Secret Scorpio

Sixteen

Now began a period of my life on Kregen that, even now, looking back, I cannot decide if I should curse horribly over it or simply stand with my fists on my hips and roar with laughter. It was all a great foolishness. I made my way by the dusty roads northwestward. When it rained in a lashing gale of Kregen that drenched everything and everyone the roads turned to a quagmire and it was useless to attempt to flounder on. Then I sought sanctuary. After leaving Natyzha Famphreon’s house where we had hatched intrigues against the emperor, I had called again at our villa in Vondium — the Valkan villa owned by Delia and myself — and besides having a long and glorious bath, taking the full Baths of the Nine, I equipped myself a little more lavishly for the journey.

The villa did not see us all that often, for we stayed at the emperor’s command in the wing of the palace given over to our use. But everything was ready, as it was bound to be. So I took a strong preysany loaded with supplies, with a harness or two of armor, spare weapons, provisions. Also I packed the old brown blanket cloak and the bamboo stick with the concealed blade. That had served before; it might serve again.

During the ride north to Seg’s estates of Falinur I was embroiled only in four small skirmishes and rode for my life only once, preferring that to fighting the stinking pack of drikingers who howled hairily at me from the roadside and hurled stones and spears and would have skewered me through had I not ducked and clapped in spurs.

This kind of flight was a different matter from running from one’s foes. These poor devils might be evil in the eyes of honest folk, but all in good time my plans called for the alleviation of the conditions that created bandits, if it could be contrived, rather than for the removal of the drikingers themselves. The zorca-ride jolted up the old liver, as I had said. I am fond of the canals and the canalfolk of Vallia, but somehow this canter through the heart of Vallia seemed more in keeping. The canal folk are a staunchly independent lot, and the men and women of the cuts do not call themselves koters and koteras as do the gentry of Vallia; they are vens and venas. But as I passed through the green countryside I would stop at bridges over the canals and talk and spend some time, for I was maturing plans and had no wish to rush. After all, I was not hurrying to a rendezvous with Delia. A strong eastward swing was advisable toward the north of Vindelka for the Ocher Limits thrust a tongue-like protrusion between that province and Seg’s Falinur to the north. I made no attempt to revisit either of the Delkas, and decided firmly against a sentimental side trip to the Dragon’s Bones. All through this central portion of the island large lakes are to be found, with the Great River twining through, and the canals boring on with man’s ingenuity at work to maintain the levels by lock and lift. So I trotted on and entered the Kovnate of Falinur and at once I saw what Seg meant about the demeanor of his people.

They did not offer hostility, although they did not know who I was, and when I put up at an inn and told them my name was Kadar the Hammer they merely sniffed and took no more than the usual notice of a stranger one expects. But the undercurrents were strong. As a simple smith, for that is what they took me to be, out seeking some gainful employment, I posed only the threat of any itinerant labor to the homegrown product. But a laughing group of koters passed, tyrs and kyrs and even a strom, and these gentry aroused dark hidden looks of anger and envy. Falinur, as Seg had said, was like to erupt in violence at any moment.

These people had backed their late kov against the emperor with the third party and had lost. So why should that still rankle? Perhaps, for I did not bring the precise subject up, perhaps it was not that which was causing their hostility to Seg. Whatever it was, we had to put it aright by fair means. Any other way would be as abhorrent to Seg as to myself. Anyway, with tough independent people as are most Vallians, brutal repression would repercuss with a vengeance.

A shrunken little fellow with one eye and swathed in furs against an imagined cold gave me a portion of the answer. He rode a hirvel and led a long string of calsanys, all loaded down with trinkets that this ob-Eye Enil hawked from village to village. We rode together for a space, and I listened.

“Aye, Kadar the Hammer! You may well ask. We ride through Vinnur’s Garden here and the land is rich.” His one eye swiveled alarmingly to regard me with cunning. “And where the land is rich, there, by Beng Drangil, men will fight and kill for it.”

The Great River which bordered Falinur’s eastern flank made a kinked loop to the east here on the border between Falinur and Vindelka. The Ocher Limits ended to the west. In the fertile area of Vinnur’s Garden riches could be won by agriculture on the fertile eastern sections by mining on the more barren western. The border between the two kovnates ran to the north of Vinnur’s Garden. The people living there had been under the rule of both Vindelka and Falinur at differing times. Now Vindelka demanded their loyalty, and their taxes. But many folk north and south of the border wished that dividing line to be redrawn much farther to the south, cutting off Vinnur’s Garden from Vindelka and giving it to Falinur. It was scarcely necessary for Ob-Eye to say, “But the new kov of Falinur, this Seg Segutorio whose past is a mystery, refuses to countenance any move against Vindelka.”

