Bladesman of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  More chambers and corridors and stairs followed. At last, and not before time, I was told to incline. I did so. I wanted to know what was going on. The incline involves the prostration of the entire body, head down, rump up, a stupid and undignified position, one used by slaves for princes.

  Or princesses. The blindfold was whipped away, many lights blinded me, and a harsh voice bade me crouch. I crouched.

  Then, blinking, I could see through the tears in my smarting eyes.

  She sat on a throne fashioned from crystal, a block of multifaceted crystal that must have weighed tons. The delicate gilding of arms and backrest could not disguise the power of that throne. Many brightly hued rugs bestrewed the throne and the dais. There golden-chained Chail Sheom simpered in attendance. Giant Womoxes waved faerling fans on each side of her. She looked — and I’ll give her her due — mighty impressive.

  “So, Bagor ti Hemlad. You are nothing better than a common thief.”

  She no longer wore all black. Her body was smothered in silver tissue, with a gold-tissue vest. Her jewels scintillated with a sparkle from the ranked lights so that she appeared a glittering statue — and, yet, no statue, for now the blood burned in her cheeks, and those slanting green eyes leeched fiercely upon me, a corner of the rich red lips caught up between white pointed teeth.

  “You do not answer! Speak, onker.”

  I was staring past the massively muscled man in the half-armor of gilded steel and the brilliantly feathered helmet, who stood by her left side, leaning on an arm of the throne and fingering his rapier, and I stared and stared at the familiar, horrible forms that crouched at her feet. Poor silly fat Queen Fahia of Hyrklana had attained a kind of surrogate dignity with her pet neemus, those vicious and treacherous black-furred cats. This woman, who had called herself the Kovneva Serea of Piraju, had gone at a bound far past fat Queen Fahia.

  I looked at the jiklos.

  I knew them, these manhounds. I had been chased by them through the jungles of Faol, had faced them with a wooden stave, had seen them rip shrieking victims to pieces. Apims, are the manhounds of Faol, apims trained to run on all fours and with their jagged teeth seize upon their prey. This woman of the blazing green eyes kept jiklos as her throne-step pets!

  To give the woman her due she gave me time to answer. Not so the man in half-armor. He left off fingering his rapier. He bounded down the dais steps, his face congested, roaring at me.

  “No stinking cramph of a slave insults the Majestrix while King Doghamrei stands ready to defend her honor!”

  Just before he reached me with every intention of knocking me headlong, I said, quickly and icily, “So King Doghamrei would soil his lily-white hands on a slave?” and then I sidestepped, clanging my chains, and tripped him and trod on him as he fell.

  Bedlam!

  The guards yelled and dragged me off and this buffoon King Doghamrei shrieked as I put a foot into his ribs and the Queen — for obviously this icy woman who had traveled incognito as the Kovneva Serea was Queen Thyllis of the Empire of Hamal — gave curt orders that in surprising time sorted out the rumpus.

  I was dragged up and then flung down before her.

  Doghamrei — the king of one of the kingdoms within the Empire of Hamal — was being sick and hustled away by his slaves. Oh, yes, that had been quite refreshing. Quite like old times. I thought the Queen would now release me, seeing that I had saved her life, finding a regal pretext to overturn the law and the sentence, and then I could get on with finding out what this mysterious cayferm was that went into the paol-boxes.

  Of course — Dray Prescot, as ever, was as stupid as an onker, a get-onker!

  Speaking in a low level voice that flayed like one of my clansmen’s skinning knives, she told me that her routine perusal of the criminal lists had revealed the name of Bagor. My personal effects, taken from me and docketed, revealed the violet-and-gold-zhantil brooch. She had had me brought here to inspect me. Here she took her green eyes away from my face, which must have been looking diabolical. When she continued I detected a quiver in her voice. “Only chance brought you to me in the first instance. Chance saw to it that I was apprised of your imprisonment. You, Bagor, whom I dignified with the cry of Jikai, are a common criminal.”

  “For three damned scales?” I shouted.

  One of the guards — they were a fresh lot, clad in mesh and probably of the same pastang that had been on duty at the little white folly — came up and hit me. I wasn’t watching him, staring at the Queen. He staggered me. I turned and swung a loop of my chains at his legs. It is an old trick. He toppled with a surprised yell and I put my knee in his nose as he went down.

