Masks of Scorpio Read online

  She did not put her hand to her mouth or stutter out some fatuous remark; but she got the message all right.

  The sight of solid objects floating in air fascinated these folk of Pandahem. Hamal and Hyrklana refused to sell their vollers to Pandahem or to any of the countries of the continent of Loh. They had sold to us in Vallia, for we were a thorn in the flesh of Pandahem. Only — in the old days the vollers we bought from Hamal continually broke down. That was policy on the part of Hamal, and one of the contingent reasons for the wars — apart from the insane ambitions of the Empress Thyllis, who was now dead and wandering about the Ice Floes of Sicce. No one would take a wager on how long it would take her to reach the sunny uplands beyond.

  The two vessels, the enormous vorlca and the smaller voller, blew away before the wind. We watched until they vanished out of sight among the clouds. Then, as though a spell had broken, we could return to our normal tasks.

  Yet the aerial vessels remained the subject of talk for some time. Pandaheem were unused to flying ships.

  As to the business that had brought a Vallian here — that was easy to guess.

  One interesting item was that the Pandaheem had little idea of the difference between a voller and a vorlca. To them both were simply magical. They were vessels that flew. I managed to have a quiet word to Dayra — to her, for she flared up at once.

  “I know, I know! But I am learning and soon I’ll be as good a Pandaheem as you! The thing is — she was one of ours and she’s been captured! That’s the important thing!”

  “She looked in a sorry mess. That’ll be the gale. Jiktar Nath Fremerhavn was in command the last I heard. He’s a good sailor. Something else happened, that’s certain sure.”

  “Yes, but what?”

  “One thing, Ros. We’ll have to act as though we, too, are overjoyed that a Vallian has been captured.

  We’re always in danger. It’s no good forgetting—”

  “I know.”

  Her color was up, her head high and her eyes bright. Useless to push anymore, as I well knew. She was my daughter all right, by Vox!

  We took turns hauling at the oars, shift by shift, and our vessel slowly forged upriver. The banks proliferated with vegetation of wild and exotic varieties; the birds flocked in prodigious numbers, fish leaped in the water, and the suns shone. Here, between two provinces who were not on friendly terms, the land, quarreled over, went its own way. The king in far off Pomdermam might rule his kingdom; out here what the local lords said went — double. This river, running between the two kovnates, was neglected. Once it was brought under a single control it could bloom and produce amazing riches.

  Trouble was — who was to rule, Kov Apgarl na Malpettar or Kov Pando na Bormark?

  “From what I’ve seen,” said Pompino, giving a twirl to his whiskers, “I wouldn’t back either of ’em with a single copper ob. If you want my opinion, the man to put the money on is our villainous Strom Murgon—”

  “What!” exclaimed Dayra. “You’re backing our enemy?”

  She was trying to fit into her new part, then. Until recently Strom Murgon had believed Dayra, with Zankov, to be his staunch allies against everyone including their homeland of Vallia.

  “Not with any pleasure, Ros. But I’ve seen little of this Pando our Jak here knew as a young man.

  Murgon — well, he’ll get more money—”

  Dayra, Ros Delphor, half-lifted her hand. Her face looked stricken.

  “What is it!”

  “Why,” said Dayra, “why — the treasure the witch melted, that disappeared — it will—”

  Pompino jumped up and down. His whiskers bristled. He looked incensed past all bearing.

  “Of course! By Horato the Potent! The devils!”

  I must admit that with all the experience we had of sorcery we’d been slow in arriving at the obvious conclusion. That striking white-haired witch in the body-hugging gown, whoever she was, would not just melt down the gold and let it run into the sea, wisp away, vanish. Oh, no. No, she’d collected it up through her thaumaturgical powers. That mass of gold and silver coins once more rested in the coffers of Strom Murgon.

  “May the obnoxious and pestiferous odors of the Divine Lady of Belschutz overwhelm them!” roared Cap’n Murkizon. “Then it is all to do again!”

  “We will, Cap’n,” said Pompino, with a snap. “We will.”

