Masks of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Those devil-spawned rasts of Malpettar took all our palines, and cut down my bush.”

  About to make a reply that, I felt, could not be the right one — for any ship’s company sailing without palines to suck and chew on and to find the surcease those remarkable berries can bring, is a ship’s company in deep trouble — I was saved by Dayra’s breathless entry. I stood up.

  With all the cracking relish of a ship’s captain, Vylene snapped out: “You do not enter here without knocking and waiting, Ros the Claw! Now go—”

  “To hell with that! We’re all starving — and all we get is this!” She threw a biscuit onto the desk. “Hard tack! Weevilly biscuits and no palines!”

  Vylene handled herself well.

  “Go away at once, Ros the Claw, and I will forget this incident. You are subject to naval discipline aboard my ship. If you have come to appeal to the emperor—” Here she half-turned to look at me, and I fancied the gleam of a tinge of uncertainty caught at her.

  At once I said: “The lady Vylene commands here, Ros.”

  “But my guts ache!”

  “As do everyone’s. We shall be leaving soon. Now—”

  Dayra simply turned around and rushed from the cabin.

  Not prepared to continue this scene, I sat down again. What Vylene was thinking of my choice of traveling companions made uncomfortable reflections. It was clear that the alias of Ros the Claw well-concealed the identity of the Princess Dayra. As it should do, of course...

  Vylene did say, being human: “These Rosy ones, beloved of Dee Sheon. I must crave your forgiveness, majister.”

  I said, “If I write to the empress, can you make arrangements to deliver the letter into the right hands?”

  This was an appropriate moment for the subject.

  She looked at me, a strong, competent, firm-faced woman in her rags of uniform.

  “I am of the Sisters of the Sword. I will call Sosie ti Vendleheim for you.”

  I nodded and sat down to the sweetest writing task any man may have in two worlds. Sosie came in and stood quietly waiting. She was just such a Sister of the Rose as so many of them were, lithe and limber, flushed with the graciousness of youth and high spirits, wearing her tatters with panache and with the marks of hard toil upon her. When I had finished I turned and said: “Sosie.”

  “Majister.”

  “I entrust to you this letter for the Empress Delia. You, I believe, will see it delivered safely.”

  “As Dee Sheon is my witness.”

  As she spoke she made that small secret sign. I nodded, satisfied, and handed the sealed packet across.

  When she had gone I stood up and stretched and said to Vylene: “I thank you for your courtesy, lady.

  Now I must be about my business.”

  “You will take the flier?”

  “Aye, Vylene. Aye, I will take the flier. She will be invaluable.” Then I outlined some of what was going on across in Port Marsilus, and finished: “So they continue to recruit an army there to invade southwest Vallia.”

  “We are on patrol against just such a threat.”

  “Good. But you’ll be sailing for Vondium directly.”

  “Yes. The yards will soon refit us.”

  I said: “One last boon before I go.” I touched the green cloth about my waist. “Have you a length of scarlet cloth in exchange for this?”

  Well, that was swiftly provided.

  Out on deck I saw Dayra with her head down talking to Sosie ti Vendleheim. My Val! but they looked splendid! As I walked across ready to go overside into the voller, Dayra looked up. Sosie moved away, discreetly, stuffing a packet into the remnants of her russet tunic. Dayra smiled at me.

  “Well, Jak! And are you ready now?”

  “Quite ready. You?”

  “Oh, aye,” and here she put the little finger of her left hand into her mouth and wriggled the nail around her teeth.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you—?” I began.

  “Yes. But you know how roast ponsho gets between the teeth!”

  “You little minx!”

  She laughed and hoicked a leg up and so slid down into the voller. When folk’s insides sound as cavernous as a bat hell then there are tricks aboard a ship to provide the necessaries... I was still sharp set — sharp set! I was starving. But young Dayra had gorged good roast ponsho...

  The folk crowded to the bulwarks to look on us as we shot off, waving and calling the remberees. Val Defender was already in process of resuming some semblance of a fighting vessel of the air. Her crew were in good heart. I settled back as Dayra at the controls sent the voller slicing through the bright air of Kregen. If a man can ever be content, which by nature he cannot, I suppose that was a moment of minor contentment as Dayra turned and extended a hand.

