Rebel of Antares (7 page)

“And valuable,” I said.

“Queen Fahia. She, alone, must be offered this churmod. To do aught else would be foolish.” Unmok waved his stump about, letting the excitement out. This ferocious and malignant wild beast would make a man’s fortune. The lawyers Avec Parlin found on our behalf would fight hard for this prize.

The churmod turned her head and stared at us. She did not rise, but her eight sets of claws extended, curved and shining, and she stretched with arrogant laziness. Her hide was all a silky slatey-blue, uniform, without patterning, and she looked like a silent silvery-blue ghost there in the center of the cage.

Her eyes were mere slits of lambent crimson in the blunt head. She looked magnificent and, at the same time, profoundly repellent. She was larger than a well-grown leem; but much as I detest leems I found another altogether more pungent feeling of distaste for this churmod rising in me and, displeased on that account, as though it demeaned my own sense of fair play, I turned away abruptly.

“Yes, Jak,” said Froshak in this new loquacious way, “they do work on a fellow. Just watch yourself with her, all the time.”

Fascinating though this splendid and vicious wild animal might be, we all felt that repugnance, and soon we moved away and Unmok and Froshak fell into a one-sided conversation about the running of the caravan and camp while Unmok was away in Huringa. He suggested we ride in together, and fake our quarrel there before witnesses. This was agreeable to me. If we could draw off Vad Noran’s antipathy from Unmok onto me, that suited me. Unmok, to give him credit, did not see it like that. He saw the practical side of being able to manage our affairs in peace.

We walked down the road toward our camp and this time the swords were safely snugged in their sheaths. As we went I turned for a last look at the menacing slate-blue form with those smoldering crimson eyes.

Chapter five

Valona

“A churmod,” said Jaezila. “Your partner will make a packet with him.”

“She’s a her. And I hope Unmok does. He deserves to.”

“Just steer well clear of them, that’s all I will say,” said Tyfar, and his mouth closed up tightly.

“Agreed. Have you had the news you expected yet?”

“I await the spy—” Here Tyfar looked around quickly. We were not overheard. The twin Suns of Scorpio, Zim and Genodras, flooded down their streaming mingled lights and filled the air with glory. We stood at one of the little open-air bars, a mere hole in a wall with a counter, where refreshing drinks could be had for the price of a copper ob or two. No one else was within earshot, and the crone serving the drinks had gone into the back at the wailing cry of a baby. Tyfar went on: “Just what it is about I am not sure. But fat old Homan ham Ambath won’t let me meet the fellow anywhere near the embassy.”

“That makes sense,” said Jaezila, and she sipped her sazz.

“It is just as well he did not arrange to meet near the Kyro of the Happy Calsany. I do not think we would be welcomed there.”

“We are not welcome anywhere in Huringa in Hyrklana,” said Jaezila. She drank off her sazz with a defiant gesture.

“And this stupid protocol demands that our comrades Kaldu and Barkindrar the Bullet and Nath the Shaft must wait apart from us merely because they are your retainers.” I half turned to lean back against the bar and so looked across the suns-drenched square toward another bar in the adjacent building where our three comrades stood, drinking easily, and keeping a watchful eye out. These finicky matters of rank seem to mean — by Krun, do mean — a great deal to most Havilfarese.

As I watched, a slinky sylvie, exhibiting all the flaunted sexuality of the sylvies, undulated up to the bar and engaged the three men in conversation. They did not stop looking out and keeping an eye on us, but they were engrossed with the sylvie, which was natural, given that they were men and she was a sylvie. She wore a dazzling garment of a rich dark blue, slit to the upper thigh, and her gems — imitation, of course — glistened in the light of the suns. She was probably a respectable girl who worked locally, out for a breath of air and a break from routine.

Jaezila drew her brows down. “Many girls say that the sylvies make them feel less than feminine.”

“I do not think your Kaldu will—” began Tyfar.

“No. Nor your Nath or Barkindrar. But who could blame them?”

They were laughing together over at the other bar. A file of slaves carrying amphorae wended past, and a totrix clip-clopped six-legged along, his rider slumped in the saddle with his broad-brimmed straw hat pulled over his nose. The day seemed perfectly ordinary.

