Savage Scorpio

Chapter Nine

The encounter between the ranked Pachak swods and the Rapa Deldars had been sanguinary in the extreme. Two Chulik Jiktars, powerful, had been swept away in the bloody rout, and an apim Paktun and a Brokelsh Hikdar were thrown with the others regretfully back into the velvet-lined box.

“Do you yield?” demanded Delia, most fierce.

“Aye,” I said. I did not tip my king over in the terrestrial way of chess but I pushed back in the chair and, looking on the ruin of my forces, said: “Aye, I bare the throat.”

Jikaida is a game where women can be so damned deceitful it amazes mere mortal men. But I could not help adding: “I notice you are using as your Pallan a female figure. I still do not recognize the representation.”

“You are not meant to.”

I glanced out through a port. The airboat fled on through the level wastes of air, speeding towards Bet-Aqsa. We had slept and eaten and I had thought to occupy the mind of Delia by Jikaida, that absorbing game that dominates so much of Kregan intellectual thinking, giving opportunities for rigorous mental disciplines. I did not pick up her Pallan, the most powerful piece on the board. But I cast the gorgeous little figure a most baleful glance.

Delia smiled. “She carries the yellow cross on the scarlet field. What more could you ask?”

I grunted. “Only that she play for me, woman!”

At this, Delia laughed, and so I knew much of her fear for her father had been damped by the amazing success we had so far enjoyed in our mission to save his life, and with it the life and well-being of all Vallia.

Most people have a game of Jikaida stuffed away somewhere in a dusty cupboard; most people play from time to time. It demands much more than the game Jikalla. Some folk play so often that the game becomes their life. Gafard, the King’s Striker, who was our son-in-law and who was now dead, had once earned a living as a Jikaidast, a man — or woman — who sets up in a suitable place and challenges all comers for wagers. Such Jikaidasts are regarded differently in various countries; usually they are given honor and I, for one, gave them due honor within the craft.

Most people who are halfway serious about Jikaida also own at least one personal set of playing pieces. Although the opposing colors are usually blue and yellow, sometimes black and white — almost never red and green — the individual figures are embellished in wondrous ways. I happened to have been using a mixed set in which diffs and apims filled the functions of representing the various pieces. I admired the fine martial appearance of the little warriors, of whatever race they happened to be. Delia had produced a marvelous set, all of delicately carved ivory and balass and gold, including Pachaks and Djangs. With, of course, her confounded mysterious female figure as her Pallan.

Now, lifting up my own Pallan, a neat little apim with a finely wrought Lohvian longbow and a sword too long for comfort, I laid him away in the balass box.

“Having bared the throat, will you wet it with some wine?”

Our son, Prince Drak, came into the stateroom just then and did the honors, pouring Gremivoh, the vintage favored in the Vallian Air Service.

“It is all going amazingly well,” he said. He still experienced difficulty in calling me father, and Jaidur always avoided the embarrassment. “The island will be in sight within a bur or so.”

We spoke for a few moments of the trip and the prospects, ground we had covered time after time. Drak expressed himself as most pleased that when we had stopped off in Djanguraj for fresh provisions, nothing would stop Kytun Kholin Dom and Ortyg Fellin Coper and their families from joining us. Then, speaking to Delia although looking at Drak, I said: “Can you tell me why this well set-up, handsome son of ours has not married so far?”

Drak’s powerful features lowered on me at this, and Delia shook her head in a quick admonitory way.

“That is my business,” said Drak.

“Oh, aye,” I said. “But the emperor is your grandfather. We are going to save his life. Rest easy on that. But, one day, it is likely you will be emperor.”

His head went up at this. Powerful, Drak, hard and strong, filled with a dark purpose I could only admire at a distance.

“Yes. Consider that well. With a family to sustain you, you will seem an even better choice to the people and the Presidio.”

“And you?”

“Me? I want only your well being — as for the emperor — throne, crown, title, wealth — they are all gewgaws. I have enough of that kind of thing already.” Here, again thinking of Djanduin of which land I am king, I paused. “At least, if it comes to it, and if your mother agrees, why, then. .”

Drak set his glass down carefully. He was worked up, his handsome face, dark and powerful, set in harsh lines of determination that, I suspected, were very like those lines I see in the mirror when I shave.

“I do not anticipate becoming emperor while you or mother live.”

He went out then, quickly, and the sturmwood door slammed somewhat too hard.

“I really do not know what to make of that boy,” I said.

Delia laughed: “You do realize, my heart, that because of our dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism, we are younger than he is?”

“Deuced odd that, by Zair!”

She became grave, on a sudden. “They — the Savanti — they would not let me go — you remember

— and you — it was a dreadful journey to the pool-” She bit her lip, and said, on a rush: “Suppose they will not let father be cured?”

