Masks of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Oh, yes, I know all that. Gullik was his usual supercilious smirking self when he rode in. And they intend to use the secret way into the Zhantil Palace.”

  That was the tortuous secret passageway system we had used under Mindi the Mad’s direction to escape. A crowd of warriors pressing in through there could well take the palace, particularly if... “And we drop in from above in Golden Zhantil? ”

  “Aye.”

  “It is after that. Pando will hold the palace, and this time the army with Murgon will be actively hostile. He cannot resist for long. Then what?”

  “I tend to the opinion,” I said, a trifle cautiously, “that Pando hopes to have finished with Murgon by then.”

  “He’ll need to be slippy. That one is a sly customer, and cunningly tough with it.”

  “It is my view, and I regret the necessity although joying in the venture, that I will have to lie to Pando.” I added quickly, “Oh, not actively lie. I’ll lie, as it were, in absentia. It won’t be a personal falsehood.”

  “Do what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He grumped off then to see about the next meal, and I sought out Dayra, who must be a party to the scheme.

  She fired up at once, and made all the preparations.

  So it was that toward the rise of She of the Veils, ever, I believe, my favorite Moon of Kregen, a grotesque figure shambled into the camp among the trees.

  Cap’n Murkizon and Nath Kemchug led him forward into the firelight. Then they moved away, out of smelling range.

  Grotesque, that figure, aye, and weird. His heavy beard was checkered into red and blue, and likewise his whiskers. His hair stuck up in spikes, colored yellow and orange and blue. His face was streaked with indigo and vermilion. His eyes glared frightfully. He was clad in a mangy animal hide of uncertain parentage, cinctured by a belt of monkey’s paws, fastened by a bronze clasp in the form of an apim skull.

  At his side swung a pallixter, a heavy knife snugged in a sheath over his hip, and he leaned on a mighty staff of twisted wood, the convoluted root of balass, black and grained, festooned with small evil-smelling bags, and tintinnabulating with a myriad tiny bells.

  Men and women shrank away from that uncouth figure. He breathed an aura of mystery and repellent blasphemy.

  “Llahal and Lahal!” he called in a strident, nerve-sawing voice. He moved with a heaviness and a hint of unsteadiness. He advanced toward the fire, and halted, and spread his arms wide, and then thumped the great staff down so that all the bells danced and clamored.

  “I am Duurn the Doomsayer!”

  Pando and Pompino stepped up, shoulder to shoulder, not one whit discomfited, although Twayne Gullik hung back well to the rear, and the guard Fristles congregated on the far side of the fire. Cap’n Murkizon gripped his axe and stood four square. Larghos the Flatch, who was not himself since the loss of the lady Nalfi, stood at Murkizon’s side, lowering and hating. Rondas the Bold, just about recovered from his wound, stood with them, ready and alert.

  “Lahal, Duurn the Doomsayer,” quoth Pando. “And what is it you want with us? Whose doom do you say?”

  “The doom of all in Bormark, all in Tomboram!”

  A gasp went up at this. No one seemed to know if they should scoff at this weird, or freeze with fear.

  “A mighty army marches on Bormark. They come like the sands of the seashore, marching from Memguin, out of Menaham. They march with a golden glittering lord at their head. They come to destroy all who oppose them and seize your steadings, your wealth, your women—”

  Pando believed this at once.

  Pompino said: “And how, mighty warlock, do you know this?”

  I was highly amused at the look this Duurn the Doomsayer bestowed on my comrade.

  “Unbeliever! Blasphemer! What know you of the Arts! Tremble lest your impiety bring you low!”

  And, then: “I saw the host, marching.”

  At that, Pando shot out: “How many? What forces? Their captains? Their rate of march? Their order?

  Tell me all you can, Duurn the Doomsayer, and you may name your price.”

  “There is no price in all Bormark that could rise to my just desserts! For I have the Eye! I have the Ear! I can scry past the mundane veils of the known! Beware lest idle curiosity burn you up as the moth is consumed by the candle.”

