“What’s that, sir?” Griffiths asked.
Still smiling, the elderly Zanfib drew back his right fist and swung it with surprising vigor across Griffiths’s jaw. The strength of the impact lifted Griffiths off his feet to fall on the steps behind. Dazed, the astronaut bounced once and began to tumble down the steps, coming to rest in the clearing at the bottom of the stairs.
Lewis, Ellerby, and Tobler all hurried past the gray wizard to where Griffiths lay akimbo at the bottom of the stairs. Tobler gathered Griffiths’s lolling head in her lap as she knelt next to him.
“Never leave a wizard for dead, barbarian!” The old man shook a thin, ancient fist back at where Griffiths lay. “Haven’t you ever read any creative books! I’m not dead until I say I’m dead!”
“I think we may have a few problems after all,” Griffiths said before he conveniently passed out.
35
Zanfib
Time went by, of that Griffiths was sure, but he couldn’t say just how much time. There was discontinuity in his mind, which told him his consciousness had fled him for a while. It was probably just as well, he realized.
“Griffiths.” Lewis’s voice floated down to his ears as though through gauze. “Griffiths, come around.”
“Jeremy,” he murmured. “My name is Jeremy.”
“Jeremy, then,” Lewis said from some distant place.
“Wake up.”
“No.”
“Jeremy, wake up.” Lewis was insistent.
Griffiths opened his eyes. “Why, hello, Elizabeth! Has the situation improved while I’ve been away?”
“Not at all,” Lewis said.
“Would you wake me up when it does?”
Lewis insisted on shaking Griffiths at that moment, although Griffiths could see neither need nor provocation for her to do so. “Snap out of it!” she said.
Griffiths sat up at the base of the stairs, his head pounding. There were massive dragons everywhere, each wearing massive spiked armor, ornamental and fierce, over their own scaly hides. Most of the dragons had rows of staffs which supported banners, pennants, and flags of various design. Their polished silver helmets—broad, with cut holes tailored to the individual dragon’s crown of horns—gleamed under the opalescent sky. Each Tsultak dragon wore his clan’s battle-kilt, into which was woven a chronicle of his clan’s battles, both triumphs and defeats. The triumphs, Griffiths had learned while on Tsultaki, were a matter of family pride. The defeats were woven into the cloth to remind each dragon of who his enemies were when he met them again. Though armor on a dragon seemed redundant at best and was obviously created more for show than for any practical application, it was nevertheless terrifying.
They stood in the clearing at the bottom of the stairs, only a few feet from where Griffiths had come to rest. He couldn’t have been out very long, he decided. He turned his head quickly to look up the stairs.
Yes, Zanfib was still standing there.
Griffiths stood up, somewhat shakily. He called out to the gray wizard, shaking his fist at him. “You crazy old coot! What the hell did you do that for?”
“That’ll learn you, you little barbarian!” Zanfib called back. “I stuck my keester in the fire for you Earthers trying to get you free of that Gnuktikut demon and what kind of thanks do I get? You go running off and leave me behind the very first time I die! What kind of gratitude is that, I ask you!”
“But … but you were dead!”
“That’s no excuse!” Zanfib shouted back.
Griffiths was at a loss for words. “Sorry, I’m not sure I understand …”
“Of course you don’t,” Zanfib replied, his hands shaking above his head with rage. “You’re an idiot! If you had any idea what an all-powerful sorcerer I am, you wouldn’t be standing there arguing with me! You would be quivering in terror, incapable of speech! I have simply got to get myself a better press agent! When you can’t go out in the galaxy and inspire a little terror at the mere mention of your name, then what’s the point?”
“Look,” Lewis said, trying to take another tack, “all we want to know is why you’re alive now.”
Zanfib slowly began to descend the stairs as he spoke. “It’s those space-happy religious fanatics—the Irindris. They found me dead where you left me and decided that it would be polite to resurrect me. Of course, I didn’t get any say in it! That was bad enough, but then they waited around and waited around—trying to clear up the red tape or something—and it took them forever to get around to doing it. By the time they’d managed the incantations and brouhaha I was pretty well ripe, I can tell you! The point is that … the point is that … oh, now I’ve forgotten the point!”