Ob-Eye wandered the central portions of Vallia, and although he confided that he had been born in Ovvend, he could look upon these squabbles with the single eye of the interested observer. I knew why Seg would not allow his people to go raiding down into Vinnur’s Garden, why he made no move to annex the place from the Kov of Vindelka. For this Kov of Vindelka was Vomanus, a good comrade to Seg and me, and we had fought at that immortal battle at the Dragon’s Bones. But I sensed this did not explain all the hostility to Seg and Thelda. As we rode north and left the parochial problem of Valinur’s Garden to the rear, still the impression I received was one of implacable hatred to the Kov of Falinur. I own I was put out by this, upset, angry and baffled. There were slaves still in Falinur, though there were not many. And I gained some more insight. Acting not just because it was my way but from honest conviction, Seg had given orders that from henceforth no slaves would be allowed in his kovnate. He was obeyed surlily and his edict was broken more and more often, for all that his guards rode to stamp out the evil. One consequence of the abolition of slavery, in intention if not yet in fact, was the resurgence of the slavers who preyed where pickings were ripest. This added another strand; it still did not explain it all. So, taking the chunkrah by the horns, I began direct questions about the Black Feathers.

The answers Ob-Bye gave me filled in about another fifty percent of the problem. Yes, there were temples and priests and traveling churches spreading the great word and, by Beng Drangil, the great day is coming, the Black Day, and in that day will the Great Chyyan reward all his loyal followers! Thus spake Ob-Eye Enil, swearing by Beng Drangil, the patron saint of hawkers. This was no fantasy. This was stark reality. As I jogged along toward Seg’s kovnate capital city of Falanriel, a place which, despite its architecture, I always looked forward to visiting, I realized more and more the hold the Chyyanists had on these people.

On a day when the suns broke through scattered clouds and the joy of living should have burst all worries — and, sadly, did not — we trotted through a ferny dell. With horrid shrieks designed to chill us, the drikingers leaped from the ferns, waving their clanxers and rapiers and spears, roaring at us to surrender or be chopped.

With a curse I ripped out the clanxer scabbarded to Twitchnose. A smith may carry samples of his wares. If it came to it I’d use the longsword on them.

Then I checked. The bandits closed up around us, fierce, hairy men with thickly bearded faces and bright merry eyes, darting the points of their weapons at us. But Ob-Eye pulled out a leather wallet from his loose tunic, opened it, waved a scrap of black feather in the air.

“Peace, brothers!” he squeaked. He was only a little frightened, I saw, and marveled. “We are all Chyyanists together, you and I. Listen to what Makfaril has said through his priests, listen and rejoice, for the day is coming.”

And then these fearsome bandits set up a yelling and a hullabaloo and crowded around, laughing, slapping their thighs and bellowing greetings, and every other sentence had to do with the Black Feathers. In no time a fire had been lit and we were sitting around listening and smelling roasting vosk haunch. The wine went around. It was good too, plunder from a vintner’s caravan. Good humor prevailed, although the leader, a ferocious villain with a spade beard he had threaded with gold wire and with golden earrings that caught the lights of the fire and of the suns, did bellow out, “By Varkwa the Open-Handed! If many more travelers are Chyyanists the pickings will be small!”

“But soon all Vallia will be ours for the looting!” bellowed his lieutenant, and the gang set up a racket of laughter and promises of what they would do on the Black Day. Chief among these was the heartfelt desire to go into Falanriel and sack the place and take all. And what they would do to the kovneva, the high and mighty, stuck-up, prideful and ignorant Kovneva Thelda, would have set the Ice Floes of Sicce alight.

I chewed on succulent vosk and kept my face down. Listening would help more than a stupid sword-swinging affray. Was this another piece of the puzzle? Was poor Thelda, who always meant well, overdoing her part as a kovneva? She loved the title and took immense pride in her status. Yet once in the long ago she had been forced to spy and scheme for the racters. Now my good comrade Seg had her in his keeping. I made a little vow that not only would I speak to Thelda as a friend, I’d stick a length of steel blade into any of these drikinger cramphs who tried to harm a hair of her head. But, all the same, she could be a terribly tiresome woman, and goodheartedly never be aware of it. There could now be no doubt that the Chyyanist creed had caught on like a prairie fire here in Falinur. An attempt had been made to spread the word in Veliadrin. Delphond had been under attack — I was sure Delia was right and there was the black feather to prove it — even though we did not know how far the Chyyanists had reached there. I fancied that Inch in the Black Mountains and Korf Aighos in the Blue Mountains would be facing the same challenge.