Tyfar squinted sideways up at the suns. By the position of the red and green suns Kregans can tell the time with wonderful accuracy. “In a few murs he will be here, if he keeps his appointment punctually.”

Even as Tyfar spoke, a bent figure in a brown tunic and straw hat walked slowly toward the bar at which we stood. He carried a staff with which he assisted his movements. He looked completely inoffensive. So, naturally, we all became alert.

The sylvie laughed and danced a few steps away, and then walked in that undulating way they have around the corner. The bent figure halted at the bar. “Is the sazz here good?”

“As good as the parclear,” said Tyfar.

That, then, was the secret exchange.

“Follow me, horters, hortera. It is not far.”

We finished the drinks and walked slowly after the man in the brown tunic. I own I let my hand brush across the hilt of my sword.

There was no doubt that Hamal kept up a secret network of spies in Hyrklana. That was mere common sense. If there were plots against Queen Fahia the Hamalese would demand to know what the plots were and how best they might profit from them. Tyfar, now, might decide to help bring down Fahia, or he might decide it was better for his country for the fat queen to remain in power. Despite my feelings of intense affection for Tyfar and Jaezila, despite that they were blade comrades with whom I had gone through the fire, in these intrigues I would put Vallia first, always providing no harm befell Jaezila or Tyfar.

The opposite side of the small square was occupied by an arcade of shops nearly all selling religious trinkets and votive offerings. The fourth side was dominated by the bulk of a temple to Malab the Kazzin. Part of the side wall had fallen in and workmen had been killed in a second fall during repairs. Blocks of stone and bricks in ungainly heaps filled the side street. No work went forward until the queen’s inspectors had surveyed the fabric. Malab is a relatively respectable religious figure. He is often called Malab the Wounded, or Malab the Fount, his believers seeking mercy and wisdom, luck and health in the blood that pours from his wounded head. He is not, of course, Malab the Kazzur, for that means bloody, and Kazzin means bloody, although the two meanings are very different. Our guide led us past the tangles of broken scaffolding and piles of brick. Dust tanged on the tongue. We went in through a low-arched doorway. The interior struck gloomily after the brilliance of the suns.

“Loosen your swords,” said Tyfar in a low voice.

He went first, as was his right as a prince, Jaezila followed, and I tagged along at the rear. At that, I kept screwing my head around to inspect the way we had come for hidden assassins.

We climbed wooden stairs that creaked. The dust lay thickly. I could see only one set of footprints in the dust ahead of us, going up. Broken windows allowed light to sift in.

We came out onto a landing and a corridor with doors leading no doubt to the cells of devotees, or the quarters of the acolytes. The whole place lay silent and deserted apart from us intruders and whoever waited for us.

At the far end of the corridor the guide pushed open a door covered in red baize and studded with brass buttons. The door creaked in protest. Light washed out in a fan.

The guide passed through the opening, followed by Tyfar and Jaezila. Both gripped their sword hilts although they had not yet drawn. I paused. A sound wafted ghostlike up from the corridor. I looked back. A glimpse of a fierce Brokelsh face, of intent staring eyes, told me Barkindrar the Bullet led on our comrades to afford us protection. And, I own it, I felt the comfort of that. I went past the red-baize door. I left it open.

A vaulted space lay before us, long and high. The slates had fallen from the roof some twenty paces ahead so that the blaze of suns light fell like a curtain across the chamber. The myriad dancing dust motes within the wall of light, the brightness of that radiance itself, contained in a narrow slot, prevented any clear impression of what lay beyond. The proportions of the room suggested the slates had fallen near the middle and there was at least as much space again beyond. The door slammed at my back.

Whirling around was, as usual in these circumstances, entirely useless. This side of the door was solid iron.

The guide half-turned and beckoned us on.

At once I knew. Jaezila and Tyfar, also, at once saw what that indifference to the closing of the door must mean. The guide, in his turn, realized he had betrayed himself. With a cry he leaped headlong, vanished like a plunging swimmer into the curtain of light. Tyfar ripped out his blade and ran after him with Jaezila at his heels. I followed and my brand was in my fist.

The light dazzled only momentarily, for I had half-closed my eyes against the glare. The space beyond duplicated the first and boxes and bales lay scattered about, with a two-wheeled handcart upended at one side. Tyfar stood peering about, looking this way and that, his sword snouting. Jaezila was nowhere to be seen. A hole in the floor between Tyfar and me puffed a little dust turning and floating and sinking.

