Storm over Vallia [Dray Prescot #35]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Presently, Kando returned. His whisper breathed like a furtive slipper on polished wood.

  “The damned windows are all boarded up. Bricked up. You promised us an entrance, my lady."

  “Let me have a look.” Silda was fed up with handing about. “There are windows all along the wall here."

  She and Kando slid ahead, ghostlike through the darkness. Kando had to acknowledge that this fine lady certainly knew how to skulk. They reached the wall and in the dimness Silda saw two windows bricked up.

  “They are all like this at the back,” said Kando.

  “What about those?” Silda indicated windows set in the angle of wall and ground. “They are barred, yes. Does that prevent you?"

  “No, But they must lead below ground."

  “And a good place to start. I'll get the rest of the people. You start."

  Silda, without more ado, started back for the shrubbery.

  A voice from out of the darkness said, “Silda."

  She stopped as though shot through by a crossbow bolt.

  “Silda!"

  Her first thought was that this must be Mandi Volanta out on sentry go. But that voice—she knew whose voice that was...

  Off to the side and hidden from observation from Kando at the wall and the others in the shrubbery a yellow light bloomed. That glow looked for all the world like the radiance from a samphron-oil lamp. She ran silently straight for the glow, halting, peering, saying, “Deb-Lu!"

  “Yes, Silda, my dear, it is me. There is very little time. Drak—"

  Silda felt her heart contract. “What of Drak?"

  “He needs your help. You defended him against the clansmen and would have given your life. The emperor used his skill with the Krozair longsword through my arts in gladiomancy. You remember, Silda, up there in Ithieursmot in Northern Jevuldrin?"

  “I remember."

  Deb-Lu-Quienyin, a magical and mystically powerful Wizard of Loh, did not really stand in the garden of King Vodun's villa in Rashumsmot. Deb-Lu could be anywhere in Vallia. In his plain robes with his funny old turban that was forever falling over one ear, he was bathed in the lamp's glow, here in the darkness of a single-moon night!

  Silda was vaguely aware that the two Wizards of Loh exerted their thaumaturgical powers in defense of their comrades. She had never considered the matter over much. Now Deb-Lu-Quienyin rattled on passionately.

  “I will try to guide you, Silda. Drak has been taken by the madman Alloran. He is to be sacrificed, and there is sorcery involved. My arts—such as they are—are at you disposal. But I must work through a—well, never mind that. Choose the fifth window from the right end of the villa, and break through. And, Silda—hurry!"

  “I will, I will. Drak—"

  “By Hlo-Hli, Silda. Run!"

  The eeriness of this confrontation, the insubstantial wraith-form of the wizard, projected by the power of his kharrna for miles and miles through thin air, could not be allowed to affect her. She fairly flung herself on, calling in a low penetrating voice. The people from the shrubbery came out, warily, casting glances in every direction. They did not see the Wizard of Loh.

  At the wall Silda, impatiently, said, “Break through the fifth window from the right. And hurry."

  “Now wait a minute,” said Kando, standing up. He'd been working on the first window. “Why—?"

  “There's no time to argue. The fifth window."

  Crafty Kando saw the girl meant what she said. One window or the next, so what was the difference? He got his people started on breaking a way in. Expert at their tasks, they had the bars out and a rope down and then all eyes turned on Silda. She didn't hesitate. She grabbed the rope, put her booted feet into the chute-like opening and slid down. The darkness and the stench hit her as though she'd plummeted into Cottmer's Caverns.

  Deb-Lu's voice whispered, “Tell them to wait."

  She called up the slot, “Wait!"

  Another voice, faint, husky with soreness, said, “What? Who's there?"

  “We have come to save you in return for a favor,” said the ghostly apparition of Deb-Lu, now faintly visible. He must have turned down his lamp so that his shrewd friendly features, highlighted, took on that upwardly shadowed aura of omnipotent power. He did not look the cheerful, pottering old buffer Silda knew and loved. Now he looked what he truly was, one of the most powerful mages in all of Kregen.

  “I am chained and helpless—"

  “You will soon be set free. In return you must use your powers, aided by mine, to guide my friends. We seek a certain person whose value to us is immense. I am sure you understand the nature of our bargain."

