Arena of Antares (23 page)

The next day I heard the report that a man had been found dead in a back alley of the city. His brown clothes had been cut to ribbons, and his body slashed in a score of places. So my fine drunken conspirator friends had caught their ponsho.

All the same, most of them found reasons to leave the city and go to their estates in the country of Hyrklana. For a space, then, the queen was to keep her life and my life at the Jikhorkdun would continue. Were the Star Lords, I wondered, really at work here? To test that I went out the very next night, stole a voller, and was battered and beaten back by a gale whose savagery sprang from supernormal forces.

I raged.

By Zair! I was trapped in this round of Kaidur, and I had begun to detest it urgently.

It has come to me as I tell you my story that you must conceive of me as a dour, brooding, humorless sort of apim, whose face hurts if he smiles, who does himself a serious mischief if he dares to laugh. I admit to a starkness of character, a feeling of doom that will not leave this side of the grave; but I do laugh, wildly and with great mirth, when a situation appeals to me in its incongruity, and I can smile most tenderly when my Delia is with me, and my twins, Drak and Lela, chuckle and laugh and grip my fingers with their tiny chubby hands. By Zair! But I talk now as I thought in those dark and scarlet days of the Jikhorkdun in Hyrklana. Babies grow up, as you shall hear, and their problems sometimes made my own seem mere pimples upon a boloth, trifles I scarce need mention beside the enormities of terror they were to face.

So I fought in the arena, and won — for defeat would end in death and the Kaidur would be over for me then — and I took a second purple vial from Balass the Hawk in exchange for a boskskin bag of golden deldys, and Naghan the Gnat was set to attend personally to my armor, at which I was much pleased, and Tilly plagued me with her long, supple golden tail, and Oby practiced swishing a thraxter about, and the long days passed. The twin Suns of Scorpio went on their eternal swinging paths about Kregen and the seven moons cast down their fuzzy pink light, and the air grew sweet with the scent of flowers, and the wealth in my marble chambers grew and swelled until in mere material terms I was a paladin of kaidurs. The queen, I knew, was kept happy by other kaidurs, and she had fallen into the habit of talking with me, seeing me when the circle of her life prevented other pursuits, and in these conversations I think we both realized our lives were restricted and circumscribed. Princess Lilah did not return to the kingdom. I never saw the king, Rogan. The hyr-kaidur Chorbaj the Stux was slain by Cleitar Adria. And on that night the queen summoned me. It was unusual for the pattern of living that had been established, and I was surprised. I dressed carefully and went to see her in the exotic chamber in the high fortress of Hakal.

“Chorbaj has got himself killed,” she said, flinging herself down on her couch. She wore a brilliant green sarong-like garment, almost a shush-chiff, which was encrusted with gems, and yet her white body glowed through cunning interstices in the sensil. I remained alert, my hand gripping that purple vial of curious shape.

“It was a great fight, Queen,” I said.

“Aye! A hyr-kaidur to the life. You reds crowed today, when the iron hooks dragged the bleeding corpse of Chorbaj the Stux from the arena.”

“The greens were not pleased, I’ll allow that.”

“I had thought to send for Cleitar Adria, but he took a cut in his victory.”

“I am here.”

“Yes, Drak the Sword. You are here. And tonight we do not simply talk and you do not lull me to sleep with your fine stories, like Sosie and the Kov of Verukiadrin!”

Sosie and the Kov of Verukiadrin
is an incredibly similar story cycle to our Earthly
Thousand and One Nights,
and Sosie and Scheherazade are twin sisters separated by four hundred light-years.

“You were expecting Chorbaj the Stux,” I said. “He was a great kaidur. The Jikhorkdun is the poorer for his loss.”

“You, a red, can say that? A kaidur’s life is short and violent, and he must take what pleasure and profit he can.”

I did not reply.

She gestured for wine.

I went to the table, and as was my custom I poured her a mild wine to begin with, so that when I slipped into her glass the single drop that would knock over a dermiflon I could drown any trace by a wine stronger and more pungent. She rang her little silver bell for her attendants, and her fifis scuttled in, giggling, flicking their tails about, and a couple of apim girls came in, one with the great golden bowl covered with an embroidered damask, the other with the pitcher and the fluffy towel. Queen Fahia stood up and walked to the screen.

