Secret Scorpio (7 page)

“You have touched nothing, San?”

“Nothing, San.”

Their exquisite politeness one to the other tickled me. I remembered them yelling at each other and hurling scathing remarks about aptitudes and abilities. Now the two wizards walked together all around the black chyyan and cocked their heads back to stare up at the malignant eyes and drew long thoughtful expressions. In short, they behaved as professional men consulted on a case of intricacy behave.

Finally, Khe-Hi said, “The idol is certainly sealed by sorcery. I know that.”

We all understood. A wizard of Loh who deals all his life in sorcery knows when sorcery is being used, or, at least, knows most of the time.

“You say the eyeballs flamed emerald, my prince?”

“Aye.”

“Yet they are plain glass with a yellowish tinge.” Khe-Hi gestured and Ornol, Evold’s assistant, brought across a ladder which was propped against the statue. Khe-Hi, hitching up his pure white robe cinctured by the crimson cord, mounted and peered closely at the eyes. I wondered what would happen if they blazed their incredible malignant green into his face.

Many men of the continent of Loh have red hair. Not all. Loh is a land of mystery and terror and remained locked away from exploration after the collapse of its famous empire. Khe-Hi’s red hair shone darkly against the black of the statue. He peered this way and that. Then he descended and stood looking thoughtfully upon the back of the idol where a single light tap gonged a hollow note.

“There are preparations I must make,” he said at last, coming to a decision. “San, I would value your help.” Evold nodded without speaking.

“Will this take time?” I spoke calmly.

“Three burs only, my Prince.”

A bur is forty Earthly minutes. There would be time for more tea and a slap-up meal in two hours. I nodded. “Then I leave the idol in your care.” Then, because of reasons that remained too obscure to be articulated, I added: “And Oby has settled a lien on the eyeballs with his long-knife.”

There was a laugh at this. Delia rose. We went out together and Turko followed. Like my return home, this first investigation of the idol had been an anticlimax.

Four

Eggs of evil

There was so much for me still to learn about what had chanced on Kregen during my absence that every spare moment was occupied in Delia’s dredging her memory to retail the choicest bits of information. We had recourse to the records of Valka, of course, kept by the stylors in Esser Rarioch. How all this fresh torrent of facts and conjectures would influence my life had to be weighed and judged. I think it best if I simply fill in what it is needful to know about any given situation as it arises in this narrative.

For instance, I was fascinated by the scraps of knowledge gleaned from distant Hyrklana, where Queen Fahia, poor soul, was having trouble finding fresh fodder for the Jikhorkdun. Likewise, I was mightily impressed by the progress made in raising and equipping three full regiments of Pachaks mounted on flutduins from the Pachaks of Zamra. But these and many and many another affair of state had nothing, as I saw it, to do with my present concern with the Chyyanists. I mention these two to give examples. Also, I handled some pressing affairs of business that my son Drak would have taken care of had he not been in Zamra dealing with the construction of a new seawall, jetty and pharos for the new town of Veliasmot put in hand to provide another secure harbor for the great galleons on which rested our trade.

So, as I ate vosk pie and momolams, I listened to Jiktar Larghos Glendile recently returned from Vondium, the capital of the Empire of Vallia, telling me of the latest decrees of the Presidio. The Presidio ran the country although the emperor as well as holding titular power controlled enough real power to maintain the balances so necessary for government. It was all a matter of balancing one power group against another, of taking advice and of making laws that would maintain.

“But the racters, my Prince! They have shrunk in numbers but have increased their powers through carefully placed men in the right positions.”

The racters, the most powerful party in Vallia, who wore the black and white, held their wealth and positions through high commerce, through land, through slaving, through mining. There were other parties, notably the panvals, who stood against the racters. But all, as I well knew, had their own candidates to take the emperor’s place.

“They maneuver the emperor so that he will stand alone. Then they can reduce him.”

“Do you know who it is whispered will take his place?”

“No, my Prince. That information is held close.”

