Mazes of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  “We’ve both been slave, we’ve both been paktuns, we’ve both been hungry and thirsty — and we’ve both been fine lords. You take what comes.”

  “That’s right, by Vox!”

  “And if you can nudge fate along a little bit—”

  “All the same,” said Seg, cutting in, having thought this thing through. “Fine lords, you say. We’ve been fine lords, and we still are! And, you’re—”

  “Yes. But it will surely suit our purpose better to be simple paktuns hiring out to guard this expedition? Surely?”

  Seg sniffed. “Going along as minions? Very well. As you say, we take what comes.”

  So, into the back entrance of The Dragon’s Roost we went to join up with the brave expedition venturing into the jungle-choked slopes of the Snarly Hills.

  Chapter eleven

  Of Another Fist

  The smells of cooking wafted deliciously from the back quarters of The Dragon’s Roost. The scurry of slaves intruded an unpleasant note into an idyllic scene; but all in Opaz’s good time we would remove the blot of slavery from Paz. We followed Hop the Intemperate through a room stuffed with sacks and boxes of food and hanging garlands of vegetables, and along a corridor. The kitchens lay ahead, and my mouth watered.

  Hop opened the door and motioned for us to go through.

  Seg went first.

  I followed.

  As I turned to look back for Hop an object of considerable hardness, some size, of rugged knobbyness and traveling at a goodly speed slap-bang-crashed into my chin.

  I went over backwards, upsetting a pile of copper pots.

  Girls started screaming. Steam filled the air. I sat up on the floor in a lake of half-cooked cabbages and stared at Hop.

  He stood just inside the door, rubbing the knuckles of his right fist. He looked — through the hair — mighty pleased.

  “That, I think, makes us even.”

  I moved my jaw. My eyes watered. I did not shake my head. My chin had click-clicked twice under each ear as I moved it.

  “You, Hop the Intemperate,” I said. “Have a fist, also.”

  “Aye.”

  Seg said, “It is just as well this is all friendly, for you should know, Hop the Rash, your insides would have been strewn across the floor for the cooks to inspect, had I so wished.”

  That, for Seg, was a long speech.

  Hop chuckled.

  “You are no paktuns, wandering for hire. I heard from mistress Tlima but did not realize at first. You are rip-roaring lords out for adventure, and I own to some simple pleasure in feeling the tingle in my knuckles.”

  So that settled all our devious schemes to hire on.

  We were accepted into the expedition as members. The unpleasant Strom Ornol had to acquiesce in the wishes of the majority, otherwise he would have been out of the expedition. Exandu expressed sorrow that he had not hired on two fine upstanding rogues to protect him, for, as he said between sneezes and sniffs at the aromatic fumes, and swigs of herbal and honey concoctions: “I am not long for this world. My bones are too frail to support my body, and my poor old heart strains to keep me alive. Why do I venture into so rash an undertaking?”

  Privately, Hop said to Seg in a whisper, “The old fraud is after the gold and jewels, that’s why.”

  We were introduced to the other members of the party. The spoils were to be divided into six. Seg and I now came into one share. Strom Ornol and his retinue, including the lady Ilsa, would take another. Exandu would gasp and wheeze, no doubt, while pocketing his share.

  When we sat around the circular table in the window alcove corner of The Dragon’s Roost, bottles and jugs nestling on the polished sturm wood, Kalu Na-Fre wrapped his tail hand around his flagon. Before lifting it to his lips, he picked up a single paline from the dish in each of his two left hands. These he popped, and chewed with relish and then the tail hand brought the flagon to his lips. With his right hand he pointed to the map, opened among the litter of bottles.

  He took the flagon away and said, “The distance is not great as the fluttrell flies.”

  Strom Ornol, pale-faced as ever, showed his disgust.

  “You are in Pandahem now, Kalu Na-Fre.”

  The Pachak popped two more palines with his two left hands. The right hand described circles on the map.

  “My point precisely.”

  “It,” said Exandu plaintively, “will prove a sore trial for my poor old bones.”

