Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The stones were old with that distinctive Rapa odor upon them still. We entered a corridor where dust lay thickly, marked by a central trail of darker footprints. At each cell door the dust lay undisturbed, at each one—save one!

  To this Bargo unhesitatingly led.

  “Open it, Bargo."

  This he did, in silence, with the keys from his belt; great clumsy wooden keys they were, each a good nine inches in length, cunningly cut from lenk. The door opened, creaking. I looked inside, my emotions held tightly under, and—

  An old man rose from his filthy bed of straw, gazing up with weak eyes, blinking, his near-lipless wrinkled mouth working, trying to distinguish us in the torchlit gloom.

  “I have told you, and told you,” he said in a voice that quavered as much from age as fear. “I cannot do it—you must believe me, Umgar Stro—there are some things forbidden and some things impossible for the Wizards of Loh."

  I took Bargo by the front of his leather tunic and I lifted his feet from the floor. My sword point nestled into his throat. He was very near death, then, and he knew it.

  “Where is she, you fool? The prisoner, the girl—tell me, quickly!"

  He gargled. He managed to spit out words. “This is the prisoner! By the snow-blind feister-feelt, I swear it!"

  “There is another, rast! A girl—the fairest girl you have ever seen. Where?

  He shook his head weakly, and his blunt snout wrinkled with his fear. His indigo hair hung lankly down his shoulders.

  “There is no other!"

  I threw him down and my sword struck like a risslaca; but in the instant of striking I turned the blade so that the flat took him across the head and he pitched forward and lay still without uttering a sound.

  “You are not of the Ullars, Jikai.” The old man stood more firmly now, clutching his rags about him. His eyes in the random light from the fallen torch caught reflections and glowed like spilled wine drops in the wrinkled map of his face. His nose was long and narrow, his lips nonexistent, and the hair that wisped about his temples was still as red as any man of Loh's. It looked blue-black in that half light, but I knew it was red.

  “Have you seen another prisoner, old man, a girl, a girl so wondrous—"

  He shook that head and I wondered why it did not creak as the cell door had creaked.

  “There is only me, Lu-si-Yuong. Have you means to escape from this accursed tower, Jikai?"

  “Yes. But I do not go without the girl for whom I came."

  “Then you will spend eternity here."

  In all the clamor of thoughts echoing in my skull I think I knew, then, that Delia was not here.

  “You have been here long, old man?"

  “I am Lu-si-Yuong, and you address me as San."[3]

  [3 Prescot spells out Lu-si-Yuong, and is meticulous about getting the name and pronunciation right. He also elaborates on these famous Wizards, and is careful to use the title San. Jikai, here, clearly is being used in a titular role, and must be assumed to be the general for “warrior". A.B.A.]

  I nodded. The title of San was ancient and revered, bearing a meaning akin to master, dominie, sage. Clearly, this representative of the Wizards of Loh not only considered himself an important personage, but was indeed truly so. I do not mind using a title when it is earned.

  “Tell me, San, please. Have you any knowledge of the girl captured by Umgar Stro and brought to this tower?"

  “I, alone, of the prisoners was spared. The Ullars know of the powers of the Wizards of Loh and they thought to avail themselves of my services. All the other prisoners were slain."

  I stood there, I, Dray Prescot, and heard this old sage's thin voice whispering words that meant the end of everything of importance to me in two worlds.

  I wanted to leap forward and choke a denial from his narrow mouth, to grip his corded throat in my two hands and wrench words I must hear from him. I think he saw my distress, for he said, again: “I cannot help you in this, Jikai. But I can help in—other—ways if you will rescue me—"

  For a moment I could not answer him, could not respond. My Delia—surely, she could not have been so wantonly killed? It did not make sense—who could callously snuff out so much beauty?

  San Young was whispering again, bending stiffly to pick up Bargo's spluttering torch. “They revel tonight, below. There are many of them, fierce, bold barbarians of the skies. To fight your way through them, Jikai, is a superhuman task—"

  “We go up,” I said, and I was short with him. All my instincts clashed there, in that cobwebby tower cell of Umgar Stro, torturing me with indecision, with doubt, with a mad and futile rage. She must be here! She must! But everything pointed to the opposite being true. This Wizard—why should he lie? Except, to cozen me into rescuing him!

