The Krozair Cycle

“Wizard of Scorpio”-2

Those two glorious suns of Scorpio, the red and the green of Antares, sank into the ocean and those constella-tions so strange and yet so familiar to me burned over-head. Soon Kregen’s first moon appeared, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, casting down her fuzzy pink and golden light, and I could make out the distant glitter of light that was the voller I pursued.

There was no gaining on the distance; the two fliers were matched for speed. I cursed and raved, was deathly quiet, fingered my rapier and left-hand dagger, smashed at the control levers, and cursed again. We bore on through the moon-drenched night over Kregen, the wind in my face.

The time passed away and still no impression could be made on the gap and Kregen’s fourth moon, She of the Veils, rose and added to the light so that I could see that damned flier ahead with all the tantalizing clarity of the untouchable. My Delia must be aboard, alive, vibrant, and I would reach her! I would!

If we persisted in this course long enough we would reach the Hoboling Islands that fringe the northern tip of the continent of Loh. Viridia the Render would be some-where ahead of me, pirating away among the islands. There were other isolated islands I did not know well to the east of the Hobolings. And, long before dawn, the flier ahead began to slant down to a black mass sparsely speckled with lights upon the face of the sea.

We had flown a long way, for they were both fast vol-lers; I felt keyed up to fighting pitch as I gently eased the levers and sent my craft hurtling down in pursuit.

The voller did not malfunction as so many vollers still do on Kregen; it was all the fault of my own i***t self. The craft ahead plunged down towards a grouping of lights. Glimpses of stone walls and domes and towers, all pink and golden beneath the moons, rolled away beneath. Clouds banked ahead, visible by their blackness and the absence of stars. The voller plunged through them and I followed. The lights vanished. I was hurtling through darkness as pitchy as the cloak of Notor Zan. Wind tugged at me and I did not see but rather felt the embracing mass of trees ahead and sought to lift the voller and she rose, rose a fraction, rose to crash rendingly through the bristly branches of thick-trunked trees.

Then the real cloak of Notor Zan enveloped me and I span away into blackness.

* * * *

“You’re all right, dom. Just a crack on the head.” The voice whispered to me over the shushing of an invisible sea. “By Opaz! You must have a head like a vosk skull!”

I opened my eyes. Pain clawed at my head and I put my fingers up, into my brown hair; they probed and felt no wound, they came away without blood. But my head rang with all those famous Bells of Beng Kishi.

About me the darkling forest rustled gently in the night wind. I lay on a rough pallet of branches with leaves for mattress and pillow. The little fellow peering down at me in the light of the Moons was apim, a homo sapiens like me, with bristly light brown hair and a nutcracker face and rags for clothes all liberally smeared with ash. I could guess what he was without trouble, and as I lifted myself on an arm, wincing, he helped me up, chattering away the while. Clearly, having a stranger fall on him was a novelty.

“It seems your hut has been demolished, dom.”

He cackled at this, finding it amusing. The hut of withes and sods had been as neatly cracked as a loloo’s egg under a spoon. Moonlight sifted down between the leaves. His snaggle teeth showed raggedly in his gash-grin, his lips wide in the pleasure he took in having his hut squashed by a voller.

“Soon build another. You are all right? Got a bottle of dopa here, somewhere...”

He rattled on. He was Nath the Ash, a charcoal burn-er, and the evidences of his craft stood about in clearings between the trees. Charcoal burning is a highly skilled task. The neatly cut logs, first in their tripod shape, then in the triangular interleaving up to a man’s height, and then the careful stacking of thick and thin logs into the pile and the packing with clay and sods, demand concen-tration. The actual burning for a day and a night or so, depending on size, and the putting out of the fire, are matters of high art within the craft.

I said, “Did you see another flier?”

“Aye, dom, aye.” He bustled about trying to find the dopa. I hadn’t the heart to tell him I wouldn’t touch the stuff. “Went across so low afore you came down.” He chuckled, highly amused. He would move to another spot for wood and make another hut there, anyway, so he had suffered no real loss. “Went down over in the ruins.”

“Ruins?” I licked my lips. Perhaps just a sip... “Where is this, by Vox!”

“Why, dom, this is Ogra-gemush—”

“I know it. King Wazur — he grows fat from the chem-zite quarries and—”

“Aye,” chuckled Nath the Ash, throwing broken sticks and mangled sods about and still not finding the dopa. “And what he makes out o’ trading with the renders. I know!”

“Where away are these ruins?”

He pointed without looking, still searching for the dopa, a fiery drink calculated to make a man fighting drunk in no time. I padded off towards the flier. The thing had been punctured and splintered and stood now on its nose half leaning against the wreck of the hut. It might fly again. I took out the longsword and strapped it to my back. Then I said, “Thank you for your hospitality, Nath. Remberee.”

He jerked up like a steel trap unspringing. “Hey, hey!” he called after me. “Here it is!” He was still waving the dopa bottle over his bristly head the last time I looked back in that mingled flood of pink and gold moonlight.

