Mazes of Scorpio (18 page)

In a cavern drenched in a pallid greenish light a giant dragon, a risslaca of horns and scales and tri-tails, essayed the task of slaying and eating us. Him we shot with arrows, from bows freshly strung with dry strings, and cut him with spears, and so drove him sobbing back into a rocky corner. We left him there, cowering from our spite, and did not kill him, and pressed on.

We pressed on. That was the sum of our achievement.

Our clothes were ripped and shredded and torn to pieces. Our limbs were raked by talons, and torn and bloodied. Our armor was dented. Our helmets hung lopsidedly. Many of our weapons were broken. But we pushed on, on...

And, at last, a ragged scarecrow bunch, we stumbled on a stair that led upward.

“I cannot climb,” declared Exandu. He sank down. “I am done for.”

“Would you have Shanli carry you on her back? Would you bear that shame?”

“Shame? What shame?”

Seg stepped forward. He lifted Exandu. The man was large and well-filled, with a nose of size; Seg lifted him as he would a little child. “I will carry you up.”

“Horkandur,” whispered Exandu. “Horkandur.”

So, up the stairs we went, and we went carefully, for we had had our bellyful of tricks and traps.

At the top a small red door stood before us. I did not kick it in with casual violence. We looked all about, and we prodded with our poles. We pushed the door with a pole from a safe distance. And we were quiet and we listened.

The door eased open.

Red light shafted out.

Kalu, at my side, took a breath. “We have been through much, Bogandur. But there is worse to come.”

“In that case,” I said, and I own to that old Prescot madness upon me, “we will front it now!”

And I bashed the door open and leaped through.

I did not die. I am here to prove that.

I would have done so if Seg, ready with arrow notched and drawn, had not loosed with deadly aim.

Yet the fellow who would have had me was only a normal human being, a malko, a ferocious gorilla-faced chap with massive muscles, of a stocky, dour, indrawn disposition. He dropped on me from above the door, and his curved sword slashed for my throat.

Seg’s shaft took him clear through his back, punched on through lungs and chest and shattered out in a splattering gush of blood. I slashed sideways as I rolled clear.

The room was wide, bright with lanterns, and a dozen more of the gorilla-faced malkos ran up, weapons glittering.

These were only men, ferocious, and armed; they were nothing compared with the terrors through which we had passed. Seg stepped up, shooting like a fountain of shafts, and Hop surged alongside me, with Kalu on the other side, and his Pachaks with him. The fight was brief and exceedingly ferocious. At its conclusion the malkos lay dead, and still we had not lost a warrior.

Sweat and blood bedabbled us. We glared at the high-domed chamber under the lights.

Along one side a row of cages stood, black-barred and empty. A few tables and benches, strewn with discarded scraps of food and warrior trappings, huddled in one corner. Seven doors opened at the far end. Nearer at hand, a door stood in an angle. The air held a cloying, stale smell.

“I must have a drink,” cried Exandu. He lay where Seg had dropped him. Shanli cooed over him. Kalu stepped out into the hall, his warriors with him, and they carried out a swift but thorough search. I crossed to the door in the angle.

“Take care, Bogandur,” called Seg.

He stood at my back, arrow to string, half drawn, ready.

I did not say, as it crossed my mind to do, “With you at my back, Seg, I have no need for care.” Cautiously, I pushed open the door with my sword.

A corridor lay exposed. The light was not as bright. A fresh rotting smell gusted out. Four doors broke the left-hand wall, and one to the right lay recessed, with a red lamp above the arch. I stepped forward.

Stepping with exquisite care, testing every footfall, I inched along to look into the barred opening of the first door. The cell lay empty, straw-strewn and stinking.

The second cell contained a skeleton, cruelly chained to the wall.

The third cell held a woman.

She stared up as I looked in. She held herself with such commanding power, clad in rags, her hair stringy and tangled, that my heart leaped. She stared with a bright and hostile arrogance upon me as I peered in through the bars.

The cell door was barred from the outside. I lifted the bar, in a gesture at once matching her arrogance, and pitiful in my instinctive reaction. I lifted the bar and threw it aside.

A sliding screech sounded in my ears.

Instantly I hurled myself headlong, fingers scrabbling for the edge of the pit the trapdoor beneath my feet opened.