  The Pachak, Kalu Na-Fre, brushed back his long yellow hair. He used one of his left hands and his right. Before their movements were finished his right-handed tail hand lifted the flagon. These wonderful folk of Kregen with more than an apim’s miserable allotment of two arms and two legs must, it is clear, be endowed with lobes in their brains that enable them to coordinate their intricate movements. As for the cunning interlocking shoulder jointing, these are marvels of bio-engineering, in all the different systems found in Kildoi, Pachak, Djang and all the others.

  “You do not have a suggestion, then, Kalu?”

  “Only that we will have to walk once the animals can go no farther.”

  Exandu sniffed and consoled himself with a swig of Mother Babli’s Home Brew, strongly laced, I fancied, with an expensive wine.

  Kalu Na-Fre and his people would come in for their sixth share.

  Any puzzlement we might have had that the booty was to be split six ways between the principals, despite the numbers of people they brought as minions, was resolved, at least in my mind, by what I surmised of the relationships here. Strom Ornol, a feckless younger son of a noble house, had been kicked out by his father to make his own way in the world. He was up past his ears in debt to Exandu.

  Seg and I had put in our contribution in good Hamalian golden deldys. That currency was well-known down in the south of Pandahem, very well known. We made it crystal clear that we were not Hamalese, and backed that by our appearance as adventurers out in the world and no longer owning allegiance to any one nation.

  Over in a corner the patrons of The Dragon’s Roost were playing dice. The game was Soshiv and the click of the ivory cubes rattled as a background to our decisions. Soshiv — the word is one of the common ways of expressing the number eighteen — so times shiv, three times six — entails using six dice each per player. Three are thrown, the highest total being eighteen, and then the opposing players take their turns to throw against point. There are complicated betting arrangements and conventions ordering the reading of the dice. The click click and the calls as the numbers fell accompanied our deliberations as we prepared for the expedition.

  Skort, the fifth member of the party, said very little. As a Clawsang he was well aware that his appearance could so unsettle and upset some people that at best they would be sick and at worst — well, Skort the Clawsang wore armor and carried weapons.

  As for myself, and Seg also, as I knew, Clawsangs were merely another form of human life in the world. If you imagined that their skull-like faces, covered with a tightly stretched pebbly skin of grey and green granulated texture, blunt of jaw, the roots of the teeth exposed, the nostrils mere sunken slits, the eyes, overhung by bony projections, of a smoky crimson, if, then, you imagined this face emerging from a freshly opened grave, you could be pardoned for the thought, unworthy though it was. It was not the Clawsangs’ fault they looked as though they were decomposing.

  Mind you, even the stoutest hearts might flinch if they bumped into a Clawsang on a pitch-black night of Notor Zan with only the erratic illumination of a torch to pick out the rotting teeth and the decomposed nose and the glaring crimson eyes...

  Yet Skort was not ashamed of his appearance. Why should he be? This was the way the gods had fashioned him. Perhaps he found the jolliness of a full-fleshed ruddy countenance as offensive to him; a bloated bladder of blood.

  The Clawsang’s voice sounded like the rustle of bat wings from a Herrelldrin Hell as he spoke. He did so infrequently. He kept his weapons handy about him. His people maintained a
sharp lookout.

  Skort said, “We must march. Why do we hesitate?”

  The lady Ilsa could not bear to look on Skort. Strom Ornol, over his shoulder, said, “We wait for the sorcerer.”

  “And if he is not here soon,” said Exandu, “I shall retire to bed. I feel faint, and I am sure I have an infection in my right ear. I can hardly hear that side.”

  The business of the tavern went on, and ale was quaffed and the dice players threw and presently a girl came in to dance. She was a Sybli, and lusciously beautiful in a vapid way, and when she had finished a handful of copper was thrown, and one or two silver pieces. She picked them up gracefully and departed, and the ale went around again.

  The local brew, made from plants tended with loving care, was a fine straw-yellow, very clear, not over strong, an ale made for quenching the thirst and not for fighting on.

  Had this part of the forested area of Pandahem lent itself to hops production as I knew it, the brew would have been improved considerably. As it was, Seg and I drank a little, and talked, and sized up the people of the party with whom we would soon be risking our lives.

