Renegade of Kregen Read online

  Immense and awe-inspiring is the city of Magdag. Enormous walls defend the many harbors. Tier upon tier rise the costly houses above the waterfront. Many glittering temples rise to Grodno, and the place is forever a babblement of people about the business of a great city.

  The single stupendous fact about Magdag, which marks it off from most other cities, is the incredible area devoted to the megaliths. For dwabur after dwabur they stretch along the plain, colossal blocks of architecture, striding with the insensate hunger of continual growth. Thousands of slaves and workers toil ceaselessly, forever creating new halls and courts and pavilions, raising fresh towers and cupolas to the glory of Grodno the Green. Always, in Magdag, there is building as the overlords indulge their obsessive craze. As a slave, as a stylor, I had worked there, and, too, I had been caught up in the dark mysteries revealing the reasons for this fraught building mania.

  As Gafard in his preysany litter and I, astride a sectrix and riding abaft him, made our way through the crowded streets, those enormous blocks, the megaliths of Magdag, fractured the far skyline. Dominant, impressive, brooding, they lowered down over the city of Magdag.

  The reception at King Genod’s palace proceeded much as I had expected. There were all the usual panoply and pomp and circumstance, the frills and the rituals, the protocols. We were escorted through court after court, up marble stairways, and through immense arches in the tall pointed fashion of Grodnim. Everywhere stood guards, ramrod stiff, on duty, only their eyes moving as they watched every arrival and departure. They wore a variety of fancy uniforms, and I stored away details of armor and weaponry against future need.

  The chamberlains in their green tabards and golden wands went before us. Trumpeters pealed a blast as we passed that was designed, I felt damned sure, to make the suppliants to the throne jump out of their skins with fright. On we went and, at last, came to the anteroom to the reception chamber. Like many of the palaces of Kregen of which I had knowledge, this Palace of Grodno the All-Wise contained a maze of rooms and chambers and secret ways. I held myself erect and I looked about openly, as would be expected; but I had loosened my longsword in the scabbard and my right hand remained limp and flexed, ready for instant action.

  Trumpets pealed again, the anteroom doors were flung back, and preceded by the chamberlains, Gafard and I marched into the gleaming brilliance of the reception chamber.

  Light, color, glitter. The sight of waving fans, bare shoulders, silk and furs, armor of iron and steel, and everywhere the green, that green, shining and refulgent, here in the reception chamber of King Genod Gannius of Magdag.

  Designed to impress, the chamber weighed down on my spirits. What was I, who had once been of Zair, doing here, even if the Krozairs of Zy had rejected me?

  The device of the lairgodont appeared in many places. Guards with spears and swords, in glittering mail swathed in green robes, stood dumbly along the walls. I marked their helmets. Atop each burnished helm rose the sculpted form of a lairgodont, in the round, fashioned of silver, shining and winking in the light streaming through the clerestory above. The artist who had created the master image had caught all the violent, vicious character of the lairgodont, portraying him with a half-turned head so the wicked fangs in that gap-jawed mouth showed prominently. The body scales were delineated to perfection, the spiked tail curled high and menacingly, the skull-crushing talons gripped like vises of death.

  We marched down the marble length of floor to the throne at the far end. There were three thrones and in the center, higher throne, sat King Genod.

  Our studded sandals rang on the marble.

  Gafard presented a formidable picture of a fighting-man, loaded with honor and wealth, harsh and cruel, superb in his strength.

  I, this same Gadak, marched a half-pace to his left rear. Over the mail shirt he had given me I wore a white robe well splashed with the green decorations, with a green sleeveless jacket embroidered in silver over that, the Genodder scabbarded high on my right side, the longsword swinging from a baldric at my left.

  Past the watching lines of guards we marched, past the crowds of courtiers and officials and high officers, past the clustering women who arranged, every one, to wear their flaunting green feathers in ways individual to each. The light streamed in above, the mass of gems and feathers and precious metals formed a chiaroscuro of brilliance, and over all the hated green prevailed.

