Savage Scorpio [Dray Prescot #16] Read online

  I did not speak. Conscious that I was acting a part, I felt a word would shatter that charade. I could with words have broken this headstrong woman, made her see the errors of her ways, given Doctor Charboi the fright of his life. And no damn guards would have stopped us, either. But I did not. Even now, had I done so, I am not sure it would have changed anything that followed. The details of the tragedy and the heartbreak might have been different; the end results would surely have been the same.

  “Are you going?” demanded the bitter, icy voice. This Ashti Melekhi switched her crop around and on the instant would have shouted for the guards.

  A weak, breathy voice spoke and for a disoriented moment, so wrapped up were we all in the tension of the situation, we could not understand who was speaking. Then Delia dropped to her knees by the bed, clasping her father's shrunken hand.

  “Delia.” The emperor gasped with the effort of speaking. “My daughter.” He worked his thin lips around each word, as though forcing each one out against enormous forces pent within him. “Aph—” He stopped and swallowed, his Adam's Apple jumping erratically. “Hamal. Todalpheme—"

  “No!” shouted Charboi, storming forward. “That is not to be thought of! Do as the vadnicha commands. Go!"

  If the rast put his hand on Delia's shoulder to pull her away from the bed I would have forgotten my play-acting and being the new, considerate, understanding, nonviolent Dray Prescot. But he still had the sense not to commit such a flagrant act of lese-majesty. Perhaps, had he taken refuge in his doctor's status, and allowed his temper to lay a hand on Delia, and I had acted as I would surely have done, the world of Kregen would be a different place today. I do not know. I do not really think so. It does not matter. For what was to happen, happened, and that is all that matters, in the whirl of vaol-paol.

  “You're not going to stand for this, Dray!” demanded Thelda. Her face betrayed shock and anger, and, also, another emotion. Seg put his arm around her waist and drew her away, and I looked at her, so she went, but not without a squib or two.

  The Vadnicha Ashti Melekhi stared with those narrow grey-green eyes after Thelda, and I knew they had sparked before, like a diamond cutting butter—and, suddenly, I knew how much I cared for Thelda, my comrade's wife, despite all. That would not stop me from gently tormenting her, of course, or stop her from fussing and over-pressuring and, in general, of being Thelda.

  Seg looked back past me over Thelda's shoulder, and I put out a hand and so stopped Katrin from blowing up. Nath picked up his sturmwood case and walked with measured tread for the door, but he looked mightily offended. So, at last, Delia rose and kissed her father, the dread emperor of a mighty empire, and we walked out sedately, together, side by side.

  Still I had said no word.

  The brittle voice cut the air after us. “Good riddance to a rabble! Now, Charboi, see if you can undo the damage that doddering incompetent may have done. I am going to find Kov Layco and tell him to make sure these cramphs never have a chance to sneak in to pester the emperor again."

  “Yes, my lady,” said Charboi, very huffed with himself.

  So I took myself off at the side of Delia, and I pondered.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  Of a Ruffianly Meeting at The Rose of Valka

  “In the old days, my Vovedeer, we'd have slipped six inches of good Zeniccean steel into the guts of the cramph! By the Black Chunkrah! I am astonished the fellow is walking about with a head on his shoulders!"

  And Hap Loder tossed the rest of his wine down and roared for more. The inner private snug of The Rose of Valka resounded with heated talk and argument. I knew what must be done. But it must be done the right way.

  “Yes, Hap, you fearsome rascal. That is the way of the clansmen who ride the plains of Segesthes. And I know that is what most of my comrades would have done. But unthinking violence will not solve the problems of Vallia now."

  “That is right, by all the shattered targes in Mount Hlabro!” quoth Seg, who as a kov of Vallia much bethought himself of his adopted country's welfare. “I'll own I was surprised at first. But that she-leem would have called the guards. Then there would have been a right merry set-to."

  Wine went the rounds. Palines and other luscious fruits lay heaped on bronze plates, ready to hand. The people gathered here, and drifting in as the evening wore on, were all my comrades, gathered from many areas of Kregen. After the adventures in the Eye of the World, when I had been saved in the nick of time by these same lusty fighters, we were enjoying one last carouse, although the dismal news of Delia's father laid a gloom across the meeting.

