The Krozair Cycle

“Wizard of Scorpio”-4

Turko the Shield would, too. So we sang the begin-ning of The Bowmen of Loh, and could wish Seg Se-gutorio was here with his great Lohvian longbow, and Inch was here also with his Saxon axe. Together, I fan-cied, we could fight our way across the Ice Floes of Sicce against all the Demons of Gundarlo, especially if we had Hap Loder and Kytun Dom along also...

The singing brought our jailers, Rapas with their vulturine beaks and their smell and their vicious handling of prisoners. I still couldn’t get to like many Rapas. The diffs hustled us out, still in our chains unhitched from the wall-chains, and so we went up to be introduced to King Wazur. By Vox! I felt better already with Delia at my side, swinging along with all her blazing beauty empha-sized by the flaunting scarlet breechclout, and the harsh iron chains upon her body mere reminders of how much we had been through together on this barbaric yet beauti-ful world of Kregen.

This King Wazur’s palace exhibited the wealth ac-quired by selling chemzite from the mines and by trading with the pirates along the Hoboling Islands. The renders needed a safe haven to sell their plunder; Wazur grew fat on the profits. He employed Rapas, Ochs, Brokelsh, Wo-moxes, as mercenary guards. I saw no Pachaks or Chuliks. Although they are among the costliest of guards, their hire would not be beyond Wazur. Also I noticed the way we went, like any civilized barbarian — or, rather, bar-baric citizen — and I kept my eyes open. The great hall was lofty and filled with the light of the twin suns, and there were many of his people there come for the spec-tacle. The throne was cut from a single gigantic block of chemzite. Zhantil skins lay strewn upon the seats and arms, and the steps were inlaid with ivory from Chem. Jewels and fans blazed in the emerald and ruby light of Genodras and Zim. The old rast was crafty, too, for his guards lined out by the throne and their bows were ready spanned. As for the king himself, he looked like a toad, he spoke like a rusty hinge, he smelled like a sewer. He leaned on a skinny elbow and opened his mouth and all his courtiers hung on his words.

“You great rast of an onker!” I bellowed up at him. “You nurdling cramph! You had best release us before a doom falls upon you that will horrify the whole world!”

The magnificence that was the clustered nobles and courtiers let out a single mutual gasp of terror. The king’s face turned that color a malsidge turns just before it must be thrown in the garbage.

“Rast!” he screeched. “The test for you will be—”

“Save your breath, kleesh!”

That drove him to a frenzy. Foam spittled his lips. He half-rose, and clutched his chest, and panted. Majordomos hustled forward. The guards began to hit us. Well, I cracked a few skulls before they dragged us off.

Whilst it had been interesting it had no doubt not been at all clever. I had achieved one object. My Delia had not been subjected to humiliation and torture beyond what she had already endured. The guards took us through passages which, beginning with tapestried walls and car-peted floors changed to dank stone walls and slimy cob-bles. We were thrust into a large square chamber and the door at our backs thunked shut. Before us in the oppo-site wall stood two doors. The chains clanked about us.

One by one the two doors opened and two girls stepped out.

One was apim, a young beauty, brilliant of eye, and in mortal terror. The other was a Fristle fifi, and her cat-like face with all its pretty vivaciousness was likewise set in a grimace of mortal terror. The two girls carried clumsy keys with which they unfastened our chains to the penultimate link. Then they ran back to the doors. The lenken iron-bound valves thudded shut with the clang of doom as the locks engaged.

We stripped off the rest of the chains.

A voice spoke to us from the wall.

“Rasts! Listen to what I say, for I am a merciful king and am minded to let you live, if you have the wit.”

Over the door we had entered, the wall was pierced with many small holes, making a grille pattern. Shadows moved there. So the king would watch his test, and gloat over our agonies.

From this back wall and running perfectly straight to the wall with the two doors were a series of slots in the floor. They were a fist in thickness and spaced about a foot apart.

“You may choose one door,” the disembodied voice went on.

“Yes, yes, you onker,” I roared up. “I should tell you that you make a disastrous mistake here. Do you not know the mighty power of the Empire of Vallia? Should you not stand in mortal terror of her fliers, her galleons, the thousands of fighting men her gold can buy? Yes, onker, you should!” I could hear muffled sounds up there beyond the grille, as of a gasping and a clutching at chests. “Know, then, kleesh, that this lady is the Princess Majestrix of Vallia! Better for you to release us now, and clothe us, and give us food and wine, lest a doom—”

“Cramph!” the voice whispered down. “You do not fool me. And were she the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, who is to know? Answer me that, onker, who is to know?”