This Jiktar Larghos Glendile presented an imposing picture as he reported. He was a Pachak. Now Pachaks, being blessed by nature or by gene manipulation with two left arms, are among the most renowned of Kregen’s fighting men. Also, they have a hand on their long whiplike tail. Loyal were Pachaks, and first-class mercenaries. I had built up centers of Pachak habitation in both Valka and Zamra that were based on a full life. That is, the towns occupied by the Pachaks were proper towns, with all the facilities of towns. They were not mere military barracks for mercenaries.

Larghos Glendile was a Jiktar, a rank I suppose most nearly equated with that of colonel. His uniform of the brave old scarlet glowed. He wore two bobs, the medals given by my Elders of Valka. His tough face, with the harsh yet human features of a man who has had wide experience, betrayed his desire to do well not just as a hired fighting man, which he no longer was, but as a full-fledged citizen of Zamra. Zamra, the larger island to the north of Valka, of which I am kov, was to prove of surprising worth in the seasons to come.

The necessity of thus building up a powerful fighting force was one I loathed. Yet the necessity remained. There are many foes in Kregen who will cheerfully sail up over the ocean rim, or drop down out of the skies, and seek to take whatever portable property is lying around not chained down. My duty as a prince was to protect my people. And, equally, when I called on them for help, their duty was to help me protect them. But of course it is not as simple as that.

Jiktar Glendile of Zamra went on to tell me more of what was transpiring in Vondium, and I listened and ate my fruit and quaffed tea and finished with a handful of palines.

The clepsydra indicated half a bur to go.

Delia came in looking radiant. I rose. Glendile straightened to ramrod attention.

Delia looked at me accusingly.

“And have you kept the Jiktar standing all the time?”

I gaped.

Neither Glendile nor I had noticed. We were warriors.

So the moment passed and Jiktar Glendile finished up his report sitting down, drinking, his booted feet stuck out, his rapier cocked up and his tail curled decorously around the chair legs. That tailhand could whip a long blade up between his legs and have a foeman’s tripes out in a twinkling.

When the Pachak had gone I said to Delia, in more of a groan than I intended, “There is so much to learn! By Zair! Things have moved on Kregen since I have been away!”
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She laughed and tinkled a fingernail against the clepsydra.

I stood up.

“Then let us go and see how the Sans have got on with that damned black idol.”

So as I stood up and spoke I saw Delia, half turned in the doorway, looking back at me, and the breath caught in my throat.

Often and often I have tried to find expression to convey some sense of the beauty of my Delia. How impossible a task! As she stood there, half laughing at me, the sheer ivory-white gown relieved only by a small brooch of brilliant scarlet scarrons, her brown hair with those shimmering tints of chestnut striking through and making a wonder and a halo around her head — yes, I felt my flinty old heart thump and the blood pulse through my veins. By Zair! Was there ever a girl like Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?

Sweetly she looked at me, mocking, knowing very well what thoughts were prancing through my mind.

I scowled. What chance of that! The scowl died and I realized I was smiling, grinning away like a loon.

“There will be plenty of time, my love,” said Delia, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, “for you to catch up.”

If I do not give my reply to that I fancy each of you, in his or her own way, will furbish up the retort suitable. The effect of all this was that we were smiling foolishly away as we walked through the hall of the images toward the laboratory. These images, of ivory and bronze and precious stones, commemorate the Stroms of Valka. I still had not made up my mind if I relished their presence forever lowering down on me, the latest Strom, or if I resented them as reminding me of past glories and past shames.

We had just passed the bust of Strom Natival, I recall, around whom legends clustered, when we heard the explosion. For a single shocked instant I thought gunpowder had been touched by a spark. But gunpowder was not used here. All my old training in a wooden ship of the line, with felt slippers and flash curtains and water buckets and hoses forever at the ready, reared up in me. With a curse I leaped forward and the billowing mass of black smoke choked around the far corner and boiled swiftly forward. The black smoke engulfed me. I swung about, reaching for Delia, waiting for the blast to take us. It was all a screaming nightmare with the concussion still ringing in my ears.

The smoke roiled and eddied. I blundered into Strom Pagan’s bust — I knew it was his by the size of the vinous nose — and it went over with a smash. Delia clung to me, saying nothing. Our eyes and noses ran with the stink. This was not ordinary smoke. There was about it a charnel tang, a foul-tasting vileness on our tongues, rasping our throats.

