The Pandahem Cycle I

Chapter three

Chapter three

Questions for SpikaturThe corridors, sculpted from rock, trimmed with rock, arched and groined with rock, loomed grim and forbidding. The walls ran with moisture. Torches hurled sharp sparks from glittering particles embedded in the walls. The floor slimed slippery underfoot. These were dungeons.

Yet the woman Pancresta had been placed in a room furnished with some comfort, with carpets and wall hangings, with tables and chairs, and a brazier against the underground damp and chill. Her room would not have shamed a middle-class hotel.

She stood up as we entered.

Her coiled hair was neatly arranged. She wore a long blue robe, and the hems were trimmed with fur. A cheap fur, perhaps, but soft and warm. Her face was pale.

While that was natural, the paleness was more a habitual absence of high color than a result of her capture, her present predicament. This, I felt strongly.

Her face was of the long, plain, strong type, with prominent cheekbones, and a tight mouth. She had worn armor, and a sword belted around those lean hips. She would be mean in a fight, and mean elsewhere, and now she was filled with a vindictive desire to revenge herself for the death of her lover.

I said, “Mistress Pancresta?”

She inclined that hard face, and the coiled hair caught the light.

“You will not believe me, Mistress Pancresta, if I express sorrow for the deaths of your companions. But it is so. Needless death offends me.”

“Death is not needless when it is such as you who should die.”

Seg opened his mouth, and I said, and I think I surprised her, “Why?”

“Why?”

She opened her eyes fully. They were dark with pain.

“Yes. Why is it needful that I die?”

“Because you are one of the lordly ones.”

I laughed.

“I? A lordly one? You mock me, Mistress Pancresta.”

Her hard face did not flush; but her lips tightened still more.

She fairly spat out: “You are the Emperor of Vallia. That, alone, marks you for destruction.”

“As to that,” I said casually, “I’m inclined to agree with you. But that has nothing to do with death.”

She was puzzled.

“You speak in riddles.”

“No. I speak in words that will be understood by those who have the intelligence to understand.”

“Now you mock me.”

Truth to tell, true though all this was, it was of small comfort to me, knowing that I intended to shift the job of being Emperor of Vallia off onto my fine son Drak. Still, he was born to be an emperor. I had merely gained that job by my sword and by election. There were differences. And, mind you, my way may very well be the better of the two...

“I would like you to tell me what you know of Spikatur Hunting Sword.”

She smiled then, a hard and cruel smile. But I fancied there was uncertainty in it, too.

“Spikatur will sweep you and all your kind away.”

“You mean you will go around murdering all the people you don’t like?”

“No — it is not like that—”

“Then what is it like?”

“It is a Great Jikai!”[2]

I frowned. The misuse of the word Jikai does not amuse me.

“I allow there are many princes and kings in this world who would be better off out of it. But not all. And not all the ordinary folk you people murder. You are drenched in blood, and most of it is blood of innocent people.”

Now, Nedfar was a man of high principles, a man of impeccable integrity, as I knew. He had been talked to long and long before agreeing to become the Emperor of Hamal. But, for all that, he was a natural-born prince, a Prince of Kregen. Now he coughed a dry little cough and spoke firmly. “I am against the use of torture. It dismays and sickens me. But in certain cases—”

Seg said, “Careful, Emperor. Dray is sensitive on that point.”

Nedfar’s reply was brusque.

“So am I, Kov Seg. But my good friend Trylon Agrival was foully murdered the other week by these monsters. He was a man steeped in the ancient lore of the Sunset People. Why should they murder him?”

“Because,” burst out the woman, “he pried into secrets we were never meant to discover.”

Extraordinarily difficult, by Krun, to argue against beliefs of this kind!

But argue one must. At least, argue and talk and cajole. Torture — no. I’d have no part of that, and neither would Seg. And, while my regiments remained in Hamal, neither would Nedfar, comrade or no. And there spoke the voice of paranoia, loud and clear...

I said, “I have struggled against unjust authority all my life. I have been slave. I have been whipped and tortured and chained in far fouler dungeons than any you may imagine, Mistress Pancresta. I do understand so much of what Spikatur Hunting Sword originally stood for.” I used the Spikatur oath. “By Sasco! I have fought alongside the adherents of Spikatur!”

She looked surprised not so much at what I said, for that could all be a hollow shell of lies, designed to trick her, but at my use of the oath calling on Sasco.

“What do you know, fool, of Spikatur?”

So I told her what little we knew. The Spikatur Hunting Sword conspiracy had begun as a force to defeat Hamal. We believed it originated in Pandahem. It was made up of groups of people and owned no single leader.

At this she leered at me, and her voice thickened.

“This is all over now.”

Seg whistled.

I saw what she had let slip.

She, too, saw. Her lids lowered over her eyes. Her mouth clamped to a bar.

