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  In a hard and exceedingly unpleasant voice, Quendur the Ripper said: “Which way, good Larghos, did the lady Empoin take? Which particular passage?”

  Larghos gestured.

  “That one.”

  Without another word, Quendur started off for the indicated passage leading from the yard at right angles to the one we had adventured down. Instantly, I was at Quendur’s side. Together, we plunged into the dimness.

  A few slotted windows at the side were mostly blotted by choking festoons of spiders’ webs. A little light seeped through, mottling the dusty floor with ruby and vermilion.

  Quendur’s sword snouted forward. His fist looked hard and knobbly, and the patterned light painted a trick upon his face, so that he looked like a puppeteer’s dangled nightmare. I paced him.

  Shouts reached us as we moved along, distant at first, and as Quendur — recognizing those calls for help

  — broke into a frantic sprint, growing louder every second. We found Lisa the Empoin neatly entrapped.

  Cobwebbed spider strands engulfed her, strands cunningly interwoven with thongs and slender iron-linked chains. The whole lot had fallen upon her from the ceiling as she brushed through.

  She saw Quendur and the color rose in her face.

  Quendur put his hands on his hips and his sword angled up alarmingly.

  “So, my lady, this is how you amuse yourself when I am away—”

  “Stop jabbering, you great buffoon, and get me out! Oh, and there are spiders about as big as soup plates you would do well to avoid — or squash instantly.” She glanced to the side.

  She’d squashed one of the creepy horrors, fairly pulping him. A thin yellowish ichor trailed from the broken body. The thing was as big as a soup plate.

  As Quendur, tight-lipped, started to cut Lisa free, I peered around, sword and feet ready to pierce or squash.

  “The chains—” she said. And then: “My love — I am—”

  “Save your breath, Lisa the Empoin.”

  “But, my heart–”

  “You—” Quendur let rip a long groaning sigh. “You are the most obstinate of women!”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are right. I cannot break the chains.”

  “There are no skeletons that I can see lying about,” I pointed out, helpfully. “So they did not expect to leave a victim entrapped here. Perhaps those two Brokelsh were patrolling this way—”

  “Probably.”

  “The chains—”

  “I am going back to the yard,” I said. Before they had time to register their surprise or disapproval, I went on briskly: “If Cap’n Murkizon will lend us his axe—”

  “Hurry, Jak Leemsjid,” Quendur said.

  I hurried. Murkizon came back personally and hacked Lisa free of the chains. As she staggered forward into Quendur’s arms, the gallant Captain Murkizon said: “The notches in my blade are well bought for the sake of so fine a lady, aye, by the scabrous belly and verminous hair of the Divine Lady of Belschutz!”

  “I will buy or obtain the finest axe for you, Cap’n Murkizon,” said Quendur. “And with it goes my thanks.”

  He did not look at me.

  I knew the unspoken thoughts seething away in Quendur’s mind, as they must soon seethe away in all my comrades’ skulls when they heard this tale.

  Lisa cut that knot — thankfully.

  “The lady Ros tried to make me return with her — and I would not. Quendur — I own sometimes I am headstrong and foolish — but—”

  “You are,” quoth Quendur the Ripper, firmly.

  We walked back along the passageway and Murkizon trod flat-footed upon a scuttling spider, and thought nothing of it. I swallowed and said: “Lisa — the lady Ros?”

  “When I would not go back to the yard with her she said that the Lady Nalfi was probably more at risk than I was.

  “She was perturbed, and I shall apologize to her, for I put her in a difficult position.”

  “If she has returned in the flier.”

  That meant Quendur had to explain our predicament to Lisa.

  “Ros Delphor would never desert us.” Lisa spoke as firmly as Quendur. “I have talked with her, as she with me. She is a lady — oh, I know how we all laugh. But it is sooth. There must be another explanation for her absence...”

  She stopped herself speaking then.

  By Krun! Didn’t I know there could be another explanation! A dark, horrible and altogether unbearable explanation...

  Chapter fourteen

  “Prepare for the Scorpion!”

