Renegade of Kregen (8 page)

He sat brooding upon us, and all the gaudy glitter of his clothes and jewels and arms paled beside the sullen power of that face.

"Lahal, Gafard."

"Lahal, majister."

That was all, between these two. Yet I swear I understood a little more of the bond between them. Master and servant, brain and tool, they complemented each other. Between them they could take the inner sea and wring it dry.

The princess Susheeng, who had once knelt weeping, beseeching, supplicating before me, naked but for the gray slave breechclout, did not move. I flicked her a quick glance and saw no outward change in her demeanor. It had been a long time, and that notorious Krozair Brother, the Lord of Strombor, was long dead and gone to his grave. And, perhaps I, too, had changed over all those years.

Also, Gafard’s shadow from the clerestory windows fell across me, and my green silken turban wound around the plain iron helmet draped half across my face. I breathed more easily.

Impossible to imagine she would recognize in this new renegade seeking admission to the king’s armies a man she had once known so long ago and who was now dead.

Gafard had warned me that this audience would form the public initiation. From this time on I was Grodnim. Later the king would see me privately, and there I might form a better opinion of what was required of me.

I recognized that Princess Susheeng had achieved much of her heart’s desire. She and her brother, that devil prince Glycas, had planned and plotted to raise themselves even higher in Magdag. Now this storming genius Genod Gannius had appeared on the scene and had led his armies in triumph over Magdag and ruled here in the city of megaliths. And he had chosen Susheeng as his consort. She, at least, had achieved much.

The thought that Glycas must be here, if he was not dead, made me realize the latter alternative to be far more preferable.

The short ceremony of admission was about to begin.

The chamberlains unhitched the Genodder from the high belt and carried it toward a Chuktar, a Chulik, who stood enormous and impressive in armor and green. He took the sword.

After some mumbo-jumbo, the Genodder would be blessed by the priests, waiting in their green robes at the side, the king would kiss it, and I would receive it back, to kiss it and so hang it once more upon my person. The admission would have been completed.

So I stood there, waiting for the next move in this charade.

No one moved.

No one stirred.

I looked hard at the king. His right hand was half lifted in the sign to begin. That hand did not move, did not waver, did not tremble. The old wise man’s mouth was half open. That mouth neither opened nor closed. Susheeng’s hand turned at the wrist and fondled a golden brooch upon her breast. Nothing moved.

So I knew.

Not a sound rose from the mass of courtiers in the bright reception chamber, not a person moved.

I shuffled my feet and turned around, nastily, to face the tall double doors. Now, I said to myself, now what does she want?

Zena Iztar walked in through the opened double doors and past the lines of petrified people. She looked, as always, supremely imposing. She wore her crimson and scarlet and golden robes, with a narrow green sash, and the jewels flamed from her to drown in magnificence the suddenly tawdry splendor of King Genod’s glittering reception chamber.

She halted a little way off from me. She shook her head.

"Dray Prescot!"

"What do you want, Zena Iztar?"

"I seek to know what you do here."

"It is obvious."

"Not to me, not to the Star Lords, not to the Savanti."

"Then are they — and you — of little wit."

That calm face, imperious, proud, beautiful yes, all those things, but also maternal and wise and sorrowing, did not smile. Again she shook her head and the jewels of her headdress flashed and sparkled. "If we used our wits, as you suggest, we might believe you did an evil thing here."

"Of course it’s evil!"

A tiny line dinted between her eyebrows.

I said, "We have met three times, Madam Ivanovna, Zena Iztar. Do you not yet understand I am an evil man?"

"Yet were you chosen by the Savanti and after they cast you off, by the Everoinye, the Star Lords."

"That was not of my seeking."

"Yet were you chosen."