  “You are a Wizard of Loh?"

  “Yes."

  “Then, San, I must agree and place my ib under the hand of Opaz into your protection. I will do as you command."

  “Thank you, San Fraipur."

  A wisp of straw among the dire scatterings on the floor lifted, it seemed of its own accord, and rose into the air. It curved toward Silda and she took it into her hand.

  “When San Fraipur is free, give him the talisman. There is power therein. He will know how to use it. I have done what I can for now. There are portents in Vallia, werewolves to be dealt with. Time is running out. Hurry!"

  The glow faded and Deb-Lu was gone.

  “Come down!” Silda called up the tunnel slot.

  Lon the Knees was first down. He made a face at the smell and then started to strike a light. Kando and the others followed, and although they crowded the cell, they made no more noise than the schrafters in their hidden recesses gnawing on dead men's bones.

  As they started in on the job of freeing Fraipur, two men appeared at the cell opening, took one look, and tried to flee. One was a butter-head Gon, the other an apim with half a left ear. Both were hit on the head with just sufficient force to put them to sleep. They were bound.

  Silda gave Fraipur the wisp of straw. Truth to tell, she could feel no difference in the straw; but Fraipur took it up and in the covered-lantern glow she could see him as it were swell, grow taller. He put on the unconscious apim's rough clothes and without a word immediately led off out of the cell. Silda felt a rush of confidence.

  The layout of the villa as it had been in the past was known in the thieves fraternity and Silda was able to indicate the likely places where Alloran had altered walls and made doors to create his secret apartments in the rear. There was no certainty about any of that, of course; but common sense told her that if she went up and remained in the rear she would emerge beyond that mysterious gold-framed green velvet door. She urged the band on with vigor, and San Fraipur, talisman in hand, went in the van.

  With shielded lights they went up the stairs, broke quietly through a locked door, and so came into a carpeted corridor. Fraipur unhesitatingly turned right.

  He felt gripped in the talons of a power so much greater than his own that it was like being swept away in a tidal wave. He was content to keep his side of the bargain and then, afterwards, he would have to think about his future. As for Alloran, Fraipur now knew he did not care what happened to that evil man.

  No one appeared to inhabit this corridor and the rooms at each side were merely bedrooms with little of value. The gang pressed on. Fraipur did pick up a long curved knife.

  The passage ended at a green velvet door.

  “Open that, and quietly,” ordered Silda. “We are bound to find a few guards on the other side. You need not be gentle with them."

  When the door had been swiftly and expertly opened, the first through were Silda and Lon, side by side.

  They found themselves in a small anteroom with an open door before them and not a sound anywhere. Cautiously, they padded through. They were in a set of chambers of considerable magnificence, strewn with silks and furs, with elegant furniture, sweetly scented, plants in exquisite pots of Pandahem ware. Iron-bound oaken chests, six of them, stood in a line against one wall. Crafty Kando smiled.

  “Diproo the Nimble-fingered blesses u
s now."

  The first chest revealed a mass of gems. The brilliance smote upward with the fierceness of the suns in the Ochre Limits.

  At once the gang, crowing with delight, began to stuff their bags and sacks. Loot!

  Silda said, “You task is only just begun. We must go on beyond the last door. There is—"

  “What?” said Kando. “This is the treasure. We will fill our sacks and be gone. We shall be rich for the rest of our lives!"

  “But—"

  “Oh, no, my lady. You have shown us the treasure as you promised. We go not a step farther."

  * * *

  Chapter sixteen

  "Kill me now and have done!"

  Vodun Alloran, King of Southwest Vallia, sat on the chair in the corner gazing upon Arachna's bed of offering and of prophecy, and brooded.

  The four Katra Curses of his new Kataki friends take it! The Mantissae in the room sensed his mood. They stood silently. Perhaps they couldn't understand why the king was so sullen and enraged when he had taken up into his hand this great prize.

