Fliers of Antares Read online

  I hankered after releasing Herrelldrin from the yoke of the Gorgrens. Turko the Shield would welcome that, for he had spoken so little of his home, out of shame, as I believed. There was no doubt but that the Djangs would follow. For one thing they loved a fight and wished to teach the Gorgrens a sorely needed lesson; and, two, by this time they regarded me as a king who could do no wrong, and would have followed me to the Ice Floes of Sicce if need be. The only pleasure I could take from that was that the country was recovering, people could look up and laugh again, the good days were returning.

  As for the Lady Lara, I had with great cunning avoided whatever she might have thought, and the issue was now clearly joined between Felder Mindner and Kytun Dom.

  I visited the Kovnate so uncannily thrust upon me by a bleeding man near to death, and found it to be rugged and wild as to country, and even more rugged and wild as to people. Kytun had clapped me on the back and roared out that — by Zodjuin of the Glittering Stux — he had a good neighbor now!

  I agreed with him, for I meant to make this gift of a Kovnate into a place to be proud of; but that, too, had to take its turn in the round of days.

  On Hyr Khor I was taken to see a marvel of the island, a marvel, indeed, of all of Djanduin, and whose fame had spread eastward to the Shrouded Sea.

  This marvel was the Kharoi Stones.

  An enormous area covered with the time-shattered wreck of an ancient city, stones tumbled in indescribable confusion, columns, shafts, arcades, walls, towers, hanging gardens now slithered into pyramids to dwarf those of Egypt, channels cumbered with chipped marbles and vast tessellated areas, all smothered with vegetation and the home for wild beasts of many descriptions, this, then, was the eerie place called the Kharoi Stones. I have seen Karnak, and Angkor Wat, and other famed relics of the past on our own Earth, and I have seen other of the ancient monuments of the Sunset People on Kregen; the Kharoi Stones holds a mystery and a deep secret all its own. At this time, as you know, I had not seen the Dam of Days, which controls the tides through the western end of the Grand Canal of the Eye of the World. But I walked among the tumbled masses of the Kharoi Stones and I marveled.

  Everywhere was to be seen, sculpted boldly in relief or in the round, the magnificent representation of the Ombor, the mythical flying monster of immense size and fiery heart, who dying is yet reborn, whose breath scorches cities, whose tears water the oceans, whose hearts beat for all humankind, and, as I knew, for whom my enclave in Zenicce had been named.

  Coupled with this plethora of ornamentation was the symbol of the double-ax — not the Minoan double-ax but an ax double-bitted yet narrow of blade, eminently suitable for the sweeping blow and the lethal chop from the saddle of a vove.

  You may well believe I promised myself much future exploration of the Kharoi Stones.

  On a day in Djanguraj after I had been up all night by the light of four of the moons, reading reports, dictating answers and orders to my stylors, planning for the well-being of the country, I met for breakfast by prearrangement with Ortyg Coper and Kytun Dom.

  We sat drinking that glorious Kregan tea and eating crisp vosk rashers, and eggs, and finishing with palines from a silver dish. Food, transport, law, education, security, all were now practically back to normal in Djanduin, and I had but a single sennight left of my prison sentence. The Todalpheme had been explicit, and my own calculations confirmed their findings.

  Now I said to Ortyg Coper, “Is the realm faring well, Ortyg?”

  And he said, “The realm is doing well, Majister, and will do better than it has ever done in the next two years.”

  “By Djan!” said Kytun in his fierce way. “That is so!”

  “I find it extraordinarily strange,” said Coper. “I was attacked as often as other Obdjangs by the leemsheads led by Nath Jagdur, and yet my life was spared. Soldiers could never find him or his leemsheads after the attacks; but I did not die. Others of my friends died.”

  We were silent for a space, remembering. The Obdjangs had been returning to Djanduin and the country really was set fine. Prosperity was just around the corner.

  “There was a reason, Ortyg.” I looked at him as I spoke.

  He munched a paline. “I am alive — Sinkie and I live.”

  “Yes, Ortyg. And I will tell you why. But, first, let me ask you, Kytun, once more, the question — would you become king of Djanduin?”

