Talons of Scorpio (22 page)

The fellow in the green breechclout started a long complaining monologue, filled with imprecations and obscene curses and threats. He would have his powerful friends carve up the zhantil faces. His sorcerous friend would blast them into black cinders. He would scatter their ashes across the Sea of Opaz, and glee as each cinder fell. He did not sound at all pleasant, and with the Bells of Beng Kishi ringing and clanging away in my head I found him tiresome. Also, muzzy as I was, I thought I knew that voice.

The girl said: “Do leave off! Think of a way to get out of here, by Vox!”

Jolted, I said: “If you’re a Vallian they’ll kill you twice over here.” My head hung down, and I was too shattered to open my eyes against the sparking glitter of the torches.

The man said in his shrill hiss: “Vallia is doomed! The great enterprise will most certainly destroy all that proud and haughty land!”

And the girl, in her hard yet modulated voice, said: “The battle is not yet won, Zankov, and if we’re dead before it begins, where is the profit in that?”

Zankov!

The bastard was hanging up helplessly — and so was I.

And this girl...

I opened my eyes against the sting and squinted.

I could remember her only as a grown woman. All the time she had been growing up, as a little child in her white dress with her toys — her dolls and beads and daggers — I’d been on Earth. I’d seen her as Ros the Claw, fighting splendidly for what she believed in. She had tried to slash my eyes out. I’d carpeted her, and carried her out of a pit of evil. She had, when she understood that — at last and so late, like any cretin — I knew who she was, she had withheld her blow. She had not slashed her lethal Claw and taken off half my face.

Confident that Pando would soon be here, light-headed with the blows I’d taken, muzzy, I cast all thoughts of caution aside.

So few words I’d spoken to her, so few, and now the important ones had to be of death...

“Dayra,” I said. “That fellow Zankov, hanging next to you, killed your grandfather. He slew your mother’s father, not me.”

In the silence, the torches spat and crackled.

She turned to look at me. The gyp-face was gone, smoke blown with the wind.

Yes — she was my daughter Dayra. That face, passionate, willful, stubborn, beautiful in a way that her mother Delia was beautiful and yet with an added darkness that — to my despair — I knew must come from me, that face that had haunted me now regarded me with a look I could not comprehend.

Then she said, in a whisper: “So you continue to lie and cheat and betray! How typical of you — the man I most loathe in all the world!”

My old head was going up and down like a swifter in a rashoon. I swallowed down the sick. I couldn’t shake my head for fear of the consequences.

I said: “You are willful, and also a fool. Zankov betrayed you, more than once, and plotted to take the crown and throne and to kill me — which might not be altogether a bad thing — and to kill all the family. He tricked you at the Sakkora Stones — your mother was chained up, and he would have slain her. Barty Vessler—”

Zankov’s thin bitter voice cut in, hatefully.

“Do not believe this kleesh! He lies! It is clear he lies!”

“I do not lie. You have betrayed Dayra too many times—”

“Perjurer!”

“There is no need for me to lie. What I say can be tested by witnesses—”

“Foul cramphs like yourself!”

The whole dungeon spun about me and the heavy blows inside my head beat and reverberated. For a space I could not say any more, only dwell agonizingly upon the bitter memories, while these two hung up beside me spoke in fierce, staccato whispers I barely heard, let alone comprehended.

Odd words spurted out, as they do from vaguely heard conversations. “Great enterprise.” “Argenters.” “Galleons.” “Delphond.” “Gold.” The word gold spat out, more than once, something about the treasure and its safekeeping in trust.

Why didn’t Dayra ask this bastard Zankov? Why was I so useless? Zankov had killed the emperor, slain him before witnesses including the Lord Farris and others, chief among whom was Delia. Delia! Hanging there in my agony I thought of her, and — as always, as always, thanks be to Zair and to Opaz and Djan — her presence in my life, whether beside me or on the other side of the world, uplifted me and strengthened me, gave a spark of courage to go on.

“Ask him!” I bellowed out and my words husked like a dry broom sweeping a gutter in the stews. “Ask him why your mother was hung up as we are hung up now, and he with a dagger in his fist. Ask him how Barty Vessler was slain! Ask him to his face, and let him deny that he killed the emperor your grandfather!”