“Hurry, you useless yetches!” she snapped at the girls, and one of them gasped in terror, and ran with the pitcher of warmed and scented water. The other stood stock still, and Queen Fahia reached for her whip, with the silken bows and tassels and the exceedingly ugly and painful lashes.

“Must I slash you, cramph!”

I looked at this new girl, turning in curiosity, and so saw her, and dropped the wine glass and the purple vial and stared and stared . . .

Delia, my Delia, in a slave breechclout, stood there, her eyes enormous and fixed on me with a look of utter disbelief.

Delia shows me around the high fortress of Hakal

Nothing could have halted my instinctive reaction then. No thought of security or of peril, no other thought in all of Kregen obsessed me. I am a man obsessed with only one idea in the whole of my life. I am obsessed with my Mountains.

I simply rushed toward her and knocked the golden bowl spinning from her hands and so took her into my arms. I clasped her to me, and she clasped me, and we stood there, unable to speak, hardly breathing, locked together.

Delia! How she had come here I could only guess. I held her dear form in my arms and I felt the quick beat of her heart against me and the warmth and softness of her figure pressed against me, and all of Kregen might have gone hang.

Over and over again I have cursed myself for a blind selfish fool. An onker! A get onker, as the Star Lords dubbed me. Oh, how incredibly idiotic I can be, at times, I, Dray Prescot with all the fancy names and titles and honors! Oh, the most fitting title I can ever earn is idiot onker, fool of fools!

Rough hands seized me and dragged us apart even as the soft malicious chiming of Queen Fahia’s golden bell rang in my ears. Armed men dragged us apart. I allowed myself to be pulled from my Delia for a heartbeat only.

Fahia was shrieking: “So this is the wench! This is the shishi! Rest assured, Drak the Sword, you will never see her again!”

I finished up my delayed business with the guard Deldar by kicking him where I once kicked Prince Cydones Esztercari. The fool had drawn his thraxter so that I was able to take it away and instantly parry a blow from a man who came in most brutally and so thrust him through the eye. They wore corselets after the fashion of Hyrklana; but they had left their shields in the guardroom for this kind of guard duty, for which they were sorry in due time.

In a frenzied flurry of action I chopped down two Rapas and two apims and went for the men grasping Delia. She struggled. She was no waxen effigy of a girl who would shrink and scream in a situation like this. I knew my Delia of old. Had we not, together, disposed of black-clad assassins on our wedding night?

Fahia was screaming on: “Seize him, you onkers! Chain him up with iron chains! Seize the rast! You fools, you cowards!” She was right to call them fools, for any man who lays a hand in animosity on Delia of Delphond is a fool, for he is a dead man. She was wrong to dub them cowards. They fought bravely. They tried to get at me and I simply leaped on them like a leem and slew them and their blood splattered horrendously into that perfumed, decadent chamber. The fifis had run screaming, their tails curled up past their shoulders in fear. The other apim girl stood, still carefully balancing her pitcher, and her mouth opened in one long scream of terror.

Delia broke free, I sliced her other guard, and she scooped his dagger. It was a Hyrklanan blade, ornate and heavily curved. It went in curving, as it was meant to do. Delia looked up at me and the glory of her face and figure, the brightness of her brown eyes and that gorgeous hair with its outrageous tints of auburn, spurred me as nothing else in two worlds can.

“Oh,
Dray . . .”

“Out of here, Delia, my heart. This is fit country for leem, little else.”

Fahia was raving.

“You will be cut down! You are condemned! I shall see to it you die a death so exquisite—”

I turned.

I was less than gallant.

“Cease your babble, fat woman! Know you not this is the Princess Majestrix of Vallia! That her father is the puissant Emperor of all Vallia? Beware lest an avenging army lays your land in waste and utterly razes your city of Huringa.”

“You lie! You lie, by Lem, you lie! You are a kaidur and she is a slave shishi! You will die, by Lem, you will die!”

I left her there screaming and screeching and I felt sick at heart at her words.

By Lem!

So
the evil cult of Lem the Silver Leem had in truth penetrated into the highest ranks of Hyrklana, and I shuddered to think what doom must fall upon this land.