  Inch had brought his lady newly arrived from Ng'groga, his home, a charming girl, all of six foot six in height, of a fiery nature and a bold eye, who, I felt with a twinge, would cut Inch down to size. Their taboos still operated, at least to some extent, for they could not be married until—and then so much metaphysical profound casuistry erupted about our thick non-Ng'grogan heads that we could only rock back and hold our sides and laugh. Inch and his taboos...

  I liked Inch's lady, Sasha, and she quickly became a part of our roistering group. Of Sasha there is much to speak, later...

  My own Wizard of Loh—I say “my own’ but that is to pitch it too high, these famous wizards being their own men; but Khe-Hi-Bjanching owed not only his status but his life to me, and he proved trustworthy and loyal. Also, since those early days, he had matured. Now he was a wizard capable of extraordinary feats.

  He listened gravely as I told him what the emperor had said and of Doctor Charboi's reaction, and what I felt I ought to do. He frowned. He looked—and I was startled—he looked most confoundedly put out, frightened, even. This moved me to say, half-jesting: “What, Khe-Hi! A Wizard of Loh, scared of anything at all in the world! That is indeed a ponsho-bitten leem.” Which is to say, something so extraordinary as to be almost unbelievable.

  “By Father Mehzta-Makku!” said Gloag, his bristle hide most carefully groomed, his whole appearance sleek and elegant as befitted my Crebent of the House of Strombor in Zenicce. “I would think three times before I accused a Wizard of Loh of being the cleverest man in all Segesthes—and then I'd hold my tongue."

  Khe-Hi-Bjanching wet his lips. “I own I am grown different from other wizards.” His voice held a flat deadness I did not like at all. “In the service of our prince I have grown into my powers. I am good. There is no sense in denying it. But I have access to some secrets I would not turn over, as I would not stick my head into a chavonth's jaws."

  The racket around us in the snug subsided as they realized some serious talk was going on. They listened, soberly.

  “Say on, Khe-Hi. You know, I think, what the emperor asked. You share Charboi's apprehensions?"

  “Apprehensions!” Bjanching gripped a fist on the sturmwood table among the wine glasses. “It is more than that. We wizards, well, all men speak of our art. We are adepts. Sorcery is child's play to us. But if you seek out the Todalpheme of Hamal and they tell you—you will be as great a pack of fools as they!"

  “But,” protested Seg. “The Todalpheme are good, wise savants. They predict the tides. They are sacrosanct. No man dares raise a hand against them. How can the Todalpheme be evil?"

  “They are not evil, kov. Of course not. But a secret has fallen into their possession and they do not understand it."

  The samphron oil lamps gleamed on their faces. They sat and stood in a circle there in the private snug of The Rose of Valka in Vondium. I can see them now, so clearly. My comrades. Men and women who had gone through the fire with me, aye, and were to go through again—and damned soon, too. I am a lonely man, a true loner, as you know; yet I have been blessed with friends such as I believe no other mortal can ever have been blessed with. The charismatic power that clings about me, the yrium, so difficult to define and yet so starkly obvious when the truth is seen, that does not explain it all, not all...

  Jaidur, my youngest son, sat very quietly for him, for the overturning of
the misconceptions of his world were taking time to work through. My second son, Zeg, Pur Zeg, a noted Krozair of Zy of the Inner Sea, now the King of Zandikar, was away there in the Eye of the World, a great man, Bane of Grodno. My eldest son, Prince Drak, had been sent for. Vomanus of Vindelka, newly arrived from some far-off corner of Kregen, listened intently, and as the half-brother of Delia shared a lively concern over the fate of the emperor, who was not his father.

  Yes, we were a ruffianly crew. The others of whom you know were there, and there were new faces, also—Dray, Seg's son, and his twins, Valin and Silda. They listened avidly and spoke little, conduct very becoming. Seg had named his firstborn son Dray when he thought I was dead. This Dray's real name was Seg, of course, as the firstborn, so that he might carry on the Torio. Valin was a good Vallian name, and Silda was the name of Thelda's mother.

