Beasts of Antares Read online

  I turned to look back down the steps.

  The chair was altogether more ornate, more regal, than the usual run of gherimcals, for the normal gherimcal of Kregen serves functional needs of carrying people about. This palanquin concentrated glory and splendor within itself.

  At the side of the gherimcal walked Rosala and Fiona. So I knew.

  I walked back down the steps, leaving the dignitaries and the waiting priests above me. I did not run. I do not know how I did not run.

  I lifted the cloth-of-gold curtains.

  Delia said, “We found not a single sign of them, and I’m late for the Day of Opaz the Deliverer — what a way for an empress to carry on!”

  And I, Dray Prescot, laughed.

  Neither Delia nor I cared a fig for being empress or emperor. We just wanted to get the job done.

  “Whatever you do, my heart,” I said, “the people of Vallia love you.”

  So we went up together to the Temple of Opaz the Judge.

  Delia looked superb. She was radiant. She wore a simple sheer gown all of white, with those two special brooches, and a cape of scarlet and gold, crimson and silver, in an artful blend that combined sumptuousness with good taste in a miraculous fashion. Her brown hair was dressed high, threaded with gold and gems, and those outrageous tints of chestnut lent the perfect touch of natural beauty. Like us all, she carried arms, a rapier and a dagger swinging from jeweled lockets on a narrow gem-encrusted belt over her hips.

  “And I am famished,” she said as we walked up.

  “Jilian?”

  “She continues the search. But the trail has gone cold, I think.”

  When the people saw Delia they went wild.

  Fantastic cheering and roaring, shrill cries calling down the blessings of Opaz upon her, a bedlam of love and good wishes broke in an inferno of joy to the clear skies over Vondium.

  Delia smiled. The whole world brightened. She looked wonderful. With an incredibly graceful gesture, she lifted her hand, bowing to the people left and right and then walking on, her head high, proud, superb, radiant — Delia — Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains.

  And I, Dray Prescot, was privileged to walk along at her side. Yes, it wasn’t all bad, being Emperor of Vallia!

  The rest of the day passed in something of a blur. All the necessary rituals were gone through with proper deference. Whenever I was called on to give a speech outside the customary rote observances, it was very easy to remind the citizens of Vondium of the perils through which we had just passed, and to harp on the dangers we still faced.

  “We of Vallia believe! Our children clamor to be heard. We cannot let their justifiable ambitions go unheeded. The land calls for purification. From all over the continents and islands of Paz our oppressors have flooded in. We have fought them. We have driven them back from Vondium, the proud city, and from many of the provinces.”

  Standing on an obelisk, or at the summit of steps, or upon some balcony banked with flowers, I would say the same words, or almost the same, telling these people that we had come a very long way, and that there was a very long way still to go.

  “The iron legions of Hamal have invaded us. The slavers, aragorn, slavemasters have taken away our loved ones, our fathers and mothers, our husbands and wives, our children, brothers and sisters, taken away to be chained in slavery. The flutsmen wing in our skies, pillaging and slaying. The masichieri march against us with rapine in their hearts — no! No, my friends. I am wrong! These masichieri, all the rest of the scum, they have no hearts that beat in human breasts.”

  The crowds would yell at this, raging, knowing the awful tragedies that had overtaken us, knowing what we had to do to bring Vallia once more into the light of Opaz.

  While I was, as you will see, preaching to the converted, I was uneasily aware that since our successes the hard edge to our purpose might fall away.

  After all, many and many a mile separated the hated foe-men now from the citizens of Vondium. Despite the ruins everywhere thrusting their harsh reminders upon us, it was deceptively easy to feel the victory had been won. The sounds of the drums were muffled by distance. Yet Vondium remained the heart of Vallia. Nothing less than total dedication could be required...

  Delia looked sharply at me as I walked back from the balcony where the last speech had been vociferously received.

  “Dray?”

  “I was thinking, even as I spoke — we must do this, Vondium must fight on, nothing less than total dedication can be—” I looked at her, seeing her beauty and the wary look on that face I know so well. “Can be tolerated, permitted?”

