? A lordly one? You mock me, Mistress Pancresta.”

  Her hard face did not flush; but her lips tightened still more.

  She fairly spat out: “You are the Emperor of Vallia. That, alone, marks you for destruction.”

  “As to that,” I said casually, “I’m inclined to agree with you. But that has nothing to do with death.”

  She was puzzled.

  “You speak in riddles.”

  “No. I speak in words that will be understood by those who have the intelligence to understand.”

  “Now you mock me.”

  Truth to tell, true though all this was, it was of small comfort to me, knowing that I intended to shift the job of being Emperor of Vallia off onto my fine son Drak. Still, he was born to be an emperor. I had merely gained that job by my sword and by election. There were differences. And, mind you, my way may very well be the better of the two...

  “I would like you to tell me what you know of Spikatur Hunting Sword.”

  She smiled then, a hard and cruel smile. But I fancied there was uncertainty in it, too.

  “Spikatur will sweep you and all your kind away.”

  “You mean you will go around murdering all the people you don’t like?”

  “No — it is not like that—”

  “Then what is it like?”

  “It is a Great Jikai!”[ii]

  I frowned. The misuse of the word Jikai does not amuse me.

  “I allow there are many princes and kings in this world who would be better off out of it. But not all. And not all the ordinary folk you people murder. You are drenched in blood, and most of it is blood of innocent people.”

  Now, Nedfar was a man of high principles, a man of impeccable integrity, as I knew. He had been talked to long and long before agreeing to become the Emperor of Hamal. But, for all that, he was a natural-born prince, a Prince of Kregen. Now he coughed a dry little cough and spoke firmly. “I am against the use of torture. It dismays and sickens me. But in certain cases—”

  Seg said, “Careful, Emperor. Dray is sensitive on that point.”

  Nedfar’s reply was brusque.

  “So am I, Kov Seg. But my good friend Trylon Agrival was foully murdered the other week by these monsters. He was a man steeped in the ancient lore of the Sunset People. Why should they murder him?”

  “Because,” burst out the woman, “he pried into secrets we were never meant to discover.”

  Extraordinarily difficult, by Krun, to argue against beliefs of this kind!

  But argue one must. At least, argue and talk and cajole. Torture — no. I’d have no part of that, and neither would Seg. And, while my regiments remained in Hamal, neither would Nedfar, comrade or no. And there spoke the voice of paranoia, loud and clear...

  I said, “I have struggled against unjust authority all my life. I have been slave. I have been whipped and tortured and chained in far fouler dungeons than any you may imagine, Mistress Pancresta. I do understand so much of what Spikatur Hunting Sword originally stood for.” I used the Spikatur oath. “By Sasco! I have fought alongside the adherents of Spikatur!”

  She looked surprised not so much at what I said, for that could all be a hollow shell of lies, designed to trick her, but at my use of the oath calling on Sasco.

  “What do you know, fool, of Spikatur?”

  So I told her what little we knew. The Spikatur Hunting Sword conspiracy had begun as a force to defeat Hamal. We believed it originated in Pandahem. It was made up of groups of people and owned no single leader.

  At this she leered at me, and her voice thickened.

  “This is all over now.”

  Seg whistled.

  I saw what she had let slip.

  She, too, saw. Her lids lowered over her eyes. Her mouth clamped to a bar.

  “We shall leave now, Mistress Pancresta. But we shall return. I need answers to those questions. If you know, I think it would be wise to answer.”

  “We of Spikatur Hunting Sword are not afraid to die for what we believe.”

  “I know,” I said, and we went out and left her alone. And then Nedfar, regal, dazzling in his robes, a prince, the Emperor of Hamal, turned at the door as the guards prepared to clang the bars shut.

  “Remember, Mistress Pancresta. Dying is easy. It is of the manner of dying that you should think.”

  Seg started to say as we walked up that dolorous corridor: “You wouldn’t really—” Nedfar shook his head.

  “Of course not. But dark thoughts loosen tongues.” The whole scene here distressed me, because a woman was incarcerated, because we were trying to force her to reveal what she had sworn to keep hidden, because the naked face of force was being used. But remembering old Trylon Agrival did make the point. He had been a Vallian, visiting Hamal and seeking to uncover the riddles of the past. He was gentle, absorbed in his work, a man out of the run of politics. Nedfar and
Agrival had struck up a firm friendship. Agrival had tended to wander off into ruins, poking and prying, trying to read the old inscriptions. Such a man was very far from the lordly ones of Kregen, rubbing the noses of the poor in the dirt.

  Yet the assassins of Spikatur Hunting Sword had murdered him.

  I felt that a new wave of terror would be unleashed, that this new leader the Spikatur adherents had acquired, this dark unknown, would bring down all that we had been struggling to achieve.

  Once, I had seen Spikatur as a potent if suspect weapon in the struggle against Hamal. Now that weapon was being turned against the very people who had emerged successfully from the fight against Hamal — the Hamal represented by mad Empress Thyllis — and against innocent people who stood aloof from the conflict. This did make sense. But in the context of Kregen and the future we all faced in dealing with the marauding Shanks, the sense was completely overshadowed by the greater sense of mutual preservation and freedom.

  “Cheer up, my old dom,” quoth Seg as we emerged into the glorious twinned rays of the Suns of Scorpio. “Now this fresh air after those dungeons gives me an appetite.”

  “Capital,” I said, and off we went to find our second breakfast.

  Not in the mood for one of those huge festive meals of Kregen, Seg and I bade a temporary farewell to Nedfar and took ourselves off to our private rooms. There we ate well, quaffed good Kregen tea, and discussed just what we planned to do.

  As usual, Seg took up the latest stave on which he was practicing his magic. In due time that stave would become a superb bowstave. There is, as I have said before and will no doubt say again, no finer archer in all Kregen than Seg Segutorio. His face was intent as he worked.

  “And you plan to take off, leave all this high life, tramp off into the wilderness?”

  “If fate takes me that way. Otherwise, I plan a little jaunt to a few places I know where one may come by some action, a few drinks, good food and a lot of laughs—”

  “You will go alone?”

  “Only if you elect not to come.”

  He looked up quickly, and the fey blueness of his eyes struck like daggered lightning through a black overcast. He smiled. He gave the stave a tremendous buffet so that it spun around and around.