  “Here.”

  I took the wrapped bundle, a yellow cloth folded over, and unwrapped it, and so looked at a chunk of roast ponsho, a heel of bread and a dip of butter. The ponsho was cold; but it was superb. Eating, I looked at Dayra, and out across the cloud-castled sky, and sighed, and chewed. Life, life... A funny old business, by Zair!

  She said with an abruptness that revealed her indecision: “I am glad you wrote to mother—”

  “I would not have thought Sosie would tell you that.”

  “Why not? I sent a letter, also—”

  “I see. So Sosie knows—”

  “Well, of course! We went through Lancival together.”

  “Then I am glad you wrote to your mother. She has been through perilous times since I last saw her. The quicker we can settle this affair of Pando’s up, and sort out that army in Port Marsilus, and burn a few more temples to Lem the Silver Leem, the quicker we can go home.”

  She regarded me with an odd expression.

  “You are the emperor. What really keeps you here? You could easily fly home directly, now — why not?”

  She knew nothing of the Star Lords.

  Obscurely, not fully certain, I felt this was not the time to tell her of the Everoinye. That would come.

  Instead, I said: “It is a matter of plain common sense. If we can prevent the army sailing, or hurt it in some way, we fight for Vallia.”

  “That is true.”

  “And this flat slug King Nemo of Tomboram. Now if we can handle him aright he might be more friendly—”

  She fired up. “Friendly! I’ll tell you what we should do with this flat King Nemo. We should chuck him out and get someone else in — your friend Pando, perhaps?”

  “The thought had occurred to me. But—”

  “But what?”

  “Life is not as easy as the Shadow Plays, or the Farces they knock about in the Souks of Lanterns—”

  “I know that!”

  Well, she did, she did, as I could testify...

  I talked to her for a time as we drove on southward through thin air about the greater problems of Paz, our grouping of islands and continents. She shared the general aversion and horror everyone felt about the Shanks who raided us. We talked companionably, and I felt these recent adventures had helped to bring us at least a little closer together.

  Following the road, we passed over forests and open areas and just about the time we calculated, working on the assumption of speed of Pompino’s party, we spied them trudging along below. They were all looking up and pointing and already unslinging their weapons. We had taken in the flags of Tomboram, for this was a king’s ship, and mightily unusual for Pandahem. We leaned over and waved.

  “Hai! Pompino!” I bellowed. “Are your feet sore?”

  “Jak! You’re the greatest unhanged rascal that ever—” So, amid the shouts of lahal and the uproar, we landed. Soon, with everyone loaded aboard, up we soared, on course for Plaxing, Kov Pando, and what the future might bring of disaster or triumph.

  Chapter seven

  We name Golden Zhantil

  “Clearly,” said Kov Pando, “the airboat will have to be returned to the king. I’m in trouble enough as it is.
He was telling me the last time I had civil words with him of how he had negotiated the purchase of an airboat from the Dawn Lands. Mighty proud he is of it. Armipand the Malignant will not spare any horrors for the malefactors who stole it.” He glared at me in a most stern fashion.

  Pompino burst out most wroth: “But, kov! We cannot send it back! Anyway, we have named the airboat Pride of Bormark.”

  I said, “Anyone who takes the airboat back to King Nemo is likely to be thrown from her deck, very high in the air, or, talking of air, he may find an air gap between head and shoulder blades.”

  “Too right!”

  We sat at Pando’s high table in his great hall in his steading of Plaxing. We had eaten until we could burst. The samphron oil lamps gleamed. A party of musicians twiddled their instruments, waiting for the kov to give them leave to begin. Because a Kregan kov is like and yet not quite like an Earthly duke, some of his functions appear odd. As for young Pando himself, well, he worried me. His sharp alert face with the jutting beard, the intelligence in his eyes, as the popular conception goes, the marks of authority about him, might have reassured me; but his irritability of manner, the way his left hand kept rubbing over the pommel of his sword, the way his energies appeared almost manically directed, yes, as I say, young Pando worried me.

