Bladesman of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  This time I spent a good long session pacing in my cell, wondering what the Queen would do. No one told me if I had given her blood poisoning when I bit her toe. The rancid food they fed me, the slops and stinking cheese and rock-hard crusts, might all easily contain poison enough to bloat her toe, and her leg, and her body, and her evil, scheming, cold-blooded head . . .

  Still, she had not introduced me to the dungeons below the castle; I had not visited the Hanitchik. There were torture chambers below her palace, here on the island in the artificial lake in the River Havilthytus. I needed no one to tell me that. She was playing with me, as a strigicaw might play with a woflo. All the vaunted laws of Hamal were excluded here in this diabolical palace of Queen Thyllis.

  On the occasions I was dragged bleeding and struggling to the great hall to be made a butt of I wondered if among those bright sycophantic courtiers stood and laughed any of my acquaintances of the sacred quarter. They would not have recognized me. I was a hairy mess, for Queen Thyllis, although having me washed, would not have my hair cut. She had a use for it, she said, taunting me.

  She got over the toe-biting, and I was dealt with most unpleasantly. As you know, my dip in the Pool of Baptism in distant Aphrasöe — I thought of the Swinging City a great deal during that horrible time — besides assuring me of a thousand years of life, gave me also remarkable, vital recuperative powers. I playacted for all I was worth, groaning and yelling to prove I was not mended. But they thwacked me, anyway.

  Despite my original belief that no sexual taint motivated the Queen’s sadistic behavior, inevitably and by degrees I came to realize that sex must go at least some way toward explaining her conduct. Yet she made no overtures whatsoever during this captivity. I have had experiences with amatory queens, but suffice it to say at this time Queen Thyllis played with me for the slaking of her lust for cruelty. She could easily have been far worse. I know that. But I gave her no encouragement whatsoever.

  The arrival of King Doghamrei in my cell, recovered from the bruised ribs I had given him on the dais of the Queen’s throne, heralded a fresh face, and a new phase of unpleasantness. This king lorded it over a moderate-sized kingdom within the empire, the kingdom of Hirrume. I discovered he had plans to enlarge his kingdom, strictly within the empire, at the expense of neighboring kings and Kovs, and he had not been king long. Also, as I discovered, he hankered after the Queen, with a view to making himself King of Hamal and, when the due observances had been made, emperor. The setback in Pandahem had also set back the ceremonies Queen Thyllis had promised herself as marking her coronation as empress. The various priests and monks of Havil the Green, the state religious establishment, would no doubt argue strongly that the coronation could not take place until all the omens were auspicious. That made sense.

  The new face turned out to be long and thin and of a yellowish cast, with two thin black moustaches drooping past a narrow mouth, and with a pair of boot-button black eyes of penetrating brilliance. I guessed who this thin and angular man must be the moment I saw him. Not from his appearance alone, was I thus confident. There was about him an aura of mystical fanaticism, that aura of power I had seen before in the person of Lu-si-Yuong. Also, his red hair shone in the torchlight with a most pressing brilliance. He obviously blackened his moustaches from vanity — and I found that passing strange in one of the famous Wizards of Loh.

  “Examine this yetch, Que-si-Rening.” King Doghamrei spoke with his usual uncouth bellow. “By Krun! I want to know all there is to know about his miserable body and his thrice-damned ib! Make him talk, Que-si-Rening!”

  The Wizards of Loh in these days may be merely a dying and faded remnant of the great force they once were, but they wield hidden and some say occult powers. It was as well to be on the safe side with them. This bully-boy king with his roaring ways, steel armor, and rapier seemed to me to be digging a pit for himself.

  “You are the man known as Bagor ti Hemlad, slave?” The wizard’s voice crackled like old parchment.

  “I am, San. Ask your questions.”

  His head went up when I gave him that ancient title for sage, dominie, master. He stared at me narrowly. “You have met a Wizard of Loh before?”

  “Aye, San. He did me a turn — as I did him.”

  “Then maybe I will find something here to make of my life less barren. I do not receive the meed that is my due.”

  “It is strange that here in Hamal I should find a Wizard of Loh, in a land where all things Lohvian are detested.”

  “The Queen has her fancies. I am kept secret.”