  He didn’t even think. “Not I, by Djan!”

  “Would you loyally support Ortyg if he were king?”

  Before Kytun could begin to reply Ortyg had reared up, agitatedly brushing his whiskers.

  “Now, wait a minute! Here — my dear Majister — I mean — hold on!”

  I tried to keep my face composed; it was a struggle.

  “I am going on a journey. I cannot avoid it, nor do I wish to do so. I want the country to prosper and to remain fruitful and peaceful. The young men get enough fighting in the eternal games, and the merezo has been enlarged for even bigger and better zorca races. There is nothing now for which I am needed. You, Ortyg, are the next king of Djanduin, arid Kytun will give you all his loyal help, as he does us both.”

  Kytun spat out a mouthful of palines, which is a terrible waste.

  “You do not have to go, really, Dray! You are King! By Zodjuin of the Rainbow! You can’t desert us!”

  I sighed. “I feared you would regard this as desertion. But it is a task laid on me. I must go. Ortyg will be—”

  “No, Majister.” Ortyg Coper stood up, and abruptly he was formal and deadly serious. “No, Majister. I will not be king. But I will stand as regent for the throne.”

  And with that I had to be content. I would return here, I promised that; but as to when . . . That, in truth, partly lay in the inscrutable hands of the Star Lords. Had they two hands apiece, I wondered, or four?

  Ortyg Coper was fully invested as regent, and Kytun was the first to lift his djangir in loyalty. I was as satisfied as I am ever satisfied about anything, that I had done all that I could do. Everyone knew I was taking a journey laid upon me, and the news traveled that the task was a reward given to me by the Glorious Djan Himself, He whose figure was not to be sculptured upon stone along with the warrior gods of Djanduin. As far as mortal mind and hand could contrive, I left the kingdom of Djanduin, of which I was sovereign, in good heart and good hands, and looking forward to golden days.

  The airboat I had bought and had provisioned was a small two-place flier. Over in my island of Hyr Khor I had found a strange and scarcely self-comprehending willingness to help. As their new Kov I was both suspect and welcome, for the old Kov, besides being a violent man, much given to breaking heads, had been impious and a leemshead, and a ravisher of the young girls of the island. I convinced the people of Hyr Khor that although I was no angel, and no simpleton, either, I was prepared to let them make their own lives, saving that they must always remain friends with the people of Uttar Djombey. There was some grumbling, I have no doubt, but on the surface the scheme worked well. So it was to Hyr Khor I went for a last farewell and to collect my flier.

  My plan was simple. I would fly from Djanduin, across Gorgrendrin, over the back hills of Migla, and out over the Shrouded Sea to the place where I had last seen Delia. I fancied the Star Lords would permit this.

  It was with a light heart I called Remberee to the people of Hyr Khor. They waved their great swords of the islands, and I took off into the morning suns-light.

  “Remberee!”

  “Remberee, Kov Dray Prescot, King of Djanduin!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The scorpion

  The little flier lanced through the bright clean air of Kregen.

  There is a coolness and sweetness about the air of these latitudes of Kregen. Because of that extraordinary width of the temperate zones of Kregen beneath Antares the climate as far south as Djanduin is perfectly suitable for comfortable living, not as hot as, for instance, northern Havilfar, by any means, but nowhere near as cold as the gray
waters south of Thothangir. Between the Yawfi Suth and the Wendwath and the back mountains of Migla there lies a broad tract of country, sometimes fertile, sometimes less so, seldom truly inhospitable. The western areas are the ancestral homes of the peoples of Herrelldrin and Sava. The Gorgrens in their aimless meanderings over the vast inner plains had come down to the west and had occupied Sava and Herrelldrin and Tarnish, which lies to the south of the Tarnish Channel. Between the somewhat undefined eastern limits of the Gorgrens’ lands and the back hills of Migla lies the country of Yanthur.

  It was over this area, in a place where spiny hills made of the landscape a miniature tree bark in appearance, that the flier chose to go wrong.

  I cursed.

