Avenger of Antares (22 page)

The whole pile was built upon a dome of rock. It broke from the jungle like a boil. Clothed with buildings, the rock possessed a hollow heart, lit by many cunning light and ventilation slots. In the very heart of the fortress of Smerdislad were held the extra special hunts.

As to sustenance for the city, that came from the unceasing toil of slaves in cleared areas, from much trade by vollers which landed and took off from flying platforms, and all this activity was paid for by hunters’ fees. Truly, Encar Capela must fancy himself a fine rich noble, living high on the vosk, I said to myself, sipping my wine, my mind evil with plans to change the ways of Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol.

Capela entered then, swearing, slashing a thin rattan against his armored legs. He was a febrile, energetic man, with dark hair cropped short, a fierce black moustache, and a body hard and fit from much exercise. His nose had been broken and badly reset, and his lips were that paradox often seen in hard men of action who yet love the hedonistic life: they were thick and sensual and yet could tighten into a cruel thin line when the man’s passions were aroused to maim and kill.

“By the Foul Fernal himself!” he bellowed. “Where is the yetch Garnath?” He saw us looking at him, and he banged his rattan onto the table, making the Jikaida men jump with a rattle. “I owe you an apology, sirs and lady. But we shall make this Garnath pay — oh, yes!”

And then, following the Kov of Faol, entered a man of whom I shall have much to say when the time is ripe. For now I mention merely that I looked at him with some attention. For this was the notorious Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong. His litter swayed rhythmically from side to side, and tiny golden bells about it tingled and tinkled in a way that should have been most cheerful, but that, instead, sent out a most dread alarm. His bearers were Womoxes, those huge, shaggy horned men from an island off the west coast of my own Vallia — and that gave me to think, I can tell you. Each massive hunk of Womox muscle was clothed in a shining black tabard-like garment, cinctured at the waist by an equally shining belt of green lizard-skin. Each massive Womox carried slung from his belt the Womox shortsword, that pattern of blade somewhat thicker and heavier than a thraxter. They padded barefoot. Their heads thrust down, bulky like a ram between the shoulder blades, and their ferocious horns were all gilded, every one.

Phu-si-Yantong had brought with him a large and glittering retinue, of Relt stylors, of Chail Sheom, of guards and slaves and free servants. I will not detail them all here, for I own I looked most at his Womoxes.

The cloth-of-gold curtains were half drawn in his palanquin so that he appeared as a mere black shadow propped upon cushions of cloth-of-gold. Their dark gleam, all sliding red-gold and purple-black, repelled me, in a flash, so that I drew back. I think my splendid diamond-and-scarron-dudinter domino must have caught the light of the suns and flashed, for I saw the dark shadow within the palanquin turn, as though an old weak neck swiveled creakily. I looked away, deliberately, at the Chulika, who was sitting up eagerly in her chair, staring out brazenly upon the new arrivals.

A voice spoke. “Where is Vad Garnath ham Hestan?” The tone of that voice! I felt a prickle of unease shiver up my spine, at that thin, ghostly, harshly echoing voice, as though this Phu-si-Yantong spoke softly in a cavern of vampire bats.

Without question the other occupants of the high room in the fortress-city of Smerdislad were powerfully affected by that whispering breathy voice speaking in the accents of doom. Well, Phu-si-Yantong was an evil man, as everyone who knew him said. Looking back on that bright colorful scene of greenery and garden blossoms, jewels and gold and silver, feathers and silks, how little I understood what dark dramas and stark terrors this wizard was to bring me in the seasons yet unborn!

A Rapa guard, heavily armed, wearing a black and green harness, dragged forward a young girl, a Fristle fifi, half swooning with fear. The Rapa uncoiled the lash with evident satisfaction, for his crest engorged and grew brilliant. That lash was much like a Russian knout, or a sjambok, a long tapering vileness of thick animal-skin. If he hit the girl with that she would be dead or maimed; at the very least, if he hit her gently she would be severely pained.

“What do you do, San?” said the Kov of Faol.

“I wish to show my girls the True Path of Obedience.”

The Rapa lifted the whip and as it snapped forward, obscenely black in the brilliant rays of the suns, I saw he struck in the pain-ways. The fifi screamed. Her soft fur leaped under the blow. Three times the Rapa struck, and three times I, Dray Prescot, forced myself to remain in that damned seat. I sat, and the girl was struck three blows, and she fell unconscious. Slaves carried her away.