  “Get on with it, get on with it!” rasped Doghamrei.

  The great blockheaded idiot didn’t seem to realize that in this three-cornered contest the Wizard of Loh was already in my corner.

  Que-si-Rening sat on the straw-stuffed pallet that served as a bed. There were not above a dozen nits in it, for I had gone hunting with thumbnails sharp and at the ready.

  “Tell me, Bagor, whom men dub a wild leem, do you lust after the body of Queen Thyllis of Hamal?”

  “Eh?” I gaped at him.

  “Don’t shilly-shally, you rast! Give an answer, or you will be flogged jikaider!”

  “If you need a Wizard of Loh to worm out the answers to questions that have no sense, cramph,” I said to King Doghamrei, “you should know jikaidering will avail you nothing.” I added, for good measure, “Kleesh!”

  He roared and tried to strike me, but I ducked, my chains jangling, and he hit the wall and bellowed like a stuck chunkrah.

  “May Havil the Green pour onto you from a great height, cramph,” I said with great equanimity.

  The wizard brushed his long moustaches. He’d enjoyed it, too.

  But this was a serious matter. I saw what was in this puffed-up king’s mind. Truth to tell, in all honesty, it must have seemed, to many people around the court in this great island palace of Hammabi el Lamma, that the Queen was besotted by more than mere cruelty. Her treatment of me would be measured in many a scheming brain as an exhibition of frustrated lust. Well, so be it. I had to turn this to my own account, as any wily clansman would.

  The king sucked his knuckles and swore. Que-si-Rening bent forward. His dark hypnotic eyes bored into mine, and I forced myself to contain all that was Dray Prescot, to hold on to my own ib, as the Kregan saying has it.

  “You will save much pain, Bagor, if you speak.”

  “I’ll speak,” I said. “By Krun! This nurdling oaf Doghamrei may have that ice-cold bitch to bed at night, and he’ll freeze to death.”

  Doghamrei started bellowing for the guards and but for the wizard’s few quick and pointed words we might have had a fair old dust up then. I had been eating, if not luxuriously, enough, and I had not lost my strength. I was a little stiff and sore, to be sure, but I am used to discomfort.

  “Tell this onker he can keep his queen. And to the Ice Floes—”

  “Enough, Bagor!”

  Well, enough is enough. But, being Dray Prescot, I was ready to take this as far as it would go. A streak of agony hit me as I thought of my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. Then the king, still sucking his knuckles, was yelling violently at the guards, and going out, and ordering the Wizard of Loh to get his stupid backside out after him.

  If he was satisfied with my answers — all well and good. I thought I had made it clear. As it turned out, the fool didn’t believe me — for which, later on, I mentally gave thanks to Zair in his omnipotent wisdom.

  As though her spies had given her cognizance of what had transpired in my cell, the very next interview with the Queen differed radically from all those that had gone before. I was dressed up in those ridiculous and demeaning clothes. I was led in my chains along new corridors, the guards very tense and nervous (the acupuncture needles must have been busy pricking their aches and pains away), and so to a private chamber deep within the palace of Hammabi el Lamma.

  Queen Thyllis was dressed most sumptuously to receive me. Smothered
as ever in jewels, she shimmered in the soft samphron lamps’ glow. Yet she wore a tight black bodice, and a wisp of black skirt. Her long white legs hinted at rosy curves under transparent tissues. Her midriff was bare, her navel blazing with a gigantic emerald. She’d blundered there, had she known it; a scarron would have pleased me more. And, for the first time, her hair swung free, massively looped in pearls, yet glittering and glinting a cornfield yellow. That hair was bleached and dyed, I wagered, cynical in such matters.

  “You will drink wine with me, Bagor my Jikai?”

  “If it is Jholaix.”

  “Ah!” She stared at me hard, the lamplight shining on her moist lips. Their thinness had all gone. She gestured and one of her chained slave girls poured.

  As though to impose her will completely upon mine, she leaned back, one naked arm behind her head, the other lifting a golden cup of wine. She said: “Shall I have you tortured as you deserve, Bagor?”

  I did not shrug. That is a gesture foreign to me. But I sipped the wine, grimaced, and put the goblet down.

  That aroused her.