  Pompino, twirling his whiskers, said, “I have not burned a temple for some time and I am beginning to feel chilly.”

  Pando, bright, arrogant, hugely relieved, said: “I thank you again for the safety of the lady Dafni. I am at your disposal when it comes to burning the Lemmites’ temples.”

  We’d marched down from Korfseyrie and met up with Pando’s force, flushed from their forced march.

  We had slept off the effects of our adventure, we had eaten enormously, and Pompino was fretting to be up and about and doing.

  Of course, I shared his views. But my concern of a father for Dayra fretted away at me.

  Pompino scoffed at my fears.

  “Ros Delphor can look after herself, Jak! Perhaps the airboat — wonderful though it truly be —

  developed some defect and drifted off with the wind.”

  “The lady Ros,” said Pando, “is a formidable lady, in all Pandrite’s truth.”

  “So—” I began.

  They wouldn’t hear of querulous hearts.

  Larghos the Flatch was so down in the mouth we all guessed that his concern for the lady Nalfi weighed on him far more than the aftereffects of his wound. Shula the Balm treated him, so he would recover; he shared with me the agonies of not knowing what was befalling a loved one.

  The camp we’d made in the woods served us well enough for the time we recouped our strength. Now Pompino, mindful of the long journey entailed in reaching the nearest likely site of a temple, itched to be off.

  Rondas the Bold made a terrible scene when we told him he’d have to go along with Kov Pando’s party back to Plaxing.

  “I do not skulk when there is work to be done, by Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls!”

  He appealed with Rapa fervor to Shula the Balm, his feathers whiffling, his beak snouting, his crest wild.

  “If they tie you upon a beast so you do not fall off, you might go, Rapa. I would not answer for your life.”

  “I do not ask you to, Lemmite! That commodity, precious though it is, is now back in my keeping.”

  “So be it.”

  Rondas the Bold, therefore, would come with us.

  Nath Kemchug, a dour, hard, merciless Chulik, said, “If you fall off, Rondas, I will catch you.” Then, with a thumb along a tusk, glistening it up, he added, “And I’ll tie you back on so tight your eyeballs will pop.”

  We were all glad that Rondas had recovered so speedily. He expressed his gratitude to us. In our turn we chaffed at him — for Rapas do, indeed, possess their own weird brand of humor — and the moment that might have become mawkish passed in amiable insult.

  The crafty Ift, Twayne Gullik, spent only the briefest of times at the camp, and then he went back at once to Plaxing with his people, claiming that his duties called him.

  Jespar stared after the cavalcade.

  “And good riddance,” he said, unknowing that he was overheard.

  Pompino and I, who had gone a little way off, ignored that. Tump and Ift — well, the up and the down, the dark and the light — and perhaps the twain never would meet.

  Pompino started, suddenly, and he looked up with such an involuntary look of apprehension, my sword was halfway out of its scabbard before I, too, saw what had startled him.

  Up there, floating in tight hunting circles, the giant golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords looked down upon us.

  That bird was undeniably beautiful. Its golden feathers gle
amed with a brilliance outshining mortal gold.

  The scarlet of its coat of feathers emphasized that glitter of gold around its throat and eyes. The wicked black talons outstretched, scarlet tipped, golden tipped, raked down as though to seize us up and rend us to pieces.

  The Gdoinye up there circled, his head tilted, surveying us. He was the messenger and spy of the Star Lords. They watched us, those superhuman near-immortal men and women, they watched us.

  Pompino, I often fancied, must have fallen to his knees when first the Gdoinye appeared to him, and spoke, and gave him orders. Now he remained standing; but he remained stiff, quiveringly alert, receptive, a perfect tool in the hands of unknowable despots.

  My own relations with the Gdoinye had been of an entirely different character — altogether on a coarser plane. My reactions and antics alarmed my Kregoinye comrade.

  Both of us were well aware that no one else in our company could see or hear the messenger from the Everoinye.

  The bird swung lower, cutting across the face of Zim, the giant red sun, and so turned himself into a wedge of blackness against the light. He volplaned out, turned, glinting in radiance, arrowed down for us.

