Arena of Antares [Dray Prescot #7]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The leather strap hummed tautly as I hauled. I took those four steps on that narrow perch across emptiness and got my fingers into the fluttclepper's neck and I squeezed. I put a foot back on the perch, and braced myself. Beneath me gaped an abyss floored with jagged rock fangs. The wind blew. I shouted. “Delia! Now!" She made of those steps across that dizzyingly narrow pole a superb dance of joy, a light skipping waltz that swept her effortlessly across and into my outstretched arm. My right fist twisted in the fluttclepper's white feathers. He tried to squawk and I kicked him, feeling my whole body sway.

  “He will never carry us, Dray—but if we are to die, then I am glad we die together."

  “Clack, clack, clack,” I said. “Slide down and grasp his leg above the claws. And, my dearest heart—hold on!"

  She slid down and gripped and, suddenly, looked up at me and I saw the anguish written on her beautiful face.

  “Dray—oh, Dray, you will not send me away—alone!"

  For answer I slid down by her side. My left arm encircled her slender waist, my right hand gripped fiercely into the legs of the fluttclepper. I yanked. The bird's claws scrabbled. He swayed. I jerked him again and the swing of our bodies overbalanced him so that he toppled screeching from the perch.

  Angry faces appeared in the window and over the rush and batter of the wind I heard a high yell: “Crossbows!"

  Much good that would do them in this wind and the hurtling pell-mell fall of the bird. He could not carry us both. That was true. But he had the instinctive reaction to, and fear of, falling and so he spread his white wings and beat frenziedly. We fell. But our fall was checked. The fluttclepper was acting as an animal parachute.

  We plunged down and out and the edges of those fanged rocks whipped past us. We hissed down through the air. Now the terraces whirled away above. We were across the patio. We were nearing the ground, and the rustling shriek of the bird's wings tore the air about our heads.

  We hit with a shock, but only enough to make us tumble head over heels across the edge of the patio and into a trellis of moon-blooms whose outer petals were greedily sucking up the moonlight from the Twins.

  We scrambled up.

  “You are all right, Dray?"

  I looked at her. “As you are. We are out of that Opaz-forsaken place. Now we need a voller."

  People on the patio and coming and going on the adjoining streets were rapidly left behind as we ran into the moon-drenched shadows. After a time we could walk as a normal couple, except for the chance I might be recognized. The great Krozair longsword I had unstrapped from my belt and carried bundled under my arm, a fold of cloth covering the hilt, where the fashionable cut of the sleeves permitted. For the rest of that magnificent scabbard, Zair must smile on its new owner.

  The voller park we chose was not the same as that flier-drome from which, twice before, I had attempted to escape from Huringa. Again I went into a voller before the attendants were aware and sent the craft surging upward. Delia sat at my side as the wind slipped past our ears. Straight into the path of the Twins I sent the voller, and chance directed we would pass straight over the Jikhorkdun. That was cheeky, but safe, for I fancied Fahia would send her guards and her aerial cavalry searching the air lanes to the north. She might not believe my words on Delia and on Vallia, but she would act on them.

  We had reached past the amphitheater and I was lifting the craft to attain a good height and maximum speed when what I could not believe, would not believe, occurred in all its horror.

  Black clouds roiled in from nowhere. Lightning flashed from that abruptly jet-black sky. The wind velocity simply halted us in mid-flight and tumbled us back, like a dusty leaf, hurling us down with contemptuous colossal ease into the ground.

  I remember yelling insanely, raving, almost incoherent with the scarlet, futile, frustrated rage burning within me.

  “No! You who call yourselves the Star Lords! This is not possible! You cannot do this to me! Onkers—rasts, cramphs, yetches! Star Lords! Everoinye!"

  The flier swung and swayed and in the supernatural gloom I gripped hard on to my Delia. If a hint of that hideous blue radiance swooped on me now ... !

  “Give me leave to depart, you Star Lords!” I bellowed. I was insane, then. I had won against fearful odds, and my Delia won with me, at my side, racing to freedom—and the stupid, vile, vicious, unspeakable kleeshes of Star Lords were driving me back, back to Huringa and the evil talons of Queen Fahia and the Jikhorkdun!