  We halted where a golden line in the marble pavement indicated the distance by which we must be separated from the king and his magnificence. I halted, still that half-pace to Gafard’s rear, and the chamberlains wheeled to the side and stood, their heads bent, facing the throne. Deliberately, I looked at the smaller thrones.

  The right-hand chair of gold held the small, shrunken body of a man I judged to be well past two hundred, well past the age he should have gone to the Ice Floes of Sicce or, in his case, up to sit in glory on the right hand of Grodno in the green radiance of Genodras. His role, I judged, would be that of court wise man, perhaps wizard, and his lined, pouched face and those dark darting eyes, like lizard eyes, confirmed the shrewd intelligence of the fellow. His frail body was so smothered in green and gold no indication of his figure was possible; I fancied he had little longer to spend on Kregen.

  In the left-hand chair sat— My breath sucked in and I forced my ugly old face to remain a carved chunk of mahogany.

  Oh, yes, I knew her.

  She had changed since I had last seen her. Plumpness had softened the lines of beauty in her face, making her appear more petulant than ever. But she remained superbly beautiful, still lithe and lovely. Her dark hair had been dyed the fashionable green. Her kohled eyes regarded me and I kept my face blank. The last words we had exchanged — so long ago here in Magdag as my old vosk-skulls surged forward to the victory that was surely theirs, that victory so cruelly denied — had been words of anger and unfulfilled yearning. She had said I looked ridiculous, standing there with an old vosk skull upon my head. She had slashed at my face with her riding crop, and I had ducked and the blow had glanced harmlessly from the vosk-skull helmet.

  The princess Susheeng.

  Oh, yes, I knew her.

  Would she know me?

  How she had recoiled when she had learned I was a Krozair of Zy, the Lord of Strombor!

  I stood dumbly and looked away, daring in the parlance of the overlords of Magdag to lift my eyes to the radiance of the king.

  He was a man, this king Genod. I saw at a glance the fire in him, the fierce energy, the deep-banked fires of genius that could flame and flash as he led his men, driving them, leading them, inspiring them with all the magnetism of his powerful personality. And yet in those deep dark eyes I saw the callous cruelty of a leem. I saw in the bladelike nose, the arrogant jut of jaw, and the thinness of the lips signs that, brush them aside as you will, denote the man who puts himself and his own purposes always foremost in all he does.

  He sat brooding upon us, and all the gaudy glitter of his clothes and jewels and arms paled beside the sullen power of that face.

  "Lahal, Gafard."

  "Lahal, majister."

  That was all, between these two. Yet I swear I understood a little more of the bond between them. Master and servant, brain and tool, they complemented each other. Between them they could take the inner sea and wring it dry.

  The princess Susheeng, who had once knelt weeping, beseeching, supplicating before me, naked but for the gray slave breechclout, did not move. I flicked her a quick glance and saw no outward change in her demeanor. It had been a long time, and that notorious Krozair Brother, the Lord of Strombor, was long dead and gone to his grave. And, perhaps I, too, had changed over all those years.

  Also, Gafard’s shadow from the clerestory windows fell across me, and my green silken turban wound around the plain iron helmet draped half across my face. I breathed more easily.

  Impossible to imagine she would recognize in this new renegade seeking admission to the king’s armies a man she h
ad once known so long ago and who was now dead.

  Gafard had warned me that this audience would form the public initiation. From this time on I was Grodnim. Later the king would see me privately, and there I might form a better opinion of what was required of me.

  I recognized that Princess Susheeng had achieved much of her heart’s desire. She and her brother, that devil prince Glycas, had planned and plotted to raise themselves even higher in Magdag. Now this storming genius Genod Gannius had appeared on the scene and had led his armies in triumph over Magdag and ruled here in the city of megaliths. And he had chosen Susheeng as his consort. She, at least, had achieved much.

  The thought that Glycas must be here, if he was not dead, made me realize the latter alternative to be far more preferable.