“Hold your tongue, you stupid old fool!” came that bitter venomous voice. “Dayra knows who her friends are.”

Desperately, reaching out with all the willpower I could muster, I said: “Dayra — you know your mother. I plead for myself in a despicable way, now, I admit. But — but, Dayra, do you think she would remain with me if I had killed her father?”

Her face turned to me and I saw that she was far more troubled and disturbed than I had thought, imagining her hard and brittle, and hating me so. “I — have wondered. Mother would not tolerate... No... I have not seen her since—”

“Since that cur-dog there tried to kill her!”

“Do not listen to him, Dayra!”

“Your mother and I miss you sorely — I own to my misdeeds. If you spoke to her, you would learn the truth—”

Zankov spluttered out in his staccato way: “Your mother believes this rogue, of course! She is easily duped. No doubt she lusts after him as a—”

“Zankov!”

But he rattled on, letting all the bile spill out, conscious of his own illegitimate ancestry and the deviltry to which he had resorted to place the crown of Vallia upon his own head. He’d had the help of the arch-Wizard of Loh, Phu-Si-Yantong, the Hyr Notor, who was now — thank Opaz — dead and gone. He had the aid of many enemies of mine.

If it does not sound too bombastically pompous, too egomaniacal, they were the enemies of Vallia, also...

If I reiterate that the blows on my head interfered with my thoughts, turned my brains into a sludgy puddle, I do so, I believe, as much to explain the fogginess of my perceptions as the lacunae in my memories. Head hanging, a thread of blood running down from scalp to ear and so dripping drop by drop upon the stone floor, I persisted in this petulant obsession — why did not Dayra question this bastard? The grayness swirled about my eyes; yet my ears picked up drifts and snatches of their words — and, yes, Dayra did question him, I hoped, and his answers, at first convincing, gradually became more incoherent, more shrill, so that he ended by simple blasphemies and kept harping on the enterprise against Vallia and his ambitions and the great treasure. He was greatly concerned about the treasure.

“...damned treasure,” said Dayra. I strained to hear in a lucid moment, only to have the sounds in the cell swirl away as though caught in a silent storm. When I could hear again, Dayra was saying: “...you and everyone said my father was a ninny, a puffed-up propaganda hero of a prince. Yet I found out differently, when he fought under the voller and escaped you all.”

“Tricks, Roz, tricks only!”

“Because of you and our friends I tried to kill my own father! By Opaz—” and here her voice shook with more than the pulse of blood in my own ears. “You’ve never properly explained why mother was treated so cruelly at the Sakkora Stones—”

“We had to convince her! You know that!”

“So you told me and so I believed. But chained up—”

Then the grayness returned and when I could take stock of what was going on again they spoke more harshly, one to the other, with more bitterness.

“I wish Hyr Brun was with me,” and Dayra spoke passionately of the yellow-haired giant who was her faithful bodyguard.

I croaked out: “I hope Hyr Brun is not dead, Dayra, for he is a good man, and the child, Vaxnik, also, a brave proud spirit—”

“They live. They are not here. Had they been—”

“Thanks to Opaz they are alive — and I hope the girl sacrifice I sought to rescue is safe, also...”

“Who cares for a slave girl bought for the glory of Lem!” Zankov spoke as any worshipper of Lem the Silver Leem.

Stung, I said, “Dayra — I am disappointed, I find it hard to believe — how could you descend to this evil nonsense of Lem the Silver Leem—?”

“And you! You wore the silver mask! You are a Leem Lover! That damns you, that causes me to distrust and hate you—” She did not go on. Banal words, but spoken with a fire that scorched.

So — I took heart!

“Listen, daughter, and mark me well. I and my friends oppose Lem. We set fire to the temple tonight. Aye! My comrades burn the stinking temples to Lem. I wore the silver mask only so that I would have the chance to rescue the girl sacrifice...”

“How can I believe!”

“He lies, Ros, he lies!”

Then Zankov stopped his shouting, abruptly. Dayra spoke slowly. “If he lies, then... And if speaks the truth, then...”

Zankov was caught both ways. He blustered and raged, swearing most vilely. I kept silent, head hanging, feeling awful. How I had contemplated this meeting with my daughter, the Princess Dayra, known as Ros the Claw... How often I had imagined its circumstances. How could I have foreseen that it would be like this — with Dayra hanging like a Rose between two thorns!