  We crashed among the warrens clustering by the amphitheater.

  My last conscious impressions were of the ground swooping up; of the warm and vibrant form of Delia clasped in my arms, and of her strong slender arms clasped about me; and of a crazed, upside-down vision of coys and apprentices and kaidurs running in the moonlight that, with a supernatural suddenness, burst through those roiling diabolical black clouds. Lightning struck down, a ferocious earth-shaking noise burst up all about me—everything coming together like a volcano in my head.

  Even as I knew I was being knocked senseless, I would not let go my hold upon my Delia. And she would not let go her hold upon me.

  * * *

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Arena

  Queen Fahia sat in her curule chair, flanked by the sinister shadows of her pet neemus, and she taunted me. She enjoyed that. She had left to her only two neemus, and that pained her. But, she had me, she had Drak the Sword, hyr-kaidur, who had caused her that pain.

  She would not be kind.

  I had, of necessity, to crouch. They had loaded me with so many iron chains I could barely walk. But walking was not necessary, for they had stuffed me into a tiny square iron-barred cage where I had to crouch in a doubled-up position. The cage was carried by sixteen massively thewed Brokelsh. I twisted my head up to look at this Queen Fahia, for she interested me. They had not tortured me. I knew why that was.

  “You have done much mischief, Drak the Sword. And I was foolish and weak enough to think you were my friend."

  Delia was not here. She was all I was concerned about. All this talk about friendship with this fat little woman who sat upon the throne of Hyrklana would have made Delia smile. I felt convinced, through my own agony and misery, that because I had not been harmed, Delia would not be either. I thought I knew the way Queen Fahia's mind worked by then.

  “My name is Dray Prescot. I warn you, Queen—"

  “Silence, you rast! I am the queen! You are no more than a yetch of a kaidur who presumes.” She threw her head back and laughed, an unprepossessing sight, to be sure. “What! You call yourself Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy?"

  “Aye. But you do not know what that is. I am Pur Dray. But, also—"

  She flicked her fingers and the Pallan Mahmud passed her the scroll wherein was written my crimes. It was not paper, which would have interested me, thinking of far Aphrasöe, but a stiff parchment. She stabbed a jeweled finger down.

  “You claim to be Pur Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Zorcander, Lord of Strombor, Prince Majister of Vallia, Kov of Zamra and Can-thirda, Strom of Valka!” She lifted her head and stared at me with a jovial evil over the parchment scroll. “And you seriously expect me to believe this roll of rubbish? This tirade of tomfoolery? You yetch! Think of my neemus! Think of my guardsmen!"

  “I have little need to think of them, for they are mostly dead. If only they all were."

  She drew her breath. She stabbed the scroll again. “I know nothing of these impossible names—save Vallia and Valka. And Zamra. I once heard of a Kov of Zamra, for my stylors tell me his name appears in a secret document they brought from Hamal, where he visited. The Relts tell me his name is Ortyg Larghos."

  I laughed.

  “Ortyg Larghos was slain by many arrows, slain in foul treachery to his emperor."

  “It is easy to claim a man is dead and take his name, when you are many dwaburs from his homeland."

  I could see Fahia was enjoying this. She was working up to a great scene when I would scream and beg f
or mercy, and she could turn the screw tighter and tighter, until in the end I would admit all my sins. She licked her full red lips. Even then, I truly think, I pitied her.

  So far no mention of Delia had crossed my lips. What I was absolutely certain was to happen would not be swayed, now, by what I said, and I wished to start the thing as soon as possible and so spare my Delia any further protracted agony.

  We must have been scooped out of the wreckage of the voller after those damned Star Lords had brought all my proud plans of escape to nothing. I had awoken to find myself as I now was, loaded with iron chains and doubled up in an iron cage. I had been given food and drink. But I was in a foul state, for all the buckets of water had been hurled over me before I had been carried into the queen's presence. My clothes had been taken from me. I wondered where the Krozair longsword had gone, but forbore to ask. That would give one more item for them to crow about.