  “You said required.”

  “Yes. We run perilously close to deep waters.”

  “Come away and drink a glass of wine. The suns decline. They have a fine Tardalvoh here which will curl your toes.”

  We were due to dine this season with the Bankers Guild. Each season on the Day, various authorities took it in turns to host the emperor and empress. The Bankers Guild, formed by a number of Companies of Friends to further their own ends, would surpass all efforts at entertainment. Well, I will not bore you with details of what we ate, the golden plates and all that high living. After the feast, the reckoning.

  We had changed from the foolish sumptuous clothes of the day to evening attire, with the smaller nikmazillas that are so becoming a part of Vallian costume. Turko and Nath and a few other nobles were talking in a corner when the portly form of Nomile Ristemer rolled up.

  “Majister! May I present my son, Mileon Ristemer, of whom I am inordinately proud. He has but just returned home to offer his sword in your service.”

  I nodded and shook hands in the Vallian fashion.

  Old Nomile Ristemer was one of the elite of the banking fraternity of Vondium, immensely rich before the Time of Troubles, still a very wealthy man. His interests extended to many parts of Kregen. He was stout, chunky, with short legs and a strut to his walk. His face was not quite doughy and he had a swab nose. His brain was like a cold chisel. He was nothing like Casmas the Deldy of Ruathytu, right out of his class altogether.

  His son, Mileon, partook of that chunky appearance, but he had kept himself in shape and looked what he was, a tough, experienced mercenary. When a mercenary achieves enough distinction, his comrades may see fit to elect him to the august company of brethren who wear the silver mortilhead on its silk ribbon at their throats. He is then a paktun. Of course, the word paktun is more often than not used of any mercenary, as I have said. The silver mortilhead, the pakmort, showed a discreet glitter at Mileon Ristemer’s throat.

  “You will, I trust, majister, find room and service for my son.”

  Constantly I was being approached in this way, and I dealt with the applicants as they deserved and in as just a way as I could contrive. Mileon Ristemer looked likely. His father was not a noble but had been given the title of Kyr, a kind of honorific, by the old emperor. The son was plain Koter Ristemer.[3]

  “I shall be glad to have the honor to serve you, majister. I shall not require pay. I have one or two ideas that, I believe, will prove of great value in future campaigns—”

  “Where have you seen service, Koter Ristemer?”

  “In various countries of Havilfar, and in Loh.”

  “I am interested in any new schemes. Make an appointment with my chief stylor, Kyr Enevon. I trust we can serve the interests of Vallia together.”

  Mileon visibly drew himself up, his shoulders going back. Maybe he hadn’t been used to dealing with raspy, down-to-earth characters like me before when taking service as a paktun.

  “Quidang, majister!”

  He rattled that out, and the word, the tone, the very vehemence of that soldier reply, sounded strange in the golden, refined world of the Bankers Guild.

  I nodded. I fancied Mileon Ristemer would shape up.

  Three or four other young hopefuls were introduced to me in the course of the evening, and if I mention Mileon alone at the moment it is not because the others
did not serve Vallia well, but that Mileon’s scheme — well, all in good time you will hear about that, by Zair!

  We fell into a conversation about the army Turko would need to bring Falinur back in to our kind of civilization. He well knew my face was turned against hiring mercenaries. My son Drak had hired paktuns and had won battles with them. There were mercenaries in the army that had marched into the southwest under the command of Vodun Alloran, the Kov of Kaldi. He had taken the Fifth Army down there and had won victories and was now attempting to consolidate what he had conquered. But more than one of my comrades now grasped the essentials of the policy of using Vallians to fight Vallian battles.

  The dancing began and there was singing and laughter and much drinking of toasts.

  Standing a little back from the main throng, a glass in my hand, talking quietly to Strom Vinsanzo, a small and somewhat wizened man who knew how to make one golden talen equal two in a season or so, I could see Mileon Ristemer laughing with his partner in the dance. The pakmort glittered at his throat.