  Dayra moved with all the grace of a hunting cat leaping after her prey. She slid in from the side, quick and deadly, while Duurn the Doomsayer began to thunder more rhetorical outpourings extolling his sorcerous powers; Dayra, passing by, halted momentarily, then went on past the firelight.

  In that slight pause, as she passed, she whispered: “You’re overdoing it, father!”

  So, incontinently, vanquished by common sense, Duurn the Doomsayer thundered his last dire doom saying, and turned away and stumped off, out of the firelight, back into the forest.

  Chapter twenty

  How lord and lady cried their Remberees

  So the great plan of Pando’s went into operation.

  Twayne Gullik together with a host of his Ifts and a sizeable force of men still loyal to the Kov of Bormark, entered the secret passageway and penetrated into the Zhantil Palace through the hidden corridors. We, for our part, flew down in Golden Zhantil bristling with weaponry.

  The attacks were timed to coincide a full four glasses after the rising of the Maiden with the Many Smiles.

  We hoped to have the palace cleared by dawn.

  In the fuzzy pink moonshine we soared down and leaped from the voller, teeth bared, weapons sharp, raging to get into action.

  I’d been spoiled for choice in the matter of weapons. The only real lack was a Krozair longsword. Still, the drexer gladly given me by Strom Ortyg served supremely well. I had the Valkan longbow. And I had repossessed the rapier and main gauche kept by Pompino when I’d been hoicked up by the Everoinye.

  We went howling in like a pack of wild beasts.

  With the twin onslaught the defenders of the palace crumbled and broke. That furious assault smashed them, drove them like chaff, swept them up as a slave girl sweeps up the dust of the lord’s Great Hall.

  Panting, flushed, triumphant, we broke the last of Murgon’s mercenaries as they attempted a stand, according to their lights, swirling in headlong combat down the grand staircase and along the luxurious halls and corridors. They could not stand before us.

  Like good quality Kregan paktuns who earn their hire in blood, they fought well. There was no quailing, no shrieking panic flight; these men and women had taken their pay and now they earned their hire. In honor, when the situation cleared unmistakably and the steel-bokkertu could be offered and made —

  why then, and only then, would these paktuns change their allegiances.

  As usual I was most anxious to get all this nasty fighting business over and done with as soon as possible.

  Pando, exalted, a single trembling entity on the point of explosion, took some time before he set the steel-bokkertu in motion. By then, more men and women had died earning their hire.

  Fragments of poetry echoed along in my skull; and I am sure, Kregen being Kregen, many a savage fighting warrior — female or male — kept up a ragged rhythm of swing and strike as the stanzas seethed in their brains. Poetry and death — ever the two are twinned...

  “Do not, my heart, get your fool self killed at the last moment—”

  “I shall not hang back in dishonor, you great dear buffoon—”

  Quendur and Lisa, striking blow for blow, were at their accustomed arguments.

  Poor Larghos the Flatch watched them in hopeless envy.

  The Divine Lady of Belschutz entered the conversation from time to time, fruitily.

  Rondas the Bold wished to take out some repayment for his wound. Nath Kemchug, like any Chulik, sowed death in his wake. As usual when divorced from their beloved varters, Wilma the Shot and Alwim the Eye shot in their bows with deft precision. Naghan the Pellendur, recently appointed shal-cadade, [iv
]

  led his Fristle guards with our onslaught. The cadade, Framco the Tranzer, had been assigned the secret entrance and this, I felt, was as much because Pando wished to keep an eye on Twayne Gullik. Mantig the Screw distinguished himself during that fight. Jespar the Scundle was not with us — he had thankfully returned to his own people.

  “I,” said Dayra to me as we cleared one of the ornate chambers leading onto the hallway below the grand staircase, “abhor killing people unnecessarily. Why doesn’t this young onker Pando negotiate? We have clearly won. Is there no one with enough authority over him to make him see sense and initiate the steel-bokkertu with the surviving paktuns?”

  Dayra halted stubbornly at the entrance to the chamber and stared malevolently out onto the hall where the foot of the grand staircase swept out into a recurve. Statues decorated every other tread of the staircase, and the high balcony above was just visible from where we stood. She shook her head. “The get onker!”