  “Scauro Pompino, known as the Iarvin!”

  The Gdoinye’s hoarse croak reached us with clarity as he circled, hovering.

  “Dray Prescot, Onker of onkers!”

  “Aye, you rascally, injurious, supercilious bird of ill omen!” I roared back. And, in the old way, I shook my fist up at him.

  He croaked a squawk that might have been a laugh.

  “Jak! Jak!” Pompino fairly bristled with anxiety.

  “We are on our own time now,” I said. “We choose to oppose Lem the Silver Leem because it appears a seemly thing to do. We know the Everoinye also oppose the Lemmites; but we were not sent here by the Star Lords—”

  “Cease your stupid babble, Onker!”

  I glared up at the bird. Pompino put a hand to his whiskers; but for some reason failed to brush them up in the old arrogant way.

  “Jak!” He almost writhed in his alarm and embarrassment. Then he tilted his foxy head back and called up: “We obey your commands. We burn the temples of Lem — what—?”

  “Yes, Pompino the Iarvin, there is yet more!”

  “Certainly!” I bellowed up. “Certainly, there is always more! And what help do we ever receive from you?”

  “Jak! ”

  “You do not understand the help you are given. You are human. I am not here to bandy words. I am here to warn you of a summons. Prepare yourselves.”

  “Damned considerate of you!”

  Well, it was, really, given the Star Lords’ usual endearing habit of plunking me down naked and unarmed in a devilish tricky spot to pick their hot chestnuts out of the fire.

  The Gdoinye winged up, a blurring of gold and scarlet.

  “Prepare for the Scorpion!”

  His blunt head pointed up, those powerful wings shredded the air, in a smother of wingbeats he lifted away, dwindled to a dot against the brightness of the sky, vanished.

  “Humph!” I said. I did not spit.

  “Jak — you run hard upon a leem’s nest!”

  “Oh, the Gdoinye and I have sharpened many a rapier together. I admit that talking to him is like saddling a zhantil — but, all the same, he has warned us.”

  “I believe this will make our task, as it were, official in the eyes of the Everoinye. Thanks be to Pandrite the All-Glorious.”

  “It was official enough for me before, by Chusto!”

  The others in the camp were going about their duties without taking the slightest notice of us. The Star Lords were perfectly capable of putting the whole of Kregen under a spell if they wanted to, I did not doubt. That they did not do so, that they worked toward the fulfillment of their plans through fallible human tools like us, was all a part of their mystery. I did not think — then — that I would ever penetrate that mystery. I persuaded myself that it did not concern me. I refused to worry over it. By Vox! I had enough worries of my own, what with Dayra going off and Opaz-alone knowing where she was. All the same, there had in these latter days been a growing rapport between the Star Lords and myself I had viewed with interest — with unease, of course, and with confidence for the future.

  Now, it seemed, we had a fresh task set to our hands.

  “Jak—” began Pompino.

  I turned to look at my comrade. I turned slowly.

  I’d taken the name of Jak for perfectly obvious reasons — reasons I have explained and that are easily understood. But, sometimes, it irked me, this answering to another name. My name is plain Dray Prescot.

  I may be the Lord of Strombor and a Krozair of Zy, which privileges and responsibilities I take seriously.

  I was also Emperor of Vallia, King of Djanduin, Strom of Valka, a whole pretty kite-tail of titles and folderols. But, all the same...

  “Yes?”

  “Once again the Gdoinye did not call you Jak. He would know that you are now Jak Leemsjid.”

  “Of course he’d know, the cunning, onkerish—”

  “Jak!”

  Instinctively, Pompino glanced up. No doubt he expected lightning to blast down for my impiety.

  Pompino dealt with the Star Lords on the basis that they were supernal gods, demanding and worthy of obedience. He was privileged to serve them. And they’d rewarded him. Their machinations had brought the gold into his fists, gold with which he’d bought his fancy fleet of ships.

  As far as I knew, they’d not put a single copper ob my way.