I wasn’t fool enough to ask why I had been chosen. The Savanti, those superhuman men of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, selected many men from Earth and subjected them to a test and so, accepting them, trained them to become Savapim and go forth upon Kregen to uphold the dignity of apims, of Homo sapiens. I had been found wanting and so had been kicked out of paradise. I had fought and worked and created my own paradise upon Kregen. All I held dear lay with my Delia. The Star Lords used me when they willed for their own ends. The reasons behind the selection of myself were obvious; the ramifications of the conflicting desires of others were the causes of the way my life had gone upon Kregen. I had no stupid delusions that I was in any way special, destined for a great and glittering fate in this world four hundred light-years from Earth.

"I warned you, Pur Dray," said Zena Iztar, "that you would not be allowed to leave the Eye of the World."

"I am no longer Pur Dray."

"That is sooth. But I would like you to become Pur Dray again, once more to take up your rightful place as a member of the Krozairs of Zy."

"I’m finished with all that!"

"You will never leave the inner sea until you do."

All along, all during the time of my boasting and planning, when I had ridden to Magdag, when I had taken the argenter, all the time, I must have known — had known — that I could not leave the Eye of the World. Those vast and implacable forces operating outside of the time and space I knew held me fast caught. Until what they desired occurred I must remain here, a free man within the confines of the inner sea, but imprisoned here as I had been imprisoned on my own Earth.

"The Krozairs of Zy mean nothing to me now. I am Apushniad. Had you forgotten?"

"I do not forget important things so lightly."

"It’s not important! Not any longer!" I was shouting. "I have put the Krozairs behind me, cast them off, shed them as a snake sheds a skin. There are other places of Kregen I hold more dear."

She bent her gaze upon me. "As a snake, you said. . ."

"Well, then? I am evil, so a snake will serve. Although I detest the things, even though they live according to their natures."

"The man of your Earth called Shakespeare had a word for your conduct now, Pur Dray."

"He had a word for everything."

"And I have a word for you. You are held here. When you are once more a Krozair of Zy, then perchance you may return to your Valka—"

"And Delia?"

She put one long white finger to her lips. Those lips, red and soft, parted and I caught the gleam of white teeth. She cared for herself, this Zena Iztar. "You know your wife. You know her mettle. She is safe, as happy as she will ever be without you — poor soul! — yet will she risk all to find you again."

"And you condemn her to that!"

She was very brisk about that. "I condemn no one to anything. Men and women have suffered since the beginning and, assuredly, will suffer until the end."

"You told me I would face a choice, a hard choice—"

"Not this petty business, serious though it may be." She brushed my words aside. "The choice will come later. Also, I said that even Grodno might play a part, that stranger things have happened."

"I remember. That was the first time, in my chambers in London, before the séance—"

"And when I saw you for the second time, by the banks of the Grand Canal, I warned you afresh. You have a part to play. I would you would play it with all your heart."

"When I am parted from Delia, that I cannot do."

"I see that, and I believe it. Then I say this to you: you must pursue the path with every part of you that you can. Put as much of yourself into your struggle as you can possibly spend. I know whereof I speak. I salute you as Pur Dray."

I nodded my head at the thrones. "And if Susheeng recognizes me?"

"I do not think the — the princess Susheeng will know you. For her the Eye of the World revolves about the king. And she will not wish the king to know she once abased herself to you and that you spurned her."

"Aye. She didn’t relish that, by Vox!"

"But you did?"

I flicked up my evil old eyes to glare at her. "Sharp, Madam Zena Iztar! No, I do not think I relished seeing a silly hulu make a fool of herself. I do not think I took pleasure from that. But had I done so, I could have understood myself passing well."

"I have no more to say to you now."

I knew that in a moment she would walk off and the silent, motionless people all about would wake to life and the ceremony would proceed. Already the Chulik Chuktar, he who held my shortsword, had the piece of red cloth extended, still and unmoving. There were very many things I wished to ask this woman, and every time she sidestepped them and we got into an argument. I said, "Not the Star Lords, not the Savanti, then who, Zena Iztar?"

She saw my eyes and looked where I looked and saw the scrap of red cloth in the fingers of the Chuktar.

"They will make you—"

"Yes, I know."

"And it will mean nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Remember what I have said. Your only way out. Remember."

