The Balintol Cycle II

Chapter two

Chapter twoI, Dray Prescot, Vovedeer, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, faced by seven thieves brandishing knives would, in normal circumstances, have been merely inconvenienced. Now, though, there was young Veda to consider. Where was the girl?

The cut over her left breast which we’d staunched with underclothes continued to trouble me. I felt we’d been lucky the bleeding had not started again in all our exertions. Veda needed the attentions of a Puncture Lady, and the quicker the sooner, by Vox!

Larghos Deft-fingers in his cunning polsim way started off the attack bravely enough. Then he drew back slightly to allow a Rapa, all bristle greeny feathers, to get at me. At his side another Rapa who could have been the first’s twin joined in. A third Rapa tried to edge around to stab me in the flank.

This, I felt, was no occasion for the Krozair brand. So I drew my drexer.

The first two Rapas looked most astonished not to say shocked when with a twinkle the blade lay flat alongside their beaks. What was going on in the dance hall must be highly entertaining, for the racket bloomed to the roof. The deep ominous baying continued, so I surmised the bloodhounds were still on their leashes and were snuffling their way through the crowds. The dancers must be flying off every which way, by Krun!

The third Rapa essayed his attack so I skipped aside, leaving him short, and hit a largish polsim over the head. This fellow fell down all tangled up with Larghos Deft-fingers. The two Rapas on the floor slumbered and their fellow, having missed his first onslaught, checked. There should be two polsims left to deal with.

There was only one standing. As I swung towards him he fell down. He tumbled down atop of the polsim who should have been helping him. I looked — and I gaped.

Veda held a bottle in each hand. Her face flushed rosy through her pale skin. She looked cross.

“Do you always get into scrapes, jikai?”

“Uh—” I started and then leaped and so brought down the hesitating Rapa.

Veda looked at Larghos Deft-fingers.

“This the blintz?”

Before I could answer Larghos fell to his knees and clasped his hands before his face in the attitude of prayer.

“Master! Mistress! Please—”

Well, yes, the recumbent bodies bore some resemblance to the aftermath of a battle. Veda gave him a smart kick. She wore new shoes. The rest of her outfit was new, a decorous deep blue tunic and skirt.

“The bloodhounds,” she snapped out. “Come on!”

The bloodhounds had not yet started in to snarling, so there was time. In addition, as was to be expected, a flood of refugees from the ruined dance poured towards the exit. What they thought of the unconscious bodies scattered about I’d no idea. Veda and I were swept away in the rout.

I call these tracker dogs bloodhounds because that is what their name is in Kregish. They are not, however, a lot like Earthly bloodhounds having six legs and fangs rather longer than shorter. They’ll track the scent of your clothes and when they grip their choppers into your rump, well, then, dom, you stay gripped.

When I’d grabbed the outfit for Veda from the temple dressing room I’d snatched up various garments from different pegs. Now I saw that had been a mistake. The owners had identified their missing clothes, the dogs had sniffed the rest of the outfit, and set off on our scent, baying. None of my clothes had been left. Now Veda was freshly dressed we had a chance to make good our escape.

So, together with the panic-stricken dancers, we fled.

Out in the street we all rushed. It was quite warm and so far the rain had not started. The girls in their fancy, scanty dancing costumes shouldn’t suffer from the weather. Veda, of course, had picked an outdoor suit, and very fine she looked in it, too.

Every which way everybody ran and soon we were able to slip off into a side street and so free ourselves of the panic-stricken herd.

The Maiden with the Many Smiles rose about then and shone her pinkish light down refulgently. We walked quietly on through pink-tinged shadows.

“What did you do with the clothes?”

“Buried them in the vosk swill.”

“Ah!”

So that piece of forward thinking had been what had delayed her. This Veda, of whom I knew nothing, was proving to be a lady of parts.

Mind you, there was no way of telling just how good the Dokerty bloodhounds were at following a scent. If Veda’s blood was in their nostrils we were still in danger. Not for the first time in my hectic career on Kregen I wished for the impossible — like, for instance, right now, the ability to shed all betraying scents and possess the power of invisibility. Still, all that was for the fairy stories they told kiddies in the nursery.

In addition, and this may sound ridiculously backhanded, to have powers of that order would make adventuring remarkably dull, by Krun!

The costume Veda had borrowed from Nalgre Froi’s Deren stood no comparison with the sumptuous outfit we’d liberated from the temple disrobing room. Mind you, she had put on a skirt which reached down to her knees. Instead of a voluminous cloak she’d flung a dark green cape about her shoulders on brass cords, and now she pushed the hood back so that the Maiden with the Many Smiles lit up her flaxen hair to smokey-gold. Oh, yes, a splendid woman, Veda!

She tilted her face up to me. “There is nowhere safe in the city I may go.”

Like the onker I am, I blurted out: “But I thought you were running to friends—”

She shook her head. “No.”

By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno! My lips clamped shut. “Sink me!” I snarled to myself. “So that plan is shot into tiny little pieces.”

