Arena of Antares [Dray Prescot #7]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “And I followed. Seg and Inch, we took our airboats and we came to Hyrklana. But, as usual, the airboat broke down and I was taken by Rhaclaws. This mad Queen Fahia saw me and bought me—"

  “Aye. She has first choice of all the most beautiful young girls, by Vox!"

  “And so I was instructed to become the chambermaid to the queen."

  “That chambermaiding did not last long, thank Zair."

  “I fancy the queen is mighty angry—look out, my heart!"

  I had seen the crossbowman.

  He leered at me over the bolt of his weapon and I saw his shoulder bunch to pull the trigger—poor practice, that, I remember thinking as I hurled the thraxter. He died with the steel through his mouth and spearing up into his brain. I put a foot on his head and hauled the thraxter free. Still with the shield shoved up on my left arm I stuck the thraxter, all bloody and smeared with brains as it was, into my mouth, puckering my lips in the old way to avoid cutting them, and snatched up the crossbow. I whirled. A Hikdar was running toward us waving his sword as though he acted in a play. The bolt took him through an eye. I threw the crossbow down and with Delia at my side sprinted on for the far doors. They were lenken and bound with gold. The uproar behind us boiled up. I could not go on swiftly enough and so out into the street. So it must be the dark and secret ways that led to the Jikhorkdun for us.

  Staring down past the half-folded doors that led first of all into a narrow passageway and then a steep and slippery flight of stairs I heard a grunting gasp and a meaty chop and a mangled scream of agony behind me. I whirled. A Rapa staggered back with his beak hanging and dripping blood. Delia didn't bother to slice him again but pointed past my shoulder, so I turned back. Armed guards with weapons bright in the lamplight boiled up that stair and crowded out past the half-folded door. The Jikhorkdun was not for us. The massive gold-bound lenken door would not be opened without a fight, and even so wonderful a girl as Delia could not open it single-handed as I held off the guards. I cocked an evil eye upward.

  A small arched stone entrance was barred by a sturm-wood door. I ran at it, and kicked it in so that the lock ripped away and the wood gleamed freshly splintered. Delia bundled in before me and I hung my shield over my back, and felt the glancing shock of bolts ricocheting from the bronze-bound wooden surface.

  “Up, Delia, my heart!"

  “Follow close, close..."

  The door was a ruin and so valueless. The first one through was a Rapa and he went shrieking back into his comrades, beakless. The next was a Brokelsh, and he somersaulted back with half his face sheared away. The third was a Gon, and his cleanly shaved scalp abruptly gaped all bloody through the wreck of his helmet. The fourth did not appear. Instead a stux flashed through, and then another. These I caught and returned, and heard two shrieks.

  Delia called from above.

  “Doors, Dray—all bolted save one—” And then I heard a beginning scream from Delia of the Blue Mountains abruptly chopped off.

  I went up those stairs like a devil.

  A horrid screeching spitting, a diabolical hissing echoed down the stone staircase. Frantic, I roared up the stone treads and came out onto a landing with the bolted doors and one door open. In the doorway crouched the black form of a neemu, its wicked eyes smoldering gold, its sleek black fur electric in the-gloom, its mouth gaping, and the white fangs bared. On one knee the slender form of Delia waited, the dagger held before her—and I saw the fresh blood on that dagger, the blood-matted fur on the neemu's throat, the claw marks ripped down the crimson robe, and the torn tufts of the furred cape. Delia had screamed—and had cut the scream off deliberately so as not to alarm me further as she faced a savage neemu with only a curved ornate dagger!

  I hurdled Delia and, shield-first, crashed headlong into the great black cat and so, with four precise thrusts, finished it.

  “Are you badly hurt, Delia—Delia...?"

  “No—I surprised it—but it was—it was—"

  “Through here."

  I helped her rise. She gave me her smile, and then we were running into the long chamber beyond the open door with the ominous clashing of mailed men following us. Along the tessellated floor of the chamber we ran and then through a gallery lined with obscene idols of jade and alabaster and ivory, and so to a door, tall and narrow, hung about with emerald wreaths, hundreds of brilliant emeralds cunningly worked by a master artist into representations of triumphal wreaths. The door was of balass and it moved smoothly and silently as I pushed it open. We passed through into a great space of shadow and mystery. I closed the door behind us and lowered the counterpoised beam of lenk into its steel slots. A full-scale battering ram would be needed to smash down that high door.