The lady Merle let out a shriek, and the faceless voice whispered like a rusty hinge. “And you would tell me you are the Prince Majister of Vallia! Ho! And were it so, I would rather see you take my test than ransom you a tenfold! Choose your door and see if Oxkalin smiles or frowns! Choose!”

Even as he spoke thick iron bars rose up from the wall end of the floor slots. They rose until they slotted into the ceiling and then they began to press inwards towards us. They could not be broken. If we did not open a door we would be crushed. I stared at those iron bars sliding with grating ominous creaks towards us. The noise emphasized the weird evil of this place.

I picked up a length of chain. I have fought with chains. The Wizard, Khe-Hi-Bjanching, looked at me, and he smiled very lopsidedly. “My brother has become an evil man in the employ of this mad king. I do not think it matters which door we choose.”

“Of course not,” I said, and Delia put her arms around Merle, whispering to her, trying to ease the fear. “This king gives us a fifty-fifty chance. I think I will make that chance a little more even.” I stared at him. “Can you work?”

He spread his hands, so I did not enquire further. He was a very young Wizard of Loh. He would learn, if he lived.

Those remorseless iron bars creaked and groaned down their slots towards us. I could waste no more time. The Wizard saw my advance to the nearest door, and he said: “What think you? A leem? A chavonth? A wersting? A tralk? It is an amusing thought, and by the Seven Ar-cades, I never thought to end life thus.” He looked sorrow-ful. Not frightened, just regretful. “A whole life’s study and discipline and diligence wasted.”

“You’re not battened down yet, Bjanching. Or burned atop your pyre, if you prefer.”

“That, indeed, by Hlo-Hli, is what I would have pre-ferred.”

“Stand by that door. Grasp the lock and be ready. Delia! Stand with Merle midway between the doors. Bjanching, on my signal — and instantly, mind! Open your door!”

He started to say something, saw my face, and studious-ly grasped the bolt of the lock in his hand. I said, “Now!”

Together we flung both doors open simultaneously.

I swear I heard a shriek from the grating above the door.

Then all sounds vanished in the beast-roars from the two doors. We four cowered midway between against the wall. I gripped my length of chain, ready to fight for Delia until I was a mere bloody pulp.

From the Wizard’s door sprang a tralk on its six legs, waddling forward after that first spring, its pincers opening and closing with the clash of steel.

From my door sprang — a Manhound!

I saw that blasphemous human form contorted into the shape of a feral beast, running on all fours, with the jagged fangs glittering, the red tongue lolling. I saw that Manhound and I felt very sorry for the tralk.

Both vicious beasts saw each other at the same time. The animal roar and the quasi-human shriek blended as both hurled themselves into blinding feral action. I grabbed Delia and hurled her around the door edge and I shouted, “Hurry, Bjanching, Merle!”

For the door began to close of itself, groaning on its hinges. We barely slid through. In total darkness we groped along until a lenken door studded with iron yielded to my thrusts and we stumbled up into a court-yard surrounded by wild-beast pens.

So swift had been our departure that the guards did not yet know we had gone. I smashed a few foolish fel-lows who sought to stop us, possessed myself of a clanxer, that cutlass-like sword of the sea-faring folk, and so we ran fleetly from the courtyard slinging tunics about our-selves as we ran, sprinting for the ornately carved gate at the end of the alley. Out through the gate, with a dead Rapa, beakless in the dust, at our backs, out and along a paved road fringed by bushes with the trees beyond, out and away and—

The pain struck like a risslaca bite up my leg. I yelled. But I struggled on into the trees before I stopped to look at the cross-bow bolt through my leg. The bleeding would have to be stopped quickly; Delia very firmly stripped the bolt of its leather flight and pushed it through, then used the tunic slashed into strips and wadded to plug the wound. I’d recover; but I’d been slowed down, a burden to the others. We ran on through the forest. They ran. I hobbled, cursing foully.

The Wizard knew the way.

What with those infernal bangs on the head, and the beatings and now this Opaz-forsaken bolt through my leg, I was in vile condition. I was also, as you may imagine, in an equally vile temper.

Delia ran fleetly ahead followed by Merle and the Wizard. I thumped along after. Delia vanished. Merle screamed and tottered and fell as the Wizard crashed into her. By the time I reached the lip of the pit and looked down the disaster had struck.

“Prince!” called up Merle. She was shaking, her face distraught. “We are trapped!”