  “It is not quite the same this time, though,” I said.

  “True. Maybe I spoke a little too harshly about your friend Pando.” Pompino was not going to apologize for a trifling matter like this. “If the chance affords itself of sinking a blade into Murgon, that we’ll do right merrily.”

  Naghan the Pellendur walked up, perhaps a trifle more relieved that the ship sailed quiet waters with green land on either beam. He still tugged at his whiskers with the same nervous violence. “Pettarsmot, horters,” he said. “My advice would be that if we sail in we will not be received in any friendly spirit.

  Quite the contrary.”

  Pompino said: “My thought, exactly.”

  “We’re from South Pandahem,” objected Murkizon. “They won’t know we have the welfare of Kov Pando at heart.”

  His words should not have surprised me. When a fellow signs up to do a job one may sort the leems from the ponshos. Murkizon was a ship captain, temporarily without a command, employed by Pompino.

  He was not quite the same as any of the other mercenaries. Yet they shared this common feeling. I truly believe that what they had witnessed of Lem the Silver Leem had wrought marvelously upon them. They shared our dedication. Dayra had seen that, too.

  “So we land on the Malpettar bank and march in, a normal group of travelers. If we tried to enter the town from the Bormark side we would face more awkward questions.”

  “That is the best.”

  So, that is what we agreed. Captain Linson was most heartily pleased and relieved. He would keep most of his crew and they’d return downriver. As to what he did then...

  Cap’n Murkizon was not prepared to push his opinion after the disastrous — to him — decisions he had made before we fought the Shanks. Anyway, it seemed best to us all to try to handle the forthcoming day or two with cunning and quietness rather than violence. That, we all felt, would come later, and in plenty.

  Well, as you shall hear, we were right, well and truly right...

  Naghan the Pellendur told us that Mindi the Mad, who was with Pando at Plaxing, would probably be able to contact Captain Linson. We breathed easier after that, and many of the fellows were vastly engaged by this use of sorcery on their behalf.

  A simple pull on the whipstaff and a hail to the boat’s crew were all that was needed to let us glide gently in to the bank. Preparations were rapidly made. We took a great quantity of weaponry, and provisions, and there was a certain amount of scuffling and laughing, for these lads were your real paktuns, dour and doughty fighting men who could let themselves go when the mood was on them. We watched as the sailors who were not going with us pulled Tuscurs Maiden out to midstream and then set off hauling downriver.

  We shouted the remberees, and watched, and presently were left on the bank, a party of fighting men and women dedicated to two main objectives — if you did not count the paramount objective of staying alive. One was to deal with the vile adherents of Lem the Silver Leem. The other to win a fortune that did not magically disappear before it could be spent.

  We marched along the riverbank to Pettarsmot, and saw few folk working the fields close to the town.

  The place was solid enough, with a fortress from which the flags flew.

  They left the gate open for us. As we’d trudged along so the folk in the fields had followed on, their day’s work done. The evening light lay mellow and rubicund upon the bricks and the masonry. The shadows looked purple under the archway. We walked in, ready to shout the Lahals and to slake our thirsts at the nearest tavern.

  A guard consisting of two ranks of spearmen waited, at ease, and
their officer sauntered across. He wore metal armor. His sword was scabbarded.

  “Llahal!” called Pompino. “We are weary travelers going inland. We do not wish—”

  The officer — he was a so-Hikdar — said in a cold voice: “What you want or do not want is not important. Just look up there.”

  We looked up to the walls. Rows of armored men drew bows, and every arrow head pointed at us.

  “Now just throw down your weapons, all quiet and peaceable.”

  Useless to rage. Some of us no doubt could have escaped; most of us would be shafted. We threw down our weapons.

  They marched us off to the lock-up and tumbled us onto foul-smelling straw with water-running stone walls about us. The sound of iron bars clanging shut rattled through the cell and through our stupid skulls, by Krun. We’d been taken up like brainless milbys in a snare. Fine warrior paktuns of Kregen we were!