  “I do not like rasts striking me, Queen, when I am not looking!” I bellowed up at her.

  She did not flinch.

  Her amusement made her courtiers and her guards nervous.

  “I am told you are a wild leem, Bagor. If you go on like this you will surely be beaten—” She mentioned one or three of the names for the unpleasant ways they have in Hamal of beating people — all under the law, of course.

  If I say that I couldn’t take all this seriously, I believe you will understand my frame of mind. There I had been, poised on the threshold of true discovery of the secrets of the fliers. I had the composition of the vaol-boxes in my head. The paol-boxes would have yielded their secret to me when I challenged Ornol again. And then I had been arrested as a thief for taking those three scales. The pouched belt of dirt had been ditched as soon as I regained consciousness, but the scales damned me. I was weighed in them and found guilty, so to speak. And, even after all that, I could have won free from the chain gang on the walls. Once back in the sacred quarter I was safe as Hamun, Amak of Paline Valley. And now this Jezebel of a queen was playing with me, having fun, dressing me up in humiliating clothing, taunting me with her lazy power.

  “What do you want of me, Queen?” I bellowed. “I have a sentence to complete of three seasons. Let me get back to the walls and smash granite for the defense of the city!”

  She put her pointed chin on her fist and stared down at me, over the heads of her vile jiklos, her green slanting eyes appraising me. “You are ceasing to amuse me, Bagor.”

  Before I could get out the exact words with which to annoy her, a Pallan approached swiftly from the rear side of the throne, picking his way apprehensively past the manhounds — as well he might, for they lolled their tongues at him, and saliva dribbled down their hideously human jaws. He whispered in Queen Thyllis’ ear for a few moments, and a look of cruel satisfaction slowly gathered on her face, flushing the chiseled whiteness, lending a more venomous cast so that one saw her character in an entirely new and altogether more hideous aspect. Truly, she had been merely playing with me!

  The Pallan blew his golden whistle and guards — more of the link-mesh-clad men — dragged in a wretch who stumbled, falling, to be dragged so that his body fairly bounced across the rich carpets. The courtiers — a brilliant lot to whom I had given scant attention — buzzed with muted excitement.

  “Stand the nulsh up so we may see the face of evil!”

  The man was lifted and banged down on his torn and bleeding feet. He was dressed in the brown of a gul, much patched. He stood near me, his face puffy from blows he had not dodged, one eye closed; blood streaked over his scalp from his tangled hair.

  “This is the man, Majestrix!” squeaked the Pallan. He sniffled in his eagerness. “He has been put to the question and he has confessed all. The indictment is written fair—”

  “Spare the laws of Hamal in my own palace!” rapped Queen Thyllis. She looked at this poor devil and I could only liken her look to that of a voryasen in the pool of the Phokaym. “Nulsh! You have been convicted of spying for Pandahem. You would betray my armies to your own foul lords!”

  The man lifted his head. He glared up, shaking in his chains, filthy, bloody, finished.

  “I work for Menaham!” he croaked. “Long live Menaham, beloved of Pandrite!”

 
I had no love for The Bloody Menaham, but this man deserved well in the thoughts of a fighting-man.

  Someone in the pressing crowd of courtiers, sycophants all, began a chanting and the rest took it up and soon that high hall rang with the words.

  “Syatra! Syatra! Syatra!”

  Instantly, I understood, and I knew the purpose of that cleared area in the hall, where ornate gilded railings — only they were solid gold, as I afterward discovered — kept folk away from a circular slab of marble. The noise beat against the gilded rafters, echoed in the groined vaultings, smothered all reason.

  “Syatra! Syatra! Syatra!”

  An old Xaffer, one of that strange remote race of diffs, trundled across to the railings. Under his directions steel-clad guards removed a section of railing and then the circular slab of marble lifted and swung aside on rollers. A round opening in the roof suddenly cleared, allowing the twin suns’ rays to spear down like spotlights. They were not quite centered over the hole in the floor. The shouting stopped, and a hush of breathless expectancy hung in that vast and evil hall.