No further blast came.

The smoke thinned. I gasped for air. We waved our hands about, wafting the smoke away.

Delia’s ivory dress was spattered with black dots, like mold on cheese. My eyelids felt redly granular, itching. I spat.

“By the foul intestines of Makki-Grodno!” I bellowed. “The infernal idol!”

I pushed Delia away.

“Go back, Delia!”

I started to run for the laboratory.

My Delia ran at my side.

“Go back! Who knows what has happened?”

“I intend to find out. Why don’t you go back?”

I saved my breath.

As I ran on I was cursing away at myself for being such a fool as to bring the damned idol into the palace. What a blind idiot! Had I never heard of Troy, and the White Horse? What sorcerous mischief had I unloosed in Esser Rarioch?

A figure blundered into me and I grasped old Evold by the arms and shook him.

“Tell me, Evold!”

“My Prince—” He babbled on, shaking. “The eyes lit up again, just as you said!” He coughed and choked and spluttered and I let him go as he swiped at his streaming eyes. “San Khe-Hi, he was almost prepared as he had promised, and then it was as though the lightning struck. The idol shrieked! There was smoke and flame and a blue-green fire and—”

He had no need to say more.

From the wrecked door of the laboratory Khe-Hi-Bjanching stumbled, beating wildly at the darting black forms surrounding him. They dived from the air, swirling their ebony wings, and their shrill chittering filled the hall with the rustling whispers of the tomb.

Chyyans! Scores of tiny chyyans, with a wing spread of no more than two feet, swooped and darted and struck and clawed. I saw their baleful red eyes, the raking dart of their scarlet talons. Their beaks gaped wide. Khe-Hi stumbled and fell. I leaped forward, ripping the rapier and main gauche free. I stood over him, straddle-legged, and at once my blades swirled and swished to cut down the fluttering horrors.

They appeared almost like bats, vampire bats, lunging in to sink their fangs into my neck and suck me dry.

But each black chyyan had four wings, four wings clad in rusty black feathers. They swooped and darted and struck, and I felt the sting on forehead and arms as they clustered thickly about me and sank their talons into my flesh.

“Wizard!” I bellowed, slashing about me wildly. “Cast a spell or something! Drive them off!”

“I have spelled them already,” came the gasping wheeze from the wizard. He tried to crawl out from between my knees and a tiny chyyan slashed at him, so that he cried out and scuttled back.

“Well, for the sweet sake of Mother Diocaster! Spell them again!”

I heard a furious yell from along the hall and between slashing and ducking turned. Turko was there, laying about him with his parrying-stick. And my Delia, slim and glorious in her slashed ivory gown, my Delia sliced and cut with the long slender jeweled dagger in whose use she is so superbly skilled.

“San!” I bellowed. “You must run for it!”

I shoved the dagger into my mouth, ricking my lips back in the old way so my teeth could grip the blade. I reached down with my left hand and hauled Khe-Hi out by the scruff of the neck. My right hand seemed of its own volition to be flickering the rapier about, chunking great swatches of black feathers away, slicing and cutting, never thrusting, for in a game like this that was the sure way to die.

I gave Khe-Hi a good rousing kick up the backside and sent him scuttling and staggering down the long hall.

Then I reached my Delia and with three blades we wove that old deadly net of steel. She flashed me a single smile. We went to work, then, in real earnest.

Jiktar Larghos Glendile appeared, raging, roaring into the fight with a rapier and two daggers, and with a blade gripped in his tailhand. He was worth two men in that kind of fight. Others of my people showed up, and soon we could actually count the numbers of chyyans remaining.

I bellowed.

“Save some! Do not slay them all!”

Then ensued a riotous chasing rout as the fluttering birds sought to escape from the palace, and my people, whooping as though on a rampage, chased them through the corridors and up and down the stairs, seeking to cast nets and sacks and whatever came to hand over them. In the end we caught three of them, penned in sacks, and the stout material bulged and strained. Turko hit a bulge with the parrying-stick and the bird in the sack quieted down.