  I faced him. He had recovered his composure now, had drawn himself up so that the torchlight flowed over his gaunt features, over those wine-dark eyes, that long supercilious nose, that near-lipless mouth. He looked at me, clutching his rags, and he was well aware of the horror and superstitious awe in which common folk held the Wizards of Loh.

  Indeed, there was power about him in an aura no one could overlook. Many and many a time have the Wizards of Loh performed deeds any normal man would dub impossible, and what their secrets may be are still a mystery to me. They demand and obtain instant obedience from the common folk—of whom, Zair be praised, there are many sturdy souls—and for the lordly of the land they reserve a kind of watching, cynical and amused tolerance, an armed truce of checks and balances of interest. Umgar Stro, for instance, could torture this old man to obtain his services, and his men might murmur but, being barbarians, they would not react in the same way that a man of Walfarg might.

  Once having obtained his services, Umgar Stro would have to kill him; for, judging by all the stories I had heard, if he did not then a retribution as horrible as it was inevitable would overtake him as surely as Zim and Genodras rose with each new day.

  So it was that this Wizard of Loh, this Lu-si-Yuong, thought he could now safely dictate what was to occur.

  He stared at me and I saw the torchlight flicker over his grimed yet pallid face. He took a step backward.

  “Listen to me, San. If you speak true, if there is no girl prisoner here, then swear it be so by all you hold sacred of Loh. For, Lu-si-Yuong, if you lie to me then you will die—as surely as anything you know of in your world!"

  His tongue rasped those wrinkled sandpaper edges of his mouth.

  “It is true. I swear to you by Hlo-Hli herself and by the seven arcades, I am the only prisoner here."

  We stood facing each other for what seemed a long time.

  I was scarcely aware when I lowered the sword point from his shrunken breast.

  “Very well.” I could not break out, not now; I could not allow myself to despair and to abandon myself to my grief. Not now, not when faithful Seg orbited outside awaiting me, in mortal danger. “Come, old man. Pray to all your pagan gods you have spoken the truth—and yet, and yet I wish you lied!"

  We left the cell and walked on the footprinted way between the dust and so up the spiral stairs, past the guardroom and up to the attic. For me, Dray Prescot, this was a skulking, an undignified way, of tackling my foes.

  Thelda had told me Delia had dropped into a tarn and been drowned. San Yuong told me she was not here. Did they both lie?

  I told Lu-si-Yuong to wait and went back to the guardroom and took up the two toonons. The bamboo was not a true bamboo but came from the Marshes of Buranaccl. I wondered what Seg would make of the weapon. My mind was beginning to function again.

  Seg was mightily joyed to see us. He brought the corths in with supple skill and I bundled up onto the trapeze with the fragile form of the Wizard tucked under my arm. We swung away into the Kregan night and the glow from the twins rolled across the eastern horizon laying pink icing across the towers, battlements, and roofs of Rapa Plicla.

  The strong vulturine-shaped wings of the corths beat up and
down, up and down, and we rode the sky levels away from the fortress of Umgar Stro until we could alight in a clearing among tuffa trees and so rearrange ourselves for our flight back to Hiclantung.

  Seg was very quiet.

  He did say, savagely: “I would have welcomed an opposition back there. We need a fight, Dray."

  “Aye,” I said. And let it lie there.

  I did not believe my Delia was dead. Not after all we had been through. Only when I held Umgar Stro's throat in my fists and choked the truth from him would I believe. And, even then, even then, I would go on hoping...

  * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  "It is my Dray! My Dray Prescot you covet!"

  One of the strange and, if the truth be told, weird, aspects of the Wizards of Loh was revealed in that grove of tuffa trees as we rested our corths and rearranged our flight program. Lu-si-Yuong, without a word of explanation to Seg or myself, squatted himself down on the ground in the pinkish light from the twin moons, composed himself and, lifting his veined hands to his eyes, threw his head back and so remained still and silent and unmoving.