“We shall leave now, Mistress Pancresta. But we shall return. I need answers to those questions. If you know, I think it would be wise to answer.”

“We of Spikatur Hunting Sword are not afraid to die for what we believe.”

“I know,” I said, and we went out and left her alone. And then Nedfar, regal, dazzling in his robes, a prince, the Emperor of Hamal, turned at the door as the guards prepared to clang the bars shut.

“Remember, Mistress Pancresta. Dying is easy. It is of the manner of dying that you should think.”

Seg started to say as we walked up that dolorous corridor: “You wouldn’t really—” Nedfar shook his head.

“Of course not. But dark thoughts loosen tongues.” The whole scene here distressed me, because a woman was incarcerated, because we were trying to force her to reveal what she had sworn to keep hidden, because the naked face of force was being used. But remembering old Trylon Agrival did make the point. He had been a Vallian, visiting Hamal and seeking to uncover the riddles of the past. He was gentle, absorbed in his work, a man out of the run of politics. Nedfar and Agrival had struck up a firm friendship. Agrival had tended to wander off into ruins, poking and prying, trying to read the old inscriptions. Such a man was very far from the lordly ones of Kregen, rubbing the noses of the poor in the dirt.

Yet the assassins of Spikatur Hunting Sword had murdered him.

I felt that a new wave of terror would be unleashed, that this new leader the Spikatur adherents had acquired, this dark unknown, would bring down all that we had been struggling to achieve.

Once, I had seen Spikatur as a potent if suspect weapon in the struggle against Hamal. Now that weapon was being turned against the very people who had emerged successfully from the fight against Hamal — the Hamal represented by mad Empress Thyllis — and against innocent people who stood aloof from the conflict. This did make sense. But in the context of Kregen and the future we all faced in dealing with the marauding Shanks, the sense was completely overshadowed by the greater sense of mutual preservation and freedom.

“Cheer up, my old dom,” quoth Seg as we emerged into the glorious twinned rays of the Suns of Scorpio. “Now this fresh air after those dungeons gives me an appetite.”

“Capital,” I said, and off we went to find our second breakfast.

Not in the mood for one of those huge festive meals of Kregen, Seg and I bade a temporary farewell to Nedfar and took ourselves off to our private rooms. There we ate well, quaffed good Kregen tea, and discussed just what we planned to do.

As usual, Seg took up the latest stave on which he was practicing his magic. In due time that stave would become a superb bowstave. There is, as I have said before and will no doubt say again, no finer archer in all Kregen than Seg Segutorio. His face was intent as he worked.

“And you plan to take off, leave all this high life, tramp off into the wilderness?”

“If fate takes me that way. Otherwise, I plan a little jaunt to a few places I know where one may come by some action, a few drinks, good food and a lot of laughs—”

“You will go alone?”

“Only if you elect not to come.”

He looked up quickly, and the fey blueness of his eyes struck like daggered lightning through a black overcast. He smiled. He gave the stave a tremendous buffet so that it spun around and around.

“The elections have just taken place,” he said.

So that was all right.

Then whiskery Rubin stuck his head around the door and bellowed.

Rubin, incidentally, like so many of my old swods, was a Zan Deldar and would, at his own request, remain so. Not for him the escalation of the dizzy heights. He could become a Hikdar, the next rank up, at once, should he so wish. It would not be long before he was a Jiktar. It would take a little longer, a matter of a decade, if no one got massacred too recklessly, before he made Chuktar. But for whiskery Rubin, being a Deldar, and a Zan Deldar, the top of the tree at that, was ambition, reward and pleasure enough.

“Majister! Hamdi the Yenakker craves audience.”

“Show him in, Rubin, please.” I glanced across sharply. “You have been on duty a long time.”

“Aye, majister. Standing in for young Long Wil, who has a twisted shoulder.”

“Oh?”

Rubin looked evasive. The magnificence of his uniform was entirely superficial. All the gold and braids and feathers would not interfere with his sword arm. But he did look splendid. His medals — the bobs — on his chest glittered.

“Fell, majister, twisted his shoulder.”

Far be it from me to inquire further. But, just to be devilish and to let my swods know I wasn’t senile yet, I walked across, digging out a gold zan-deldy piece. This I placed in the horny palm of Rubin.

“Puggled, winner or loser. You will know, Zan Deldar Rubin, who deserves this acknowledgment from me.”

“Aye, majister, may the glory of Opaz shine on us all.”

He stiffened up into attention. On Kregen it could not be ramrod attention; but he stiffened up as straight as one of Seg’s best shafts. His face, brown and lined and like a chunk of that hard stone they can never seem to break under a year’s hard labor in distant Shalasfreel, betrayed nothing. If Long Wil had been in a fight, his comrades would see to it that the deserving of the combatants received the gold. And ten gold pieces, in one zan-deldy coin, was a matter of consideration. I did not think Long Wil had fallen down drunk. That behavior tended to exclude folk from the ranks of my various guard units.

