The Star Magicians

5. IN THE HALL OF ZARGON

THEY STOOD in a great circular chamber of naked stone. Against the further wall loomed up into the dimness of the far, domed roof above a great idol formed in the likeness of a throned Titan. Before its stone feet, brazen tripods sent wavering up the pale green and scented smoke of burnt cinnamon, mingled with white spikenard from far Dolmentus.

Gigantic in the gloom, the face of Zargon stared broodingly down.

Chryselephantine, it was formed of two kinds of stone, welded together by fire-magic. Half of its kingly, bearded visage was in the fashion of a stern but smiling Rewarder. And this side of the God’s face was hewn of Irian marble, blue in color, for that is the Hue of Mercy. The other side of the face was a snarling, fanged mask of rage, cunningly worked in the deep red alabaster which the Tigermen mine from the desert hills of Bartosca, growling beneath the electrical lash of the Winged People who are their masters.

The dual nature of Zargon was seen throughout his titanic idol. From one blue shoulder spread a sheltering eagle-wing; from the crimson, a clawed bat-pinion arched menacingly. One mighty hand clasped the Rod of Forgivingness; the other, a hideous, scaled bird-claw, held the jagged Mace of Punishment.

Upon his knees the blue and crimson idol bore the Balance of Justice, in which the souls of men are weighed in the hour of their death.

Throned on the rude King-bench of the Rovers, between Zargon’s feet, the Warlord brooded ominously. The burning rapier of his gaze flickered from one to another of the faces before him in the center of the Hall. Perion skulked to one side of the others, knees atremble, sniveling with his face in his hands. Lurn stood tall and proud, having recovered her composure. Her eyes were downcast, but no token of submission was visible in her stance. Abdekiel, blandly smiling, arms tucked in his deep, mouse-gray sleeves, stood with the Rover Chieftains. By his side Tonguth glowered, his dull wits still struggling to piece sense out of a pattern of conflicting evidence.

There was silence now: all stories had been told, and retold. Drask surveyed the two chief players in this little drama with derision in his fierce hawk-gold eyes.

“So. We have had words, and words, and—words,” Drask said, and there was a sly, dangerous softness in his hard tones, like a steel blade sheathed in silk. “Among all these arguments and explanations, however, I do not find a word of truth.”

“Ah, the liqueurs of my native land … my little lamp!” Perion whimpered faintly.

Drask’s basilisk-gaze swiveled to bathe the Piper in its icy glare. Perion wilted, hiding his face behind trembling fingers.

“Piper …” the Warlord purred.

“Mercy, Dread Lord—I did nothing! It was this girl … this wicked, wicked girl, who stole all my pretties and hid her great ugly body in my hamper!”

Not a muscle in the Warlord’s iron visage moved, but inwardly he was as puzzled as the others. Instinct and reason told him the scrawny little sniveler lied. It was too fantastic to conceive the dancing girl capable of concealing herself so adroitly, that she should baffle his keenest huntsmen all night and well into the following morning. Spy though she was, he did not believe the wench had it in her to think so coolly, act so adeptly. Or was she indeed a spy? Perhaps her account of how she had come by the Green Goddess’ talisman was, in point of fact, truth … which would mean she was not a spy and therefore was naught but a silly, quivering girl and, hence, could never have been capable of hiding … which would mean the Piper lied … but, to look at him, the little knave lacked guts for more than mere impudence and mischief … but, then again, his incredible daredeviltry in the arena yesterday—!

Drask stifled a groan. Lie—lie—and counter-lie! In this blind labyrinth of confusion, how could any man find the way to truth? He growled like a needled boar. Best toss the lot of them to the kogors, and have done with the whole tangled business!

“Abdekiel!” he growled.

The shaman waddled from the throng and came across the stone pave to bow obsequiously before the dais whereon the Warlord sat before the enthroned God of Judgment.

“Yes, great Lord?”

“Let us put yon little jester to the Test … and see if there be true wit beneath his jest.”

The shaman smiled placidly, bowing again, and stepped across the floor with sandals slapping softly on the polished stone. Lurn flashed a frightened glance towards Perion, who shrank from the oily enchanter’s outstretched hand.