  Seg whispered: “I think, Dray, he is in lupu."

  “Oh?” I really hardly cared.

  “Yes. They say the Wizards of Loh can see into the future—"

  “A simple story for simple minds. The credulous will believe any mumbo jumbo and it puts a copper into the hands of clever tricksters."

  Seg glanced obliquely at me, his mouth open. He shut his mouth, and looked back at Yuong, and did not say what he so clearly thought. I had a mind to speak more kindly toward him, for he was of Loh, but I forbore. Delia! I remembered my anguish when among the tents and the wagons and chunkrah herds of the Clansmen of Felschraung I had heard my Delia was dead, and I recalled my determination to remain alive and fighting strong so that if, as I truly believed, she was not dead, I would be able to render her what aid I could. Now, as the Wizard of Loh went through his mumbo jumbo I made the same solemn vow.

  Quietly, I said to Seg: “I came away from the tower tonight, Seg, for there were reasons why I should do so. I cannot believe that Delia is truly dead. I shall go on until I find Umgar Stro, wherever he may be. I think he was lucky not to be home tonight, and yet more unfortunate, too."

  “How is that, dom?” asked Seg in a neutral voice.

  “I would have killed him tonight, stone dead. But if it takes me long to find him then there will be that amount more time in which to store resentment, and to think of ways of making him talk and—pay!"

  Seg turned his eyes away from my face.

  Lu-si-Yuong began to tremble. His thin shoulders shook and over all his scrawny body beneath the rags he shuddered and then he began slowly to draw his palms from before his eyes. His eyeballs were rolled up, displaying the whites like a bird-befouled marble statue's, and his breathing had practically ceased.

  “Lupu,” I said. “Is that it?"

  “Aye, Dray, that is being in lupu. He is having visions. Who can tell where his mind is wandering now—"

  “Get a grip on yourself, Seg!"

  All the fey characteristics of his race predominated in Seg Segutorio now, all the dark and hidden lore in his native hills of Erthyrdrin pulsed and answered the weirdness of this old man, this San, this Wizard of Loh.

  As the streaming pink moons-light fell upon that gaunt upturned face and turned those blind eyes into cracked yellow pits I looked about the grove of tuffa trees and at the three corths uneasily picking and pecking their feathers, and I, Dray Prescot of Earth, wondered at the faces of Kregen I had not yet seen.

  A gargling cry wailed from Yuong. His trembling ceased. Unsteadily, waveringly, he tottered to his feet. He opened his arms wide, the fingers rigid and outspread. Like some blasphemous cross he gyrated, like a cyclone-torn scarecrow, like a whirling dervish in the last stages of exhaustion. Then, as abruptly as he had begun, he sank down, resumed his contemplative position, and so lowered his hands flat to the ground and opened his eyes and looked on us.

  “And have you looked into the future, old man?” I said.

  “Dray!” Seg's outraged cry affected me not at all.

  San Yuong looked at me. I think, even then, he did not know how to size me up or to read me in the context of those people with whom he was accustomed to deal. I do know now, and admit it with only the slightest diffidence, that I must have been in a state of shock still, and hardly recking of what I did or said. In any event Yuong decided to treat me with caution. For this I was later duly grateful; at the time I merely remarked to myself that I must be wearing that old devil's mask of a face again—and joying in it, Zair help me, joying in my pain.

  “The future does not concern me at this moment, my friend. I shall thank you properly for rescuing me at a suitable time. What I have been discovering is how I will be received by Queen Lilah—"

  “She does not blame you for the defeat of her army in the massacre,” I said. “At least, she did not mention you in that context—or at all."

  “She would not."

  “What have you discovered, San?” asked Seg.

  “The Queen will need my guidance and advice in what is to come. But she was cold—distant and cold. There is a woman, another woman, they have fought bitterly—"

  “Thelda!” exclaimed Seg. He stared at me in dismay.

