Legions of Antares [Dray Prescot #25]

by Alan Burt Akers

  And so I entered Empress Thyllis's throne room.

  The most awesome single impression of that room was that you did not notice its height or length or width or the lavish decorations. Every eye was instantly drawn to the throne fashioned from its colossal block of multi-faceted crystal. Brightly colored rugs lay scattered across the dais below the throne and over the steps where the scantily clad golden-chained slave girls, the Chail Sheom, simpered and shuddered. For the manhounds were there, the jiklos, lolling their red tongues, their teeth sharp and jagged—the Manhounds of Antares, apims cruelly contorted by genetic science to run on all fours and to be more vicious than a hunting cat of the jungle. The chains that held them were of solid iron. To one side the golden railings encircled the marble slab with its chains and rollers.

  And so to Thyllis herself.

  She had changed. The face was as white and sharp as ever; but her jaw line had thickened and even in the blaze of light coruscating about her and reflecting from the solid mass of gems that smothered her, her body lacked the old slenderness of waist. Her green eyes slanted cruelly upon her courtiers and the officers gathered here in the evening levee prepared to march out on the morrow for the defense of her city.

  Her lips were as red as ever, and fuller, more sensuous, and still she caught up one corner in her sharp white teeth.

  The Womoxes at her back waved their faerling fans and their horns were gilded and polished, and their size proved they were still picked from the finest specimens Thyllis could come by.

  I admit, I was caught up in watching this woman. Evil? Thyllis, was she a wicked woman? Well, she was if you call throwing people down into her syatra pit, or letting her manhounds loose to munch on them in the Hall of Notor Zan wicked. But, some folk would claim these are some of the mere tiresome duties of being an empress. She was a creature of her time and circumstances. In her the Scorpion had stung the Frog, and, willy-nilly, her life had followed with the inevitability of high tragedy. I had been drawn here almost against my own inclination to see her for the last time before I joined Kytun. It seemed to me only fit and proper that the Emperor of Vallia should look upon the Empress of Hamal before the final confrontation.

  Despite the size of the throne room the closeness of the atmosphere made us clammy, the smell breathed in redolent with scents and sweat and fear. The noise of the crowd hung muted in shuffling of feet, the clink of swords, the jangle of golden ornaments. When a manhound yawned revealing a red cavern hedged in fangs the women jumped and the men looked unhappy, reflexively grasping their sword hilts. And, over the whole barbaric scene the presence of Thyllis brooded.

  Yet she was being gracious. She was aware that these soldiers would march out to fight for her. That they obeyed her because of fear or for reward was for the moment pushed aside. But not far aside; as though to reinforce that chill grip of fear she inspired, a screaming wretch was dragged in. It was given out that he was a Chuktar, condemned for attempting to betray his empress for gold. The gathered mob began that dreadful chant.

  “Syatra! Syatra! Syatra!"

  Yet the sound did not ring and vibrate in the room as it once had done, it did not beat against the gilded rafters or echo in the groined vaultings. A man near me kept his mouth firmly closed, and a woman put a lace kerchief to her face. Half a dozen other poor wretches were dragged in, all accused of one crime or another. An iron hoop containing many of the best-quality torches of Kregen lowered over the round marble slab. Their light splashed weirdly down over the scene.

  The shouts came mostly from the mercenaries. “Syatra! Syatra!” Guards pulled and whipped the condemned men forward. An old Xaffer shuffled up and removed a section of the gilded railings and the pulleys and rollers lifted and trundled the marble slab aside. A hole as black as the cloak of Notor Zan revealed itself in the floor, a blackness that gradually lightened to a leprous greenish-whiteness. Everyone craned to see.

  Shrieking and struggling the doomed men were dragged on and hurled down into the pit. The round opening in the roof was not cleared for the rays of the suns to shine through for Zim and Genodras had sunk below the horizon, unwilling to shine upon this horror.

  “By Havil! I do not like this!” said a horter at my side.

  “Those poor men,” said his wife. “But the empress knows what she is doing."

  There was a perceptible delay before the man said, “Of course, my dear, of course she does."