  “We keep referring to Pando as young Pando,” I said, and I, too, stopped beside the entrance and looked out onto the last dying flickers of the combat. “But he is not so young these days. Like any hot-blooded lord he is difficult to control. And, it is perfectly clear, he will not desist from this fight until Murgon—”

  “Ah! Malignant, then—”

  “Not really.” I’d given Dayra most of my past history in connection with Pando and his mother, Tilda the Fair, Tilda of the Many Veils. She did understand, of course; but like me the sight of wanton slaughter filled her with revulsion.

  The stink of spilled blood, the feel of sweat in the air, the harshness of all this, gave us pause, there in the doorway of the hall with the grand staircase lofting above.

  Dayra had not worn her Claw in this fight.

  A Sister of the Rose normally keeps her Claw in its bronze or silver-bound balass box, secret. But that box would be an awkward encumbrance to a girl in a fight before she dons the Claw, and so usually the talons are secreted in a leather and canvas bag which can be slung on her back out of the way. These bags normally are quite plain, perhaps with a row of fancy red stitching to distinguish them one from another. The Claw itself will have each separate tooth masked by a sheath of ivory or bone, or perhaps of wood. Now, through the insights afforded me by the Everoinye, I happened to know that these sacks are called jikvarpams.

  In the fight Dayra had used thraxter and shield.

  She had also been armored.

  I own I’d raised my voice a trifle when we’d been equipping ourselves before the off. I’d been insistent.

  She’d said, with a toss of her head, words more or less to the effect that if I wanted to make a scene then she’d damned well wear armor, and carry a shield. I’d replied that I’d make more than a scene if she got herself killed. We were, you will perceive, improving in our relationship.

  Now she reached around and fretfully began to pluck at the jikvarpam on her back, the blood from her thraxter staining the canvas.

  “Where is Pando, or Murgon? By Vox! I need a wet!”

  “By who?”

  She glared at me.

  “By Chusto, then, you — you—”

  Dayra, like all my children, knew how to use a sword and shield with superb skill, having been trained by Balass the Hawk. She slid the shield off her left arm, and dumped it against the doorjamb. She looked pretty ferocious, I can tell you.

  A step at our backs brought me around sharpish. I relaxed. The Lady Dafni walked up. She wore a middle-length white gown, belted in gold, and there were flowers in her hair. Her face was composed, yet I detected an overbrightness there, a quivering sense of panic suppressed by sheer self-preservation.

  Odd.

  Pando walked with her, dignified and warlike in armor, carrying a naked sword. With them among the retainers came the Mytham twins, Pynsi and Poldo. Both were outfitted for battle, both carried bows.

  Pando did not look pleased.

  “We have gained the day,” he said, surly and vengeful. “But where is the rast Murgon? He hides away like a skulking pest of the sewers. Jikarna, I brand him, jikarna!” [v]

  “Not so!” The lady Dafni pointed aloft. “Look!”

  Up there on the head of the grand staircase a brisk little fight finished with a couple of Rapas falling, and Strom Murgon, blood-bespattered, flushed, waving his sword in contempt at us clustered below.

  Pando rushed out to get a better view, yelling that the cramph would escape. We followed.

  Murgon brandished his blood-befouled sword at us. He looked magnificent, filled with elan and fighting spirit, defying us to the death.

  Poldo Mytham did not hesitate.

  He lifted his bow and on his face the shattering hatred filling him rendered him demonic. He loosed.

  The shaft struck Murgon in the neck, above the corselet rim.

  He stood for a moment, surprised.

  He dropped his sword. He swayed. Then he pitched over the railing and fell headlong to the polished marble below.

  Poldo lowered his bow. He loved Dafni with a hopeless longing. Perhaps he thought... Well, who knows what he thought?

  With a horrified shriek, Dafni rushed forward. In a smother of white dress she collapsed onto her knees beside Murgon. His head was a ghastly red pudding. She took that hideous object in her arms and rested it in her lap and bent over him, her face stained with his blood as she kissed that crushed and ghastly face. She crooned hysterical words...

  “Murgon! My only true love — my heart — Murgon!”