“I have thought of that. We fly directly to the Pool of Baptism. Once we are there and your father is cured, it will be too late for the Savanti to interfere.”

So we agreed on the plan between us. I felt some confidence that with the tearaway bunch of ruffians with us, and with the fine navigation of Vangar — I would help, of course — we ought both to find the River Zelph and the Pool and take care of any opposition along the way. What the Savanti might say I did not much care. I own I felt some concern over what they might do. But they were, as I knew, a civilized people who wanted to make of Kregen a world fit for people to grow into fulfilled lives without the dark fears that plagued them now. The stakes were too high to draw back now out of phantasmal fears of what might be.

We went up on deck into the clean swift rush of wind.

Our friends were peering ahead from every flier. Wersting Rogahan, who could shoot a varter and hit the center of the Chunkrah’s eye every time, had been the man they had found to guide them to the Yuccamot island in the Risshamal Keys. He had been shipwrecked with me in the old Ovvend Barynth, a rough-tongued rapscallion, an old sea-dog; but he was a man I fancied I understood and could rub along with. He had advanced just one step in rank since I had had him made up to so-Deldar, and was now a ley-Deldar. He still wore that dark strip of chin beard under his jaws, his lean knowing face was just the same with the broken nose and the mahogany tan of a life spent at sea. Up here in a flying craft he had donned a buff shirt where normally he went bare-chested, and the old buff trousers cut off at the knees might have been the same pair he’d worn when we’d shot our varters in competition against the pursuing shanks.

“Land ho!”

The shrill yell skyrocketed up from Oby, perched high. He pointed ahead. Soon we all saw the low dark outline of coast, with hills beyond, and the cream of surf and the wink of rivers. Bet-Aqsa was a sizeable island, triangular in shape and some one hundred eighty or so dwaburs across at the widest part, smaller than the forbidden island of Tambu to the north. Kytun Kholin Dom, my fearsome four-armed Djang comrade, bellowed across the wind-rushing gap between fliers: “So that’s where those Drig-loving reivers live, is it? Now we know, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! we will pay them a visit and return their gifts to us in fire and the sword!”

Well, knowing my Djangs as I do, and knowing of the raids they suffered from the sea people — not the Shanks — I could not be surprised.

If the inhabitants of Bet-Aqsa as distinct from the Todalpheme of that place made a habit of raiding the western coasts of Havilfar, secure that their home was far enough west to deter anyone reckless enough even to think of sailing that far into the Ocean of Doubt, then they would be in for a nasty shock. The place was secretive enough, Zair knew. Events were changing fast on Kregen, and the world would never be the same again.

Over the horizon to the north and east the forbidden island of Tambu presented no lure. I had met men who claimed to have been there and the stories about the place, not all apocryphal, I feel sure, were calculated to curdle the blood. Gruesome, distasteful, the stories, most of them, as I was to discover. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps the forbidden character of Tambu could be explained away by the unsuspected presence there of the Savanti.

That, we would soon discover.

Over the island we flew, seeing towns and villages of peculiar aspect, and long rolling downlands, forests, marks of cultivation. A few fluttrell patrols winged up after us; but we flew vollers high and fast and left the laboring saddle birds far below. Also, there arose other flyers riding beasts new to us, flying steeds of remarkable appearance, all speckled with ruby and amber feathers, with gappy jaws and long whiplike tails. Still and all, despite their efficient wingspan, long and wide like an albatross’s and despite the gesticulating figures upon their backs, they were outdistanced also.

“Straight to the Western Akhram, Vangar,” I told the captain of my Valkan Fleet, admiral, Chuktar, flag-captain and skipper of whatever voller I happened to be flying in all rolled into one efficient, loyal, great-hearted man. He nodded and bent to his map, the self-same map I had drawn out for him from my memory of the one shown me by Akhram of the Todalpheme of Denrette.

Soon at the best speed of our vollers the western coast came in sight, a green-blue glittering expanse of water stretching out beyond the last fingerings of land, a vast mass of empty water stretching out no man knew whither. This was the Ocean of Doubt.

“There!” screeched Oby, pointing, the wind in his hair.

A collection of yellow-green onion domes rose from the edge of an inlet. Ships lay moored and signs of activity from what were clearly dockyards showed that these people kept themselves busy, an impression heightened by the size of the town strung along the water’s edge. The low yellow fortress guarding the mouth of the inlet was not lost upon us. These folk trafficked upon the sea, and yet they built defenses. We all thought we knew for whom those stout walls had been built.

The Akhram stood aloof from these mundane pursuits, the cluster of onion domes glistening in the limpid air.