  Chapter four

  I learn about Ros the Claw

  “Well,” I said in what I hoped was a reasonable voice, “you can’t really blame them. We’ll see a local dignitary in the morning and explain. Then we can set off for the interior.”

  “You’re a fambly, Jak!” foamed Pompino. He strode up and down the stone cell and folk drew their legs out of his way. “Onker! We should have come in here with drawn swords!”

  “Then,” said Dayra in her level voice, “we’d all be dead.”

  In circumstances like these, people display their own peculiar characteristics. Murkizon was all for hitting the first guard over the head and breaking out. They’d taken our weapons away, of course; we were in no doubt that we’d pick them up, or others, in the nearest guardroom.

  Rondas the Bold, his vulturine features beaked and grim, seconded Murkizon. Nath Kemchug was perfectly prepared to bash a few skulls to win free.

  Surprisingly, Quendur the Ripper and Lisa the Empoin sided with me and counseled caution. They, too, felt that in a civilized country the mistake would soon be cleared up.

  “Mistake?” said Larghos the Flatch. He held the lady Nalfi close. “Mistake? The only mistake we made is in not doing as horter Pompino and Cap’n Murkizon suggested.”

  If we fell to a quarrel among ourselves, well, that would be perfectly natural. It wouldn’t help at all.

  Dayra had expressed her surprise that the lady Nalfi had elected to accompany us. But, Nalfi had, and here she was, penned up with us between dank stone walls behind iron bars.

  The others of our group expressed their opinions. Naghan and his guards were all for a bashing spree. I went across to a far corner where Dayra sat, and plumped down, and decided I wouldn’t waste energy arguing over hypothetical actions. Come the morning, and we’d know for sure.

  “Then,” said Dayra, whom I had to call Ros Delphor, “Then we go out and blatter them.” She spoke with feeling. They had taken away the canvas and leather bag in which she carried her Claw. She was clearly concerned over its welfare.

  “Aye,” I said. “If they will not see reason.”

  She laughed. There in that fetid den, my daughter Dayra laughed.

  “Since when have you ever bothered about seeing reason when you want to do what you want to do?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “I doubt it.”

  We were a little separated from the wrangle, which in the sprightly Kregan way promised to last a long time and be of consuming interest to all involved. A torch cast a spluttery kind of mildewy light upon the scene.

  After a time, Dayra said: “You were always gone, so mother said, always off somewhere or other.”

  “That is true.”

  She cocked her head and glanced sideways at me.

  “I own I was surprised to see you here in Pandahem. Vastly surprised. I thought you in Vallia, seeing about the empire.”

  “Your brother Drak is doing that.”

  “So you say. I suppose—” and here she shuffled herself more comfortably against the wall. “I suppose why you were so often away from home was because you were off doing things like we’re doing now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard the stories about a devil in a red breech-clout leaping about with a great sword—”

  “Just stories.”

  “Folk tend to look over their shoulder when they tell these ‘just stories’.”

  “And,” I said, “the breechclout is scarlet.”

  “Ah!”

  We relapsed into silence, each occupied with thoughts the other might, perhaps, only guess at. Water dripped in that noisome place, and little beasties scuttled across the floor. Of food and drink we had none. Our stomachs rumbled and our throats were dry, believe me. But the time passed and we slept fitfully, on and off.

  At one point or another, speaking quietly in the glimmer of the dying torch, I said to Dayra: “I well remember when your mother and Lela were off searching for you. You were smashing up taverns, and whatever other deviltries you were up to — I didn’t know then, for your mother wouldn’t tell me, and I forbore to ask.” She turned to face me and the vague light lay orange curves down her cheek. “Wait, Ros — all that’s gone now, smoke blown with the wind. When your mother and Lela searched for you

  — it was during that time we had to combat the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan — I was frantic with worry. Often and often we’ve been parted. I don’t want those old evil days to return.”

  She whispered, “I heard about the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. A false creed. I do not think it to be much like this Lem religion.”