  We surveyed this place wherein we had fled, and saw that it was a shrine raised within the fortress of Hakal to the highest state spirit, the national god, of Hyrklana, for all that other cults and beliefs were undermining the strength of the old religion.

  Samphron-oil lamps glowed a mellow gleam upon the shrine within that vast chamber, picking out the fantastic wealth of decoration, the abandon of riches, the exotic outpouring of art and skill. Central within the shrine and lofting higher than fifty feet rose the idol. The image was of a morphology serene and bland, with a bewildering wagonwheel of eight arms, each hand rigidly fixed in a ritualistic pose of power. The face might have been apim, with Chulik tusks, Womox horns, Rapa beak, Fristle whiskers. It combined many racial characteristics, and yet was of itself.

  “Havil the Green!” whispered Delia.

  “Had we the time, my love, I'd welcome the chance to prize a few of those emeralds free and tuck them into a lesten-hide bag.” I laughed. “Korf Aighos should be here now!"

  “Aye, Dray, if only he were!” She controlled herself, lifting her spirits. “And Seg and Inch and Turko the Shield!"

  She went to move on and I placed my left hand, all bloody as it was, upon her shoulder.

  “Do not move, my heart!"

  She saw the four neemus, then, their heads low, their tails moving slowly from side to side, as they slunk out like four demoniac black shadows, creeping forward on their bellies.

  Queen Fahia had released her pets to cleanse her palace of a man and a woman who had despised her before her people and thrown a stux at her, and defamed her.

  I cocked an eye up at the statue.

  With a sinewy thrust I lifted Delia so that she stood upon the idol's left foot. The leg had been encased in a greave of chased gold and emeralds, and at my urgent gesture Delia began to climb up the projections, as she would a ladder, so that soon she was some ten feet above my head. Then I slid the shield down before me and took a fresh grip upon the thraxter and faced the neemus.

  They spat at me. Their lips writhed back and their fangs gleamed in the mellow samphron glow.

  Delia did not speak.

  A sullen booming began from the high balass door and the lenken bar in its steel sockets moved and groaned.

  At that moment, with my Delia in so grave a peril, I think I can be forgiven if I say that had the four neemus been four leems they would have stood little chance. The first one sprang and I smashed the shield into its face and passed the thraxter through it, the sleek black fur clotting with blood, the claws grasping and scratching at the shield rim. On the instant I ducked and withdrew and slashed the sword in a flat arc that slit the second's throat as he sprang after his fellow. The third sprang, also, and landed on the shield; but I kept low so that his hind legs could not rake forward. The thraxter bit again. That left one. He circled, his tail lashing, his head turning from side to side, and he hissed and spat. And I charged him, and so took him, the shield smashing into his head and forequarters, and the thraxter sliding bloodily into his heart.

  I stepped back.

  Delia did not immediately climb down. I looked up at her and she lifted her right hand, and she said, “Hai Jikai!"

  I laughed at her. “Rather, Delia, my girl, you should say as these folks here do—hyr
-Kaidur!"

  “Oh, they would, them and their debased arena."

  She climbed down and I hugged her and then we prowled on toward the far end of that vast and shadowy chamber where the emerald idol of Havil the Green brooded through the centuries. The booming gong-notes from the balass door receded as we passed through the far opening. In this corridor I was completely at a loss. No one appeared. No guard, no courtier, no slave.

  “The sacred precincts,” Delia said, with her practical knowledge of palaces and fortresses and temples. “There must be a way out, if we can find it."

  “We should be feeling like two trapped woflos,” I said. “But I feel sorry for anyone who crosses our path. Lead on, my princess. After all, you are a princess—now let us see you put that elevated position to some practical use."

  “You great shaggy graint! You, Dray Prescot..."