  We argued on, with the wizard genuinely concerned to deflect us from what increasingly we saw as the only way to aid the emperor. But you who listen to these tapes know far more than my comrades there in the comfortable snug of The Rose of Valka. Only I understood with Delia what the Wizard of Loh was hinting at. When the emperor's daughter had fallen from a zorca, he had raised heaven and hell to find a cure. He had been put into contact with the Todalpheme of Hamal through an airboat salesman, for at that time Vallia and Hamal were on more-or-less speaking terms. The information had cost a great deal. The Todalpheme of Hamal, it was rumored, knew also of a fabled land where miracle cures might be effected. Delia had been taken through the various secret channels in a flier and had at last reached Aphrasöe, where the Savanti had been too long in making up their minds whether or not to cure her. So I, that uncouth sailor, Dray Prescot, newly arrived from Earth and out of the thunder of the broadsides as the seventy-fours drifted down into the battlesmoke, had taken it upon myself to cure Delia.

  That I had done so, and into the bargain assured her of a thousand years of life, was past history. But the whole business was wrapped about with mystery. During my journeys on Kregen I had asked always for news of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, and no one had even heard of the place. To me, then, it had been paradise. And I had been thrown out of paradise. But real life had caught up with me and engulfed me, so that, for me, Paradise was Valka and Strombor and Djanduin and the Great Plains of Segesthes. I speak, you understand, of the time in Vondium when the emperor lay dying. Fragrant Azby, the other places, what has happened to me since—ah, well, all that must wait its due turn.

  Even when I had at last discovered that the Todalpheme of Hamal had been the ones responsible—or, at least, could put me in touch with the ones responsible—I had been in no case to prosecute further inquiries or do any more about it. Real life has a habit of rolling along everything before its onward surge, ambitions, dreams, nightmares, the daily grind.

  The gravity of the burden of our conversation was lost upon no one there. The light from the mellow samphron oil lamps gleamed upon our faces, and reflected without edged menace from scabbarded blades. The menace breathed all about us in the night of Vondium, under the seven moons of Kregen.

  Even those two rogues sensed the atmosphere. One drinking happily, the other drinking, but seeming somewhat empty without a wench on his knee; my two favorite rascals, Nath and Zolta, understood what went forward here. And how they reveled in this whole new world outside the inner sea! Any fears I had had that they would be overawed, fail to fit in, become dejected and morose, had evaporated. Nath and Zolta! Fine, fearsome, rascally rogues, my two oar-comrades—and great-hearted Zorg dead and gone and food for chanks in the Eye of the World.

  “I know, Dray,” said Vomanus, carelessly, popping a paline into his mouth, chewing and swallowing—a barbarous habit, for the paline is a berry of superlative performance on a man's digestion: “I know what the emperor did and said when Delia crippled herself falling off that damned zorca. For a start he had the beast's throat slit. But this Opaz-forsaken airboat salesman was eager to sell, and we poor fools of Vallia eager to buy his rubbish.” The old sore spot again ... “He gave names and addresses to the emperor, and Delia was sent, all neatly packaged. The fellow was some kind of defrocked Todalpheme acolyte, I believe. Came by his information evilly, I'll warrant. Still, it must have been successful.” And Vomanus smiled broadly at my Delia as she regarded him gravely, thinking of those times.

  We had told no one of our experiences in Aphrasöe.

  “So we do the same,” I said. “We take the emperor to this place known to the Todalpheme's contacts. We effect a miracle cure, also."

  “Aye!” they shouted, ready to brave a world.

  “But,” said Seg. “How do we start? You saw how those rasts kept him mewed up."

  “Aye. But we can find a key to open the cage."

  “I would have thought, Dray Prescot, that the emperor's daughter and the Prince Majister, her husband, could take the emperor to a doctor without such a to-do!"

  Thus spake Thelda.

  Seg started to say something; but, quickly, Delia broke in gently to say: “We will, Thelda, my dear, we will. And you will aid us, I know."

  “Well, of course!” Thelda turned to me, high of color, heaving of bosom, glowing with resolution. “Prince, am I not Delia's best friend?"

  Very, very carefully, I said: “Yes, Thelda."