If I allowed myself to be swayed by the megalomania I have been accused of, I could see a clear pattern. But Natyzha Famphreon and the other racters knew of the Black Feathers, and their provinces had been infiltrated also. Makfaril, whoever he was, surely intended to sound the call for the Black Day at the same time all over Vallia. With a little knowledge I have of human nature, with a little knowledge of running affairs of state, and with the knowledge borne in on me by the demeanor of bandits around the campfire, I knew with a dark foreboding that Makfaril might not be able to hold his followers to his timetable. The explosion might erupt at any moment, triggered by any silly stupid event. The day of the Black Feathers could strike tomorrow. .

That ride up through the heart of Valka was all a great foolishness. Bits of it recur to me now. I had hoped the long ride would soothe me and calm me down, but the more I saw and heard the more fraught and tense I became. And the burden of my fear, a true and deeply abiding fear, must be shown by the first words I spoke to Seg after the joyful Lahals.

“And the news from Delia, Seg? Where is her letter?”

He shook his head. “No letter from Delia has arrived here, Dray. There are packages for you forwarded on, flown in from Vondium and Valka, and coming from — well, you know the names.”

I did. There would be estate information from Strombor and chunkrah counts from Hap Loder and the Clansmen. There would be news from Kytun and Ortyg in Djanduin. But I hungered to hear from Delia, for now I knew she struggled against some unknown evil that threatened our daughter Dayra. I asked after Thelda, and Seg spread his hands and said she had been visiting in Vondium and was momentarily expected.

The impression Seg gave was that he wanted to take up his great longbow and go ask the emperor to repeat the words that had banished me. I fancied the emperor would find life exceedingly uncomfortable thereafter if he did repeat them.

“Well, by Vox! how long does he think to keep you banished, the old onker?”

“Only from Vondium. And the Black Feathers have not sprouted there as yet.”

“Come and wet that dusty throat of yours and let us see what we may contrive.”

We went down from the battlemented gateway and so across the outer yard and through the inner walls and up through narrow winding stairways of stone into Seg’s private chambers in the Fletcher’s Tower. Once it had been the Jade Tower, but Seg had changed all that. This castle fortress of his, frowning down over the city of Falanriel, had been built to withstand a protracted siege. Seg kept the place amply stocked. He had a small guard of Bowmen of Loh, backed up by a regiment of Pachaks with a few other diffs in their different specialities. He was no fool, was Seg Segutorio, over these matters, with the wild fey ways and shrewd practicality of his mountain people.

All the same, as we sat and drank in the quiet ease of his rooms, I had to say, “It does look as though we are the high and mighty of the land now, and grind down the poor.”

“To the Ice Floes with that, my old dom!” Seg looked annoyed. “I was a miserable starveling, a mercenary, a slave. I know. If a man works in my province of Falinur he is assured of a living and of comfort.”

“Slaves?”

Seg made a face and drank his wine. “These devils are sly and secret and run slaves no matter what I do to stop ’em.”

“Vinnur’s Garden-”

He did not let me go on. “My nobility here, all owing their fine estates to me, all prate on and on about marching into Vinnur’s Garden and taking it for Falinur. But Vomanus-”

“He is seldom at home. He is almost as much of an absentee landlord as I am.”

“Well, I have put in my stint here. And it looks as though I’d have done better to have stayed in Vondium, or visited Erthyrdrin again, for all the good I have done here.”

When I told him, during the course of our long talk through the evening and most of the night, about Natyzha Famphreon and the chavonths, he grimaced and said, “I’d rather not hear what she did to her slaves. They’d all be punished to make sure the guilty got it in the neck, to the devil with the innocent”

“Aye.”

“And they actually expected you to fight your father-in-law?”

“Not exactly fight him. But certainly not assist him.”

“Remember the Dragon’s Bones?”

“Now there was a bonny little fracas.”

“Bonny little fracas! Dray, Dray! That was High Jikai!”

“I wouldn’t have said so, but it was squeaky, all the same.”

“Those days when you and Delia and Thelda and I marched across the hostile territories! Ah, but they’ll never come again.”

I was not at all sure of that. Kregen is a world of ups and downs. So we talked on through the night, amicably drinking, and our thoughts were as often of the stirring past adventures as of the terrors of the future and the problems we faced.

