Masks of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  What she did do was to stand up and say — inter alia with comments about the new dress she had ordered and the way she required her eggs in the morning — that now she would retire. Her handmaids went with her. Of all the ladies left only one, I judged, might not wish to join in the drinking and singing that would follow. Perhaps two, if Pynsi Mytham was feeling too frail. The lady Nalfi stood up. “I, too, will retire.”

  So that was a simple wager won.

  Pynsi stayed on and this, I judged, was because Pando did. We sang a few songs; but they did not rollick out with the required gusto. We were not, all told, a happy band.

  In the end I’d had enough. I said to Dayra: “I’m for bed.”

  So, Dayra, Pompino, two or three others, we made our respects and cleared off to our quarters.

  Larghos vanished. We slept. We awoke. We breakfasted. All that day we argued back and forth, and Pando did not put in an appearance. We renewed acquaintanceship with the cadade, the captain of the guard, Framco the Tranzer. He was pleased to see us, for he recognized the crew as seasoned warriors.

  Naghan the Pellendur had copied his cadade’s habit of pulling his whiskers.

  Everyone wanted to go and inspect the voller.

  I said to Pompino, “We can’t call her Pride of Bormark.”

  “True. Well, let your young friend Pando sweat. We’ll call her Golden Zhantil.”

  “Capital!”

  At our own request we saddled up zorcas and rode through the forests, admiring their richness. The animals were very fine, not as fine as Filbarrka’s zorcas of the Blue Mountains of Vallia, but then, as he would be the first to say, there are no zorcas in all Kregen to match his.

  Three days thus passed in idleness and chatter.

  On the fourth day we cantered back gently through the falling shadows of indigo and bronze, looking forward to a good meal. Pando had not put in an appearance, and I was seriously considering going and trying to induce some sense into his thick vosk-skull of a head.

  The longer we delayed, the greater Murgon’s ambitions would rise, the greater his power extend.

  We rode into the stockaded yard of the steading to find absolute chaos, stark raging madness.

  When we’d shaken some sense into the nearest wight we could lay hands on he shook himself in fear. He was a Fristle guard, and he bore a great wound down his arm.

  “Lords, lords! They came and took her away!”

  “Who came? Took who?”

  He shivered.

  “I do not know who they were. They wore silver leem masks. And they took the Vadni Dafni away with them.”

  Chapter eight

  A roll of gold for Jespar the Scundle

  The first question to ask in these circumstances is: “Which way did they go?”

  Murkizon growled out the question and the Fristle shook and shivered and stuttered: “Lord, lord, I do not know.”

  “Where’s Pando?”

  The uproar in the yard we now saw was mostly from slaves scared witless, men and women who had been wounded, and not a needleman in sight, and folk who just rushed about aimlessly. The kov, we learned, had ridden out in pursuit with a large party of his retainers and most of the guard led by the cadade.

  “So he knew which way to go,” said Pompino.

  The hubbub continued unabated. Slaves were taking full advantage of the confusion to do what slaves tend to do given half the chance. I saw one fellow staggering off to the back quarters carrying an enormous jar — ale, probably — and followed by a raggle-taggle of his cronies. Other slaves were upsetting the side trestles, and roaring, and running. The bedlam battered on. We found a tump slave calmly sitting with his back against a wall stripping palines from a branch and popping them one by one into his mouth. He was happy. Well, not all tumps are your dour, taciturn, mining people who just dig in the ground for red gold and continually bicker with the Ifts of the forest — though tumps and Ifts bicker all the time, of course.

  He wiped his mouth where the whiskers sprouted, for his beard reached to his belt, and swallowed the last morsel of paline and stood up.

  “Masters, that Ift castellan, Twayne Gullik, led the pursuit.”

  From his manner, cowed and abject in the slave fashion though it was, you could tell what he thought of Ifts.