Therefore, a fresh plan was called for, and needed in a hurry.

Obviously there was one place I could go and be perfectly safe. Veda would be safe there, too — unless the regent C’Chermina wanted to bring an overseas war to add to the wars she intended to foment in Balintol. Mind you, with these damned ibmanzies of her Dokerty-loving chief priest to call on, the crazed woman might not shrink from challenging a powerful empire.

If she did that, why, then, what of my obedience to the desires of the Star Lords to unite Balintol? Not only would I have failed in that, I’d have spread the conflagration over a much wider area. By the Black Chunkrah! What a moil for a simple sailorman!

A piquant thought struck me. My Val! Suppose I did!

After my recent highly unsavory interview with the lady Quensella when her passion had overwhelmed her sensibilities, suppose I turned up bringing with me a beautiful girl! What would be Quensella’s reaction? Anger, resentment, the overpowering feeling of being rejected for another woman? Nothing I could say would convince her of anything other than that I had scorned her for another.

And, by Krun, we all know what hath no fury compared with that!

So therefore it seemed there was nothing else for it but to go and see Elten Naghan Vindo. My cover name was Varghan na Vernheim, and I did not particularly want young Veda to know that.

Veda asked just the once about our destination and I simply said that we were going to see a friend I’d recently made in the city and who, I hoped, would help us. We walked along more silent than not. When we arrived, even though we went in the back way she could quite plainly see this was the Vallian Embassy.

She gave me a quick upward glance. “You have — interesting — friends, Drajak the Sudden.”

“I just hope he’ll help us.”

I was not going to tell her that Elten Naghan would jump through flaming hoops to assist me, for was I not Dray Prescot, once Emperor of Vallia, and now Emperor of Emperors, Emperor of All Paz?

That title and conception, which I continued to find ridiculous, was quite clearly not going to be easily accepted by quite a lot of people. Right now, it was not being accepted by the regent, the lady C’Chermina. Mind you, who could blame her? How would you like some foreigner strutting in and telling you he was going to become your overlord? Or her, for that matter. Oh, no, by the distended belly and swollen thighs of the Divine Madam of Belschutz! Tsleetha tsleethi, softly softly, as they say, to persuade great and puissant lords that for the good of Paz they had to unite.

Speaking the name of Varghan na Vernheim so that Veda could not hear, and then ushering her into the hall and through to the ambassador’s private apartments, gave me the opportunity of putting my finger to my lips as the Elten received us, smiling. He understood at once.

“Lahal. I am glad to see you — Horter Drajak.”

“Lahal. And I you, notor. May I introduce this lady, Veda, who is in immediate need of a Puncture Lady.”

In very short order after that Veda was carted off into a bedroom where a Hytak woman of extreme competence, Suzy the Surcease, shooed we mere men out. “She’ll be as bright as the celene in the morning,” Suzy said in her brisk way. “Now let me stick some needles in her and clean up the cuts.” Out, therefore, we trailed.

Closeted with Naghan Vindo and with a good wine in my fist I told him what I knew of Veda. Unlike many of the splendid young women I’d met in my adventures upon Kregen, she couldn’t be affectionately called ‘that young madam’ or ‘that little lady’. There was in her a core of seriousness, of gravity. She did smile — from time to time.

Naghan confirmed that she would be kept safely in the embassy until between us we sorted out what would be best for her future. Then I turned in, and, as always, my last thought before sleep was exceedingly sweet.

Because of my dip in the Sacred Pool in far Aphrasöe wounds healed with phenomenal speed without leaving the trace of a scar. The next morning, rested and bandaged up, Veda surprised me by her recovery rate. She ate an enormous first breakfast and we finished as ever with luscious palines. They, alone, revived the weary.

Gently, I put certain questions, and gradually her story came out. Her name began with a Double — V’Veda — and went on for a mouthful of syllables before ending in charran. She’d been born in Kildrin, where her father was a priest of Aaran and her mother a priestess. Aaran, I gathered, was a small and select religion of the utmost dedication. Her childhood had been severe, unpleasant, rigidly disciplined. She had eight brothers, four sets of twins, and she’d come along right in the middle. As a lone girl in a family of boys her upbringing had been a rough and tumble struggle to survive. Sitting quietly, slightly bent forward with her hands clasped between her knees, she spoke composedly. She had been beaten by her father far too frequently.

One day she suffered a beating far worse than anything she had experienced before and so she had run away.

“I wasn’t even naughty. My brothers and I were working with the other boys and my dress fell off.”

The fact was perfectly plain that as she grew up she had no idea her body was developing into dazzling beauty.

“So I ran away. I should have run away before. I was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of a lady going to join the Jikai Vuvushis of Kildrin.”

Of course, other countries of Kregen besides Vallia had their sororities of War Women, Battle Maidens.

Veda had learned well, as I could testify by her spirited actions during our hectic if brief acquaintance. The trouble was, the disciplined lifestyle reminded her too much of her miserable childhood. Then she fell in with Dokerty.