  The short ceremony of admission was about to begin.

  The chamberlains unhitched the Genodder from the high belt and carried it toward a Chuktar, a Chulik, who stood enormous and impressive in armor and green. He took the sword.

  After some mumbo-jumbo, the Genodder would be blessed by the priests, waiting in their green robes at the side, the king would kiss it, and I would receive it back, to kiss it and so hang it once more upon my person. The admission would have been completed.

  So I stood there, waiting for the next move in this charade.

  No one moved.

  No one stirred.

  I looked hard at the king. His right hand was half lifted in the sign to begin. That hand did not move, did not waver, did not tremble. The old wise man’s mouth was half open. That mouth neither opened nor closed. Susheeng’s hand turned at the wrist and fondled a golden brooch upon her breast. Nothing moved.

  So I knew.

  Not a sound rose from the mass of courtiers in the bright reception chamber, not a person moved.

  I shuffled my feet and turned around, nastily, to face the tall double doors. Now, I said to myself, now what does she want?

  Zena Iztar walked in through the opened double doors and past the lines of petrified people. She looked, as always, supremely imposing. She wore her crimson and scarlet and golden robes, with a narrow green sash, and the jewels flamed from her to drown in magnificence the suddenly tawdry splendor of King Genod’s glittering reception chamber.

  She halted a little way off from me. She shook her head.

  "Dray Prescot!"

  "What do you want, Zena Iztar?"

  "I seek to know what you do here."

  "It is obvious."

  "Not to me, not to the Star Lords, not to the Savanti."

  "Then are they — and you — of little wit."

  That calm face, imperious, proud, beautiful yes, all those things, but also maternal and wise and sorrowing, did not smile. Again she shook her head and the jewels of her headdress flashed and sparkled. "If we used our wits, as you suggest, we might believe you did an evil thing here."

  "Of course it’s evil!"

  A tiny line dinted between her eyebrows.

  I said, "We have met three times, Madam Ivanovna, Zena Iztar. Do you not yet understand I am an evil man?"

  "Yet were you chosen by the Savanti and after they cast you off, by the Everoinye, the Star Lords."

  "That was not of my seeking."

  "Yet were you chosen."

  I wasn’t fool enough to ask why I had been chosen. The Savanti, those superhuman men of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, selected many men from Earth and subjected them to a test and so, accepting them, trained them to become Savapim and go forth upon Kregen to uphold the dignity of apims, of Homo sapiens. I had been found wanting and so had been kicked out of paradise. I had fought and worked and created my own paradise upon Kregen. All I held dear lay with my Delia. The Star Lords used me when they willed for their own ends. The reasons behind the selection of myself were obvious; the ramifications of the conflicting desires of others were the causes of the way my life had gone upon Kregen. I had no stupid delusions that I was in any way special, destined for a great and glittering fate in this world four hundred light-years from Earth.

  "I warned you, Pur Dray," said Zena Iztar, "that you would not be allowed to leave the Eye of the World."

  "I am no longer Pur Dray."

  "That is sooth. But I would like you to become Pur Dray again, once more to take up your rightful place as a member of the Krozairs of Zy."

  "I’m finished with all that!"

  "You will never leave the inner sea until you do."

  All along, all during the time of my boasting and planning, when I had ridden to Magdag, when I had taken the argenter, all the time, I must have known — had known — that I could not leave the Eye of the World. Those vast and implacable forces operating outside of the time and space I knew held me fast caught. Until what they desired occurred I must remain here, a free man within the confines of the inner sea, but imprisoned here as I had been imprisoned on my own Earth.

  "The Krozairs of Zy mean nothing to me now. I am Apushniad. Had you forgotten?"

  "I do not forget important things so lightly."

  "It’s not important! Not any longer!" I was shouting. "I have put the Krozairs behind me, cast them off, shed them as a snake sheds a skin. There are other places of Kregen I hold more dear."

  She bent her gaze upon me. "As a snake, you said. . ."