"But — tell me who you are and why—" But she was walking away with that lithe swinging gait, going out the doors. She had passed along all that long expanse of marble with supernatural speed; yet she appeared to be only walking naturally. The double doors closed of their own volition — or so it seemed. She was gone. The piece of red cloth in the Chulik Chuktar’s fingers jerked as he finished ripping it from his pocket. He held it up, ready for the king’s signal.

Silver trumpets pealed. The high room filled with the sigh and murmur of hundreds of people gathered together to witness the repudiation of the Red and the acceptance of the Green. The king finished making his signal.

So the sorry charade was gone through, when I spat on the red cloth — it was an old swifter flag — and trampled on it. I made various promises which, as they were made in the name of Grodno, meant nothing — and all the time I heard those ominous words clanging about in my vosk skull of a head.

"To leave the inner sea — you must become a Krozair of Zy!"

Chapter Six

Gadak the Renegade rides north

"Such plans the king has!" said Gafard, guiding his sectrix past a broken tree stump in the forest trail. "Such plans, Gadak, as gods must surely dream!"

I wasn’t fool enough to point out that the king was no god.

"You may rest assured, gernu, that I will do all I can to help the king." I looked at him as he rode, a tall, strong robust man with that iron profile eager and aimed always for the heights. I decided to take a chance. "I think, gernu, all I can for the king — after you."

He turned his head to regard me. His Zairian face glowered. Then the sheer infectious bubbling of his good spirits broke down that overlaid Grodnim severity. "Aye, Gadak — I know what you mean, and I joy in it, for that is why I chose you. But, for all our good and health, never say it again."

"Your orders, my commands, gernu."

"Remember it!"

We rode for the northern mountains. We rode for battle. The leemsheads — outlaws — had allied themselves with the barbarians of the north and King Genod had arisen in his wrath and dispatched his favorite general to put down the disorders and to drive the barbarians back away from Magdaggian land and to hang all the leemsheads he could lay his iron hands on.

At the least, I had not, for my first task, been called upon to fight against Zairians.

A sizable little force we were, a full ten thousand warriors, led by the overlords of Magdag. And, leading them, a renegade, this Gafard, the King’s Striker.

I wondered just when the moment would come when I would have to strike him down.

That, it seemed to me then, was the only course left open to me.

The reasons why he had taken to me, helped me, secured my admission as a Grodnim to the service of the king through him, were perfectly plain. He had many enemies. Many and many a proud overlord of Magdag hated and despised this upstart renegade. That would be inevitable. So he looked for friends, men he could trust, allies in whom he could repose confidence. And of all his friends, bought by bribes and high office and the ear of the king, none would be more faithful than men like himself, once of Zair and now of Grodnim, traitors, turncoats, renegades.

One very simple and effective way of ensuring their loyalty had been spelled out to me by Gafard himself.

"My name is anathema to all Zairians. They know of me only too well. Rest assured, Gadak; your name also has been passed to the king and his nobles in Sanurkazz, to the Krozairs, to the Red Brethren. There is no return for us. Now we are of the Green. I do not believe you plan treachery against me, for I am your good friend and master; but think what will be your fate should you return to Zairia."

Well, that was the rub. That kind of fate did not bear contemplation, and yet according to Zena Iztar it must be dared. How arrogant her display of power, there in the sumptuous reception chamber of King Genod! She had chosen her moment well. How clearly she had shown me my own puniness, the driveling paucity of all men, of Red and Green, here in the inner sea!

There was the other side of this coin of forwarding names of renegades. The Grodnims kept long lists of the names of Zairians who had wounded them. These rolls had been diligently searched and no record of one Dak of Zullia had been found thereon. Gafard had shown his relief.

"Had they found your name on the rolls, Gadak, you would have had to answer for your crimes against Grodno, after you had renounced Zair and taken the Green. The secular and the divine laws catch you between them, like Tyr Nath and his hammer!"

He also took the opportunity to tell me, in a strange tone of voice, that not one of the names on the Grodnim Rolls of Infamy bore a longer list of crimes than the name of Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy, the Lord of Strombor.