How far we had come! Right to the edge of the known world — over it, for all we had previously known of these foreign parts. Where one might have expected to discover an uncouth half-savage people, it was clear there was wealth down there, industry and commerce — and, for sure, a deal of loot from the coasts of Havilfar, including Djanduin.

I had argued with my friends and overborne them.

Delia said: “But I should go with you! I have been to Aphrasoe before. Therefore-”

“Therefore you will stay here, with the fleet.”

She pouted at me, making a mockery of my heavy-handedness. But I would not be swayed. I had brought a fleet and a large body of fighting men, for that is the best way to travel on Kregen when you are in a hurry and will meet foes — and carry a bedridden, dying emperor. The very best way, of course, is alone, like a savage clansman in hunting leathers — and, truly, better even than that, is just the two of you, just the two, alone in the whole wide world of Kregen. .

So I would not be swayed now. Nath the Needle said he dare not leave the emperor. The poison wasting away the once stalwart frame was insidious, and any cure that might once have been possible was long since too late, by far. All he could do was administer what antidote he could. Every bur the emperor had to take a teaspoonful of the nauseating mixture Nath prepared, swallowing it down past clenched teeth we had gently to prise open with silver levers. Also, acupuncture needles had to be used, carefully inserted in the right nodes and along the correct lines to ease the increasing pain. I had studied assiduously with Nath the Needle as well as other eminent doctors to discover all I could of the arcane mysteries of the needleman’s art. I could insert a needle now and know with sure certainty that it would do the work intended.

Making preparations as the fleet hovered over the Akhram, I gave my last instructions. “I go alone and hope to win through with gold and peaceful talk. If I am not back within three burs then, Seg and Inch, you’d better fly down and see what is keeping me. I trust you will bring a few sturdy fellows with you, and, as well, leave another pack of sky-leems up here to guard our return.”

They nodded. They were not joking, even if I tended to treat this whole escapade as just that. They didn’t like me jaunting off by myself. Even I had to admit that that was because they cared for my leathery old hide, and not, as I dearly loved to believe, because they fancied I was hogging all the action. All my experiences on Kregen so far indicated that the Todalpheme were quiet, studious, peace-loving men who wished only to get on with their tasks of tracking the course of the moons and the suns and of predicting the tides. They kept up a force of brown-clad workpeople who were not slave, superintended by the Oblifanters, answerable directly to the Todalpheme. The Oblifanters and their work force were not cloaked by the universal acceptance of the sanctity of the Todalpheme. They might be entrapped, made slave, killed. So they were a rougher bunch. Their methods of work I had seen at the Dam of Days.

The voller spun away and I was lunging for the cluster of greenish-yellow onion domes within the long walls.

While it is not true to say that one Akhram is very much like another, they must all share a deal in common as to the purpose of their architecture. They each possess an observatory and a library and a refectory. As I expected, after a wait, I was shown into a small room where Akhram would see me. Gold, even among the Todalpheme, sometimes eases the way. But the Todalpheme welcome students visiting them, and within the framework of their vital occupations will delight in conversation with visitors, seeing that they are usually cut off from normal human intercourse. As a rule they lead solitary lives, at one with the waves and the winds and the tides. I anticipated only the problem of convincing the Todalpheme of Bet-Aqsa that I was genuinely in need of secret information. Some thought had been taken as to my dress.

To go with the orange favors of the Djangs would be to excite instant suspicion if not hostility. To go as a Vallian would mean little, except to create wariness almost as much as a Hamalian. Finally I donned a simple short russet-colored tunic, edged with a deep yellow, belted with lesten hide and a great golden buckle — petty ostentation, this last, but designed with a purpose. A rapier and dagger swung at my sides and the old longsword jutted up over my shoulder. I hung a long white cloak around my shoulders, clear of the hilt of the longsword, and fastened off the bronzen zhantil-head clips. The unworldly combination should provoke interest, at the least.

“And are you a prince, dom?” said Akhram, coming into the chamber and sitting down. He was a fat and fleshy man, with pursed lips despite the fat jowliness of his cheeks, and pouchy eyes. I did not like the sound of that “dom” which is common among ordinary folk as a greeting name, and among friends as a mark of affection. For the first time I felt unease, that I had blundered.

“That is not of importance.” I put to him the reason for my visit. I opened the lesten-hide bag and showed him the contents. As I did this I watched his eyes. My hackles rose. He was a Todalpheme; I do not deny him that. And, also, I knew there was much and much I did not know about Kregen. But he was like no other Todalpheme, least of all an Akhram, that I had met before.

“Pretty baubles,” he said, lifting the golden chains. But his face betrayed far different emotions from his words.

“All yours, Excellency.” I used the word deliberately. “The man is very sick. Only the Savanti can cure him.”

He looked up quickly, the golden chain swinging from his soft plump ringers. “So you know their name?