  I was well used to airboats breaking down in Vallia and Zenicce; I had formed the opinion that they were built with some kind of weakness which was obviated in those models built for sale in Havilfar. This was a voller purchased from a Hamalian yard and delivered to express orders of the King of Djanduin. For this airboat to go wrong boded ill for someone.

  And that someone was likely to be me.

  I touched down in a lonely valley where a narrow fast-running stream poured in a silvery tinkle over sandstone rocks, and where violet and yellow flowers clustered. The lower slopes of the hills on every side were covered with trees, and their crests, too, were tree covered. The voller touched down and skidded wildly across rock and grass and ended up embedded in the low-sweeping branches of the tamiyan trees. The shaking released a cloud of yellow petals that pirouetted in the air and spread, shining in the suns.

  I just sat there for a moment, and thought of the journey ahead of me. Until I reached a place where I could hire or buy fresh transport, I must perforce walk. I had walked before to reach Delia; I would do so again.

  A laccapin, one of those monstrous flying reptiles of Havilfar, cruised by high above, its tail extended well aft and looking barbed and angry. I was about to climb down from the flier by way of the tamiyan branches, keeping my eyes open for any unwelcome beasts, when I saw the gorgeous gold and scarlet bird come flying into my view, just beyond the edge of the tree branches.

  All the time of my enforced exile in Djanduin I had not seen the Gdoinye, the magnificent scarlet-and-golden-feathered hunting bird of the Star Lords. The remarkable bird is the spy and messenger of the Everoinye, and I know that great things are afoot when it heaves in sight.

  It perched on a branch and squawked at me.

  I rubbed my hand over my chin. This was a period, in Djanduin, when I had shaved carefully, leaving only my fierce old moustache.

  I smelled trouble.

  “What do you want, bird of ill omen?”

  “An onker, Dray Prescot! As ever was!” the bird shrieked in jovial abuse at me.

  I prepared to argue my case to the Star Lords through the bird’s mediation. “I do not seek to break your interdiction upon me,” I said. I spoke firmly, as though I meant business, which I did, Zair knows. “I shall meet my comrades in the voller after they have searched for me, and they will suspect nothing, for this voller will be sunk in the Shrouded Sea.” Then I cracked a fist against the wooden-framed hull. “If, that is, I can get the Makki-Grodno beast to working again.”

  The Gdoinye cackled.

  “An onker, Dray Prescot! There is work for you to do—”

  I froze.

  “No,” I said. I spoke calmly. Remember, I had been a king for three Terrestrial years. “No, I cannot work for you until I have seen my friends again.”

  “You dare not argue with the Star Lords, Dray Prescot.”

  “I think I shall.”

  The scarlet and gold raptor ruffled up its feathers and dug its vicious claws into the tamiyan bark.

  “To refuse would bring down great wrath on your head.”

  I had a bow in the voller, along with food and supplies and other weapons. Now I lifted the bow, and with a practiced jerk strung it, for it was the familiar compound reflex bow, and nocked an arrow. I aimed the steel head of the arrow at the Gdoinye.

  “Once, a man called Xoltemb, a caravan master, said he might cut down any man who raised a shaft against you.”

  “Onker.”

  “If I loose, would the arrow slay you, Gdoinye, or would it merely pass through air? Are you real?”

  “There is work for your hands in a place to which you would wish to go. This voller you bought — and others — do you remember Tyr Nath Kynam ti Hippax?”

  “I remember,” I growled, for the memory was still sore in me. Tyr Nath Kynam had been a valued member of the Djangs who had been rebuilding the country. Coper, who as Pallan of the Vollers, had bought the flier, had been pleased he had secured a brand-new specimen for Nath Kynam, and although it was of the minor sort, it was new and smart. Nath Kynam was short and squat and a dynamo of a man, always working at top speed, always ready to talk energetically, and a good friend. Yet he had personal problems, and was always anxious to have acupuncture needles in him, soothing and calming his restless energy.

  Well, the brand-new flier had failed him, or his heart had burst the bonds of mere flesh. He had crashed and been killed. Yes, I would not forget Tyr Nath Kynam ti Hippax.