  As Seg, speaking quietly behind his ale jug, said, “I judge the Clawsang to be a fighter, and the Pachak, clearly. This Strom Ornol could be useful if he is not wounded. Exandu?”

  “He really believes he can catch all the illnesses sent by all the devils there are. But he looks healthy enough.”

  “Aye. And we are to have a sorcerer with us.”

  “If all the tales the locals tell are true, that might be not only useful but essential.”

  “If you believe the stories...”

  The inhabitants of Selsmot were riddled with the dread of the Snarly Hills. Travel toward the south went invariably all the way around in boats on the River of Bloody Jaws. The trails went east and west, for a way; not south.

  The conversation, such as it was, became general as Ornol, fretfully, exclaimed, “But the bandits have stopped attacking the caravans and the river traffic. Why, then, is there still this superstitious dread of the Snarly Hills?”

  The Pachak, Kalu Na-Fre, said, “Perhaps a greater evil has settled there.”

  The lady Ilsa looked flustered. Skort the Clawsang rubbed a skeletal hand across the rotting roots of his teeth. Ornol’s color rose. And Exandu fluttered his yellow kerchief in a wild and vain attempt to halt a tremendous sneeze.

  “There is a draught! I am sure of it! Shanli, my pet, find the draught—”

  “Yes, yes, master. It is there, over by that window—”

  She started to rise, and, in truth, a breath of air did fan in from an ill-fitting window shade. Seg stood up.

  “Mistress Shanli. Please allow me.”

  She flushed.

  Exandu, fluttering his kerchief, did not notice and Seg went across and adjusted the shade. We thought nothing of the incident.

  No one spoke further on the subject of greater evils.

  The risks ahead of us we could guess would be great. There is on Kregen a saying — “Don’t dice with a four-armed fellow” — which attempts to caution against taking foreseeable and unnecessary risks. What we would be facing would be perils of the unknown kind.

  The locals, while relishing relating to us all manner of ghastly stories of the Snarly Hills and accepting drinks, did not wish actively to be too closely associated with us. They would not sit at our table. Their grimaces and winks, their grave nods, even the way they quaffed the ale we bought for them, all contributed to a creeping horror about to overwhelm us.

  One of the locals, a Rapa, having imbibed a skinful, decided it was time to go home. His strongly vulturine face, the sharp beak surrounded by a bristle of brown and grey feathers, turned toward the door before the fellow’s body followed the commands of his brain. His plain tunic was ale-stained. He was happy, though.

  Tangle-footed, he swayed toward the door and then — and the transition was abrupt — he lurched sideways in terror and crashed into a table. Ale spilled. Tankards flew. The people at the table leaped back; but their protests died in their throats.

  Through the open doorway came the sixth member of our party.

  “At last,” said Strom Ornol. “Fregeff. Now perhaps we can decide.” The young lord took no notice of the turmoil the sorcerer’s entrance caused.

  This Fregeff, one could see at a glance, was an Adept of the Doxology of San Destinakon. Swathed in an enveloping gown of brown and black lozenges that bewildered with their subtle shifts of alignment as he moved, he presented an imposing figure simply because one knew what he was. Set against wizards of other cults, an Adept of the Doxology of San Destinakon appears dark, somber and eclipsed. This is an illusion.

  Because he was a Fristle, his powerful catlike features arrogant within the hood, he did not bear a woflovol upon his left shoulder. The bronze cham about his waist connected to a bronze necklet, and that hoop rested securely around the neck of a vicious winged reptile, a volschrin, one of the rissniks. The narrow head lay low beside the Fristle’s ear. A red tongue darted. The membranous wings were folded back, and the barbed tail was hidden within the sorcerer’s hood. When those wings unfurled and were spread and the volschrin flew wickedly to tear out the eyes of his victim, they spanned a full arm’s breadth. But his body was no larger than that of a cat, and, like his catman master, he hissed.

  The hissing voice said, “Greetings and Lahal.”

  We all replied politely. The sorcerer moved toward our table and the empty seat. He placed his wooden-hafted bronze flail upon the sturm-wood table, and sat down. The brown and black lozenges adorning his robe shifted eye-wateringly.