Outside in the corridor we ran through the ways I knew, and Delia ran fleetly at my side, for I had no need to drag her along with me, as I had dragged Princess Lilah, and Tulema the dancing girl from a dopa den, and those two silly girls, Saenda and Quaesa.

Guards tried to stop us, of course, mercenaries of various races. With the protection of Delia as my reason for living they had no chance. No blood lust obsessed me; as I have told you, fighting and killing are abhorrent to me except where they are inevitable, and Zair himself does not point a different path.

Fleetly we ran down the long curving marble staircase. Its walls were covered in carved representations of many of the marvelous legends and stories of Kregen, and we ran hurtling past hero and demon, god and devil, monstrous beast and beautiful woman, swirling pictures of love and combat, of sack and creation. A file of apim guards ran out below and I did not check but leaped the last fifteen stairs and so smashed among them and in the quick and bitter flashing of swords cut them down. A shriek rang out at the head of the staircase.

Delia and I looked up.

Queen Fahia had dragged herself to the marble balustrade and leaned there, panting, glaring down at us with mad eyes.

“You cannot escape from Huringa! Every hand will be against you!”

A Rhaclaw’s immense head appeared beside her and he lifted a stux and hurled. I did not swat the stux away. I seized it out of the air, and reversed it, and so hurled it back.

“Any man who dares touch Delia, Princess Majestrix of Vallia, dies! Remember that!”

Fahia ducked and the stux took the Rhaclaw in his bloated head so that it burst and showered the queen with blood and brains. We left her to her shrieks and threats and ran on.

A terrified apim slave girl crouched away from us as we rounded the next corner. Ahead lay a long passage studded with many doors, and then we might go on to the outer ways and so the street, or down and through the secret passages to the Jikhorkdun.

The apim girl was slave to a pallan’s wife, a noble lady who stared down her nose at us, at a savage-faced maniac with a bloody sword in his hand, and a stunningly beautiful girl clad only in the white slave breechclout of the queen’s household. Ordinary slaves wore the slave gray.

“What tomfoolery is this?” the noble lady began. I had seen her fawning on the queen. “You will be severely punished.”

She wore a fine deep-crimson robe, with a smart furred cape over that, with many jewels, and her sandals gleamed with gems. I took the robe in my left fist and twisted the noble lady about and so held her as Delia, with me at once, flicked her long slender fingers down the latchings. The robe fell free. The noble lady was screaming and struggling.

“Guards! Guards! Slay me these slaves,
instantly!”

Her command would have been obeyed, instantly. Only two guards arrived on the scene, for the others hereabouts were dead, and these two joined muster with them shortly.

Delia donned the crimson robe. The noble lady wore a white sensil chemise.

“No time for the chemise, my heart—”

“The dress stinks!” said Delia. In truth, the noble lady’s taste in perfume was overly strong for our nostrils.

Dressed decently in the crimson robe with the furred cape flung across her shoulders and with those jeweled slippers on her feet, my Delia could proudly face the city of Huringa.

We ran on.

No coldly calculating thoughts of victory or defeat entered my mind. I knew we had to get out of here. If we did not, it would be the arena for us. I had no need to be told what the stakes and the bosks would do. Queen Fahia would delight in putting us both to the supreme test. We sped past the hard and cold marble, and every now and then a mercenary guard sought to dispute our passage.

Delia gasped out words as we ran and I did not stop her, for she trusted in me and I was fascinated by what she had to say.

“Only four days ago, beloved, the battle. The Battle of the Crimson Missals! When you disappeared in the thunderstorm I heard you say you would not go to Hyrklana. And so — and so—”

“I will tell you, Delia, my heart.” At this point I stopped talking and crossed thraxters with a Rhaclaw who bore a shield. He wanted to fight in the proper, ordinary, decent way of two men fighting each other. There was no time for that. I ran at him leaping in the air so that he lifted himself for my attack, and then I let myself drop to that polished marble floor and, feet first sliding on my bottom, I skidded toward him. My feet shot between his legs, I passed under the bottom rim of the shield. Flat on my back I whistled under the shield and so thrust upward with the thraxter most hurtfully, gutting him. After that we had a shield to lift on my own left arm.

“I did not wish to come to Hyrklana. But — but I did . . .”