  “No.”

  She settled back. “Now I’ve tried to find you, I do not wish to be—” She stopped speaking and yawned, and said, “By Chusto, Jak! Try to get some sleep.”

  In that guttering light I glanced swiftly about the cell. The people were mere misshapen lumps upon the stone. Some snored. I did not think anyone could have overheard us. And, truth to tell — I was beginning to grow tired of this Ros this and Ros that. Well, not so much the Ros, for that is a fine name, as the pretense that Dayra was a mere friend and not a precious daughter. If Pompino knew, he was horter enough to know when to stop his questions.

  Then Dayra shifted over again. I could just make out her face in the last of the torch glow.

  “The Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. If we are to enjoy an honest relationship...”

  “Yes?”

  “Zankov thought he could bargain with Makfaril, the leader. A golden numim hoodwinked him, a lion-man called—”

  “Rafik Avandil.”

  Her eyes opened in a surprise she concealed at once.

  “I might have guessed... They ill-treated Zankov and imprisoned him in a horrible underground temple abandoned for centuries—”

  “The ruined temple of Hjemur-Gebir. A monstrous toad-thing of stone, a malignant idol, at the center of the underground—”

  “Yes. I imagine afterward many people went to gawp.”

  “I believe they did.” I stared at her, my face in shadow. “And you were there. It was Zankov with a broken arm—”

  “How...!”

  “I saw it. I saw — you! — rescue him. You were there, there, so close, and I wished you well and went on...” I recalled all that old and horrible adventure. “I did not know who you were — except that you were a tiger-girl, powerful and gorgeous, very quick and lethal, and you went away with that rast Zankov...”

  “You — saw — all that...”

  “Aye.” Someone moved restlessly among that heap of sleeping bodies, and I finished quickly: “Sleep now. We can talk over old times tomorrow.”

  But, before she lay back to sleep, she whispered, “I heard the uproar. I was carrying Zankov along —

  and we could not find a way out. And then Rafik Avandil was there in his golden armor, raging, cursing, insane with despair and rage, and—”

  “It was your mother’s dagger. The gems in the form of a rose...”

  “Aye. It went through his neck sweetly...”

  S
o I lay back. What one learns about one’s children as they grow old enough to confide! [i]

  My penultimate thought as I drifted off to sleep at last was that there would be many more horrific stories to learn of my wayward daughter’s headlong career upon Kregen; but I took heart from this, for I felt the trueness of the bridge we were building between us.

  My last thought before sleep, as it is every night, was the same; although on this particular night it was of Makfaril’s Sacrifice...

  We were roused out just after dawn by apim guards who kicked us awake. We stumbled into a stone-walled courtyard, blinking in the early light, apple-green and palest rose. We were given no breakfast. We husked about, and tried to spit, and waited while the guards went through their tiresome rigmarole.

  The women among us had been offered no indignity, and we were generally agreed that this was a wise action on the part of the jailers of the Pettarsmot prison. We were, for the sake of the Bright Pandrite, in Mappeltar, in Tomboram, a civilized country! When I said to Naghan, speaking in a dry, a very dry voice, that I thought the place was called Malpettar, he managed a hissing sort of laugh.

  “Malpettar or Mappeltar, depending on north or south; for us in Bormark they are all tarred with the same brush.”

  “Well, keep your black-fanged winespout shut about Bormark,” rasped Murkizon.

  We were herded along to the gateway and here we were joined by another bunch of decrepit-looking folk. They were prodded up from adjoining cells. They had been worse-treated than us, that was clear.

  Many were wounded and their bandages were all what they had provided themselves. I felt Dayra’s hand on my arm; and I did not look at her but fastened my gaze on those poor devils who were whipped and beaten along.

  They wore shreds of uniforms. There were apims and diffs, men and women, in that sorry line. Those uniforms wrung a savage gasp from me. Dayra squeezed my arm.

  I — I, myself and Delia, and many another comrade, had helped design those uniforms.

  “They’re from the vorlca Vol Defender.”