  Presently the queen's taunts became cruder and cruder and there is no point in repeating them. She worked herself up into a veritable passion, her blue eyes flashing at me and her features twisting. She dribbled and slashed at her slave fifis who trembled and tried to wipe the spittle away with sensil cloths. She saw the way I looked at her, and I believe then she understood that if I could get my hands around her fat neck I would have had no compunction about squeezing her evil life out, for all that I pitied her, and had recoiled from that deed before, for events had moved on apace since then, by Vox!

  “By the putrescent left eyeball of Makki-Grodno!” I roared at her. “You silly fat old woman! Get on with it, for the sake of that yetch Havil the Green. Or"—and I stared her full in the face as she flinched back—"may that hyr-kleesh Lem the Silver Leem devour your mangy body entire!"

  She fairly exploded then.

  Courtiers ran with whips to hit me, guards milled, a number of Horters fainted, and noble ladies leaned on their noble spouses’ shoulders, shaking.

  By the time the hullabaloo had subsided Queen Fahia had left her audience chamber, and her black neemus padded balefully after her, twisting their rounded heads, their wedge-ears low, their tails lolling. I laughed.

  The preparations within the Jikhorkdun for this greatest of great Kaidurs were made with thoroughness. Barriers around the arena were heightened and strengthened, and solid marble walls were erected before the queen's box, and many crossbowmen were stationed there. Her Chulik Chuktar still retained his place; but I knew it had been a near squeak for him when I had so impudently slipped and deflected his bolts and stuxes, and so barbarically hurled the bloody leem's tail in her face. Thinking back, I would not have dubbed that a high Jikai. More likely a little Kaidur!

  They brought my iron cage to a small newly created stone enclosure I did not recognize. All across one side of the stone-walled space stood a line of mercenaries, all with their crossbows lifted, loaded, and cocked, and aimed directly at me. There were fifty of them. At the Chulik Chuktar's command—for he had taken personal control of this wild leem of a prisoner—fifty bolts would flash toward me, narrowing in a fan and piercing my heart. There would not be a lot left of that heart by the time fifty steel-headed quarrels had bedded there.

  Slaves wearing the gray slave breechclout unlocked the cage and the chains. The reasoning was, I suppose, that the slaves were expendable. As it was, the four of them shook so much their fingers made a sad hash of the locks, until I said: “Hai, brothers! I am not a slave-master. One day the light will reach this evil place of Huringa. One day slaves will be free."

  They didn't believe me, of course. And, to my shame, it was a bravo's gesture, words out of an empty bladder of courage. They got the locks undone and then it was the old bloodstream twisting me about so that, for a time, I could not have faced a woflo, let alone a ponsho, and a quoffa might have had his way with me unmolested. When at last I could stand up, the guards with their crossbows aimed and their trigger-fingers white as death escorted me, all naked, through the far gateway.

  Oh, yes, believe me, I can see that scene now, etched in acid on my retinas.

  I stepped onto the silver sand of the arena. Everything was the same and everything was different. The terraces and boxes rose into the high blue sky. I was let out onto the sands of the arena exactly as the Suns of Scorpio reached the zenith. Shadows shrank small. Everyone would have a fine unobstructed view. The roar! The yells and shrieks in a bedlam of sound pulsed down from those thousands of throats. And I heard the tenor of much of that noise, the howls for “Drak the Sword! Hyr-kaidur!” Oh, yes, they loved to see the hot blood spurting, and if it gouted from a champion, from a favorite, there were always new accolades to be won by kaidurs forcing their way upward in the Jikhorkdun.

  The silver sand gleamed under the suns. The smell of caged beasts wafted in a streaming fetid breath down here, down on the blood-soaked sands of the arena, where the action was. There was, as usual, no wind. I looked up as a skein of mirvols with watchful patrolling aerial cavalry passed, and guessed they would find an excuse to wing around and so hover near, taking their fill of the sport below. They swung away, and a smaller, slimmer flying figure appeared, slipping in over the roof of the western stand and so disappearing in a twinkling. I had caught no sight of a flier upon the flying animal's back.