  Vodun Alloran, the Kov of Kaldi, returning to his native Vallia as a successful paktun and wishing to fight to regain his kovnate, did not wear his pakmort. That would be, he had said, too flamboyant. Watching Mileon, straight-backed, limber, most gallant with his partner, I wondered afresh.

  And it was perfectly clear that old Nomile Ristemer was enraptured by this soldier son of his, proud and strutting, unable to stop prating about Mileon and the return of the warrior son so dear to his heart. I knew just how he felt. I had to turn away from Strom Vinsanzo with a small word of apology.

  Delia, with a graceful gesture and her sweet smile, disengaged herself from the group chattering about her. She walked across to me quickly.

  “Dray! You look—”

  “Aye. I look the ugly old savage I am.”

  “Agreed. And the specific?”

  “Look at Mileon, there, and old Nomile! I was thinking of Drak, and Zeg, and Jaidur, and—”

  “Our three sons make their marks on the world.”

  “They do. By Zair, but I am proud of them, all of them!”

  “I have been thinking that you ought to know what I’ve been up to in that direction since you went away.”

  We kept our voices low and we walked together along the terrace, past the serried columns, and the dancers took no notice of us, as was proper.

  “And, too,” I went on, and I know my voice was troubled, “I am thinking of our daughters. You know the wild she-cat Dayra has become, with her whip and her claw and her black leathers. Jilian, who is much the same, refuses to help because of her vows—”

  “And so she should!”

  “Aye. You Sisters of the Rose have more secrets than an army of bungling men.” I could feel Delia’s hand on my arm, a reassuring and invigorating feeling, and that firm hand did not tremble by so much as a spider’s eyelash. “And there is Velia and Didi, and they will soon grow big enough to bring more headaches—”

  “And Lela?”

  I sighed. “Lela. I have not seen her since I came back from my long banishment on Earth. I — it is damned hard, my love, damned hard, when a crusty old father feels his eldest daughter refuses to come to see him—”

  “She does not refuse!” Delia’s tones were sharp, a rebuke.

  “I know, I know. She is busy with the Sisters of the Rose. But you girls of the SoR work her too hard.”

  “Now if Jilian Sweet-tooth had been our daughter—”

  I stopped. “So that is her name!”

  “No. Sweet-tooth is what we call her.”

  “She is ready enough to talk about her banje shop, but not anything about the things we really want to know — no. About the things I really want to know.”

  “I do not press for your secrets of the Krozairs of Zy.”

  This was familiar territory. We were a partnership, a twinned one, Delia and I. And we each had our own inner lives, and mostly we shared everything. But there remained these spaces between us that were not empty, distant, repellent but were spaces filled with the light of love.

  Then, and Delia astonished me profoundly, she went on to say that she had arranged for our daughters to visit the River Zelph, in far Aphrasöe, and there bathe in the sacred pool of baptism. I turned her to face me. I looked down into her gorgeous face and I saw the love and the pride in our children there, and the defiance — and a little hint of furtiveness?

  “Furtive you should be, Delia of Delphond! By Zim-Zair! You take our girls there, all those perils — the mortal danger — why — why—”

  “Yes! And this explains where I and the girls have been. Your explanations of where you have been involve your funny little world with only one tiny yellow sun, and one silver moon, and only apims to flesh the world with color and not a single diff anywhere in sight! I think your story far stranger than mine!”

  “But the dangers—”

  I could feel myself shaking. We had bathed in the sacred pool of baptism, and were thereby assured of a thousand years of life, and our wounds would heal with miraculous swiftness. But the Savanti nal Aphrasöe guarded the pool. There were monsters. I had gone through some parlous times there. And now Delia was calmly telling me...!

  Well, when I’d calmed down, I saw the rightness of it. Truth to tell, it solved a problem that had been bothering me.

  “But that does not explain where Lela is gone to now,” I said.

  “No. I hope she will not be much longer. She is devoted, to Vallia, to the SoR, to her family—” said Delia.

  “Ha!”

  “—and to the work entrusted to her.”

  “Do you know what that work is?”

  “No.”

  “And how many eligible young bachelors has she turned down this season? I believe I could form a regiment from them!”