  “So,” said Dayra softly, at my side, “so that was the way of it. It explains much.”

  “Aye.”

  From somewhere in the shadows — and to this day neither I nor anyone else knows who loosed — a crossbow bolt lanced the air, thudding into Dafni, smashing her forward. She collapsed over the shattered body of her lover. Together, blood mingling with blood, they lay in death.

  No one spoke.

  The part Dafni had played in this business now appeared plain. She and Murgon had loved each other —

  and in furtherance of his plans he had used her to bedazzle Pando. The interview I had witnessed was now explained, and when we’d rescued Dafni — she had not wanted to be rescued. Pando had been the victim all along. Tilda of the Many Veils had seen much; but her intoxication as a way of life had precluded any clear statements to aid us. And the Mytham twins?

  Poldo was distraught. And Pynsi — would she now be able to marry Pando? Only the future could answer that.

  The immediate task was to ensure the loyalty of Pando’s people, and the army waiting outside Port Marsilus. Into that hush the sound of a man yelling in pain penetrated and Pompino appeared, brisk and bright and most foxy, dragging along a wight by one ear.

  “Says he has a message for Strom Murgon which, I think, with a little persuasion, he might tell us!”

  Pompino halted as he saw the two bodies, blood-befouled, sprawled together. He whistled.

  “That takes care of that, then!”

  The order of events had to be kept in a correct sequence. The cadade and his Fristle guards went off to secure the palace. Palace slaves and servants set about clearing away the detritus of battle — which is a way of saying that they collected up the corpses. Pando shouted passionately that they should treat Dafni with care and that she should be laid out in state in a bedroom. As for Murgon; he turned away and it was clear to us all that he didn’t give a damn if they bunged Murgon’s corpse on the dung heap.

  Dayra went off to make sure that that didn’t happen. At least she knew how to treat a beaten adversary.

  In all this bustle, Pompino’s capture stood sullenly waiting to be questioned. He was a Brokelsh, hairy and uncouth, and one eye was black and his face was cut.

  I looked at Pando curious to know how he would react to the knowledge that Dafni had been beguiling him all the time, under orders from Murgon to secure Murgon’s desires to control the kovnate. For all her ceaseless chatter, Dafni proved herself to h
ave been a lady of spirit.

  Pando just pushed all that aside. His choleric noble attitude just brushed away the implications. He rounded on Pompino. “Well, Khibil! Don’t just stand there! What is the message this rast has for Murgon?”

  Pompino twisted a red whisker, and most mildly said: “Speak up, Bargal the Ley. Strom Murgon is dead and Kov Pando is your liege lord.”

  “Yes, well—” began this Bargal the Ley, mumbling.

  Pando roared: “Speak up or your hide will decorate the battlements!”

  “Message from Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham, pantor!”

  Dayra appeared at my side, silently, like a jungle predator. She touched me lightly on the arm.

  “Oh? Yes?” bellowed Pando, incensed. “And?”

  “He is ready for the great expedition against Vallia, pantor! He awaits word from you to finalize the date!

  Send me back with this information and the two fleets can sail.”

  “There is treachery here.” Pando fairly snarled in his bewilderment. “Mogper advances to attack Bormark!”

  “Your pardon, pantor!” No one contradicts a great lord when he is incensed without peril. “Not so! The kov is in alliance with Bormark. The venture is against Vallia.”

  His brows fairly writhing in indecision, Pando half-turned to look at us, all standing in a half-circle and watching in fascination. “That is certainly what I believed. That bastard Murgon at least had that right. But the grotesque, Duurn the Doomsayer — could he have been mistaken?”

  Taking this as a direct question, everyone started off on a passionate braying of their own beliefs. Dayra and I remained quiet. I glanced at her.

  The rustic hermit she’d found in the woods and from whom she’d borrowed the trappings of Duurn the Doomsayer had been rewarded with a handful of gold and seen safely on his way. As a powerful inducement to belief, the guise of the grotesque had seemed to me to be excellent. Not many other visitors could, I thought, have impressed Pando so strongly. But — was all that skill and artifice to go for nothing?