  “So the kov did know which way to go.” Pompino swung away energetically. “Well, that settles it.” He drew me a little apart from our comrades, who were now intent upon finding their own suppers. “Jak, we have wasted too much time here shilly-shallying. We should be about the Star Lords’ business, burning temples—”

  “But this was part of the plan—”

  “Assuredly. But burning temples to Lem the Silver Leem is by far the most important task we have at the moment. If your friendship for the kov Pando — whom I cannot profess to care overmuch for —

  prevents you from carrying out your duty to the Everoinye—”

  I spoke hotly.

  “I’ve told you, aye, and the Everoinye, what I think of their duty. They have caused me much anguish in the past. I know I distress you with these sentiments, Pompino; but they are sincerely held. The Star Lords plunk me down in unhealthy places and expect me to sort out their problems for them. All right.

  And I agree we must smash the Lemmites. But, right now, at this moment, I am concerned for Pando.”

  “Nobody knows which way he’s gone!”

  “True. But we can take the airboat and search.”

  He put his fists on his hips and glared at me, whiskers bristling, face flushed, foxy and brilliant and altogether a sharp customer.

  “If I order my people to follow me, then—”

  “Then I’ll be on my own.”

  “And — you would?”

  “Aye, Pompino, by the Black Chunkrah, I would!”

  The moment blew up into the promise of a full-grown gale — and then the tump walked across. He was around four foot high, so he was well-grown and he looked up. “Masters?”

  “Aye, what?” growled Pompino.

  “That haughty Ift shouted out as they galloped off—”

  “What?”

  He shuffled from one splayed foot to the other. He screwed up that knobbly face with the long nose, squinting up at us.

  I said, “I know how you tumps love to dig in the ground, and sing about your work, and bring forth ripe rich red gold. But if I gave you a gold piece, now, for your words, well — you are slave. What could you do with gold now?”

  “I was not always slave, master, and I will not always be slave. There is a scheme. The red gold—”

  “Your name?”

  “Here they call me Jespar the Scundle, master.”

  I reached into my pouch, and my fingers felt the leather and the stitching and not much else — perhaps a dead moth — and I almost laughed.

  “All our gold was melted or spent or fined away, Jespar the Scundle. Now, we must hurry. The kovneva will give you gold.” I started off at a trot, and I yelled the old man-driving word I seldom use: “Bratch! ”

  Jespar the Scundle bratched.

  Tilda’s handmaids were outraged and Naghan the Pellendur who had been left as a guard demurred. I brushed all that aside. Into Tilda’s private apartments we went. I was after the loan of a gold piece; I need not have bothered.

  Mindi the Mad stood beside the kovneva’s bed. She wore her pale blue gown in that shadowy chamber of heavy drapes and mellow lamps and thick rugs. She lifted her head within the hood and I saw that pale, narrow, high-cheekboned face in the flesh for the first time. But, of course, I knew her well.

  “You are the man they call Jak?”

  I said: “A gold piece, Mindi. The tump here is entitled to his due. We must be after the kov and Dafni—”

  “The kov is being misled—”

  “Ha!” broke in Jespar, with a most unslavelike rasp of humor. “The haughty Ift Twayne Gullik is foresworn again!”

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “If you knew Pando had gone
the wrong way, why didn’t you stop him?”

  She did not flinch.

  “I did not know then, for I have just scryed. And, anyway, they were out of the steading like a pack of wild leem.”

  A slushy, slurred and yet full voice from the bed said: “Is that...?”

  She sat propped against pillows, half in the shadow of a curtain draped from the bedhead. Her gross form mountained the bedclothes like The Stratemsk, across which monstrous mountains I’d ventured just before my first meeting with Tilda. She held out a hand. The cup slanted at an angle.

  “Natalia! My cup is empty. If my cup is empty, you know — you know what — what will...”

  Her thick voice trailed off. A wisp of gossamer, the flash of a slender form, white arms tilting an amphora, and the kovneva Tilda’s cup was once more full. She slopped some wine, drank some, stained the bedclothes a deeper pink, and said, “It is no use chasing after Pando. Or after Dafni. He will not — not find her. Let — let her go. No good will come of them...”

  She was, for this latter-day Tilda of the Many Veils, remarkably sober and lucid.