Two days later Thelda arrived back in Falanriel, flushed, bright-eyed, bouncing, filled with glowing stories of her time in Vondium. She had been desolated that her great friend Delia had not been there. Of all her sprightly babble we took the due meed of attention. “And the dear queen! Queen Lushfymi! What a charming woman she is, and so regal. I own she has quite won me over. And yet the ignorant fools call her Queen Lush. It really is a disgrace.”

Seg asked a casual question about the Queen of Lome and Thelda fired up instantly. “Beautiful, oh, yes!

She is radiant. And so cultured. She is rich too. Lome is not the largest country in Pandahem, but her wealth is dazzling. The presents she brought, the length of the procession — the animals and the people and the displays — you should have seen it all, my dear. You would have enjoyed it.”

“I’m sure,” said Seg, looking at me with a straight face.

Seg and Thelda loved each other; that was true, and gave me great joy. When couples split apart friends are hurt also. I felt as confident as of anything that Seg and Thelda knew each other well enough by now. As for their children, the eldest son, named Dray for some odd quirk of desire on Seg’s part, was off adventuring. The twins were at school. No — here Thelda pursed her lips up most comically — Silda, the girl, was with the Sisters of the Rose.

I sat up.

“But you are a Sister of Patience, Thelda.”

“It’s none of your business, my dearest Dray, for you are a man. But, yes, I am. And Silda hankered so after the SoR I had to let her go. I own it mystifies me.”

In his droll way, Seg said, “Delia was mystified too.”

So, of course, that explained it. It also made me think again about what I both might and ought to do. A very great deal of our conversations concerned Queen Lushfymi, the Queen of Lome. Lome is the country situated in the northwest of Pandahem where the long east-west central chain of mountains sweeps up northwestward and, extending out to sea, forms the straggling line of the Hoboling Islands. Lome is rich although not overlarge, occupying the space east of the mountains to the border with Iyam. East of Iyam lies Menaham, occupied by the Bloody Menahem. Then comes Tomboram where I harbored most guilty memories of Tilda and Pando. And, in the jutting northeast corner of Pandahem is situated Jholaix. One smacks ones lips at the thought of Jholaix.

So after the Vallians had kicked the Hamalese out of Pandahem after the Battle of Jholaix, it seemed the emperor was attempting to make friends with at least one nation of Pandahem, for that whole island had been in a state of near-conflict with Vallia for many seasons. I welcomed this move. It was statesmanship at the level I sought. I devoutly wished Vallia and Pandahem to come together in comradeship, at first against Hamal and then, and much more importantly, to stand together with other countries of Paz against the raids of the shanks from the other continental grouping on the other side of Kregen. What with talking about Queen Lushfymi and arranging a party for the castellan’s eldest son who was about to go off to be a mercenary, disdaining service under his father, Thelda was kept busy. Seg and I rode and hunted and talked and drank. But for his generally subdued air, Seg was in good spirits, considering the circumstances. He got through a prodigious amount of work. But for the malignant animosity in which these confounded idiots of Falinur held him, he would have been a perfect kov. As for Thelda, she was quite wrapped up in her own doings and seemed unaware of the atmosphere. Seg had even refused to go up to Vondium to greet the emperor on his return, as Inch had likewise not gone, because of his concern.

How I felt the old guilty stab that, when I asked him, he would always manage to get away to aid me!

And more importantly, how he would race across half a world to rescue me from a sticky corner, as you will know.

Only two sword-swinging occasions of note occurred during that stay in Seg’s castle of Falanriel, the castle some men called the Falnagur. I will speak of one only, seeing that the other bore on threads of intrigue outside my present concerns, but intrigues that were to plague me woefully in later days, as you shall hear.

The messenger staggered through the main gate, his zorca dead a dwabur down the track, his blood bedabbling his hacked armor. The story was soon told, and familiar. As we mounted up and set spurs to our mounts and galloped headlong out through the frowning gateway of the Falnagur, I found I harbored deep agonies of indecision. Could I cut down some poor wight of a ponsho farmer, a chunkrah herder, a vosk breeder, because they had been willfully misled by the devil Makfaril and his creed of Chyyanism?

We rode through the night with the moons casting down their fuzzy pink and golden lights, our shadows blobs of purple darkness, the sound of the hooves and the clattering of armor clear warning to all who would listen.