“The point is that you’re loony,” Griffiths said with exasperation.
“Exactly!” Zanfib replied.
“What?”
“The point is that I’m loony,” Zanfib replied with a sudden calmness in his voice.
Griffiths was suddenly distracted by a loud commotion behind him. The ranks of dragons had opened a path down which the crew of the Venture Revenge was being herded. Targ walked in front of them, quiet and thoughtful, it seemed. Behind him came Flynn, supporting Merinda, who seemed barely able to walk on her own. Watching them filled Griffiths with an inexplicable feeling of loss.
Targ reached them first. “Vestis Zanfib! What a surprise!”
“That’s Sentinel Zanfib to you, Targ,” Zanfib said, with his prominent nose thrust high, “for I am a member of an Order so secret that no one knows our names—not even myself!”
Merinda loosed herself from Flynn’s supporting arm and straightened slightly as she peered into the old wizard’s face. “Zanfib?”
“Who?” Zanfib said, with a wink in Targ’s direction. “Where?”
“Zanfib! It’s me! Merinda!”
“Of course you are, my dear, and how wonderful to see you again,” Zanfib said, taking Merinda’s hand gently and patting it. “So sorry to have come to kill you and your friends but, as they say, all the galaxy’s a stage and sometimes the main characters bow out in the second act!”
“Excuse me,” Griffiths interjected, his head throbbing worse than before, “but just how long did you say you were dead?”
“Too long,” Zanfib said, once again turning his smoldering indignation on the astronaut. “Much too long, and it’s your fault. If I hadn’t transferred the mission logs to your little brain, then I wouldn’t have had the feedback to deal with. Memories and ideas from your own mind backwashed into mine in its weakened state. As it is, I was dead so long that your old thoughts and my own have become inseparably fused. Now I can’t tell where I end and you begin!”
“Since when did you become a Sentinel?” Targ sniffed.
“Shush!” Zanfib said, putting a finger to his lips. “We’re a secret organization and not to be recognized!”
“Right.” Targ nodded, even as his eyes rolled upward. “So, when were you first not part of this organization?”
“I’ve not been part of this organization since its very inception,” Zanfib offered with pride. “I was not a highly placed operative among the Vestis and I was not a supreme leader of the Order of the Future Faith until this barbarian clod left me for dead. We waste time, however. I have come for the map, if you please, for my destiny will wait no longer.”
“You want the map, too?” Griffiths nearly choked.
“Hey,” Flynn said, stepping into the group, “that map is mine. I paid for it!”
“As did I,” Zanfib said, pulling out a second parchment map and unrolling it before them all to see. It was perfect in every detail; an exact duplicate of the map that Griffiths and Flynn had made on Tsultaki.
“By the Nine!” Merinda whispered.
“Actually, I didn’t pay for it,” Zanfib said matter-of-factly. “It would be more correct to say that Scrimshaw paid for it with his own life. It wouldn’t do to have multiple copies of the real map floating around the Tsultak starport. Sadly, the artistry of his work will
be missed.”
“You’ve got the map,” Flynn said gravely. “What is it you want with us?”
“Why what everyone here wants,” Zanfib said with a sweet smile on his ancient lips. “To find the passage through the Maelstrom Wall. There I’ll put right what this Earth-fool has made wrong—and my fellow Sentinels will once again offer me a place among their number.”
“No one knows the way,” Merinda said.
“That’s not true, Merinda!” Zanfib replied in a voice that was almost tolerant and kind. “Griffiths knows—as he has always known. Once I have delivered him to my brothers and sisters of the Sentinel council, he should be more than willing to tell them everything that he knows—including the passage to the Nightsword’s final resting-place. The council wanted the Mantle to protect itself—but the Nightsword is a device of supreme conquest. A far more pro-active stance for the Order, would you not say?”