  We had not yet seen his mother, Tilda of the Many Veils, and everyone knew this was because by this time in the evening she was lushly into her third, or fourth, bottle and would not be disturbed for an earthquake.

  Pando had greeted us kindly. He was a great lord, even if he was for a moment in disgrace and in what amounted to hiding. He’d been disgraced before and had won back into the king’s favor. But my comrades were aware that Pando was a kov, one of the great ones of the world. Also, we had been very swift to tell him that we held no allegiance to the Silver Wonder, and were aware that he had joined the worshipers of Lem only so as to strike at his cousin, Murgon Marsilus.

  As for Plaxing itself, it was a fine estate set in connected clearings in the forests, run by a curmudgeonly old fellow called Mankar the Horn, an Ift, and although the place was just a lord’s estate, used for hunting as much as produce, it was unlike the other hunting lodges and estates I have seen in other parts of Kregen. One could scarcely expect a hunting lodge in, say the country inland of Magdag, or an estate in Hamal, to be the same as a similar place in Pandahem. Yet the similarities existed as well as the differences.

  Pando said, “The airboat will have to go back to the king, and there’s an end to it.”

  Pompino scrubbed up his whiskers. He had eaten and drunk well. “The airboat was lost from Malpettar, kov. No one knows who stole it—”

  Almost, I was about to break in with: “Liberated—”

  I halted myself. Dayra glanced at me, and smiled, and I warmed to her. If young Pando got ideas in Dayra’s direction, I’d have to think on. Of course, she was a grown woman and mistress of her own fate, as far as anyone can be on Kregen. That would be for later.

  A lively fellow with clear eyes and curly hair, dressed carefully and yet with a soberness to the cut of the clothes, leaned forward. “But, you said there were Vallians in the town. What happened to them?”

  Dayra spoke easily, holding an apple in one hand, the fruit shining and ripe and ready for the crunch of white teeth.

  “I believe they managed to escape. There was a great deal of confusion at the time.”

  “There!” exclaimed this young fellow, who had been introduced as Poldo Mytham, taking an interest in the argument. “You see! The loss of the airboat will be blamed on them!”

  The buzz of agreement rippled around the high table. They were free and easy among themselves, I’d noticed, except when Pando spoke. Then the strained attentive silence was close to embarrassment.

  Poldo seldom took his eyes off the lady Dafni Harlstam, who sat at Pando’s right. She talked — well, she talked all the time so that in the end you tended to be able to carry on with other conversations and interests without actually hearing her — and as well as talking she did not look particularly happy. She’d been rescued from the evil clutches of Strom Murgon Marsilus and brought here. Pando was determined to marry her for her estates, Murgon wanted her for the same reason, only poor Poldo wanted her for herself.

  Across from him his twin sister, Pynsi, a girl who looked withdrawn, with pale hair banded about her head, seldom took her eyes from Pando, as her brother seldom left off looking at the vadni at Pando’s side. It was all a conundrum.

  Pando said, “Are you questioning my orders, Poldo?”

  “What—? No, no, kov, of course not!”

  “Oh, Poldo!” breathed Pynsi.

  “I say the airboat goes back to the king. You, Poldo, can take it back.”

  Pynsi looked stricken.

  I pushed my wine cup away across the table. I said: “That will not be necessary. The airboat which once belonged to King Nemo no longer is his. She belongs to me — to Ros Delphor, and to me. To no one else. We say what will happen to her.”

  “Aye,” said Dayra into the shocked hush. “And we’re not giving her back to that flat slug Nemo.”

  Well! I can tell you! A right royal shindig began then.

  I had the shrewdest of suspicions that all Pando’s people, all his paktuns and Ifts, would not have stood against Pompino’s crew had it come down to handstrokes. For, make no mistake, Pompino was using Pando for his own ends just as were the rest of our cutthroat band.

  Over the hubbub Pando glared at me. Now, remember, he’d known me when he was a young lad, when Inch and I had taken back his kovnate for him from Murgon’s rascally father who had usurped the title.