  “I remember Nath Kynam. And Tyr Man Dorga ti Palding, who would have saved him if he could. I do not need you, bird of ill omen, to remind me of my good fortune in true friends on Kregen; so what is this to the Star Lords?”

  “A year, Dray Prescot, onker of onkers. A single year is all the Everoinye require of you.”

  If I knew what the raptor meant I would not allow that awful knowledge to crowd into my brain.

  “The Star Lords are so far above you, Dray Prescot, as you perhaps may be above a nit on a calsany. But they have been watching you with an interest you may — or may not — warrant. Beware lest you be cast forth!”

  Almost, I let the arrow loose.

  But I held it fast and shouted, “By Makki-Grodno’s diseased left armpit! Tell me straight, you nurdling yetch!”

  “A year, Prescot.” The bird stretched those gorgeous pinions wide and with a spring he was airborne. “A single year. Then you may — for a space only — imagine yourself a free man.” Then, with what I can only describe as a derisive howl, the raptor winged away into the blue, a scarlet and golden splash of color that rose and darkened into a black blot and so vanished in the suns-glow.

  I lowered the bow.

  Damned uppity bird!

  Sinkie had cried when I bid her and her husband, Ortyg Coper, who was now Regent for the King of Djanduin, Remberee.

  Yet she could have no knowledge of what dangers and what terrors I would face upon the beautiful hostile face of Kregen.

  No manifestation of a blue scorpion arose before my eyes, no blue radiance engulfed me to suck me into emptiness. Remember, it was a full ten years since I had last experienced the summons of the scorpion. Then the Star Lords had clearly missed their target in time, although they had found it in space, for they had dumped me down by the inn and the crossroads after the time I should have been there. We had heard that one of the leemsheads had been hung up in chains on the tree; so all was explained about what I had seen — the repaired roof, the different season. But perhaps the Star Lords were waiting for my violent protestations, which they assumed I must make with such vehement anger. Perhaps if they transmitted me during my burst of rage they were, in some way unknown to me, dislocated in their calculations.

  Certainly, I had defeated their purposes before this.

  Could it be that a mere mortal man might thwart the Everoinye not merely in an underhand way, as I had done, but in a straight contest of wills? I thought it hardly likely.

  “Why do you wait, you puissant Star Lords?” I bellowed out, there beneath the tamiyan trees, perched so ridiculously in my broken-down voller in the land of Yanthur. “Where is your powerful and venomous blue scorpion?”

  I thought then to look to see if by chance the white dove of the Savanti might not be circling overhead, watchi
ng me, and watching the Gdoinye of the Star Lords, too.

  But I saw nothing of the white dove of the Savanti.

  This was becoming ludicrous. I had been learning a little of the fliers and their idiosyncrasies. Ever since the time Delia had told me to move the silver boxes so as to bring our runaway flier to the plains of Segesthes I had been fascinated by all vollers. I held the Air Service of Vallia in great esteem. So I thought it prudent before I girded myself up for a long trek to see if I might not be able to fiddle about with the cantankerous voller and get it into the air again.

  I stood up in the small two-place flier and rested my hands on the wooden-framed hull. It was a shallow, petal-shaped craft, with a small windshield and a pit filled with flying furs and silks. I was putting my leg over the side to crawl out on a branch of the tamiyan trees, when the blueness came down with such speed and force that I gasped. I felt a giant rushing wind and I struggled for breath. I shouted something, anything, I know not what, and went pitching out and down.

  One thing I recall; I hit my head on something extraordinarily hard. So it was that with the bells of Beng-Kishi ringing in my skull and the hovering presence of Notor Zan about me that I was pitched headlong into the next adventurous task I must fulfill for the Star Lords.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Muruaa speaks

  Stark naked, weaponless, and with a thump on the head that left me dizzy and half senseless, I struggled to open my eyes to find out where on Kregen I had been flung.

  I could hear shrieking and screaming.

  That was normal enough.

  Also I could hear a strange hissing sizzling, as though a thousand giant vosk steaks fried upon Notor Kanli’s forge.

  That was odd.

  Someone crashed into me and knocked me flat.