“Jaezila!” I yelled.

Tyfar looked at the hole. I saw his face. The shock, the despair and then the anger flooded into that face of his. His rapier shook.

“I heard nothing, Jak! Nothing! She must have—”

“Yes.”

I ran to the hole, carefully, for the floorboards might be rotten, and looked down. Only darkness down there. Not a speck of light. Our blade comrade Jaezila had fallen down through a devilish trapdoor in the floor.

Tyfar edged closer. He gathered himself. He was going to throw himself down, without hesitation, gathering himself as a professional diver gathers himself before launching off a high cliff into a narrow slot of rock-infested water.

Before Tyfar took that plunge a figure rose from the cover of an upturned bale at his back. A blade glimmered. The figure screeched wildly and hurtled forward, the sword aimed directly for Tyfar’s back.

The trap had been sprung.

I cannot say if I shouted first or jumped first. Everything happened at once.

“Your back, Tyfar!” I leaped.

I leaped. “Your back, Tyfar!”

Whatever the order, Tyfar heard me and rolled away and I landed awkwardly on the edge of the trap and got my rapier up in time to parry that cowardly thrust.

The man was a superb swordsman, that was apparent in the first passage, and he pressed in again hard, silently, swirling his brown cloak with his left hand to dazzle me. I fended him off, feeling for a secure foothold at the trap edge.

“Jak!” Tyfar raged forward.

“Jaezila,” I shouted, “go on, go on!”

Tyfar hesitated no longer. Instead of leaping in to fight with me, as he had automatically begun to do, being a blade comrade, he jumped bodily down through the trap. I did not envy him the decision he had had to make, but he had made the right one. When there are three blade comrades and you have to choose which one to stand alongside in a fight to the death, all the gods must needs smile for you to choose right.

A second figure joined in against me, and this was the guide, bent over no longer, but young and lithe and, his staff cast away, boring in with a skillful flourish of a rapier fighter.

Circling, I cleared that dangerous trapdoor. I foined and then a thrust intended to skewer the guts of the first fighter scored all along his arm as he riffled the cloak. He let out a yell and staggered back; in that moment I stepped in and, most unbladesmanlike, hit the guide alongside the jaw with my left fist. He fell down.

“So that is how you damned Hamalese fight!” said a light voice at my side.

I didn’t hang around. I leaped away, ducking, and a blow from some solid gleaming object whistled past, missing me by the thickness of a copper ob.

“Gouge the rast’s eyes out, Valona!” yelped the man with the gashed arm. He started to come in again, the cloak now wrapped clumsily around wrist and arm to stanch the blood.

The girl who, after her first blow had missed, had sprung back to clear a space between us, lifted her rapier in her right fist. Her left arm was held down behind her back. For a moment we stood, fronting one another.

“I can take care of this Hamalese cramph, Erndor. Get after that corrupt prince! Stick him! He is the man we want.”

“Quidang!” said this Erndor. He ran and jumped down through the hole.

I said, “I admire your self-confidence, Valona. You Hyrklese hate Hamalese very deeply — or some of you.” I wanted to annoy her. I studied her as she stared in open anger and contempt upon me. She wore a loose blue tunic and her legs were bare. Her legs were very long and lovely. Her brown hair was fastened by a fillet. Her face was regular and beautiful, with widely spaced brown eyes, and the redness of her lips in the radiance from the roof glistened with full passion. Some peculiarity in her face, some characteristic, struck me with a chord of memory. I did not know her, but I felt I ought to know her, although we had never met before now.

“The Hyrklese hate the Hamalese, some of them, as you say, rast. But I am not of Hyrklana.”

And she sprang.

As she leaped so she foined with the rapier and then — and then!

Her left arm whipped up. Her left hand reached for my face.

Razored steel flashed before my eyes. Her left hand was sheathed in talons, steel tiger-claws that could shred and rip and blind. And I knew she was exceedingly cunning in the use of this metal claw.

Without hesitation I leaped away, jangling the rapiers, and moving off and away from her. I did not wish to kill her. I could not, seeing she was of Vallia, and a sister of the Sisters of the Rose.