  But I laughed and we went on, my thraxter and her dagger dripping bright blood, shining in a trail of red drops upon the priceless marble of the pavement.

  We came at last to another vast chamber within the fortress of Hakal, which frowns down over Huringa, and now I stared about and whistled in admiration. We stood in Queen Fahia's trophy room. Almost all the collection gathered here referred to the Jikhorkdun, in weapons and armor and curious artifacts used in the arena. Delia was happy to throw down her curved dagger and take up an example of that long slender-bladed dagger in the use of which she is a master—or mistress, more accurately. I stopped. The hope had grown in my breast, but I would give it no credence, no room to burgeon—and now...

  “Well, Dray, my shaggy Krozair, take it down and let us get on."

  So I took down the great Krozair longsword.

  This was the same weapon with which I had bested that silver-collared leem in the arena. My fingers felt the incised letters, feeling the power flowing from them, the miraculous magic of those simple letters KRZY pouring through me.

  I threw down the thraxter, but I kept the shield and pushed it back on loosened straps so that it sat high on my left shoulder. I strapped on the scabbard, but I held the brand naked in my fist.

  We pushed on.

  Delia said, “I think there will be no exits in this direction, Dray. The balass door protected all this wing of the fortress. There will be secret ways only, and we do not have the time to find them."

  “Very well,” I said, like any tomfool hero from a shadow-play acted out to the glow of samphron-oil lamps in the pink-lit moonlight of Kregen. “We will go back and make our way through these cramphs—"

  “There is always a window."

  “And the stones will be worn, for the fortress is old, and our fingers and toes have enough skin on them to see us down. Perhaps you are a princess, after all."

  “You are a prince, my hairy graint, or had you forgotten?"

  “I've not had the same practice at it that you've had."

  “Well, you will go jaunting off on various mysterious errands. Little Drak and Lela are likely to grow up orphans if you carry on like this."

  All the time we spoke thus to each other we ran swiftly through the deserted corridors. We both heard the distant booming thud, like a gong that is beaten so savagely it breaks from its chains and crashes to the floor. We both knew that the guards of Queen Fahia would be upon us with feral swiftness.

  Delia found the right corridor and chamber beyond. Her instinctive familiarity with palaces grown with her from childhood did stand her in good stead now—aye! and me.

  We ran swiftly along the corridor toward this room and now we could hear the clank of iron-studded sandals following us, beating a menacing tattoo upon the marble floor.

  We burst into the room.

  A narrow window in the far wall showed a pinkish wash of moonlight. The Twins would be up, forever circling each other, and I took heart from that, as a sign from Zair.

  I stuck my head through the window.

  The pink moonlight picked up the scene and showed me the trap into which we had blundered.

  “What is it, Dray? Let me see!"

  Delia wriggled herself by me to look out.

  The angle of wall beside us dropped sheer in an unbroken line for six hundred feet, sheer to the fanged rocks upon which the high fortress of Hakal had been built. Just beyond the rocks terraces dropped away, one below another, to the northern face of the Jikhorkdun, its massive pile dwarfed as to height by the Hakal, its oval shape easily discernible.

  “May Opaz smile on us now!” breathed Delia.

  All along that precipitous drop the moonlight picked out crevices and chinks, but I doubted if they would serve us all the way. Then in that moonlight I saw the wide band of marble about the wall, a band smooth and slippery and carefully repaired, so that angle of marble fitted against angle. We would need a stout stake to drive in as a piton and a rope to negotiate that, and in this bare storage chamber with broken chairs heaped against one wall, a few brooms and buckets of bronze and wood against another, and dust everywhere, ropes and pitons were not available.

  I looked along the wall.

  A shadow moved there, and a shape humped around and a wing flickered up to be tucked more comfortably back, and I knew that Zair had answered my plea.

  “Into the next room, Delia, and swiftly, before the cramphs spot us."

  We ran from that dusty storage chamber along the corridor and into the next room. It was empty of life, although fitted as a sleeping chamber for a guardsman or courier. Judging by the perch-pole outside the narrow window, it was more probably the latter. With her neemus prowling, Queen Fahia had withdrawn all her people from this part of the fortress, ordering them to steal away down the secret passageways. Now that her pet neemus were slain—and would I ever forget the picture of my Delia facing with so great a courage the coming spring of the savage black beast?—and her guardsmen had broken through the balass door, we could expect mercenary guards to come streaming in from every direction.