Their voices blended, one shrill and bitter and loaded with invective, the other hard and growing harder, suspicious, horrified. I’d started this adventure with a simple objective, as Pompino had said, but that had been deflected by a greater urgency, and I was now in a peril so great as to cause me to tremble, me, Dray Prescot, father of this girl who was troubled out of her wits... Bad advice, no advice, bad example and no example... Her life, despite the connotations and her connection with the Sisters of the Rose, had been no bed of roses... She deserved more from me than I could repay.

I do not think any words of mine — the stupid, stumbling, feeble words — tipped the balance. Dayra had been misled, deceived; but she was not a stupid girl — how could she be, how could any daughter of Delia’s be stupid? She must have harbored doubts. That she had rationalized the sight of her mother hanging in chains must have caused her intense agony; doubts persisted, engendered despite all the wily and malevolent advice heaped upon her by her friends.

Zankov confirmed my suspicions.

Among the threats, the taunting, the obscenities, he reproached Dayra. “You have proved stubborn in the past, and have grown worse lately.” The thin bitter words crackled as the torches spat sparks. “I have lost a great deal of the hope and trust I once had in you. You are an ingrate — and this miserable kleesh, your father—”

“I have tried!” She sounded distraught and yet, and yet, through all her desperate despair, that hard note of reawakening reality heartened me. “I believed you and our friends. The Kataki twins — I believed what they said. All of you — because my father was not there. And the calumnies you put about regarding my mother — are they lies, also?”

My blade-comrade Seg Segutorio had been forced to kill a few folk for these false and vile rumors about Delia. I’d experienced horror when he’d told me — death for a few words! Now, seeing the havoc they had wrought, these few words, I could wish Seg had dispatched all the dispensers of lies and calumnies regarding Delia... Dayra had suffered, and I had not known how she had been affected.

I croaked out — and Dayra turned her head to listen to me even as Zankov spluttered and blasphemed on her other side! — “Dayra — your mother is above reproach from anyone, she cannot be touched by the stinks of offal like that.”

The effort of speaking nigh exhausted me. I could feel the blood dripping down my face. I’d been sore wounded before, far worse than these clumsy blows on the head, and I’d recover well enough. But I needed to be alive and vigorous right now. Right at this moment I needed all the strength and willpower I could muster. This schemer Zankov had to be unmasked, and now. Dayra could not be expected to change her mind about the conduct of her life in an instant. The painful process would take time. She had to be convinced and then when she had thought it all through for herself and seen the truth, why, then she would make the decision.

All I could do was hope Pando got here in time.

And — I could go on through the dizziness and put in what arguments I could, explain, keep calm — keep calm! — and try to make Dayra’s agonizing reappraisal an experience that would not destroy her. That, I shuddered to think, was a real danger... But, was it? Would a daughter of Delia’s be shattered? I took heart. No — not while the Ice Floes of Sicce exuded their chill breath!

Intermittently I heard Dayra trying to question Zankov, and he slid away from the quizzing and harped on the great enterprise and his powerful friends and the treasure they had entrusted to him to pay for the ships that would carry the army to Vallia. I struggled to listen and learn of this, although I cursed the fellow and willed Dayra to press her inquiries.

“The Lord Farris?” shouted Zankov, answering one of her questions at last. “Yes, he was there. When I see him he will tell you the truth, him and Lykon Crimahan both!”

Spluttering, I coughed out: “Lykon Crimahan! I did not speak of him, Zankov, so how—?”

“It is common knowledge—”

“It is not common knowledge. Lykon Crimahan, the Kov of Forli, returned to his kovnate and fought the aragorn and the slavemasters. He was no friend to me. But now he is loyal, and he saw you slay the emperor...”

“He saw you, you cramph!”

“I think,” I said to Dayra, “that unless Crimahan is very careful, if this fellow here is let free, these words have signed Crimahan’s death warrant.”

“He and Farris, all of you!” shrieked Zankov.

Dayra turned those gorgeous brown Vallian eyes on me. I could see her mother there. “And you truly joined the Lemmites and wore the silver mask to rescue the sacrifice and burn the temple?”

“You saw me carrying the child to safety. The temple burned.”

“Yes...”

“Did you, Dayra, become a Leem-Lover—?”