  The beast roar smothered reason. Men and women—apim and halfling—screamed and screeched and banged the benches and swung their rattles and beat their gourd-drums. The winesellers passed along the benches, and could not sell their wares fast enough to slake the throats that all this yelling turned into volcanoes of thirst. Young slave girls, apims, Fristles, Lamnias, sylvies, in particular, moved among the seated thousands carrying fresh paline bushes for sale. Their masters employed girls from those races which traditionally produced the most beautiful girls. I have not mentioned the sylvies before out of decency. But they were there, and doing a roaring trade with their palines and squishes and gregarians and all the exotic fruits of Kregen.

  The royal box had never been more ornately decorated. It blazed with color and fire. Queen Fahia sat there, enthroned, and I could guess she would be sitting with her hand propped on her chin, absorbing all this pageantry of the Jikhorkdun with those blue eyes wide, her full lower lip caught between her teeth, mesmerized. If I say that I was to witness a similar spectacle that would surpass this Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana, that is not to say that it was not a most impressive spectacle. Golden trumpets cut the air, shrieking their high notes above the din. A silence gradually fell, a silence of waiting, of lip-licking expectation.

  I had been let out onto the sands, all naked as I was, from that special area near the queen's box from which her own Queen's Kaidurs—who owed no allegiance to any color—would march proudly forth to fight for her. They would halt and lift their arms in salute. There was nothing about the Queen's Kaidurs or their prospects in the arena to prompt them to cry anything about imminent dying and present saluting.

  I walked out a little upon the sand. I had not been able—all the time I moved from that stone gateway onto the sand, all the time the corner of my eye had picked up that mysterious flier slipping over the roof of the amphitheater, all the time my senses had been drowned by the noise and smells—all that time, I had been quite unable to take my eyes from the stake positioned in the center of the arena.

  I prayed she was unharmed.

  Silver chains they had used to bind her. This was not because she was a princess, for Fahia did not believe that. The silver chains, I guessed, and felt the black rage in me, were a direct reference to the silver leem.

  All naked she was suspended there.

  Her glorious brown hair lay strewn about her shoulders and bosom. Her shape would set fire to any man. The silver chains draped her so that she could not move, and her arms were drawn up above her head and fastened with silver staples to the black balass of the stake.

  She was a princess, and she looked more proud, more beautiful, more regal, than anyone there—anyone!

  Soon, I knew, the
horned bosks would be let out.

  The thought of those long cruel bosk horns tearing into that slender form filled me with such horror, such rage, that I nearly allowed myself to go berserk and strive to climb that sheer unmarked marble wall to place my fists around the fat neck of that fat, evil woman.

  I stood there, and I saluted her as her own Queen's Kaidurs might salute had they wished to die instantly.

  There is on Kregen a gesture of such obscene connotation that I have made it a practice never to use, for I am squeamish in such matters.

  Now I drew myself up and saluted the queen with this sign.

  The sigh that rippled around the amphitheater might have been the sigh of the mourners around an open grave or gathered by the pyre.

  I was naked and unarmed. I faced, as I expected, either a single bosk and his long horns, or two or three together. The Chulik Chuktar came to the edge of the arena and tossed me a djangir. The short sword, squat and fat and two-edged, landed in the sand at my feet. Being frugal in the matter of weapons, as you know, I bent and retrieved it. It was sharp. They wanted their sport, then, before I died. And with my death, the death also of Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, fastened by silver chains to an ebony stake.

  Once, she had said to me, “I wish to be known as Delia of Strombor."

  But I had always thought of her as Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. Now, perhaps in a few heartbeats, it would not matter.

  Cunning are the ways of the managers of the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, which is the capital city of Hyrklana, in Havilfar. But, of them all, none so cunning or malefic as their queen, Queen Fahia, she of the blue eyes and golden hair and heart as black as the fur of her own neemus!

  This time they did not wait until my back was turned to release the beast into the arena, as they had done when I fought the leem with the silver collar. This time they wished me to see at once the horror I faced.