  The spy from The Bloody Menaham shrieked as he saw what snaked, white and sucking and seeking, up through the hole.

  A syatra is a corpse-white man-eating plant, with spine-barbed leaves and many thick fleshy tentacles sprouting from a central trunk. Growths like Venus’s-flytraps, larger than coffins, grow around the trunk. Steam drifted from the opening and a gust of raw damp air swept chokingly from the hole in the marble floor. Inch had told me that the tropical jungles of Chem on the continent of Loh are choked with these devilish syatras.

  Despite the foul odors gushing from the hole the courtiers craned forward, rustling their bright robes, their golden ornaments clashing like a barbaric accompaniment to the horror going forward here. I shot a quick savage look at Queen Thyllis and as though she could read my mind she made a quick and incisive gesture. Instantly I was seized by my chains, dragged helplessly across the floor. I shouted at her, words, broken phrases, I know not what. The poor devil of Menaham had not stopped shrieking. He was dragged to the lip of the pit, through the gap in the railings, and as though merely waiting for this juicy morsel, the syatra flailed a tentacle around his waist.

  Screaming, struggling, he was dragged toward the hole and the palely pink-and-green caverns of crushing horror.

  Yet still he shrieked, and then as the corpse-white syatra burst full upon his shattered senses he retained a few final moments of lucidity — of pride and defiance!

  “For Menaham!” He yelled it out, strong and bell-like. “I, Tyr Dopitka ti Appanshad, spit upon you all!” And then, as the agony came on him: “Pandrite, aid me! Opaz — Pandr—”

  The miasmic air of malignity in that foul pit hung no more heavily than the venomous atmosphere in the high hall. The rollers rumbled back, the marble slab closed, the old Xaffer fussily superintended the replacement of the gold railings.

  “You, Bagor ti Hemlad!” Queen Thyllis spoke with caustic virulence. “One word — and that fate awaits you!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Of a big toe and mockery

  I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, with a whole gaudy raggle-taggle tail of high-sounding names, paced my stone cell, four paces north, four paces south, over and over, and if every now and again I thumped a fist against the stone walls so that my knuckles buzzed — I felt Zair and Opaz and Djan were dealing most unkindly with me.

  Many a Kregan in my position might think that Havil the Green, or Lem the Silver Leem, had gained an ascendancy. I would not countenance the thought that Grodno so much as breathed in Zair’s pure air — although I had seen sights that made me realize the reality. I was locked in that reeking palace of Queen Thyllis of Hamal. I had seen sights that made me think that perhaps the damned Grodnims of the green northern shore of the inner sea were not so damned as others were, here. Evil flowered here. Queen Thyllis knew of those ancient Queens of Pain of Loh. She consciously modeled herself on the legends and stories of horror that clung about their names and reputations. Poor silly fat Queen Fahia of Huringa in Hyrklana was a simpering ninny compared to the vibrant evil of Queen Thyllis. Queen Lilah of Hiclantung, with whom I had passed a time or two, seemed to me in retrospect quite a charming little lady with her remote witchlike face. This Queen Thyllis overmatched them all. I, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy, knew in all seriousness that it behooved me to walk damned small while she was around. That I, inevitably, would not do so merely made me perk up a little at the thought of spitting in her eye. What, I wondered, would this Thyllis do if I hurled the bloody tail of a leem full in her cold face.

  There was time to think rational thoughts in my cell, and I forcibly made myself do so. For one thing: all the peoples of Havilfar had compacted never to sell airboats to anyone of the continent of Loh. This ban extended to Pandahem. I knew why, now, a puzzle that had been with me for a long time. And the answer was simple. In the old days, when the Queens of Pain had ruled and the Empire of Walfarg, which was commonly called the Empire of Loh, extended over vast territories, over Pandahem, for instance, the Havilfarese had suffered constant invasion and harassment. Now they would sooner impale a Lohvian than sell him a voller. Simple, human — and with gigantic consequences.