  I looked out the window. Here in the heart of Huringa, capital city of Hyrklana, where saddle-birds were common, there was little need even for the minimal anti-flier precautions they took in Miglish Yaman. As for the flier-protection of cities of the Hostile Territories, here in Huringa such things were unknown and—given that an attack must cross the sea to reach the island at all, and then wing for dwaburs inland—unnecessary. A concession in the perch-poles was made so that they might in time of trouble be drawn inward. Feet clattered in the corridor outside and Delia swiftly closed the door.

  I hauled in on the leather rope running from a brass ring in the wall. The flying beast out there stirred and flicked that wing again and gripped its claws into the perch and twitched around—and I cursed savagely.

  The bird was a fluttclepper. It was a small high-speed racing bird, without the wide vane of the fluttrell, and it was capable of carrying only one rider. One rider. Used in races, or as speedy mounts for couriers, the fluttclepper is a most desirable flying steed; for Delia and me, then, it was practically useless.

  Surely, I thought, surely Zair would not disown me now? As for the Star Lords and the Savanti, I had written them off in situations like this a long time ago. To save myself, to save Delia, I must depend on my own strength and my own wits.

  The jagged-edge rocks into which the foundations of the fortress were sunk grinned up at me, their edges glittering in the pink moonlight. Beyond them the terraces trended downward, most containing walled gardens of flowers or herbs or greenery, some set out as practice courts for the ball games of Kregen, others with butts for crossbow practice. Beyond them the wide patio surrounding the Jikhorkdun spread invitingly. But to reach it we must fly.

  Must fly.

  I hauled the strap in.

  Delia said, “I do not think that small bird will carry both of us, my heart."

  Blows broke upon the door, and the iron bolt groaned. An ax-head appeared through the wood, which was a smooth-grained yellow vone from southern Havilfar's pine forests. It would not resist like sturm or l
enk; it would go down into long yellow splinters and ruin in mere murs.

  The fluttclepper was in a bad temper, for he had been awoken from a sleep and his master, as he thought, was most inconsiderate to drag him on his leading strap like this. He dug in his claws and resisted. I cursed the fool thing, and hauled. I saw long splinters split from the perch. Then I realized the fluttclepper was no fool; he was smart. He had recognized I was not his master, his usual rider.

  The door groaned and chips flew.

  I threw the shield to Delia and she caught it deftly and swung with it facing the disintegrating door. The stones on the windowsill had been set only a foot above the level of the floor for ease of egress and ingress. I moved through the window, gripping the stone edge, and put a foot on the perch-pole.

  The wind, unnoticed inside the building, now whistled about me. There were four long paces to reach the fluttclepper. I took a breath. My short half-cape billowed and I unfastened and let it slip from my fingers. It flew up and out like a monstrous bat, caught in the air currents, eddying about, twining in on itself, and finally falling long and long to the rocks below.

  When I took a look back through the window into the room, still holding on to the stone architrave, I saw the door buckling away from the frame. A hand reached in for the bolt. Without even being fully conscious of what I had been about, for all I wanted to do was get that damned fluttclepper under my hands and set Delia upon him, I saw the way Delia was half crouched behind the shield, facing the door, and the long straight slender glitter of the dagger in her hand. “Hurry, my princess!” She turned to look up at me.

  “You go on, Dray. The bird will carry you to safety—"

  I never shout at my Delia—or not often. I said to her in a voice I thought was perfectly reasonable: “Get up here, woman, and do as you are told."

  She stood up. Her eyes locked on mine, brown eyes staring into brown eyes. I could have drowned then. I took her wrist and hauled. She balanced easily on the sill. The door across the room burst open as the hand at last slid the bolt. I took the shield from Delia and skated it across. Its bronze-bound rim gashed into the throat of the leading Fristle, and he screamed and frothed blood and toppled back into his comrades.