I knew of this King Wazur of Ogra-gemush but had never met him. We in Vallia had bought a consignment of chemzite, for the mines here produce a marvelous yellow-tawny tinged stone, much prized. Also I knew he was the provider of one of the entrepots in which the pirates dis-posed of their gains. He was a rich man and although his island kingdom might be small, he would have many hired mercenaries. Why had his men taken the voller with the lady Merle and my Delia aboard? I felt the longsword on my back and I plunged recklessly through the forest until the jagged columns and shattered stones of the ruins glimmered palely before me, the crumbled outlines fes-tooned with vines, the light of the moons pallid upon this wreck of time.

Strange blossoms clustered thickly upon the vines, wax-like blooms glimmering palely under the moons like en-twined ropes of severed heads. The silence hung about these ruins as though undisturbed since the sunset people passed by. I padded silent as a hunting leem along the broad broken avenues, looking past the corpse-like rem-nants of buildings, peering into every pink shadow, wary in case real leems should be lurking ready to pounce with their deadly wedge-shaped heads gaping vicious fangs at my back. I did not tarry overlong in any part but pressed on to where what had once been a domed and towered palace hung now in time-blasted wreckage against the face of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. She was almost gone. Soon the twin suns would rise. She of the Veils would float for a few burs in the daytime sky, a sign and an omen. I heard nothing as I passed along, and yet that intense prickly feeling of a presence, intangible, manifest, unseen, made my fingers itch.

An abrupt and unexpected noise made me swing about, the longsword scraping from the scabbard at my back. The moons light struck along the blade, turning it pink-gold. The noise c*****d again, much like the sound of leathern armor striking against stone. In the shadows, I waited, fierce, predatory, more vicious than any of the wild beasts of Kregen, for I could not wait long.

I could see no movement. The sounds ceased. With a muffled Makki-Grodno oath I glided swiftly from the shadows and over the last steps across a shattered paving into the black archway. The archway led into gloom as deep as Cottmer’s Caverns. I halted and turned. Now I was looking out onto the moon-drenched shadows of the paving. If anything followed me I would see. Nothing moved. There was no sign of the flier; there was nothing here for me. If I had to search until all the Ice Floes of Sicce melted into the fires I would search; I would never give up my Delia, my Delia of Delphond.

If this ancient ruin was indeed a city then I would search every smashed alley, every ruined street. I stuck the longsword back into the scabbard and put my foot out into the moonlight — and froze.

A whisper ghosted at my back.

I whirled.

Against the darkness I could see the moon reflections striking from the long slender blade of a rapier — a rapier darting directly for my heart!

Even as I swayed aside my own rapier leaped into my fist and the blades scraped and rang as I parried that treacherous blow. Instantly I was engaged with an un-seen adversary, fighting for my life.

My dagger parried the next successive flurries. Who-ever the attacker might be, and still I could not make him out in the gloom, he was good. Unless he wore a black mask, he must be a black man, probably from Xuntal. Now his main gauche caught my thrust and twisted, and I leaped back and flashed a feinting stroke and so cut with my own blade. I knew I had him. I have some reputation as a swordsman; now was no time for fancy work. Now was a time for speed and more speed, so that I might seek for the flier and my Delia.

The cut missed.

Without a curse to slow me down I dazzled a succes-sion of passades, took his blade and thrust him through.

The rapier licked back, bright and clean; I felt no shock of bodily encounter. The two blades against my two continued to lick in and out and seek to spit me through the guts. I had to hop and skip with great cunning and fury. I circled on the cracked stone, working my way around. Now I would have this fellow with his uncanny swordplay silhouetted against the light of the moon. He was very good for he had avoided a cut and a thrust I had thought lethal. Perhaps, here in this moon-shot darkness on the isle of Ogra-gemush, I had at last met my match and was about to die. I would not let that happen. I would fight until they screwed me down, and then I’d as lief shove the coffin lid up for a last go at them all.

Around him I circled and so brought the bladesman fronting me with his back to the arched opening and the moon-light dappled shadows outside.

I let out a furious yell. Yes, I shouted — in anger, in fear, in panic — I shouted. “By Zim-Zair!” I bellowed. “There’s only one way to deal with you!”

And, skipping back out of arm’s reach, I threw down the rapier and dagger so that they rang and bounced on the stone.

For — against that silhouetting light showed only the rapier and dagger of my opponent. No living hand wielded those blades! They hung unsupported in mid air. Moving by some uncanny power they went through all the motions of swordsmanship and had rung and scraped against my blades, and yet no mortal hands grasped them, no flesh and blood urged them in cunning combat. No wonder my blade had passed so easily through nothing!

Out came the longsword, ripped from the scabbard over my back. This was not a true Krozair longsword; but it had been forged in cunning and beauty by Naghan the Gnat and me in the smithy of Esser Rarioch, and was a true blade. This was the blade with which I had led on my aerial troops to victory in the Battle of Jholaix. I did not waste time.