  Of course, the suns had only just gone down. It was early in the evening yet.

  A superb russet-clad form moved gently beside Pompino, and Dayra said: “Mindi the Mad. You can scry. Can you not tell kov Pando? And put us on the right path? You have the power, I know...”

  For a moment I held my breath. The Sisters of the Rose could produce girls whose command of sorcery ran deep, who were thaumaturges of a very high order. Delia had not taken her Witch’s Vows. The SoR

  did not deign to call their girls with the magical powers sorceresses or witches, instead dubbing such a girl a vibushi. I glanced sideways at Dayra. Was she a vibushi, then, a mistress of the magical arts as well as of the Whip and Claw?

  Mindi the Mad looked at Dayra.

  “The kovneva has just expressed a wish that the lady Dafni be left to ride away—”

  Pompino blew up then.

  “That’s it! By Horato the Potent! This is footling. Come on, let’s leave this pestilential place and set about our proper business!”

  By Krun! And wasn’t that the temptation!

  I said, “I believe our best ends will be served if we can prevent the union between Murgon and Dafni. As to any future marriage between Dafni and Pando, that is entirely a different matter.”

  “How serve our best ends?”

  I couldn’t tell Pando all of it. But, by Zair, I was in the frame of mind to cut through all this skullduggery.

  If Pompino knew the truth, he would change in his attitude to me, of course he would change. But then we might get things done quickly that now I had to beat about the bush to accomplish.

  With her smooth voice modulated and level, Dayra said: “If this Murgon takes Dafni, he wins her province, that will make him even stronger with the king, and the temples you speak of will proliferate and flourish...”

  “All the more to burn!” grunted Pompino. But Dayra’s words had made him think afresh.

  He drew his dagger. Mindi flinched back and half raised her hand. No one really believed she could turn him into a little green toad. But the thought was there, stark in our minds.

  Pompino presented the point of the dagger to Jespar the Scundle’s throat. His left hand seized the long beard and jerked the tump forward and up.

  “I am not a silly forest Ift, tump. I am a Khibil. Now you will tell me what I want to know.”

  Jespar strained on tiptoe. He remained calm.

  “You may kill a slave, Khibil; you will not then learn what it is you wish to know.”

  Oh, yes, tough these tumps; tough as the rock they dig their red gold from.

  I drew my knife; that broad heavy sailor blade caught a glint from the lamps and glittered. Jespar swiveled his eyeballs in my direction. I heard Dayra take a breath.

  On the footrail of Tilda’s bed, exposed by the drape of the clothes, the golden inlay gleamed lushly. The point of the knife slid in, I twisted, pulled, got the strip in my fingers and hauled. I was able to roll up a good arm’s length of the golden inlay into a bundle. This I held out.

  “You’d better put Jespar down, Pompino. You’ll have that beautiful beard out by the roots else.”

  The Khibil laughed. He socked the tump back onto the soles of his feet, and said: “Well, tump? Tell us!”

  Jespar the Scundle shook himself straight, grabbed the roll of the golden inlay, stuffed it away somewhere into his gray slave breechclout and drew the belt tight.

  “Yes, Jespar,” I said straightly. “Tell us it all.” For I had not missed the inner significance of the tump’s words.

  “That haughty Ift, Twayne Gullik,” he began. Then he realized just what I had said. He slid those deep eyes of his around to goggle at me again, and said in a rapid staccato: “The Ift shouted out Benorlad; but I knew the men in the silver leem masks had not come from there.”

  “Benorlad,” jerked out Naghan, his Fristle whiskers quivering. “That’s Murgon’s damned great fortress in his stromnate of Ribenor—”

  “Why, Jespar?” I said.

  “Why — wasn’t my second cousin’s wife’s brother there, with the men in the silver masks, with a chain around his neck and sitting on the back of a zorca? Tumps don’t ride so grandly. And we don’t like straying far. No, that wight Tangle the Ears — and I can’t say I care for him over much for he got disgustingly drunk when my second cousin was married — was being made to act the guide. They’re off to the mines up around the headwaters of the River Oonparl, up beyond Erronskorf.”