  “It is best Jholaix, rast!”

  “Third-grade Jholaix, Queen. You have been swindled if you believe you drink of the best.”

  Her pale face flushed. Her slanting green eyes fairly snapped. Suddenly I was ashamed of what I’d done. The wine was good — very good. Not the best, of course, for that seldom leaves Jholaix in Pandahem. But fine. It was better than third class. Now I realized that my spiting of her might have put some poor devil of a wine merchant’s life in danger.

  Then she said, spitting the words out: “I know wine, nulsh! This is the finest. You cannot mock me!”

  Again I did not shrug. “One does not need to mock you, Queen.”

  I think, then, that she realized something about me she had not hitherto allowed herself to see. She panted a little, the mass of jewels upon the black bodice in turmoil. Then she clapped a golden hammer against a golden gong — always a handy item of ornamental furniture to bring the slaves scurrying — and when the guards came she said: “Take him down.” She added a few terse instructions about the items of torture I was to undergo.

  The guards by now thought they understood my mettle. I was trussed up like a side of vosk ready for the spit of a pagan feast. Down the stairs we went, and I saw over the stolid faces of the guards carrying me the alive, vibrant, coldly evil face of Queen Thyllis, gloating.

  The moment we were outside that chamber the guards relaxed. Poor devils, they went in mortal terror of the Queen. They were a vile bunch, I knew, but their evil paled to nothing beside hers.

  As I say, the guards thought they understood my mettle. They had trussed me like a roast vosk, but they had not used lesten-hide. They relaxed when we passed from the presence of the Queen, and I was able to bunch up my body, exert a bursting muscular surge of power, snap the bonds, and then set about the guards with my chains. I had fixed those damned chains myself, after being caught once, and so I had a little movement.

  We had a fine old skipping, lunging, prancing set-to on the stairs. I wedged my back against the wall in an angle and kicked and bludgeoned them down the treads. They went clanging and clattering down in fine style. I belted the last one across the face with a lethal bight of chain even as he thought about using his thraxter with intent. They tumbled away. I leaped down, kicked the nearest, hurdled them and scooped up a thraxter on the way.

  As for getting out of the vile palace of Hammabi el Lamma, that was an entirely different kettle of fish.

  I prowled along, most angry, not caring for the moment to trust myself to grab a guard and prod the information from him. Soon as look at the cramphs I’d do for them, such was my black mood. So, once again, sheer black anger undid me . . .

  In that maze of galleries and corridors I stalked along. I saw no one. This struck me as strange. Then I found myself in the corridor wherein was situated my own cell. I walked past the door, looking in as I did so, and saw my late meal laid out, the second supper of Kregen. The cup of water was what I needed, so I stepped in, took up the cup, and drank it all down at a gulp. It was foul and bitter, but it wet my throat.

  “Mother Zinzu the Blessed!” I said. “I needed that!” Which statement was a pure blasphemy, seeing that Mother Zinzu the Blessed is the patron saint of the drinking classes of Sanurkazz.

  So, standing in the center of my cell, the door open and unbarred, I girded myself afresh to bash a way out. The dizziness crept treacherously, at first, a faint white tremor along my limbs, a distant gong-note, infinitely repeated, in my skull. I felt — oh, I felt nothing. I knew I was swaying, for the walls were rocking. I fell. I fell full length even as I knew I had toppled backward toward the door. So, as I fell toward the east my thraxter flew from my nerveless fingers and flashed under the straw pallet. It was the most curious experience. My head and shoulders hit the bed, I rolled over, feeling nothing, slumped down, half sitting, my head hanging. I could see and hear perfectly, yet I could not move!

  I was held in a paralysis. Conscious, helpless, I just slumped there. The dip in its niche in the stone wall quivered and spider-shadows ran. I lay there, too astonished to swear. By the time I had worked out that the water had been drugged — why? why? — and had made stupendous and entirely useless efforts to move, I had also come to the grim conclusion that I could do nothing until the effects of the drug wore off.

  A face peered suspiciously around the door. This face bore a huge badly sewn scar across the right cheek, the nose, and the left eye; the blade that had caused the damage had gouged out that eye, so that this guard was known as Derson Ob-Eye. He withdrew, I heard a faint whistle, and then two guards clanked into the room, lifting me, stiff and stark and paralyzed, carrying me out like a side of roast vosk, bound without cords!