  “Jak — why does the Gdoinye call you by the name of the Emperor of Vallia, a name which you adopted as a ruse long ago, when he knows the truth?”

  I did not pluck my lower lip; I did not scratch my head. I did not narrow my eyes on my comrade. Had I done all those things they would have been perfectly proper.

  “Well, Pompino...” I began. Then, as Seg Segutorio would have said in his fine free way, I also said:

  “...My old dom. It’s like this.”

  And then I stopped.

  No. No, I wouldn’t shatter our relationship. As I had surmised earlier, if I told Pompino the truth, he’d never regard me in the same comradely way again. How could he? If I was an emperor, then he’d have to start treating me like an emperor, like one of the lordly beings of Kregen, and I detested that. I valued Pompino. Perhaps, when the situation was clearer, he might know, and then we would work out a modus vivendi. For now — no. No, I couldn’t tell him the truth.

  “Well, Jak Leemsjid?”

  Now we had talked together of our experiences beforetime with the Star Lords. I’d been circumspect with Pompino, anticipating he had not penetrated to the Star Lords’ hugely vaulted chamber of scarlet, seen the world spread out below, ridden in one of their hissing chairs, understood just a trifle of their plans. So he knew somewhat of my history regarding the Everoinye.

  I said: “Must be because that was the first name they knew me by. They don’t have the sense to get up to date.”

  “They know everything!”

  “So they must forget a lot, mustn’t they?”

  “That, I cannot believe.”

  It sounded lame, even to me.

  I tried again.

  “The Everoinye were once people as we are. I am sure they still possess a sense of humor. It may be vestigial. I think they amuse themselves by thus dubbing a poor wight like me with the name of the emperor of Vallia—”

  “A most puissant and terrible man!”

  “Oh, aye.”

  “He was dreadfully severe on the slavers in Vallia. His name is not one lightly to be conjured with. If ever you venture up into Vallia, Jak, you had best beware.”

  I said, and I blurted it out before my stupid babbling tongue could be halted: “One day, Pompino, I look forward to the time when you and I go in friendship to Vallia.”

  His bushy, foxy eyebrows rose.

  “Oh?”

  I blustered it out.

 
“Surely. There must be fine pickings there.”

  And I laughed, forcing myself, as a free-roving reiver and paktun would laugh at the thought of loot.

  Pompino, severely, said, “If you try any tricks in Vallia these days, the emperor will put you down, cut off your head, dangle you over the walls of his stupendous deren in Vondium — Jak, Jak! Think on!”

  “Well, there’s a damned army forming in Port Marsilus, paid by gold from somewhere — gold that was once in our possession. When that army sails for Vallia, the story might be different.”

  “You would join that army against Vallia?”

  “Join it?” I pretended to ponder. Then: “Aye, Pompino! I’d join it. Then I would sabotage it and destroy it and scatter it to the winds. Why, then, man, I’d go up to this high and mighty Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia, and stare him in the face, and demand a fitting recompense for saving his empire for him!”

  And Pompino guffawed at the conceit.

  He sobered. “If we are to be snatched up by the Scorpion of the Everoinye then I must warn Cap’n Murkizon and the others. They will have to make their way back to the ship.”

  “Aye.”

  Pompino nodded and walked off, moving briskly, going among the trees toward the camp.

  I stood for a moment, all my thoughts of Dayra making me feel the miserable stupid fool I really was, that fool, that onker, that I was dubbed by the Gdoinye.

  As I stood there, the blue radiance grew about me.

  The coldness of an arctic wind cut through every fiber of my body, the silence of a rushing wind drowned thought. The world fell away. I saw above me, towering and enormous, the gigantic blue outlines of the Scorpion, immense, awful, and then I toppled away into the blue radiance of the Star Lords’ commands.

  Chapter fifteen

  Gold Mask vs. Silver Masks

  Sometimes the Star Lords procrastinated unbearably in their casual dumping of me down into action.

  Often and often I’d find myself in some desperate situation, quite without a clue, unable instantly to decide exactly what the Everoinye were demanding of me. They acted like this, I was more than half convinced, not out of malice but out of sheer indifference.