“The True Path is Obedience to the Master,” said Yantong in that eerie double-echoing voice, so soft and slurred and yet so penetrating that all in the room heard without difficulty.

Encar Capela laughed.

“You have the right of it, San. And Vad Garnath has been sighted. See!” And Capela pointed through the arcaded opening out into the brilliant sky. We all peered to look. A merker spun toward the fortress, and in his hand a lighted torch streamed a long trailing spume of black smoke. “See, the signal! The lion-maid will soon be with us.”

“That is good,” said Kov Numrais na Neagron. “Had the Rapa attempted to strike
her
pain-ways she would have had his manhood off or his eyes out. Hai! I look forward to this Jikai, by Yskaroth!”

I have told you of this scene and now I must say that my thoughts, as we waited for Vad Garnath to arrive, cannot possibly be repeated. I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, had sat on my backside in a chair and watched a Rapa lash a girl! So impossible did this thing seem to me, so much at variance with the tenor of my life upon this cruel world of Kregen, that I dare not repeat my thoughts to anyone — least of all to Delia, my Delia of Delphond.

A baby neemu, all soft and cuddly, let out a meow from where it wriggled on the knees of the Trylon Thurkin. He was an insignificant fellow, this Trylon, with a lopsided look to his face and a large squashy nose. He had been born with useless legs. At least, by his efforts to retain his father’s Trylonate, he proved both that he was much more than he looked and that it was possible for a crippled man to make his way upon Kregen, which is a task to daunt the most stouthearted.

Attended to by the slaves, eating and drinking and talking, we waited until, with something of an entrance, Garnath ham Hestan, Vad of Middle Nalem, was carried into the room followed by his retinue, among whom strutted the Kataki, Rosil na Morcray.

I looked intently among his people for that glorious golden form of Saffi the lion-maid. She was not there. She had not been brought here into this upper chamber. Like all the other girls to be used in the hunt, she was under close guard below, being readied for this Great Jikai.

I tightly gripped the arms of the chair and took my necessary part in the pappattu. This Kataki looked an interesting rast. Someone had made a passing reference to my palanquin, for as I have said Quarnach had had much of it overlaid with ivory. This was real true ivory from Chem, as I could see, for it possessed that creamy color and soft smooth texture, unlike the ivory from Northern Havilfar, which is altogether a sharper white, chalky, and coarse textured.

“Very pretty,” said the Kataki, Strom Rosil. He carried a true rank in the Hamalese army as a Chuktar. He passed his dark hand over the ivory. “My men would imperil their ibs to prize this loose after a battle.”

He stood there, blocky, dark, and forbidding like any damned Kataki. His low brow above the flaring nostrils and gape-jawed mouth, his wide-spaced eyes, narrow, and brilliant, and cold, his cocky attitude, his arrogantly upflung bladed tail, all vividly brought back to me my first meeting with diffs of his race, down in the south in the village of Podia on a forgotten island of the Shrouded Sea. These Katakis, aragorn and slave-masters by profession and nature, were truly evil. With that whiplike tail with a glittering curved blade strapped to its tip, the Kataki presented a stark and brutal figure of sheer power.

The vultures were gathering, and of them all I calculated that this Kataki, this Chuktar Strom, would be the most formidable. Well, in that I made a profound mistake, for then I did not know the Wizard Phu-si-Yantong. But in all else, I think, I was right.

Strom Rosil wore a smart Hamalese uniform. But his helmet was pure Kataki: small, round, close-fitting, without crest or feather. That was so he might lash his tail about freely, giving full play to that terrible weapon. As a paktun, that is, a notorious mercenary, he had risen in the service of Hamal, commanding brigades of the army. Now, with the urgings of Vad Garnath hardly necessary, he had reverted to his ancestral way of life and masterminded the capture of Saffi, so as to further the plans of Garnath. I did not know what the plans were, or how they were affected by Yantong; all I knew now was that Saffi was here, in this place, and so was I. I could shilly-shally no longer.

These people were here on a hunting holiday. It was all to be fun and games, drinking, singing, and hunting beautiful young girls to the death.

“You do not speak, Vad Quarnach.” The Chuktar Strom tried to see into my palanquin. “Have you a shishi there with you occupying your tongue?” And he gave a dark self-satisfied chuckle and put his hands on the curtains by my face.