  They moved furtively. Derson Ob-Eye led the way by shadowy runnels, down winding flang-infested stairways, under low arches where the cobwebs brushed and caught and streamed from the guards’ steel like Spanish moss. At a small postern stood a bulky man swathed in a massive gray cape. He turned as we approached and I saw it was King Doghamrei.

  So that was one little mystery solved.

  Ob-Eye grunted and lifted a butt end of a torch from its becket, held it against my face. I could not blink, could not so much as twitch a muscle.

  King Doghamrei smiled.

  “I know you can see and hear me, nulsh. I will not strike you, for you will not feel it.” Doghamrei was really enjoying himself now. “You will be taken well out to sea. You will be dropped from that great height you promised to have Havil the Green pour on me. I shall not be there. But it will be done. Ob-Eye and my guards know the penalties for failure.” He was trembling, and sweat dewed his upper lip and forehead. “Take him, and go, and your Kuerden the Merciless will seem to you a kind and tolerant mother beside me if you fail!”

  This Derson Ob-Eye was an apt pupil to a vile master. He chuckled, with a brown snaggletoothed smile.

  “The pleasure will be ours, King, when he pitches overboard and makes a coffin-sized hole in the sea!”

  “Far out, dolt. Far out, so that no one will ever look upon his filthy face again.”

  I tried to speak. I know my face remained stony, but some hint of the effort I was making must have shown in my eyes, in the veins of my neck and forehead, for King Doghamrei laughed again, bending close in the sputtering torchlight to gloat upon my helplessness.

  “There will be no escape for you, rast! The Queen even aids my scheme, for she sends sky ships to deal with vermin off our coast.” He was thoroughly enjoying himself, and reluctant to see me go. “I use my own ship in a dual purpose this day! Now may Lem the Silver Leem be praised!”

  Well. That did, of course, explain much . . .

  Brisker now, exultant, King Doghamrei tongue-lashed his men into action. “And tell Hikdar Hardin well out to sea, mind, Ob-Eye! I want no trace of this kleesh ever found again.”

  “As you command, King.” Ob-Eye let his singl
e eye’s gaze wander toward me and he sniggered. “And I have a scheme that will delight you, great King.” The two guards hefted me and carried me off, and so I had to wait to hear Ob-Eye’s little scheme. When I discovered it I knew he was right: it would delight the great cramph King Doghamrei. How I wanted to yell at him that if he thought Queen Thyllis would tolerate him alongside her on the throne of Hamal for an instant, he was so great a get-onker as to be ineffable. But I could not move.

  They took me in a little flier out to the coast in the dawning light as the emerald-and-ruby glory broke over the land, and we slanted down to a vast flat area of dust and scrawny grass where row after row of monstrous Hamalese sky ships were lined up. I watched everything with feverish eyes.

  Ob-Eye had me loaded aboard a giant of the skies, a veritable aerial fortress. Thick were her timbers, massive her upperworks, profuse her provision of varters and catapults, her ports for bowmen. All this was a revelation to me, accustomed to the small vollers and airboats; the greatest fliers I had seen had not even approximated in size to these monsters. I saw then something of the awful power of Hamal.

  Two sky ships lifted off as the twin suns cleared the horizon, and as we rose, so the suns raced up the sky. Ob-Eye had the complete confidence of his master, and I saw and heard him giving intolerant and contemptuous orders to the captain of the ship, this Hikdar Hardin. This ship sported the colors and insignia of Hirrume. The lead ship showed the purple and gold of the Queen. In trail we flew out over the sea.

  A hexagonal structure mounted on stilts just forward of the center allowed an uninterrupted sweep of deck fore and aft beneath. Other towers of various shapes and sizes housed artillery, the varters and catapults; this hexagonal bridge was the center of command, and there I was carried. The sky ships are built in a number of different fashions and styles, in the never-ending effort to achieve better efficiency. High in the control area, with Hikdar Hardin most uneasy, with Ob-Eye chuckling away, chewing cham and thoroughly enjoying himself, I waited like a chunk of frozen beef.