  In my time I had been called rough and tough and ruthless; I decided I could stomach no more of this. It had been a mistake to take a last look at Thyllis. She was doomed, if the allies could ordain fate, and I felt a great uplift of the spirit. And, in that moment, the coincidence that was no matter of chance brought high-ringing peals from golden trumpets, and the buzz of talk and comment in the room stilled instantly.

  Into the cleared space before the crystal throne stepped a group of Katakis. Richly clad they were, and yet bearing with them the darkness of their vile profession. And, at their head, his arrogant whiptail upflung so the torchlight splintered against the curved blade—Rosil na Morcray, the Chuktar Strom!

  He had wrought my friends and me much harm, and had helped to ravage Vallia. He was here because we had defeated him in our homeland. And as I stared hotly at him, I heard a tinkling tingling as of a multitude of tiny bells—so I knew. I knew!

  Sixteen Womoxes, horns all gilded, and clad in black tabards girt with green lizard skins, bore the palanquin. The cloth of gold curtains were half drawn so that the dark shape of the occupant showed against the red-gold gleam, all liquid eye-watering, of the cushions within. The tiny golden bells tingled with their eerie, spine-chilling tinklings. Following the palanquin came the retinue of Relt stylors and chained Chail Sheom, of guards and slaves. They forced a note of obtrusive displayed power within Thyllis's throne room. She sat up straight on her crystal throne, and her manhounds yawned and closed their eyes, and she put a hand to the mass of gems clustered above her heart.

  “What means—” she began.

  The voice whispered. It held that curious double-echo, soft and breathy, as though echoing in a cave of vampire bats, yet it carried clearly throughout the vaults of the throne room.

  “Empress Thyllis, you are a foolish woman."

  The assembled courtiers and soldiers were too astounded to gasp. Fans waved, swords were grasped, faces turned white, but no one uttered a sound, gripped by what went forward here.

  I, Dray Prescot, I swallowed down, and I felt the pain in my left hand as I gripped the rapier hilt.

  This palanquin with its ornate embellishments, these Womoxes, this retinue, this power and wealth flaunted in the face of the Empress of Hamal—one man, one man only would dare. One man who was more than a man, one being who was a Wizard of Loh—

  Phu-Si-Yantong.

  He was here, within the same room, here with his people and his Katakis, here under my hand. And I stood, and felt the blackness boiling in me and the bile rising to my throat.

  Phu-Si-Yantong, the architect of misery, the creator of chaos, the purveyor of pain and the maniac who sought the dominance of all Paz, here, here before me.

  Now people whispered: “The Hyr Notor!"

  The ghastly whispering voice spoke again. “You are foolish, empress, on two counts, and the lesser is your loss of Ruathytu."

  Thyllis looked a glittering image, frozen, as she said, “Ruathytu? Lost?"

  “You will send the flower of your army out to fight the Vallians on the morrow. Fool! They suck you in. A great army carried in an armada of vollers will descend on your city tomorrow."

  “You lie!"

  “You do not, empress, speak to a Wizard of Loh in those terms. The Emperor of Vallia has tricked you. As he tricked you before when you thought he was Bagor ti Hemlad, as he tricked you when he escaped after your coronation as empress. He is the King of Djanduin. Had you forgotten? His army of Djangs will destroy your city on the morrow if it was left to you."

  “It cannot be? Our
scouts—the plans—” Thyllis looked around her, panting, shattered. Then she drew herself together. “If what you say is true, Hyr Notor, then we will meet and defeat the Djangs. But you said there were two—"

  “Two counts that make you a fool. Aye. But I do not think you will live to learn the second."

  The Empress of Hamal flashed her slanting green eyes. She exerted all her scorn. “You—” she began to speak.

  The eerie breathy voice said, “Strom Rosil!"

  Rosil, the Kataki Strom, stepped forward and lifted the crossbow. He loosed. It was very quick. The bolt struck Thyllis near the center of her body, through her breast, over her heart. It jutted there, hard and black and ugly. And Thyllis uttered no sound. She sat upright, a burnished statue, glittering, resplendent and dead.

  Again that whispering voice cut through the room.

  “I am the Emperor of Hamal. Woe to anyone who forgets this or who opposes me."

