Allies of Antares

Chapter one-2

“The kov speaks with the words of the gods,” said Drak. He knew when to bring religion into it. Cunning, resourceful, ruthless, Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia, and yet upright, honest, loyal, a man of the highest principles. Sometimes those high principles made life for lesser mortals damned uncomfortable. Jaidur, his brother, was of altogether more volatile a nature. As for Zeg, the middle brother, who was now King Zeg of Zandikar miles and miles away in the inner sea, the Eye of the World, I’d not heard from him for just not long enough to make me worried. Pretty soon, when this Hamal nonsense was cleared up, I was due a trip to the Eye of the World...

The two kings were in nowise chastened. But other delegates were growing tired of this incessant wrangling. Even rulers of countries of the Dawn Lands traditionally opposed to one another cooled in face of the problems ahead. Various candidates for various sections of Hamal were touted. We all agreed that those nations of the Dawn Lands with frontiers on the River Os, the southern boundary of Hamal, had a prior right in the decisions affecting the parcels of land across their borders. This seemed fair to the delegates.

Even that caused disagreement. A number of the nations right in the north of the Dawn Lands immediately to the south of the River Os, He of the Commendable Countenance, had been in subjection to Hamal for so long they had not contributed anything to the armies of the alliance. In fact, some of them had actually had their own men in the ranks of the Hamalian army. These difficulties had to be discussed and agreements reached.

What at first glance seemed fair, on closer inspection turned ugly with imponderables.

Many of the delegates supported rival claimants. No one was aware of any legitimate issue of the Empress Thyllis and her nonentity of a husband. He had disappeared long ago. A number of relations existed: distant cousins aplenty, and a group of men and women claiming the emperor as their uncle. After Thyllis had been shot to death by a crossbow bolt, loosed by Rosil, the Kataki Strom, Phu-Si-Yantong had proclaimed himself as Emperor of Hamal. Now what seemed to many of the delegates a ludicrous legal situation arose. Did this brief occupation of the throne acquire legality, and, if so, how did it affect the claims of Thyllis’s husband’s cousins and nephews?

Intriguing.

Nothing would stop the lawyers from inflicting day-long speeches upon the subject with all the happy hunting ground of the inflexible Laws of Hamal in which to play — short of nipping the problem in the bud. Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia, did just that.

“No legitimacy accrues to the Wizard of Loh, Phu-Si-Yantong, now dead — thanks be to Opaz! — or any of his assigns or heirs through this illegal usurpation of the throne.” Drak looked around the chamber meaningfully. There was so much gold and silver displayed, so many gems, that the delegates could blind with radiance the unwary eye. “We have enough problems sorting out who is to take over in Hamal without saddling ourselves with more.”

“Agreed!” The shouts were unanimous. On one subject, then, the famous Conquerors of Hamal could agree...

In the tiny hush of reaction to the outburst, young King Rogpe of Mandua stood up. He drew his sumptuous robes about him in the instinctive gathering of resources gesture of one about to plunge into unpleasant argument; almost immediately he loosened the fur-trimmed velvet, for Hamal was warmer than Mandua. “There is a matter I must have settled before I return.” He held up a hand as some delegates started to protest.

Young and uncertain, Rogpe might be; in what he had to say he was in deadly earnest and therefore articulate and convincing.

“Here me! I speak of the case of those countries who actively allied themselves with Hamal! Most notably that of Shanodrin!”

“Slay ’em all!” and, “Burn their towns around their ears!” The suggestions on what should be done with collaborators bubbled up merrily and uglily.

“Prince Mefto A’Shanofero, known as Mefto the Kazzur! He stands indicted before this assembly! He and his accomplices must be brought to trial.”

No one there in that glittering chamber was unaware that Mefto the Kazzur had sought through his alliance with the Hamalese to dominate much of the Dawn Lands. The Kingdom of Mandua had suffered. Now Rogpe put a hand to his quiff of fair hair. He smiled, a nervous smile yet one which revealed his feelings of triumph at delayed revenge accomplished.

Puffy faced, impatient, King Nodgen the Bald leaped to his feet. He shook a fist at Rogpe.

“Yes, yes, my young fighting king, yes! We will deal with the traitor Mefto the Kazzur. But we have more zhantils to saddle here. There is no doubt that if Hamal is to be kept under proper control the empire must be given a Hamalese to rule. That man is King Telmont—”

Nodgen the Bald’s words were lost in a chorus of catcalls and fiercely amused expostulations and accusations.

“King Telmont is not related in any way to Thyllis—”

“He cowers in his kingdom in the far Black Hills—”

“He is spineless!”

The knowledge of family relationships and intricate blood ties and links and alliances through marriage were meat and drink to the rulers in the Dawn Lands. Such knowledge was of vital consequence. By understanding why one king did this and one queen did the opposite through the promptings of family loyalties enabled a tricky course of diplomacy to be set. The delegates had to keep themselves informed of the intrigues that fomented all the time. It was a matter of survival, along with always remembering names, for by forgetting a name one might lose a kingdom.

The rival king who had accused Nodgen the Bald of flying his airboats back home and then claiming compensation for their loss rose to shout with great scorn: “We know why you champion this King Telmont, Nodgen the Bald! How much gold has he paid you? What promises has he made?”

The marshal Djangs eased forward, wary.