  Well, ran the savage thoughts of Alloran, they were just stupid Kataki women, ugly as sin, doing as they were told. What could they know of the greater diplomacy of the outside world? Two items of news, one on the heels of the other, had shaken him far more than he cared for. By Takroti! Things looked black. The great force of mercenaries he'd expected from North Pandahem was not coming. Their fleet had burned, and they'd got down to knocking hell out of their next-door neighbors. And, on top of that, a messenger brought news from his spies that a tremendous reinforcement fleet had arrived in the battle area along the border of Ovvend and Kaldi. That fleet was commanded by many famous kampeons, and with it flew King Jaidur and Queen Lildra of Hyrklana. At a stroke, Alloran had been deprived of an army and been faced with a fresh one.

  No wonder he ground his teeth. Yet—yet! He had this whipper-snapper Prince Drak. Had him! He'd ask Arachna the questions and put Drak to her so that she could not complain that her sacrificial victim was not puissant enough. No, by the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable!

  His bitter thoughts twined on. This King of Hyrklana, now. He was Drak's youngest brother. Yet he'd been made a king, all right, with all the huzzas. Alloran had had to fight for his kingdom.

  He'd set off from Vondium to regain control of his province of Kaldi and he'd been given the Fifth Army by the emperor, and a miserable lot they'd turned out to be. He'd had to recruit himself to make up the desertions. And he'd paid good red gold for the paktuns, so that, in one way, the very worst news he'd received, a deadly body blow, was to learn Zankov was dead.

  Just how Zankov got hold of the gold didn't concern Alloran. Bleakly, he stared into the future, and he flinched’ white-faced from what he saw.

  But—but, he'd have the answers when Arachna took her sacrifice and prophesied! Then he would know what to do...

  “What are we waiting for?” he rasped out. “Is that bastard Drak proving troublesome?"

  “No, majister,” said a Mantissa. “He has been kept drugged. Listen! I hear Arachna now."

  Moments later the procession entered the room. Alloran, savage, bitter, stared eagerly, desperate for the ceremony to progress so that he would know what to do. He'd have to look away at the moment of revealment; but that made no difference. Arachna—ah! All his hopes now reposed in her and her mystic powers.

  One of the baby werstings decided to act as a wersting should act. He leaped forward with his babyish snarl, all yellow teeth and dripping saliva, and was hauled up in an undignified tumble by the silver lead. The giant Womox shouldering his axe moved a little away; he might be stupid, he wasn't silly enough not to know that a wersting like any hunting dog could give him a nasty bite. The Fristle fifi hauled in the dog and decorum was restored.

  Clad in her swathing blue silk cloak with the mask drawn across the face, Arachna was assisted onto the bed. The liquid gleam like oil on water within the eyeslits gave Alloran a fresh upsurge of hope. Surely, this powerful sorceress must know the answers to his problems.

  The silver gong sent out its trembling notes. The Mantissa replaced the padded hammer before returning to her place beside the bed. The second door opened sweeping the blue hangings aside and four Mantissae brought in the bound and naked form of Drak.

  The questions were asked, the answers given, and then, almost gobbling in his eagerness and anxiety verging on panic, Alloran asked what he must do.

  Arachna threw the cloak wide.

  Alloran turned his head aside.

  As though he looked through a glass where milk drained away in streaks of obscuration, Drak tried to see what was going on. His head hurt. By Zair! His head felt like the top of a volcano. He could clearly recall the girl in the white shawl saying the queen wished to see him urgently. Then what had happened? Had he heard a chink of steel? He was sure he could remember the wind in his face, and the feel of an airboat under him. Where in the name of Beng Raindrek was he now?

  His vision began to clear. His wrists were bound at his back. He could see a bed. On the bed ... He felt lust shoot through him like melting snow in spring. The girl reminded him of someone—Queen Lush? Yes, there was much of the queen in this beauty. And—Silda. Silda whom he had seen half-naked and bloodied and fighting like a zhantilla for his life.

  Whoever she was, she was his. He struggled against the bonds at his wrists. He panted, staring, making gobbling sounds, and saliva speckled his lips and ran down his chin.

  The Mantissa with the knife stepped forward to slash away the hampering bonds.

  * * * *

  “Listen,” said Silda, holding tightly within herself the screaming impatience she felt at these oafish villains. “The man I love is held here. In return for the treasure you promised to help me—"

  “We promised nothing, my lady. I give you thanks; but we take the gems and depart."