I stared down and saw my Delia lying on the packed earth of the pit with the tumbled remains of the twigs. She was unconscious. The others must have fallen on her. I saw a large part of that scarlet veil that drops over a man’s eyes, then, the scarlet veil I disavow and condemn.

I remember picking her up tenderly in my arms. I do not remember climbing down. I looked up. The walls were sheer but the handholds and footholds that had brought me down would take me up, and with Delia on my back, lashed by the strips of tunic.

I climbed. My muscles cracked, my head span, I felt the hollowness of the world within me and the weight of Kregen upon me; but I climbed out and lay on the top gasping like a stranded fish. How I had done it I did not know. I heard a crash and looked down. Both Merle and Bjanching were trying to climb out, and falling. Delia opened her eyes.

“We must run for the voller, Delia. The werstings will be on our tracks soon, if they do not use Manhounds.”

She made a face at that. She had broken no bones, for which I thanked Zair. “Where are Merle and the Wizard? I fell...”

She looked into the pit. She turned and looked at me.

“No,” I said. I thought I spoke firmly; but my voice husked. “I think of our twins, Drak and Lela. And our new twins, Segnik and Velia. They need their mother. Merle is—”

“Merle is Merle.”

“Aye. And we must go.”

There was no hesitation on my part. Merle was a nice girl, a lady of Vallia, a human being. But she was not Delia.

“Dray.”

“Let us go. The guards and the werstings—”

“Are you concerned over mere guards? And you have slain many a wersting — or so you said — in Havilfar.”

I didn’t like this. “My duty is plain. You and the chil-dren are all that concern me. You know that. There is no sin in leaving these two, no shame.” I am, after all, only a man.

“Dray, you would give your life for me. I know that. And I would do the same and you know that!”

“That is beside the point.”

“Dear heart, that is the point!”

“Sink me!” I burst out. “I’ve been hit on the head, beaten, shot through the leg, and now my own wife turns on me! By Krun! Listen! Werstings! You can tell those vicious brutes miles off.”

“Then there is little time.”

“Delia!” I said, as I started down into the pit again. “Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains!”

Somehow, and I still do not remember it all right, I got the two out. Merle had to be carried by Bjanching, a task he was not averse to, I saw. But my head roared and the ground surged under me like the deck of a swifter or a swordship and I hobbled and lurched along and only when we saw the voller on its keel beside the remains of Nath the Ash’s hut was it borne in on me that Delia had been supporting me for the last part of our flight. Nath the Ash with a huge bundle of wood on his shoulder cackled when he saw me.

“Knew you’d be back, dom! Found the bottle — all ready—”

We tumbled into the voller. If the thing did not work now we were done for. The werstings were close. I man-aged to shout.

“Clear away, Nath the Ash! You have not seen us! Else they’ll put you to the test!” Then, as he cackled and chuckled and started rummaging for the dopa bottle, I was rude.

“Schtump!” I brayed at him. “Schtump, Nath the Ash!”

He looked shattered; but he heard the werstings and he knew what those vicious hunting dogs could do, and he made off.

Delia took the voller into the air with a sure clean sweep of power that reassured me. We would make Vallia! By Zair! We would fly all the way home across the Sunset Sea, and then...

The island of Ogra-gemush vanished beneath us as we rose through the low clouds. We were leaving King Wazur and his test. The suns of Scorpio streamed their mingled glorious radiance about us. But I made myself a little promise...

Before that promise was carried out Delia and I, with a lightly-dropped hint from the emperor, sorted out the love-life of the lady Merle and that rapscallion, Vangar Riurik, the Strom of Quivir. Old Foke, the Kov of Vy-borg, found himself another sweet little lady of Vallia to make his Kovneva. So that was settled.

But for the other settlement and the fulfillment of my promise, I took an aerial fleet from Vallia and Valka, and regiments of my Valkan Archers and blade comrades, a host of fighting men, and Seg and his Bowmen of Loh and Inch and his Black Mountain Men came along for the ride, and we flew into action. Over us fluttered that brave old yellow cross on the scarlet field, that battle-flag fighting men call Old Superb. I must tell you that when my promise was fulfilled it was solely to recover a possession.

That is the truth, as Zair is my witness.

I led that host of warriors back to pay a social call on King Wazur only so as to recover the longsword Naghan the Gnat and I had made. This is true.

I would not like you to think otherwise.

At least, my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond, knows that was the true reason — whatever else may have happened whilst we were regain-ing the sword.

The Tides of Kregen