  I stared at Mindi the Mad.

  “You knew this?”

  She, in her turn, looked at Tilda. The gross form moved spasmodically as Tilda turned over, slopping wine, having had her say determined not to hear any more. Mindi took that as permission.

  “Since you have discovered where Murgon is going, through chicanery — why, yes.”

  “Then,” I said, swinging about and grasping Jespar, “do you scry and warn kov Pando. Tell him we are headed directly for Erronskorf. If he rides hard he may come up with us to be of use.”

  “But—” she began.

  “You would be well-advised to do it,” said Pompino. He spoke gravely. He meant what he said.

  Jespar squealed in my grip.

  “Lord, lord! I cannot ride a jut, let alone aspire to straddling a zorca!”

  “Oh,” I said. “You won’t have to worry about riding any animal the way we’re going.”

  And, so, without more ado, off we trooped to gather our lads and to take after Strom Murgon and his silver leem masked rogues and the Vadni Dafni.

  Chapter nine

  We drop in on Korfseyrie

  Hurtling through the windrush under the Moons of Kregen we pelted headlong for Erronskorf.

  Pompino gave orders for the crew to sleep by watches; I suppose some of us caught a few moments of sleep as we hurtled on in that streaming radiance from She of the Veils and the Maiden with the Many Smiles. One of the small moons bustled past above, swinging wildly through the star fields.

  Because these Pandaheem were totally unacquainted with vollers, Dayra and I had to fly Golden Zhantil ourselves. Dayra proved a first-class pilot — well, by Zair! and didn’t she ought to be, seeing her mother had taught her? Delia had also taught me my piloting. As for Delia, well, no doubt there were better pilots who flew vollers all day for a living, no doubt; my view remained exactly the same as the view which told me that Seg Segutorio was the best bowman of Kregen — Delia, likewise, was the best pilot in all the world. So said I.

  Sitting quietly at the controls with the port-windows thrust wide I was privy to a vastly entertaining conversation between Rondas the Bold, our Rapa paktun, and the diminutive tump, Jespar the Scundle.

  “Now, tump,” said Rondas in his big blustery way, “you are very welcome to join our company. Why, we are fearsome and ferocious paktuns, aye, and at the moment we are serving without pay, seeing it was all fined away f
rom us by a scoundrelly woman.”

  “I never thought to live to see the day mercenaries would serve without pay—”

  Ronda’s answering snort must have riffled his feathers splendidly. “No more did I, tump, by Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls! But, and listen good, we are in the habit of going agio when we go into action—”

  “Agio?” Jespar’s voice was an alarmed squeak.

  “Aye, dom, agio! You see, all of us put in our gold, into the kitty, all of it. Then, when the battle’s over we share it out again.”

  “You mean, to keep it safe?”

  “Fambly! No! Why, those who share it out are less than those who put it in, onker! That way a fellow can make a little on the side from a fight.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “It’s all fair and above board. It’s in every paktun contract, I expect — anyways, it’s in ours. So, you see, tump, when we get to wherever this fight is to be, your roll of gold will be in good hands.”

  “But...!”

  I concentrated on flying the voller. By Krun! But they were a rascally bunch, right enough.

  The two girl varterists came up and when Jespar appealed to them, they gravely told him that as far as they were concerned they went in for agio and — had they any gold about them — it would have gone into the kitty along with Jespar’s roll of gold inlay.

  “Why don’t I just keep my own gold—?”

  “What! And suppose you are killed!”

  “Why, as to that,” said Jespar, “I don’t intend to get into any fights!”

  “Amazing!”

  “Incredible!”

  “Not believable,” amplified Rondas. He must have been mournfully shaking his great beaked head, very vulturine, very menacing. “Coming with us and not getting into a fight!”

  “I didn’t want to come!” squeaked Jespar. “Anyway, I’m just a guide. I wouldn’t have come at all if that great hulking apim fellow hadn’t hauled me along—”