  “You, Kando,” said Lon, hearing what Lyss the Lone said and knowing that had been there all the time, and knowing, too, it made no difference to him. “You, Kando, are a faithless cramph, and no friend of mine!"

  “You'll think differently when we are safe away with the treasure."

  Fraipur held the heavy knife in his right hand and the wisp of straw in his left. He felt, he distinctly felt, the straw twitch.

  The knife was a lethal enough weapon, something like a single-edged kalider. Yet the wizard knew that the straw was immeasurably the more powerful weapon. He lifted it, turning to the gang who were prizing open the next chests.

  “You will do as the lady commands. We must hurry. Follow me."

  Without waiting to see their reactions or if they followed, Fraipur marched toward a blue-swathed door in the far wall. Instantly, Lon the Knees was up with him. Silda cast a look at the thieves. Kando dropped his sack of loot. He drew his knife. The others whipped out their weapons and crowded up. With Silda leading they hurried after Fraipur and Lon. The blue-covered door swung open. The little husk of straw in Fraipur's hand appeared to burn into his fingers. He saw. Understanding of what was going on sleeted over him like a lightning bolt.

  “Lon!” he said in a firm hard voice that made the animal-handler jump. “On the bed. Throw your knife."

  Silda barged in. She saw. She felt the bile in her, the scarlet rage, the horror—and the pain and agony and love. Lon threw. At the last, Arachna must have realized, her powers shrieking a warning. But Fraipur knew that he wielded occult magics superior, frighteningly superior. Lon's knife flew.

  Alloran switched around, startled, and his hand reached for his sword hilt. The Mantissae remained fast. Their normal expectation of being told what to do checked them for those few vital heartbeats—those heartbeats that measured out the time in which the heart of Arachna ceased to beat.

  Everyone was held and gripped. They stared at the bed. The knife hilt protruded from the rib cage. The body shriveled into a grayish-black leathery carapace. The gorgeous glowing face of unutterable apim beauty flowed and melted and sl
oughed into the low-browed, tangled-lock face of a female Kataki with the snaggle-teeth and wide-spaced eyes, narrow, cold and hostile. And yet—and yet about that face and body clung tantalizing hints of another strain. The grayish skin glinted as it were with a golden pigment imperfectly matched, the face in its bone structure might have elements of a nobility entirely foreign to a Kataki, male or female.

  The long flexible whiptail tremored, rippling its entire length down the bed. The hand, the left hand at the top of the tail, flexed, opening and closing, and flopped back, cupped and still.

  Thinking of Korero the Shield, the emperor's shield bearer, a golden Kildoi with just such a powerful tail hand, Silda guessed at the truth. Arachna was the fruit of a miscegenation of Kataki and Kildoi. The quick and immediate stab of sympathy for her passed Silda and left her with the hollow feeling that the fates are unjust to all seeming, and unfitted to rule the destinies of frail humankind.

  Still, Arachna need not have turned her arts into the evil ways she had. Sympathy existed. That was all. More sympathy, Silda felt, was owed Arachna's mother...

  With wild shrieks of abandonment and despair the Mantissae leaped into action. Their bladed whiptails sliced up. Daggers glittered. Kando's gang recoiled and then, under the thrall of sorcery or because they saw there was no other way for it, they fought.

  Silda ran to Drak. He turned, dazed, shaking, the sweat starting out all over his body. Alloran looked on from his chair, the sword in his fist, and he did nothing.

  “Silda...?"

  “Drak. Here—” With efficient hands, Silda ripped the blue silk cloak away from the shriveled body of Arachna, swathed it about Drak. She made him sit on the edge of the bed. He stopped shaking. He looked up.

  “I suppose you'll tell me. But first there must be things to be done urgently..."

  “Plenty. Alloran, for a start."

  “Alloran?"

  Drak didn't know what the hell had been going on; but it didn't take a genius to guess at most of it. Damned sorcery! He swiveled himself about and so looked on King Vodun Alloran.

  The man still sat, gripping his sword. The sweat on his forehead glistened thickly, more profuse than the sweat upon Drak. He shook. The sword splintered lights into the overheated air of the chamber where Kando's gang fought the Mantissae. Silda felt perfectly content to leave all that physical exertion to them. After all, that was what she'd taken all this trouble to bring them here for, wasn't it?