  Delia laughed. “I believe you could! Lela has her heart set on no man yet. There is time.”

  And, thinking of young men who were in love with my daughters, I felt the wrenching pang strike me that Barty Vessler was dead, struck down by a vicious cowardly blow from Kov Colun Mogper. Well, my lad Jaidur was after that rast, and after his accomplice, Zankov, too... What a tangle it all was! And yet, as always and now with more force than ever, I believed there was a pattern, a grand design, woven by the Savanti who had brought me to Kregen in the first place, or by the Star Lords who brought me here to work for them or hurled me back to Earth on a whim or for the defiance I showed them out of stupid stubbornness.

  “It is an unholy thing in a man’s life,” I said, turning and resuming our promenade along the terrace, “when he does not recognize his children and they do not recognize him.”

  “But you know them all now, my heart, all, save—”

  “Lela.”

  “She will come home soon, I feel sure. But—”

  I saw Naghan Vanki walk out of the overheated room where the dancing and the perfumes and the feathers coiled among the laughter and the music. He looked swiftly along the terrace, turned, saw us, and started at once to walk down. He wore an elegant Vallian evening dress, of dark green and in impeccable taste. Black and silver leaves formed an entwined border. His rapier and dagger swung. His mazilla was the formal black velvet, smooth and fashionable.

  “Majister!”

  “But what, Delia? Vanki!”

  “I have not heard from her in too long...”

  “Get Khe-Hi or Deb-Lu to suss her out in lupu! By Zair! If she is in danger—”

  “No, no! I have arranged all that. If she were dead I would know.”

  “Majister! News has come in.” Naghan Vanki halted before us. His pallid face was as tight as a knuckled fist. “My people report they are on the track of Voinderam and Fransha.”

  “Who?” I said.

  Delia looked at me.

  Vanki’s face expressed nothing.

  Then I said, “I see. This is good news. Tell me where they are and I’ll be off at once.”

  Although Naghan Vanki was the
empire’s chief spymaster, there were few people in the land aware of that fact. Among the gathered nobility and gentility and bankers here at Bankers Guild, there were, I suppose, not above half a dozen who knew.

  So the people, attracted by the intrusion, could leave off dancing and a little crowd gather at a discreet distance along the terrace. Much protocol was relaxed on the Day of Opaz the Deliverer once the formal celebrations were over.

  “But, majister—” said Vanki.

  “You—” Delia shook her head.

  Some of my people walked across. Many of them you know, many have not been mentioned so far. But they were friends, a goodly number ennobled by me. They were concerned for my welfare. I said, “I will go after the runaway lovers and see what they say for themselves. After all, no one condemns them for their actions.”

  Trylon Marovius puffed his cheeks dubiously.

  “You are the emperor, majister. It is not meet you should go haring about. Send men — I will go for you willingly.”

  “Yes,” quoth others, and a whole crowd joined in. “I will go. And I! Me, too!”

  They were all well-meaning, anxious, concerned lest their emperor should go chasing off into dangers on the trail of two runaways. I suppose my old beakhead of a face began to draw down into the ferocious expression that, so I am told — tartly — can stop a charging dinosaur in its tracks.

  Delia’s warning voice reached me. “Dray...”

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “Am I not the emperor! Cannot I go and risk a danger or two?”

  They didn’t like that. Lord Pernalsh shook his head. He was taller than I, broader, a veritable man-mountain.

  “Not while I live, majister!”

  A chorus of affirmation followed. Vanki whispered close to my ear, his breath fluttering, “My people will handle this.” He was not there when I turned to answer. In his customary way he had blended into the background when the crowd arrived. A spymaster he was, Naghan Vanki in his black and silver, and a damned slippery fellow with it.

  Delia was making covert signs and the gathered people began to drift away. Something of the sense of petulant frustration that had shaken the old emperor, Delia’s father, was going to rub off on me pretty quick, by Vox! I felt caged. I felt as those savagely noble wild animals, caged and chained for the arena, must feel as they are whipped and prodded behind the iron bars.