Seg had placed a number of people he thought loyal and hardworking in positions of trust, trying wherever possible to choose native Falinurese. But as a result these folk were regarded as the minor nobility, which they were and hated accordingly by the rest. In a steading a mere three and a half dwaburs off along a tributary of the Great River, Tarek Nalgre Lithisfer was besieged and near to exhaustion. We rode. A tarek is of the minor baronage, a gift within the giving of a kov. Seg had told me of Tarek Nalgre, saying he valued him. Now the Black Feathers had risen openly against him, burning barns and dreadfully killing women and children, and I knew that a bamboo stick might not be enough, that the edge of steel might horrendously have to be employed.

In any event, we were able to ride and scatter the besieging people. Mixed with my remorse I found a little comfort in the fact that the hard core of the besiegers was formed of a body of drikingers, three or four bands joined together to effect the mischief. We fought them. Seg’s Bowmen shot their terrible shafts. His Pachaks twirled their tailhands and the blades glittered under the moons. Yes, we fought these bandits, for the country folk mostly ran when we galloped up.

But I did not enjoy the work. I mention it to illustrate just how far the malcontents had aroused the countryside and in allying themselves with the Black Feathers acquired a kind of respectability in the eyes of the ordinary folk. It is often thus. Bandits, knaves, villains, all take on the jargon of a new and zealous creed, an idealistic revolutionary appeal, and use what is honest and subvert it to their own dark ends. Had Chyyanism been an honest religion, had Seg and his baronage been ruthless tyrants, then the situation would have been entirely different. Although it seemed I fought for the haves against the have-nots, the truth was far from that.

We trailed home with one or two wounded, having made sure Tarek Nalgre was safe. The steading had not burned. Seg left a guard there. But our resentment against the Chyyanists had been inflamed. The immediate cause of this outbreak had been Tarek Nalgre’s order that a certain slave girl was to be released immediately. The girl’s owner, malignant, had appealed to the local leaders of the Chyyanists, and the burnings and killings had followed. No, I was in an ugly mood as we rode back to Seg’s castle, the Falnagur, and doffed our armor and rubbed our bruises and counted the cost.

“This Tarek,” I said to Seg later, as we tried to relax after a capital meal, quashing all guilt thoughts. “He seems a quality fighter and man.”

“Aye. He is a bonny fighting man, and honest and loyal.”

“The very man for the order.”

Seg looked pleased at this, for he took his position within the order with great seriousness. I spoke to match his mood.

“We must begin with seasoned men. Once we are established and have a base and the beginnings of a tradition — how the Krozairs are fortunate in that! — we can enroll likely young lads and give them the full benefit of proper training.”

“And will you find one of your Krozair brothers willing to travel all this way, to teach what he may regard as breaking his vows?”

I had thought of that. “There is no betrayal in teaching young men to be upright and honest and to respect their own strength. There is altogether too much banging and bashing around on Kregen by the strong against the weak. I speak in general terms. I think we are both too cynical and beyond the naive area of simple chivalry. Sometimes a man must be a bit of a villain to survive. But if more people thought more and struck less, then the demands of villainy would die out.”

Looking back and seeing myself as I was then, I can smile a little indulgently at my foolish self. Even then I was dreadfully young in the ways of Kregen, for all my vaunted experience — at least, vaunted by others, not by me, who knows far too much about Dray Prescot for comfort. Came the day when I told Seg and Thelda I must wish them Remberee. I shook my head when they asked if I would visit Inch.

“I think not. His letters say that his Black Mountain Men have little sympathy with the Chyyanists. And as for the Blue Mountain Boys, there was a most distressing occurrence with a Chyyanist priest. Something to do with burned tail feathers, I believe. Most injurious to pride and stern ends.”

Seg managed a smile at this. He did not burst out with a complaint that he only wished his Falinurese were of the same caliber as Inch’s Black Mountain Men. For that I respected him. He was entitled to the complaint; fate alone had decided this.

“Well, Dray my dear,” said Thelda in her managing way, “then it will be Delphond, I suppose. Or,” and here she cocked her head on one side in a calculating way, organizing things for me, “or you could go to Strombor. I need some of their beautiful-”

“Thelda!” said Seg, half laughing. So whatever it was Thelda wanted from Strombor we did not find out.

“I shall,” I said, “go to Vondium.”

“But!” said Seg.

“But,” said Thelda, “you are banished! The emperor has published an edict of proscription. The dear queen told me so herself. You will be taken up if you go back to Vondium.”

“Maybe. And again, maybe not. But I am not prepared to let the emperor stand any longer between what I must do and my own frail desires. By Vox! I am tired of shilly-shallying around.”

“So it is Vondium then, my old dom.”

“Aye! And if the emperor or any of his men try to stand in my way it will not be me who will be sorry!”