As she told me, with a sigh, the revelation was magical. Here was a religion so vastly different from that in which she had been brought up, so libertarian in its beliefs, so free in its actions, that she had plunged in head over heels. She had become a devoted Dokerty disciple.

Caneldrin offered a place where she could start afresh. Her devotion and dedication had elevated her rapidly through the lower ranks and she had been selected for special training. She was recruited into what became the ibmanzy programme.

Then the man she referred to as His Highness turned lustful eyes upon her. The result of her scornful rejection brought her to the condition in which I’d met her — a victim of the ibmanzy programme.

Her lips twisted. “At home they called me Veda the Mazarnil.” That is to say, Veda the Unruly. “I lived up to my name, to my great misfortune, until you came along, Drajak the Sudden.”

“I am glad I was able,” I said, uncomfortably.

“Very able.” She essayed one of her rare smiles. “Oh, yes, you carry weapons like his, and ape his ways and sayings, and carry it off very well; but you’re no Dray Prescot.”

My harsh old wine spout remained very firmly shut.

By all the devils in a Herrelldrin Hell! The many books and plays and puppet shows and songs about Dray Prescot got everywhere in Paz these days! I scooped up a handful of palines and placed — not popped — the luscious yellow berries one at a time into my mouth, for I didn’t trust myself to say anything at that precise moment.

How could a simple sailorman like me live up to the inflated legend of the Dray Prescot festering in the credulous minds of all the folk who believed implicitly in the fantastic stories of his prowess?

This line of conversation had to be terminated, and terminated at once. Far more importantly, the fascinating prospect of what young Veda could reveal of the ibmanzy project tantalized me with expectation. By Vox! She’d been at the heart of the damned business, assistant to this bastard called His Highness. He was marked down in what can euphemistically be dubbed my little black book.

Very little in the way of subtle questioning was needed to start the Mazarnil telling me what she knew.

As she began to speak the ambassador came in carrying a book. He sat quietly in a chair in the comfortable sitting room placed at our disposal, listening intently.

Religion is a relentless taskmaster. Many incredible acts have been performed in the service of one religion or another. Belief can move mountains. Here we had the case of belief in the existence of a pantheon of demons actually bringing them into existence. By whatever means they made the journey from their occult other realm to Kregen, make that awful leap they did.

Whilst remaining unconvinced they were real demons of the devilish persuasion within the occult, I had to accept that they did exist once they’d taken over the body of a human being. Let loose over Kregen they would become a scourge.

From what I’d already witnessed I knew the pathway was opened by inflicting intolerable pain upon the subject. His own ib, his spirit, was suffused by demonic forces from whatever dark realm they spawned, grew, bloated, became an ibmanzy.

When that bastard called His Highness leveled the symbol of the two upflung wings at the victim, and shouted: ‘Dokomek!’ in the voice of command, the ibmanzy took over.

What I wanted to know from Veda was how that command would reach the ibmanzies when they were scattered throughout Balintol.

“Dokerty,” she told us in a tight, controlled voice, “is the great god. Oltomek is his hand upon the face of Kregen.”

She hesitated, and then went on in so low a voice we leaned closer. “I have seen what I did not see, what I did not want to see. I now wish I had never met with Dokerty. I see clearly now, now it is too late. Regrets—”

“The thing now is, Veda the Unruly,” I said, “regrets are useless baggage in life. We have to find a way to halt this monstrous project, and you’re the only one who can help us.”

“Yes.”

She admitted she was not fully aware of all the processes. I felt alarmed dismay at this. The method once she explained it was mind-bogglingly obvious, logical, and dazzlingly simple — in hindsight.

Belief.

“There is concealed in the winged symbol, the Flutubium,” she said in that small voice, “a thing sacred to Dokerty. It is said to have been sent down from Dokerty himself by the hand of Oltomek to the first high priest when Dokerty revealed himself to Kregen. These things are kept secret. They are known to few.”

“What is it, Veda?”

“A Prism of Power.”

Well, now. Belief in the powers of the god and his prophet channeled through the Prism of Power — that, then, was the answer. People of Kregen believed in their wizards, for they could see what marvels the sorcerers wrought. That was belief. Religious belief, too, could work miracles. Oltomek would carry the messages across the world to turn ordinary young men and women into monsters.

We all sat silent for some time. I could feel in the atmosphere in the room an oppressive closeness, an unpleasant reminder of the claustrophobic pressure within the temple to Dokerty.

Finally, Naghan Vindo stirred. He tugged his little goatee, and the book fell from his lap onto the carpet. He picked it up. The gaudy cover blazed the title Dray Prescot and the Castle of Doom. I winced.

“What, then,” said the ambassador, “is to be done about these devilish ibmanzies?”

Veda looked up, and then pointed a rigid forefinger at the book.

“I do not know. But if he were here, Dray Prescot would know what to do, and go out and do it!”