  All the old subjection to the racters that had made of Thelda a tool for political designs had gone. Her family, well-born but poverty-stricken through foolish gambling of a rake-hell grandfather, had not been able to give her any assistance in life save that of offering her as a tool for the racters in return for gold. Her marriage to Seg and her friendship with the Prince and Princess, her own status as a kovneva, and the known wildness of her friends, had protected Thelda from the unwelcome attentions of those who might have sought to employ her again.

  “It's high time we did something,” growled Inch, very tall and grim in the lamplight.

  “Aye!” roared those wolfish fighting men—and those vulpine lady-friends and wives. “Aye! For Delia and for Dray!"

  Well, it was all very pretty. But it shod no zorcas, as my clansmen would say.

  The door swung open as Young Bargom, the proprietor, hustled in. With him came Prince Varden Wanek and Natema who were staying at a merchant friend's house because one of the children's children had a slight fever. Nath the Needle had hurried round there, and now he came in with Varden and Natema, looking excited.

  “What news, Nath?"

  “It is as I suspected,” he said, swirling his cloak off and sneezing and almost putting his satchel on the table. Someone caught it. He mumbled around and produced a small vial. It held a colorless liquid.

  “I refined and clarified the emperor's spittle. There is no doubt. He has been fed solkien concentrate—"

  A gasp broke from many gathered there.

  Nath nodded, not pretending to lecture. “A most lethal and unpleasant poison. It is secret—and the secret of its discovery even more so. But,” he said without false modesty, “I know it. A deadly mixture of the tree Memph, the cactus Trechinolc, a little of the bark Liverspot, one or two other spicy ingredients, all balanced to waste the flesh, to dilute the blood, to destroy most subtly."

  Delia swayed. I put out a hand and she grasped it, staring into my face, trying to smile for me and failing.

  “Oh—Dray!"

  “Tonight,” I said. Everyone hung on my words. “Tonight we will go in by certain secret passageways I know of, ways that were inspected with Largan the Rule, the palace architect—"

  “Dead and gone these many seasons,” said Vomanus.

  “I'm sorry to know that. But we may make our way in and we may make our way out bearing the emperor. It is the way I should have taken today, but did not. Thelda! Can you see to the nursing facilities for Doctor Nath the Needle?"

  “Of course!” She tossed her head, and then said: “And I do not wish to hear about vilmy flowers, and especially not about fallimy flowers! So there!"

  Oby
said: “I will see to the fliers."

  Turko said: “I'll see to the provisions."

  “Right. And, friends all, bring your weapons sharp."

  “Aye,” they growled. I own, trying to see them critically and not as the dear friends they were, they were a cutthroat bunch and no mistake.

  Of course, it had to be Vomanus, careless, bright-eyed, casual, who said: “Mind you, Dray. My half-sister is heir. If the emperor dies you would have a good claim to the throne yourself."

  I just looked. The rapscallion had the grace to look away and adopt a less negligent attitude, half-perched on a table. But the thought was there, hanging, ugly, in the air of the snug.

  What each one thought I do not know. What I thought I am not sure. “I want nothing of the emperor save what I already have—his daughter. Unless—unless the evil days are too evil.” My memories embraced Djanduin and what I had done there.

  The door opened on the little silence and Bargom thrust his head in and bellowed: “Prince Drak!"

  And here was my son, Drak, Prince of Vallia, most wroth, fuming with rage. He flung his cloak off in a great swirl and hurled it at a chair, snatching up a pot of wine from the table.

  “By Vox!” he said. “By all the grey ones of Sicce! They wouldn't let me see grandfather. They threw me out up at the palace, that bitch Melekhi and her scum! And, on the way here, stikitches tried to do for me, assassins tried to skewer me. I tell you, Vondium is become a madhouse!"

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  We Pay a Duty Call on the Emperor of Vallia

  Two closed carriages took the raiding party to the portcullised gate below the Jasmine Tower. The bulk of the Tower wheeled against the stars, blazing in those familiar constellations over Kregen. She of the Veils shed a fuzzy pink and golden light, icing the gables and rooftops, contouring the domes with mysterious shadows, lending a deeper menace to the darkness beneath the craggy walls. The carriages, pulled by four krahniks apiece, rolled to a stop close to the edge of the dried-up moat. Here the old Canal of Contentment, very short, curved about the rear re-entrants of the palace walls. To either hand the long curtain walls vanished into the darkness, battlemented against the sky.