Only a catlike swiftness saved me. I caught the edge and hung. Dangling, I hung there as the harsh croaking voices of malkos sounded, gobbling in glee. They broke from the recessed door with the red light above it. They swarmed across the corridor, their weapons lifted, their gorilla faces alive with sadistic glee at my plight and their solution to my problem.

Suspended over a gulf — which at its floor held a bed of spikes, I did not doubt, if nothing worse — I saw the onrush of the guards. There were six of them. They wielded spears and axes. They rushed.

My muscles cracked as I sought to lever myself up.

Seg’s bow loosed. With blurring speed he loosed again. Two of the malkos pitched forward, skewered. Then Seg, with a bellow of pure rage, hurled himself forward. His sword flamed. I got an elbow up, then the other, chinned myself over the lip and rolled. Seg’s blade clashed violently with the axe of the first malko, twirled and thrust. A spear slashed down Seg’s side and he reeled away, and came back, raging. I was up on a knee. The next malko sought to smash Seg’s brains out, and was punctured for his pains. The others closed in, and for a moment Seg was slashing and hacking, leaping and ducking, a magnificent fighting warrior, battling for his life and the life of his comrade.

Then I got myself — tardily, tardily! — into action and dinted the last of them. He fell full length with a clash of armor.

Seg shooshed a great breath, and wiped a bloody hand across his face. His sword dripped.

“Hai, Jikai!” cried the woman, walking from her cell. “I give you the High Jikai!”

“My lady!” said Seg.

“Aye,” I said, speaking with a rush. “And I give you the High Jikai, too, Seg.”

We stood for a moment, there in that blood-soaked corridor in a place of horrors, and took our breath. Then Seg said, “Llahal, my lady. I am Seg. And this is Dray.”

She managed a smile. She did not look at the mangled corpses. “You are welcome. You have come with a strong party of warriors to rescue the king and queen?”

“Well, no, my lady,” said Seg.

“But you must have! Why else would you venture into the Coup Blag, this vile place in the Snarly Hills?”

I said, “There is gold, my lady, and treasure.”

She looked stunned. Then, “You have not seen the king, the queen? Or any of — their people?”

“Only a poor devil of a Pachak, who died.”

We must have looked like very devils, ourselves, Seg and me. We were battle-stained, blood-splashed, grimed and sweaty. Our swords reeked. We were big, muscle-bulging fellows with hardy looks and uncommon quick ways. She sucked in her breath.

Seg said, “My lady. Our swords are at your command.”

“Yes, yes, Jikais. But — those poor people — I came here with the queen to look for the king. We did not find him. We found horror and death. And the bandits were too frightened—”

“Yes,” I said. “Do not fret over them now.”

Seg began to wipe his sword on the tunic of a slain malko. I did the same. We were careful to wipe our hands and the hilts of our sword, scrupulous in cleansing them.

The woman said, “Lahal, you must forgive me.” She swayed. “My name is Milsi and I serve Queen Mab. And you are drikingers, also.”

“Lahal, Milsi,” said Seg. “No. No, we are not bandits.”

“But—”

And then Exandu tottered along, staring at the corpses and mopping his brow.

“Careful of that great hole in the floor,” said Seg.

“What—” He saw Milsi. “A woman, Seg the Horkandur?”

“Aye,” said Seg. “The lady Milsi.”

She had said she served Queen Mab and it was quite clear from her demeanor and carriage that she was no serving wench. She looked with some curiosity upon Exandu, and, in truth, he looked like us, a right bundle of rags and blood.

She addressed Seg, and he instantly attended to her, bending only a little, his face intent.

“The next cell. Would you look, please?”

“The bar—” I warned.

“Aye.”

Seg looked in and I peered over his shoulder. A corpse of a woman, half-naked, with long dark hair astrew, lay collapsed against the wall. Seg turned at once.

The woman sighed at his face.

“So she is dead, then — a friend — oh, this hideous place!”

And Seg put his arms about the lady Milsi, and comforted her.

Kalu and his people came in then to report that nothing stirred in the chamber. We had seven doors from which to make a choice. Which would it be?

“My lady,” said Seg, and I marveled at the gentleness of his voice in these horrific surroundings. “You have knowledge of this place? This maze of the Coup Blag?”