  The crowds surged as the tides surge through between barren rocks. Women were shrieking, and men, too were screaming and some ran out of the throne room, and Katakis appeared, many Katakis, with bladed tails. Phu-Si-Yantong had prepared well.

  In the uproar I stood like a loon. It was difficult to grasp that mad Empress Thyllis was truly dead. Still she sat, upheld by her carapace of gems, and her white face looked as it had looked in life, with her slanting green eyes bearing down in malicious cruelty upon her suppliants.

  Phu-Si-Yantong spoke again, and I listened in a daze. In the groups of people in the retinue, fleetingly glimpsed, there looked to be a man remarkably like Lobur the Dagger. But it could not be him. He was safely away with Thefi in Pandahem...

  “The second mistake this foolish woman made,” said Yantong, “the second reason she is no longer fit to be your empress, I will tell you.” The Katakis now bunched before every doorway. Strom Rosil handed his crossbow to a lackey who set about respanning and loading it. Rosil looked about, his low-drawn brow, his flaring nostrils and gape-jawed mouth, and his wide-spaced eyes, cold and unfeeling, made the people flinch back.

  “I will tell you. She did not know that the Emperor of Vallia watched and listened to her petty plans. She did not know that the arch-devil, Dray Prescot, is here in this room, now!"

  There was uproar at this as everyone looked around, panicky, searching their neighbors’ faces to find the devil himself.

  In the bedlam as people shouted and men were seized on suspicion and the Katakis began to force their way in a line and push the people into protesting straggling groups, the chains and the rollers of the cover to the syatra pit were abandoned. Down there in a corpse-light grew a monstrous plant, with rib-crushing tentacles and spiny growths like Venus flytraps that would crunch a man in and suck from him all his juices. Horror grew and writhed in that dank pit. And horror gripped the Hamalese in the throne room.

  The Katakis were not gentle. Strom Rosil snatched back his crossbow. The cloth of gold curtains framing the palanquin shook as Phu-Si-Yantong laughed at his own cleverness.

  And I was trapped.

  Looking about for the quickest way out, I saw the number of Katakis, and saw, also, that Chuliks were entering the chamber in support. Yantong had brought a private army of great strength, strength sufficient, certainly, to seal off the throne room and this wing of the palace, and powerful enough in sheer numbers, let alone quality, to take me up like a fly in treacle.

  And, of course, that bastard of a Wizard of Loh knew exactly where I was standing.

  A thin white hand, so pale and wan as to appear green, beckoned between the cloth of gold curtains. The Kataki Strom bent. The pale hand lifted and pointed. The forefinger pointed directly at me.

  Rosil laughed, his coarse bellow without humor of any sort, a raw sound of triumph. He lifted the crossbow.

  I took off, running, pushing people out of the way, haring like a maniac for the marble slab. The crossbow bolt flicked past my bent head. At full speed I leaped the golden railings. I snatched a torch from the hoop. Without hesitation, headlong, I dived into the pit of the syatra.

  * * *

  Chapter twenty-one

  Phu-Si-Yantong

  Torchlight blazed orange down the slimed walls of the pit, and reflected like a sunset of Earth from the stagnant water pools at the bottom. The suffocating heat and dampness wrapped around my falling body. Steam gushed coiling. Head over heels, spinning arms and legs, I fell. I hit.

  The torch went flame first into the water and was instantly extinguished.

  The breath was knocked out of me and it was vitally necessary to blink away the phantasmal afterimages of the torchlight, to see in the ghastly corpse-light, to see the syatra, to see and dodge.

  The first tentacle wriggled across a mud patch as I staggered up, treading through the hot water upon a thick crust of bones, human bones. Piles of skulls formed lodgments, thighbones terraces, vertebrae, scattered pavings. Steam lifted in curling vapors like beckoning skeletal fingers of mist, matches for the yellowing bones beneath the water. Glaring around, trying to see, dashing the sweat and condensation from my face, I drew the rapier and then, even faster than I'd drawn, thrust it back into the scabbard. The first tentacle writhed long and evil from the steam.