Zanfib smiled again from behind his great, gray beard. He walked with a confident gait past Merinda, Targ, and the other humans. He passed the Hishawei, the Goromok gnomes, the Uruh, the minotaurs and all the other assembled crew of the Venture Revenge with a smug confidence. At last he came to stand before the towering bulk of a dragon, its huge head dropping closer to the wizard that it might better hear.
“Dedrak Kurbin-Flamishar, Minister of Peace for all of Tsultak and the Majesty and Greater Glory of the Council,” Zanfib said with great solemnity, “I hereby charge you to arrest these individuals for crimes against …”
“Wait!”
Everyone, including the dragon minister Kurbin-Flamishar, turned toward the sound.
It was Flynn. The pirate captain was running through the assembled crew directly toward the towering dragon minister. The ornate chain mail that draped down around Kurbin-Flamishar’s head and neck rang loudly as the dragon craned his massive head in the direction of the charging human. Flynn didn’t miss a step as he ran, reaching down and scooping up a fist-sized rock. Flynn skidded to a halt short of the dragon’s jaws, which hovered just ten feet above the ground.
Everything seemed to slow as Griffiths watched.
Flynn drew back his arm to throw.
The massive dragon’s eyes narrowed.
Zanfib was turning, puzzled by Flynn’s initial shout.
“Flynn! No!” Merinda cried out.
Flynn let loose the stone. It sailed through the air, tumbling awkwardly as it made a straight line for the dragon’s nose. It wasn’t a particularly well thrown rock and didn’t connect squarely with the center of the dragon’s nose, as one might expect. Instead it grazed the beast’s left nostril, bounced off, and clattered among the scales on the dragon’s snout before falling at last harmlessly to the dirt below.
The dragon bellowed in rage. In the following instant the assembled dragons that encircled them all trumpeted their own chorus of anger and contempt. The sound seemed to fill all space with a horrible cacophony of their thunderous chorus.
“Tall Man,” Kurbin-Flamishar raged, lowering his head to within a handsbreadth of Flynn’s face, “you shall die for that insult!”
Flynn promptly reached up and slapped the dragon across his broad snout.
Griffiths’s jaw dropped. “My God, we’re dead!” he said, sputtering loudly.
“Been there; done that,” Zanfib snarled.
The dragon, however, did not move.
“I am Captain Evon Flynn of the Venture Revenge,” he shouted at the dragon, his fist raised in defiance. “Your race has grieved us much! We demand satisfaction on the field of honor and glory which your fathers have forgotten and your mothers lament and weep for to be once again.”
Griffiths turned to Merinda. “What the hell is he doing?”
Merinda shook her head, unsure.
“My clan of shipmates declares war upon the Tsultak and all their Empire clan!” Flynn said.
Then he spit upon the dragon’s gleaming black foreclaw.
36
Formal Declarations
“Kill him, Flamishar,” Zanfib yelled. The ancient wizard pointed directly at Evon Flynn, even as he was hastily backing away. “Kill him now!”
The massive dragon’s eyes blazed fiercely, yet he did not move. Instead, Kurbin-Flamishar reared up on his hind legs, his polished armor sparkling under the opal nebula above as he spoke. His voice shook the ground. “Tall Man—One Who is Unworthy of a Name—your people are small and weak. Your bones break pleasantly between our jaws. Your flesh is sweet to our taste. Your ship could not carry a single one of our young on its flimsy deck. What are you that we would make worthy warfare upon you?”
“That we are a weak and small race compared to the mighty Tsultak is true,” Flynn asserted with his fists planted defiantly on both hips, his neck craned upward to see the face of the towering dragon. “But our cause is just, as your ancestors long passed into the Nine Heavens will avow when our fates are revealed. We have endured your insults and those of your people until they were no longer to be tolerated. This day we draw a line across the Tsultak path and declare no more! We claim the right of honorable warfare that the spirits of our ancestors may decide our fates through our own blood and prowess.”
Zanfib was livid, a deep red flush washing over his balding forehead. “Just kill him! Don’t stand there like an oversized doorknob! Don’t talk—just eat!”
The dragon remained erect, his only motion for a moment being his thumb claw grating against his foreclaw in contemplation. “Will you accept the usual conditions of honorable warfare?”