  No one ventured to suggest he was late for the meeting.

  Fregeff turned his head and whispered to the reptile on his shoulder, and then called, “A dish of blood, and swiftly!”

  Without delay a pottery dish awash in fresh chicken blood was hurried in. The serving girl, a plain-faced gentle soul, trembled as she placed the gory dish upon the table.

  The volschrin hopped down, bronze links clanking, and lapped.

  “Well,” said Strom Ornol, his voice quivering from affronted dignity, “perhaps now we can get started.”

  Chapter twelve

  Through the Snarly Hills

  “Hold on a moment, Seg,” I said, and halted on the forest slope to catch a breath. “My lungs are on fire, and my side burns.”

  Seg stopped to look back. Some of the others took the opportunity to halt in a straggly line between the trees under the dim green light. Seg didn’t believe me.

  “It’s all uphill and down my old dom, I know. But—?”

  Strom Ornol bustled up. His pale face looked greenish in the light and — was that a flush of color along the cheekbones? Possible, although unlikely...

  “What are you lollygagging about for? Come on, come on!”

  Skort the Clawsang passed me, his bulging knapsack just about finding room between me and the tree I leaned against. I had to pull back to let him pass. His skull face turned toward me, but he said nothing. Only his crimson eyes gleamed as he passed.

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “I’ll rupture my inward parts if we gallop along like this.”

  Seg’s face was a picture.

  The Fristle sorcerer, for whom we had waited for our meeting in The Dragon’s Roost, also passed without a word. His winged pet balanced agilely on his shoulder, every now and again flirting a wing out to maintain balance. A right pair, they were...

  Exandu waddled up.

  His face resembled Zim at the going down of the day, seen through a misty haze, embracing all around him with a roseate glow. Sweat dropped. He puffed.

  “I have—” he gasped, and swallowed, and tried again. “I have a thorn through my foot. I am sure of it. And my face — I am bitten through to the bone by these pinheads!”

  Shanli helped him. Her face was intent.

  “I have ointments, master — when we rest—”

  “When! That Ornol strides on like a madman!�
�

  “We rest now, Exandu,” I said. I turned as the blue shadow that was the lady Ilsa halted, gasping, her hand to her side. “We rest now.”

  “Oh” said Seg. He beamed. Then: “Why didn’t you just tell the infernal idiot?”

  “He believes he leads us. That is fine—” I looked away as Ilsa more fell than sat down. She still did not accept us as equals, and Seg and I couldn’t care less. I said to no one in particular, “If I can’t have a rest now, I will not answer for the consequences.”

  When Strom Ornol strode back along the line of struggling people with their burdens he found us sitting comfortably, our backs against the tree, sipping ale.

  He frowned.

  He picked on the lady Ilsa.

  “Up, Ilsa. We must get on. You keep me waiting.”

  “My feet, Ornol—”

  Her moccasins were strong and sensible, supple and resistant to thorns. But no one was in any doubt that marching over this forested range of hills was a laborious and painful business for anyone, let alone a girl. I had ventured, just the once, to suggest that the ladies be left in Selsmot. I had been told by Ornol to shut my mouth and keep out of his business, and by Exandu that, much as he regretted the necessity, Shanli had to go. “It’s my insides, you see. Shanli understands them. She keeps me alive.”

  We crawled to our feet after a bit, following Ilsa, who obeyed the strom. But that was not the first or the last time I called for a halt because I was too fatigued to go farther.

  Seg told Ornol, “You see, strom, he was stung by a Cabaret Plant. It has drained his strength.”

  “If he’s this bad, he shouldn’t have started.”

  Walking along, Hop the Intemperate said, sotto voce, “If he’s this bad he’d be dead.”

  Seg walked with Hop for a space after that, and explained the situation. Hop’s hairy face moved in an expressive way. He grasped it. Later he was seen talking to Shanli, and later still, when we stopped again, Exandu took the opportunity to say in a quiet voice, “You are a man of parts, Dray the Bogandur. A man of resource.”