  The cloud of steam moved and my eyes grew more used to the greenish light. The whole place stank like a—like—well, in brief, like a syatra pit. I moved back from that first seeking tendril. There had to be a way out of here. Logic said so. There was running water, hot and steaming. That came in and went out. If it came or went through an opening smaller than was I—the tentacle struck.

  A rift in the steam, my own movement, the vegetable sense stirred into blind insensate action ... The tentacle lapped about my ankle. I unlimbered the longsword and cut the tentacle away, it writhed and contorted and withdrew. The heat bore down like a steam chest. This wall at my back was solid. The shaft was circular and I edged around, knowing I would have to meet the syatra at some point, and hoping I'd reach an opening before that unwanted meeting.

  Syatras are unpleasant plants. Corpse-white, equipped with powerful tentacles that seize on prey and stuff it into the coffin-sized spiny traps ranged around the plant, they do very well in Chemish jungles. In more moderate climates they usually grow where there is a supply of warm water from a hot spring. No one had mentioned to me the existence of hot springs below the Hammabi el Lamma.

  In daylight with the suns shining through the opening the syatra would reach up the shaft to the light. It could scoop a fellow off the lip of the marble slab. Now it had digested the victims recently flung to it and that would make not the slightest difference to its appetite, by Krun. More tentacles appeared out of the coiling vapor and the impression of a vast body, moving, flickered in green and white and black, rising and lifting and towering up...

  The thing broke through the vapor above me. It lowered down, and a multitude of tentacles dangling before it writhed into more purposeful action. At the foot of the main stem were ranged the coffin-sized traps, spined and barbed, grinning with their vegetable grins. Venus Flytraps writ enormous, they waited to snap shut and pierce with spines and suck with relish upon human flesh and blood.

  The Krozair brand did not flame in that dolorous greenish whitish half-light.

  But the longsword bit through lashing tentacles, bit and cut and sent severed ends plopping into the steamy water. In a few moments a dozen tentacles drew back, coiling around each other like crazed beanplants. In that moment I saw water boiling up in a spout and had time just to leap back and fling myself to the side.

  A trap the size of a double-bed foamed out of the water, borne at the end of a short thick stalk. It looked like a fly swatter doubled up for luck, and I the fly intended to be squashed. In a vegetable fury the trap opened and closed, insensately seeking its prey. I circled around, stepping cautiously, got to one side and with a single blow severed the hinge. The trap hung slackly. And a damned tentacle slapped around my neck, all slimy and stinky and horrible, and I
had to slice blindly with the longsword to lop it off and so rip it away. Not nice, not nice at all, this fighting a syatra in a repellent pit of stenches.

  Eventually by the slow drift of water I found the opening. By this time a great deal of syatra had been cut away and floated or sank, I didn't care which. Downstream did not appeal to me. The opening was large enough to take me—just. The thought occurred that inspections had to be carried out from time to time, and some poor devils of slaves would have to crawl through here. With a last slash at the syatra, which deprived it of six foot of tendril, I ducked down and started to splash along upstream. The corpse-green light persisted, tiny flecks of it in the walls giving just about enough light to prevent Notor Zan from flinging his cloak over all.

  The water grew hotter as I went along. Perhaps I'd been stupid to choose the upstream—if I got boiled I would know I had been stupid. But at about the time the water grew too hot to be comfortably tolerable, I came to the first overhead grating and without any hesitation gripped the iron rungs and hauled myself up. No doubt ahead lay a hot spring or a huge furnace room with slaves heating the water for the syatra. Either way, this grating looked more promising.

  After a heave and a grunt, the grating slid sideways. I pulled myself out. A quick look showed me a room filled with buckets and brooms and cleaning equipment. I crawled into a corner. I sat propped against the wall. I just sat. If I make this confrontation with the syatra a mere routine affair, that was the way I wanted to regard it at the time. The truth was it was a horrid heart-thumping brush with a squashy kind of death.

  The problem and the truth here were the same. I could not sit huddled into a corner like Little Jack Horner when my Djangs flew down into battle very soon now and would be met by foemen whom I had thought would be away fighting Seg. All the cleverness—of both sides—had been brought to nothing by Phu-Si-Yantong. He had cut through everything and imposed his own solutions.