  He knew I’d called myself Dray Prescot, and thought I’d used the name aping the man who was to become the emperor of Vallia. He thought I was Jak. But Dray Prescot or Jak, Pando knew that I’d stand no nonsense from him in these latter days. I’d told him. Had I been firmer with him when he was a lad he might not have turned out as he had. His mother, Tilda the Beautiful, had held my hand to both their griefs.

  So, he spoke up. Instant silence fell.

  “Very well, Jak. I agree the airboat is your stolen property. This means I cannot accept you as a guest. If you keep the airboat you must leave — or I will arrest you and send you and that woman in chains to King Nemo.”

  Cap’n Murkizon said: “I am weary of walking everywhere. I prefer to sail in a ship, even if she flies in the sky.” He did not mention his Divine Lady of Belschutz, and he made his position perfectly plain. Larghos the Flatch, instantly, agreed. So did the others.

  The green-clad Ift, sitting along from me, who had not so far taken a great interest in the conversation, by reason of his continual baiting of a tiny tump serving girl, leaned forward.

  “Better if you left at once, then, Jak,” said Twayne Gullik.

  I regarded him. His tall pointed ears stuck up almost past the crown of his head. His narrow slanted eyes conveyed that devious look that so marks Ifts, a wayward folk, at home in the forests, clad all in varying tones and shades of green. This Twayne Gullik was the castellan of Pando’s palace in Port Marsilus.

  He’d taken the kovneva Tilda into hiding here, taken her away from Pompino and the crew of Tuscurs Maiden. We fancied he was a man who backed both ends against the middle and we trusted him as far as we could throw a dermiflon.

  “Far better, Gullik,” I said, knowing he did not like this bald use of his name. “The problem over that easy course of action is that Kov Pando is in some trouble and as we are his friends we must rally round.”

  Some folk took that well, some ill, and Cap’n Murkizon laughed, and poured more wine.

  Pando slouched back in his high chair. The people around the table rattled and chattered away, and in all this talk there was precious little of any planning. And Pando grew more and more irritable and jumpy. I just was not happy with that young imp, not happy at all...

  When folk are immersed in animated conversations and the room fills wi
th the racket, there often occur on this Earth unaccountable sudden silences. These occur at twenty minutes to or twenty minutes past the hour. In one such abrupt silence two things happened.

  One — Twayne Gullik craftily snitched out his sword scabbard, tangled it in the busy legs of the little tump serving girl and toppled her over. The tray with its freight of half-empty wine cups spilled. Twayne Gullik laughed, a clever Ift scoring over a stupid tump in the eternal rivalry between the two races.

  Murkizon snorted, and turned away, disgusted.

  And, two — I said, hard edged to Pando: “Tell me, Kov Pando, why did you choose the zhantil as your emblem?”

  He knew. Of course he knew, and he damned well knew I knew, too.

  Pando gripped a gem-encrusted golden goblet. He looked down the table at me. “I recall a certain day, with the caravan, out in the New Territories of Turismond. I lost the pelt, seasons ago. But I said, then, and I kept my promise. The zhantil is the noblest wild animal—” He stopped himself, and then went on:

  “You called yourself Dray Prescot then.”

  “I have used the name, I admit,” I said casually. “And the zhantil-masks we spoke of? I admire your craft there. It is a great gesture, potentially a Jikai, to smash the leem-masks with zhantil-masks.”

  “And that is our true purpose!” cried Pompino, very bristly. “And not this unseemly wrangling among ourselves.”

  I hid my smile as I drank. My haughty Khibil comrade Pompino not enjoying a bout of wrangling! Come the day!

  “Murgon has the king’s ear,” said Pando. He spoke moodily. “He is ensconced in the Zhantil Palace in Port Marsilus. He raises an army. I begin to think that perhaps he has won this bout, and maybe this is the last contest.”

  “Nonsense, kov!” said Pompino. “Do you not have the Vadni Dafni at your side!”

  I must admit I wondered what the talkative Dafni would have to say about being lumped together as what amounted to a chattel along with the king’s ear and the Zhantil Palace. Mind you, given the circumstances and the customs, that was exactly the situation, and she was enough of a noble lady to understand that. I wondered, too, what she would do about it.