As Hamdi the Yenakker sidled in, I reflected that this little aside with Rubin was not unimportant. Of little incidents like this was the trust between commander and men forged, for there was nothing here of the insulting patronage of handing out money as largesse without reason beyond the buying of men’s loyalty. My men and I swore our mutual loyalties by the edge of the sword.

“Well, Hamdi?”

“Majister. She is the woman I warned you of.”

“So I gathered. This Pancresta. Sit down and take a glass. What else have you learned?”

“She is from Pandahem. From south. I do not trust her. But she asks for an audience with you, majister.”

“Does she? Well, Hamdi, you rogue, as you well know I do not trust you. Oh, we have done business in the past. But mayhap this time... Who knows?”

Hamdi looked hurt. He was still the same tall and upright fellow, carrying himself with a swagger, now sworn to all things Vallian after our victory over mad Empress Thyllis. But he understood we knew he was a rogue. I feel that upset him only in that he felt less free to practice his wiles. Well, nothing much need be said about Hamdi the Yenakker. He sold us information. He provided contacts. He had his uses.

And, so far, he had not betrayed us.

“Have I not served you well, majister? Was it not I who took you and Kov Seg here to The Crushed Toad to meet Nath the Dwa? Have I not provided you with trustworthy information? Did I not save the life of young Strom Nomius?”

“Aye, Hamdi, you did warn us in time to prevent his assassination. But to the matter of the woman—”

“Yes, majister. I think she wishes to trick you by giving you false information.” He stood up for himself. “Unlike me.”

Seg said, “I could wish Deb-Lu or Khe-Hi were here.”

“Aye.”

Had our two comrades who were Wizards of Loh been available on hand, they might well have riddled out if Pancresta spoke the truth. As it was, the Wizards were about their own business.

Then Hamdi said, “Has... pressure... been exerted on the woman, majister?”

“No,” I said. His look was sly, understanding, a tilt to his head and a sidelong glance conveying what he was hinting at. “Nothing like that, and nothing like that will be permitted while Kov Seg or myself remain in command.”

“Well, majister, something made her wish to talk.”

I would not open out on a speculation on the results of Nedfar’s threat. I said, “It is probably as you say. She wishes to trick us. I will see her.”

Hamdi screwed up his eyes.

“There is one thing—”

“Yes?”

“—She insists that she meet you privately, in the open, away from spying eyes.”

Carefully, Seg said, “Can she insist?”

“She was, kov, most insistent.”

“She must be afraid of others of Spikatur. If she sells them, they will surely seek to kill her.”

“That is right,” I said. “But it suggests there are loopholes in the security here.”

“It is all Hamalese, now, apart from this wing of the palace.”

“All right.” One woman, alone, deserved her fair chance of life. “I’ll see her as she wishes.”

“1 shall arrange it, majister.”

Hamdi rose, finishing his glass of parclear, and bowed. I let him. He put store by these things. When he had gone, Seg said, “All right, Dray. So you meet her and some hidden stikitche puts a shaft through your back.”

“So I shall wear a breast and back.”

“If it was me, I’d put one through whatever of you was unarmored. That’d be your vosk-skull of a head.”

“Most assassins are not as good shots as you.”

“Any stikitche worth contracting could hit your head.”

The point of this wrangle was perfectly clear. Seg wanted to come along, too. I did not say him nay.

There was time to see Ortyg ham Hundral, Pallan of Buildings, and to join with him in gleeful contemplation of the plans of the Temple of Havil in Splendor. I had only one fleeting thought at the oddness of this. Not so long ago I’d have been straining every nerve to destroy every damned temple erected to Havil the Green.

Times change, by Zair!

When Hamdi the Yenakker reported back the location chosen for the meeting with Pancresta, I own to an odd feeling of the rightness of the choice.

The bloodiness of the Arena in Ruathytu was notorious throughout the length and breadth of the continent of Havilfar. I had not fought there at that time, although the ways of the Star Lords are passing strange and beyond the full comprehension of mortal men; but I had fought in the Arena of Huringa in Hyrklana. Along with many others, I had set my face against the idea of the Jikhorkdun, the Arena, the killing machinery of deadly games on the silver sand.

In the Great Arena, here in Ruathytu, the arch devil Phu-Si-Yantong, that infamous Wizard of Loh, had made his last stand, his final resistance, until blown away in the Quern of Gramarye fashioned by our comrade Wizards of Loh.

Since that awful occurrence, the place had not been popular, we had done all we could to discourage attendance, and the other smaller Jikhorkduns had reopened to patronage we deplored. So the Great Arena lay deserted under the Suns, and the silver sand sparkled unmarked by the tramp of booted feet, the rush of talons, the sprinkle of shed blood.

Here, out on the silver sand, Pancresta chose to meet us and tell us the secrets of Spikatur Hunting Sword.