Flynn nearly smiled. “We do—and expect no less from the honorable Tsultak.”
“Very well,” the dragon intoned. “There is no single sun by which the coming of night may be judged on this world. Will you accept our ship’s chronometer as the arbiter of all timings for our declarations?”
“That depends upon the current time of your chronometer,” Flynn said judiciously.
Kurbin-Flamishar turned to the smaller dragon—his aide—who stood next to him. After a discussion of some length, Kurbin-Flamishar turned back toward the waiting Flynn. “I am informed we are in the tenth hour of the day.”
“Very well, dragon,” Flynn said with mock concern, “in this we have agreement. We accept your timing for our declarations and shall meet you on the twentieth hour at this selfsame spot.”
“It is agreed,” Kurbin-Flamishar said, then suddenly dropped down on all four legs and folded his wings tightly against his armor. “A formal declaration of war has commenced. We shall return in the twentieth hour to this spot. Prepare yourself. Until that time, farewell.”
“Farewell,” Flynn replied with a smug grin.
“Wait just one gal-darn minute!” Zanfib huffed. “Where do you think you’re going, Flamishar?”
Kurbin-Flamishar turned and began walking into the jungle. In every direction around him, the assembled army of dragons wheeled in unison to follow the dragon Minister of Peace into the dense canopy.
“Damn it, Flamishar!” Zanfib bellowed. The old wizard moved with amazing spryness back across the clearing after the dragon. He managed to grab the dragon’s tail, which was dragging along the ground under the weight of the armor plating that Kurbin-Flamishar so seldom wore these days. Zanfib dug in his heels but it was a hopeless task. The dragon didn’t even notice the additional weight. Zanfib began making a small furrow in the topsoil as he continued to yell. “Just stop, you oversized Gila monster! We’re not finished here yet! I want my mind back, damn it! I want my life back!”
Kurbin-Flamishar plunged into the dark jungle, his tail dragging the old wizard with him. Zanfib’s voice could still be heard for a time, becoming more and more distant—the wizard never giving up and, apparently, never letting go either. “Stupid dragons! Thick as posts, high maintenance, impossible to steer …”
In a most orderly manner, the dragons continued to file out of the clearing.
“Evon,” Merinda said, amazement in her voice, “what was that all about?”
Flynn turned back to the group, letting out a long breath that he had forgotten he was holding. “The Tsultak dragons are massively powerful and ferocious enemies, but they have one flaw—they think of themselves as civilized. They wouldn’t have hesitated a moment to arrest us as criminals—something of which that old geezer has apparently already convinced them. That process had already been completed.”
“So,” Targ said, stepping forward, “you declared war on them—an act which they were honor bound to address at once?”
“Yes,” Flynn said, walking toward his assembled crew. “A declaration of war takes precedence over all other considerations. They will have to conduct a complete formal declaration of war now. Master Shindak?”
“Yes, Captain,” the tall elf said smoothly.
“I am at something of a loss as to why you and the rest of the crew are here,” Flynn said casually. “Is the Venture Revenge still secure?”
“Yes, Captain,” the elf replied evenly. “The ship remains in good repair down in the bay as you left it.”
“Forgive my question,” Flynn said quietly, “but how is it that the entire crew and the ship itself escaped any harm during the ferocious boarding action that surely must have ensued?”
“I felt that surrender at the time was a more prudent option considering the force that opposed us,” the cool elf said in response. “Would the captain have preferred a burned ship and a dead crew?”
Flynn chuckled. “Of course not, Master Shindak. However, I wouldn’t make it a habit of abandoning my ship every time my back is turned. I might take offense.”
“Why, Captain.” Shindak barely moved, his drawn, pale features a smug mask. “Who would possibly want to offend you?”
“Very well, Shindak. Take the crew into the ruins here and settle everyone down. I’ll be there directly to fill them in and give them their instructions.” Flynn turned and began walking toward Merinda and the others.
“Indeed,” Shindak murmured through a slight curl in his lips. “I suppose it’s time that the humans-only club meets to find another way to botch this job!”
Nightsword Page 30