  I was intrigued. Could this old man in some way have seen what was even now happening in Hiclantung? Impossible! But, remember, then I was young and new to the ways of Kregen and especially to the wiles of the Wizards of Loh.

  “The Queen has imprisoned this woman, this Thelda, and she weeps for her lost lover.” Yuong canted his head so that his supercilious nose aimed itself over my right shoulder. “Perchance she dreams of you, Jikai?"

  “If she does,” I said, “she does so without my permission."

  “Since when has a maid required permission to long for a man?"

  I didn't want to continue this, not with Seg looking and listening, so I went across to my corth and inspected its harness.

  “Let us go,” I said. “If Queen Lilah has flung Thelda into prison we must get her out again. We owe her that much, at least."

  Seg vaulted into his saddle. His fist gripped into his rein knot—and his other hand made sure his great longbow was in position, handy as to bending and loosing, the feather of his arrows protruding from their quiver past his right ear.

  I could see the irony in this situation; more than irony, deadly mockery of all I held dear. Here I was setting out to rescue my Delia from the clutches of a malevolent monster and instead was hurrying back to our friends to rescue a tiresome woman.

  How all the Clansmen would have roared their appreciation of the joke—until I silenced them with my upraised sword!

  We soared aloft with those initial convulsive rippling movements of the corths’ wide wings driving us low across the clearing until we had picked up enough speed to rise and bank out past the trees. I scanned three hundred and sixty degrees as I would have done the moment I stepped onto the quarterdeck of Roscommon back on Earth—only now I had to sweep again below as well as above the level of our flight height. It was almost with regret that I saw no pursuing impiters, no vengeful corths, no varter-towing yuelshi.

  Had I been of the stuff from which the romantic heroes of Kregan legends are constructed—all manliness and pride and stoicism and lofty indifference to personal pain—I would not have felt then as I did, all the agony and the remorse clawing and tearing my spirit. I knew only that I must go on—somehow.

  We alighted on the outskirts of Hiclantung.

  “If Thelda truly has been imprisoned by Lilah,” I said, “then it would be foolish simply to fly back when day dawns."

  “Yes,” said Seg.

  I knew how he felt. His constant cheerfulness with me both heartened and saddened me, for Seg had tried most desperately to interest Thelda in himself and had as desperately failed.

  The corths snuffled around, ruffling their feathers, givin
g clear indication they wished to rest. I looked at Yuong.

  “Tell me, San. Can you reach out with your mind and find the woman I seek?"

  “Speak more plainly, Jikai. Do you mean Thelda, whom you would rescue from the Queen, or do you mean the woman you love?"

  I started violently.

  Fool! Why had I not thought of this myself—and before!

  I gripped his thin shoulder. He did not wince but stared up at me placidly. I began to speak, but he shook his head.

  “Is this woman you love as beautiful as you say?"

  “Yes."

  “Incredibly lovely?"

  “Yes."

  He moved my hand away. I let him. “I cannot find her for you, for I have no means of location, as I had with Thelda, who was with the Queen.” He started back at my movement. Pink moonshine runneled along his jaws. “But, if she is as beautiful as you say, I believe she still lives. Umgar Stro values beautiful objects."

  “Delia of the Blue Mountains is not an object!"

  “With Umgar Stro all women are objects."

  I turned away from him. Old as he was, cocksure as he was, weird as he was, if I had not turned away I believe I would have struck him down.

  “By the veiled Froyvil, Dray! Let us get on!"

  San Lu-si-Yuong went through his pantomime again. I call it a pantomime, for that is how I thought then when I was under tremendous strain, tensed up, desperate and weary and vengeful. Yuong did, however, play fair by us.

  “She is with the Queen even now, in the Paline Bower—"

  “I know it!” said Seg.

  “I shall humor you,” went on Yuong, “and go into lupu in the morning when the gates are open and we may enter the city."

  Seg started violently.

  I said: “You do not think Seg and I are men to wait tamely out here for them to open the gates for us, do you?"

  He nodded that stringy lipless head with the wine-dark eyes somber and yet full of a spritely malice. “What else will you do, Jikai?"

  Seg laughed.