  "Well, then? I am evil, so a snake will serve. Although I detest the things, even though they live according to their natures."

  "The man of your Earth called Shakespeare had a word for your conduct now, Pur Dray."

  "He had a word for everything."

  "And I have a word for you. You are held here. When you are once more a Krozair of Zy, then perchance you may return to your Valka—"

  "And Delia?"

  She put one long white finger to her lips. Those lips, red and soft, parted and I caught the gleam of white teeth. She cared for herself, this Zena Iztar. "You know your wife. You know her mettle. She is safe, as happy as she will ever be without you — poor soul! — yet will she risk all to find you again."

  "And you condemn her to that!"

  She was very brisk about that. "I condemn no one to anything. Men and women have suffered since the beginning and, assuredly, will suffer until the end."

  "You told me I would face a choice, a hard choice—"

  "Not this petty business, serious though it may be." She brushed my words aside. "The choice will come later. Also, I said that even Grodno might play a part, that stranger things have happened."

  "I remember. That was the first time, in my chambers in London, before the séance—"

  "And when I saw you for the second time, by the banks of the Grand Canal, I warned you afresh. You have a part to play. I would you would play it with all your heart."

  "When I am parted from Delia, that I cannot do."

  "I see that, and I believe it. Then I say this to you: you must pursue the path with every part of you that you can. Put as much of yourself into your struggle as you can possibly spend. I know whereof I speak. I salute you as Pur Dray."

  I nodded my head at the thrones. "And if Susheeng recognizes me?"

  "I do not think the — the princess Susheeng will know you. For her the Eye of the World revolves about the king. And she will not wish the king to know she once abased herself to you and that you spurned her."

  "Aye. She didn’t relish that, by Vox!"

  "But you did?"

  I flicked up my evil old eyes to glare at her. "Sharp, Madam Zena Iztar! No, I do not think I relished seeing a silly hulu make a fool of herself. I do not think I took pleasure from that. But had I done so, I could have understood myself passing well."

  "I have no more to say to you now."

  I knew that in a moment she would walk off and the silent, motionless people all about would wake to life and the ceremony would proceed. Already the Chulik Chuktar, he who held my shortsword, had the piece of red cloth extended, still and unmoving. There were very many things I wished to ask this woman, and every time she sidestepped them
and we got into an argument. I said, "Not the Star Lords, not the Savanti, then who, Zena Iztar?"

  She saw my eyes and looked where I looked and saw the scrap of red cloth in the fingers of the Chuktar.

  "They will make you—"

  "Yes, I know."

  "And it will mean nothing?"

  "Nothing."

  "Remember what I have said. Your only way out. Remember."

  "But — tell me who you are and why—" But she was walking away with that lithe swinging gait, going out the doors. She had passed along all that long expanse of marble with supernatural speed; yet she appeared to be only walking naturally. The double doors closed of their own volition — or so it seemed. She was gone. The piece of red cloth in the Chulik Chuktar’s fingers jerked as he finished ripping it from his pocket. He held it up, ready for the king’s signal.

  Silver trumpets pealed. The high room filled with the sigh and murmur of hundreds of people gathered together to witness the repudiation of the Red and the acceptance of the Green. The king finished making his signal.

  So the sorry charade was gone through, when I spat on the red cloth — it was an old swifter flag — and trampled on it. I made various promises which, as they were made in the name of Grodno, meant nothing — and all the time I heard those ominous words clanging about in my vosk skull of a head.

  "To leave the inner sea — you must become a Krozair of Zy!"

  Chapter Six

  Gadak the Renegade rides north

  "Such plans the king has!" said Gafard, guiding his sectrix past a broken tree stump in the forest trail. "Such plans, Gadak, as gods must surely dream!"

  I wasn’t fool enough to point out that the king was no god.

  "You may rest assured, gernu, that I will do all I can to help the king." I looked at him as he rode, a tall, strong robust man with that iron profile eager and aimed always for the heights. I decided to take a chance. "I think, gernu, all I can for the king — after you."