“I spit on your robe, King Nalgre the Defaced! I deny your accusations, I hurl them back into your teeth—”

Fresh fuel was heaped on the fire of enmity; the duel that would follow later might enlarge catastrophically to include two entire countries, at each other’s throats — as usual. These local wars had been contained in the mutual onslaught on Hamal. Now, with the sad inevitability of human nature, they would burst out again, raw and red and bloody.

The damping down of that squabble — a damping down only, for to extinguish it would take longer and demand harsher means — was left to Drak. By the grimness of his demeanor he left no one in any doubt of his anger and contempt. He tried to bring the Peace Conference back to considerations of what lay immediately to hand. “We each have a rapier to sharpen, and so accommodations must be made. If the delegates from the Dawn Lands insist on fighting among themselves, we deplore that but accept it as a burden of history. The future of Hamal must be assured. Let no one forget that all of us face a greater menace from the Shanks who raid us from over the oceans.”

“Aye,” said Jaidur. This was a matter touching him and his new kingdom nearly. “And I suspect the damned Shanks will soon stop raiding and attempt permanent settlements—”

Fresh uproar at this statement could not conceal the wave of dread that swept over the chamber. All men of this grouping of continents and islands called Paz who lived near a coastline were dreadfully aware of the menace of the Shanks. Fish heads, they called them, Leem Lovers, any scurrilous name a man could put his tongue to, all revealing the horror their name conjured up.

As though the mere mention of the Shanks put a pause to the precedent proceedings, a fresh session opened with a concerted attack on the delegates from Vallia, Hyrklana and Djanduin.

Nodgen the Bald, irked at the dismissal of his claims for King Telmont, pointed a forefinger at Drak. He swept that indicting digit around to encompass Seg, Jaidur, Kytun and O. Fellin Coper. The unmistakable result of the gesture was to isolate these men and to range the other delegates against them.

“You sit there fulminating against us. You sit there pompously pontificating. Yet who are you? You are not of Havilfar North and Central—”

Kytun bellowed: “We are of Havilfar South West!”

Jaidur said, “We are of Hyrklana off Havilfar East!”

Drak and Seg remained silent, very sensibly.

“Look at you!” Nodgen waggled that forefinger. “All of you, lackeys. Aye, lackeys!”

Kytun’s four arms windmilled and Ortyg, with a squeak of alarm, tugged at his comrade’s military cape. “Let him chatter, Kytun!”

“Lackeys!” roared K. Kholin Dom, fearsome, ferocious, a warrior four-armed Dwadjang. “Explain yourself — king!”

“That is not difficult!” shouted another delegate.

“No! Lackeys — all of you — lackeys of one man!”

“Let me blatter ’em!” pleaded Kytun, his face a black sunburst.

“Hold still, Kytun, do!” Ortyg’s gerbil-face expressed concern for Kytun, nothing for the shouted accusations.

Nodgen the Bald bellowed: “One man commands you, the father of the King of Hyrklana; the King of Djanduin; the Emperor of Vallia. One man — and where is he? Why is he not here to talk to us — does he think himself so far above us—?”

The picture wavered.

As though heated air rose before the scene in the assembly chamber the whole glittering assemblage shivered and undulated.

“Your pardon,” said Deb-Lu-Quienyin. “I must admit I allowed my concentration to lapse.”

The Wizard of Loh’s eyes encompassed the world. I stared into those eyes and looked through the sorcerous power of Deb-Lu into the Peace Conference. People in there were shouting and waving fists although, I was thankful to observe, no one was foolish enough to draw a sword.

“It is all right, Deb-Lu,” I said. “I must be tiring you. And what they say is right, in one way. I do not wish to go down and sit among them for these dreary proceedings.”

“Very practical.”

“And if that is being high and mighty — so be it.”

“Shall I go on?”

“It is hardly worth it. They will decide nothing. But Drak tries hard. No, I need a wet and—”

The picture I saw through the Wizard of Loh’s eyes came into focus. We sat comfortably in a small aerie high in the Mirvol Keep of the palace of Ruathytu, the Hammabi el Lamma. Whoever had lived here before, probably a Chuktar of saddle birds, had done himself well. There was ample provision of wine and fine fare. The picture steadied and the resplendent assembly came back into focus. Deb-Lu-Quienyin had arranged a signomant, a device which eased his powers of observation at a distance, and its placing discreetly in the chamber allowed us excellent vision all around, if in a little foreshortened a fashion.

The wet I promised myself had to wait for the double doors at the far end of the assembly chamber crashed open. The Djangs on duty there recovered swiftly and their stuxes thrust steel heads at the man who burst in. They halted their instinctive reaction at once, for the man was clearly a merker, a messenger who had flown hard. His leathers were glazed with dust.

He held up a hand and shouted so that all could hear.

“Lahal, notors! King Telmont has gathered a great army and marches on us. He vows vengeance. He has sworn to retake the city of Ruathytu and to place the crown of empire upon his head. And his chief promise is this: he will seize by the heels and utterly destroy the man called Dray Prescot.”

Deb-Lu let out a cry and the picture I saw through his eyes vanished instantly. I blinked.

“Jak!” said Deb-Lu. “This is serious—”

“What?” I said. “Not you, too? You did not think, like those delegates down there, that by one battle and the taking of their capital the whole puissant Empire of Hamal would be conquered?”