  Another rational thought that was likely to drive me irrational was that I held fifty percent of the secrets of the fliers. I had the itchy feeling that some of the wiser men of Vallia might know about this damned cayferm. If I could get back home — home! here on Kregen and not four hundred light-years off through the deeps of interstellar space — I would crack into a program of voller construction. I knew why the fliers these treacherous Hamalians sold to Vallia, Zenicce, and elsewhere were unreliable. The mix of minerals was made impure — deliberately. The techs of the Vallian Air Service would have to shake up the boxes to free the clogged minerals when one of their fliers broke down. Also there were breakages in the linkages that controlled the boxes’ attitudes, which in their turn controlled an airboat’s flight.

  All this I had my hands on, and I was locked in a cell!

  Do you blame me that I had worked myself up to such a pitch that when a Hikdar brought a squad along to drag me out I went berserk? I lashed at them, getting my chains around their necks, cutting their feet from under them, kicking and gouging and biting. They were frightened to kill me, and to that I owe my life. In the end they swamped me by sheer weight and numbers and dragged me off, bawling.

  Sink me! I do not remember those times in the decadent palace of Queen Thyllis with any pleasure. She was a cold calculating bitch. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with me. I do not believe any sexual overtones — or undertones — entered into it. She had seen me fight. She wanted to break me. She would do it in the end. I’d be dead then, but if she got any satisfaction from me I’d be damned!

  So lost in mortification was I that I bellowed at her, insulting her, calling her all the Makki-Grodno diseased names I could put my coarse sailorman’s tongue around. She rode them all, wallowing in a kind of perverted masochism in the luxury of seeing me suffer. I was dressed like a popinjay, in silks and ribbons and bows and feathers.

  The costume was obscene to me. I tried ripping it off, but they thrashed me and put fresh clothes on my bleeding back. I was partially senseless when I was dragged before this evil playacting Queen of Pain.

  She allowed one of her pet jiklos to come down and lick my bleeding wounds.

  I spat in the thing’s face, but my parched mouth wouldn’t bring up a single gobbet.

  “Give him a drink, so that he may scream,” said the Queen. I drank — scummy water, but like Jholaix.

  “I should have let Nath and Nalgre have their way with you, Queen!” I croaked up. “They would have enjoyed that.”

  “Onker. Those flutsmen were paid by someone in Pandahem to kidnap me. You forget yourself, Bagor the wild leem.” She leaned down toward me, so that the gems in her solid breastplate dazzled me. “Would you care to face my pret
ty jiklos in the Jikhorkdun?”

  A flash of spirit shook me. Would she be such a fool?

  I dissembled. “That would be sport for you, shishi.”

  She did not flinch at the word.

  “It would be too easy for you. My pretty manhounds would slay you too fast.” She tickled one manhound behind the ear and he purred, tongue lolling. And he was human, apim, like me! She breathed faster. “You do not like being flogged, Bagor?”

  “Ask a silly question, Queen, and . . .”

  “You will be flogged, Bagor. Maybe even the syatra will suck on you, crunching your bones! But I will be merciful to you. Crawl to me, Bagor the zhantil! Crawl to me and kiss my foot, oh Bagor, the great Jikai!”

  Well, maybe I would have kissed her foot with its green-painted toenails, just to avoid a flogging, if she hadn’t flung in that taunt about Jikai. I know what a High Jikai is. I crawled up the marble steps to her, over the crystal footstool of the throne. Guards followed my every move. They were enjoying the fun, not as much as their queen, who overmatched them in depravity, but it was fun to them all the same. I crawled up and she negligently pulled her silver-glitter dress up her ankles. She pulled it over her calves, past her knees. She craned over to look down on me, her green slanting eyes bright upon me with malicious intent, her twisted lips glistening.

  I thought she would kick me in the face.

  She did not. “Kiss my foot, Bagor the zhantil!”

  I bent down and brushed my lips against her foot, got her big toe nicely positioned, opened my mouth — and bit.

  She screeched.

  That got to the bitch.

  Guards yanked me back and the whips and the balass sticks rose and fell. In for a zorca, in for a vove . . . I reared up, flailing the chains, laid a guard’s head open, kicked another betwixt wind and water. But the devils had fixed my chains in a new way so that I could not get a good swing on them. They hampered me, tripping me, and flail as I might I could not reach any more of the onkers, and so half stood, half crouched, growling like a veritable wild beast of the jungle, panting with fury, my hair over my eyes, roaring, futile, ludicrous.