I said, “If you draw the curtains, Kataki, your tail will rot and fall off.”

He jerked back, outraged. Oh, yes, I could almost hear his thoughts churning away:
This fellow is a Vad, and therefore important. But I am a Kataki and a Strom and a Chuktar!
So he put his hand on the curtain to draw it back; Zair knows what would have happened next if Vad Garnath had not called across.

“It seems we are late, Rosil. Bear me witness it was no fault of ours.”

As the Kataki turned back, letting the curtain fall, Garnath went on, his voice rising: “And, anyway, Kov Encar, we are here, the lion-maid is here; so what harm is there?”

What answer the Kov of Faol might have made was chopped off by the soft, whispery voice of the wizard.

“You have kept us waiting, Vad Garnath. For that we forgive you. But our forgiveness is not bought cheaply.”

The Kataki stood by Garnath’s litter now, facing the wizard’s palanquin, and I saw clearly in them both the fear and the sick terror. I marveled. For I did not know this Phu-si-Yantong then, did not know him at all.

They had a good excuse for their lateness (true or not I did not know), and if flutsmen had attacked them it gave color to my own story. I was concerned over Saffi only.

Toilet facilities, of course, were provided within the palanquin and it was the unenviable task of a little slave girl to empty the basins. I leaned a little sideways and said to this poor creature, one hired from the Kov of Faol, “It is necessary for me to retire for a moment. Tell the bearers to take me out.”

The bearers were Fristles; at the slave girl’s words they began to carry me away.

“What, Quarnach! We are about to begin!”

“You must excuse me, Kov. I will join you presently.”

Encar Capela nodded, not ill pleased. If one of his customers, and moreover one who had not brought a girl for quarry, chose to miss the beginning of the Jikai, then all the more sport for his other guests.

But Kov Numrais, thin and crafty though he was, must have found a liking for Vad Quarnach in him after the victory at Jikaida, for he sang out: “Oh, come now, Encar! Let us wait a few murs. It is little enough, Yskaroth knows!”

Sometimes well-meaning people, even people who go on hunts to shoot young girls can be well-meaning, create the most devilish problems. I had thought it would be simple: Just slide out of the chair, take up my weapons, and dealing with any nurdling rasts who got in the way, seek out Saffi, free her, and take a voller out to the tomb of Imbis Frolhan the Ship Merchant.

Now, it was clear, I was fated to accompany these rasts to the huge cavern within the rock-dome. I did not want to be with them in the arched gallery running all around the dome. Nor did I wish to be in the artificial jungle — we had been told Capela had arranged a crystal jungle, this time, for our special benefit — at the center. I wanted to get in among the passageways and readying rooms, where the slaves and guards and animal-handlers and manhounds were kept or stabled. There, I knew, I would find Saffi.

“Schtump!” came the whispering eerie voice of the wizard. “Schtump, Vad Quarnach.”

Now schtump means hurry up, but it means it in a way that can be as offensive as one cares to make it, as I have indicated. One seldom hears just that cutting malevolent tone addressed to a noble — except, as here, when that noble is being told to get a move on by someone of a higher rank.

What factual rank Yantong possessed I did not know. As a Wizard of Loh he very naturally considered himself superior to any other creature of Kregen apart from another wizard, and it was now clear to me that Yantong would acknowledge no peers. I remembered the feeling of apprehension I had received from Que-si-Rening when he had gone into lupu and had, only briefly, contacted the aura of this Phu-si-Yantong.

None of the others expressed surprise or shock at the wizard’s tone. The Kov of Faol, indeed, added his own urgent demand that I make speed. Kov Numrais, fingering his beard, looked across at my palanquin with not a little uncertainty at what he had conjured up by his suggestion.

As my Fristles bore me away to a small toilet chamber with the little slave girl trotting alongside, I reflected that insults should roll from me as water rolls from a duck’s back. One thing now remained important. The hunt would have to begin without me.

Filled with the light from the Suns of Scorpio, the high room broke into a babblement of sound as fresh wine was brought and the mighty crippled hunters and their retainers prepared to wait the few murs I had been granted. I left them and the bronze doors clashed shut, the guards in the forest-green of the Kov of Faol slamming their spear-butts against the ground and resuming their static poses of alertness.