The brothers grow careless. And you have come far?”

“A goodly way.” I pushed the heavy bag nearer. “Tell me where lies Aphrasoe and these are yours and I will leave at once.”

No strangeness afflicted me as I considered what I said, what I demanded. The search for information had upheld me for long periods of my life upon Kregen. It was a secret I had hungered for, suffered for, something I had thought meant more to me than anything else in two worlds. Paradise! I had been thrown out of the paradise that was Aphrasoe, the Swinging City. I had asked and asked and always to no avail, and then real life had taken me in and the Swinging City had dimmed. And now, here I was, calmly offering gold to buy the secret. Weird!

So the strangeness of it all did affect me, after all.

“I think, dom,” said this Akhram, touching his lips, which shone, moist in the lights through the open windows. “I think the bag of treasure is mine, whether I give you the secret or not.”

“How so?”

“We do not impart this to everyone who asks. It is a high trust placed in our hands.”

Again, I blundered.

“I do not believe that. You came by the information by chance-”

“Do not presume!” He flared at me, shaking already with an anger he did little to control. This Todalpheme showed a petty emotion. “We have sent our men before. Good men. In vollers that cost a great deal of money in far Havilfar.”

By saying “far” Havilfar, he sought to entrap me into some kind of reaction by which he might judge my place of origin.

Stony-faced, I said: “I need the information and I need it in a hurry. I do not quarrel with anything you say of your acquisition or trust of the secret. The man is like to die. You will tell me.”

“And if I will not?”

I put my hand on the bag.

He sneered. “We have sent brothers to Aphrasoe and often they do not return. Gold will not buy their lives.”

“I do not ask any escort.”

Then he said the revealing thing I had sensed and which had caused my blundering, my stiff-necked talk.

“No,” he said. “No, we are not as other Todalpheme.”

He wore a fine sensil robe of yellow. His thick waist was girded by a scarlet rope. He was, in truth, one of the Scarlet-Roped Todalpheme, men I had sought over the face of Kregen. And now I had found one of that brotherhood and he was proving two-faced, obstinate, greedy, attempting to cheat and defraud me, attempting, also, to browbeat me.

He reached out a hand and touched the bag of treasure.

“I think this is mine, already. I think you had best be gone before worse befalls you.”

I said: “Do you consider yourself sacrosanct?”

His astonishment was genuine.

His eyes glittered through abruptly down-drawn lids. Yet he answered obliquely. “You wear swords, dom.” He paused. His use of the word dom continued to offend me. I saw quite clearly in it a patronizing sneer; dom is the word between friends for friend, or the kindly word indicating no hostility. Except, of course, when it is used in irony, and then the circumstances are perfectly plain. There are subtleties in the use of words. Here, this Akhram was baiting me. Why? He thought he could take the treasure and kick me out. He had guards, powerful armed men at call.

He put his hands together and continued, heavily. “You wear swords. Only a madman would offer violence to a Todalpheme.”

Yes, on occasion I am mad. But I was not as yet mad enough to risk everything on a cheap retort, something like: “I am mad, dom, mad enough to do your business for you if you do not speak up -

quick!”

Instead, I said: “What impediment is there to telling me? Surely the gold is not all there is to it?”

He hesitated again at this. I can judge time passably well. The three burs were drifting away through the glass.

“We have been warned by the Savanti. They do not relish strangers visiting them.”

This sounded likely. I remembered the vexation with which Maspero, my tutor, had greeted the arrival of the flier carrying Delia. With her had been three yellow-robed, scarlet-roped men — and they had all three been dead.

He leaned forward. “Perhaps, if you told me the name and identity of the sick man. .?”

Now it was my turn to pause. Information. The Todalpheme were avaricious for news of all kinds. A mistake now — in all sober truth the fate of Vallia trembled on what I said, hung there, stark and brutal before me.

I said: “It is the Emperor of Vallia.”

“Ah.” He pushed back in his carved chair and smiled. He glanced at the bag of treasure. “One bag of gold is an insult.”

“So that is it. You are greedy.”

He flushed. “Take care, rast, lest you regret hasty words.”

All I had learned as a good Kregan warred within me with myself. I have a nature. My nature has to be quashed. The Todalpheme are sacrosanct; no sane man will raise a hand against them. But what of tradition, what of the truth of the question when a great empire may run red with blood? Where lay my duty now?

He watched me slyly. He saw the twitch of my hand toward the rapier hilt. He smiled wetly. “The fate of a man who raises a hand against a Todalpheme is awful — awful.”

Was my just punishment if I violated the basic tenet of this solemn Kregan belief worthy payment for saving the life of an emperor, of preventing the torrents of blood that would follow? Would my Delia thank me for destroying myself in saving her father?

The decision was mine.