She pulled back a little from him and looked up, and the tears stood in her eyes. “No. No, I do not know — I know only that we must find the king — and the queen — and leave with our lives — if we can.”

“We must do more than that,” put in Kalu, with his usual cheerfulness. He appeared undaunted by the terrors through which we had gone. “I, for one, do not intend to leave without my fair share of treasure.”

“But — your life—?”

“I have risked it many times, my lady. It is a habit.”

About to turn away and make a start on the next door, I swung back as Seg spoke. He spoke to the lady Milsi.

“Lady. Your life will be mine — while I live no harm shall come to you if I can prevent it. That I swear.”

Abruptly, like lightning striking through thunderclouds, she smiled. She was splendid in that moment. “You will be my Jikai, Seg the Horkandur?”

“If you wish it, lady.”

They stood, looking one at the other, and I knew they did not see and were not aware of anyone else. Softly, she said, “I wish it.”

Chapter seventeen

Milsi

We stood before the seven doors and Exandu said, “You choose red again, Bogandur? After the travails we suffered because of that red door at the head of the staircase?” He cocked his head at me, his nose red as the door before which we stood. “Blue or green are the colors of Pandahem.”

“As they are of Hamal, master Exandu.”

“That I grant you. But red — I do not think my aching bones, my head, my feet, my heart or liver will stand any further torments.”

“There will be more, Exandu,” said Kalu. “Never fear.”

The lady Milsi stood close by Seg. She said. “He is mightily cheerful.” She turned to Kalu. “Why is that, Pachak?”

“My lady?” Kalu Na-Fre looked perplexed. “Why should one be concerned over death? Papachak has all mortals in his hands. There is treasure here, and my bonny fellows will bring it out.”

“Or die in the attempt?”

“If that is willed.” Kalu gestured at the doors. “I have followed pantor Dray and with him Exandu and pantor Seg. I do not think I shall change now. They have brought me luck.”

“Luck!” burst out Exandu. Shanli soothed him, and Hop the Intemperate let out a gusty kind of laughing groan.

“Certainly. I have not lost a single one of my fine fellows since we left that Strom Ornol.”

The lady Milsi put a hand to her face. Seg instantly put his arm about her waist to support her. She was a splendid woman, her body, although grimed with dirt, glowing through the rents in her clothes, full and firm and voluptuous. She was of an age with Seg, I judged, probably a few seasons younger, given that Seg had bathed in the River of Baptism in far Aphrasöe, and therefore one must judge his age not by chronology but by his appearance when he bathed in that magical stream.

“Very well, then,” spoke out Exandu, and he drew himself up. “Red it is.” Then he said, “It will bring back the memories.”

Using the skills we had acquired to stay living people in this place, this abode of horrors called the Coup Blag, we pushed the door open. Only a stone-walled corridor showed before us, ten feet high and broad, stretching some fifty feet to the corner, unbroken by doors. We entered and, prodding and watching, went on.

We found a few traps, things of swinging flagstones in the floor, and spyholes with crossbow bolts fixed to loose at anyone passing, and a metal mirror fixed at forty-five degrees so that what we thought was the end of the tunnel was a pit filled with acid. These traps we negotiated, and pressed on. The sound of voices, and singing, and the clink of bottles and glasses reached us from around the next bend.

“Anyone for the Cabaret?” said Seg, and he laughed.

The lady Milsi walked now with her arm about his waist, and he assisted her along with great solicitude.

I stuck my head around the corner.

The chamber was large, filled with light. There were tables laid for a feast. They were there, sprawled out, eating and drinking and singing. Chests stood ranked and broken open and a profusion of treasures had been pulled out and lay scattered on the marble flooring. The smells of food and wine struck us shrewdly.

Strom Ornol looked up. His pallid face showed a flush along the cheekbones and he waved a golden goblet high.

“So there you are! We thought you were all dead.”

We walked forward.

Fregeff and Rik Razortooth were drinking, one a good rosé and the other a silver dish of blood. I could not see Skort the Clawsang.

“Skort?” said Ornol. “Oh, he disappeared some time ago. We had a wonderful time in a valley choked with fruit trees and filled with flowers. Then we came in here and have been feasting ever since. We move on soon. You are only just in time.” He saw the lady Milsi.

“Oh?”

The pappattu was made. Milsi was seated next to the lady Ilsa, and we men heard words concerning fresh clothes.