A murmur ran through the assembled Rovers. The Test of Truth … Now we shall see which is the lie.

Slowly, the shaman extended one hand. The Piper stared at it, eyes wide with fascination, as the groundfowl stares into the hypnotic gaze of the horn-serpent. His face paled to the sallow hue of soiled linen.

Whispering a cantrip beneath his breath, the shaman slowly touched the tip of one forefinger to Perion’s brow, between the eyes, to the place where occult science says the Ajnaic chakra, the Third Eye of Astral Vision, was located before it vanished after ages of devolution.

Then his hand dropped to the Piper’s bony breast. He ripped open a blouse of blue silk, purchased but that very morning in the bazaar, exposing the pale unhealthy flesh of the Piper’s bony chest, whereon dangled a cheap lead amulet of Maryash the Protector. His forefinger prodded the place just above the cardiac plexus where, the sages say, is located the astral organ called the Anahataic chakra, the Throne of Vital Energy. Under his breath, the shaman repeated uncouth words in some arcane tongue, in a weird sing-song rhythm.

Nothing whatever happened.

The shaman’s cold reptilian eyes narrowed to icy slits of glittering jet. Again he repeated the mantra, buttery brow cortorted with spiritual effort.

Nothing. Where there should have appeared a vague, clotted mist of auric light, had untruth dwelt in the subject’s heart or mind, was—nothing.

Ergo: Perion’s story was true!

The hawk-eyes of the Warlord had missed none of this. He could read the results as well as Abdekiel, and he sat back uneasily, with fretful brow. Perion released a long-pent breath, looking rather as if he were on the brink of collapse.

“Well, shaman?” demanded the Warlord coldly.

The old enchanter stepped back, looking Perion up and down with a light of baffled hatred in his slant eyes.

“I could swear by the Iron Heart of Khali-Zoramatoth, Lord of Chaos, this little man lies like the dog he is!” the shaman said softly. “But—”

“—But he has passed the Test of Breast and Brow, eh?” Drask finished for him. Sardonic mockery rang in his harsh voice. “O worthy, learned shaman!”

The impassive features writhed, before icy self-control clamped down again, stamping them with a placid mask of indifference. The shaman bowed humbly.

“I have sought to the very limits of my art. I have sought by Phul, by Hagith, by the Scarlet Lake and the Eye of Ygg. My art has never failed before … and I would stake my soul upon the fact that this creature’s heart stinks with putrid lies—!”

Drask’s brazen rod of judgment rang on the marble pave, like the crack of doom, cutting off the shaman’s words.

“And I thought you could read the truth in men’s words,” Drask said, flaying the impassive-featured shaman with his merciless tongue. His words hissed like acid biting into gold. “Or so at least you claimed, when you entered my service … and for so-doing I have been pouring good yellow gold into your vulture-claws all this while!”

Tucked into the voluminous sleeves of his gray robe, Abdekiel’s hands clawed and tore each other, as he strove to control his seething fury. When he spoke, his words were a soft, rasping purr.

“The Test is infallible, Dread Lord! By all my skill in magic, I know this beny thing speaks living truth . : . but my thoughts are even with your own, Sire: in my heart I know the treacherous pig lies like the cunning serpent that he is.”

Gaining some confidence, having passed the mysterious magical test, Perion’s impudence reasserted itself. Such were his ebullient spirits of mischief that terror could only cow him for the moment.

“Lies, is it, you fat blubber-worm! If I am thief, liar, spy and traitor—if I am here to betray and deceive my Lord Drask, you magic-mumbling old eunuch!—then why did I, yestereve, save your Master’s life, at risk of my own, when that mad Argion-Princess sought to spill his blood with her dag? And did this deed—I, treacherous Perion—while all you great mangy Rovers sat dumb and still as stone images!”

Perion’s shrill voice rang wildly through the echoing domed vault, but before the furious shaman could make reply, burly Tonguth spoke out.

“Agh! Master—make an end to all this quarrelsome niggling. Put a yard of cold steel through the Piper’s weasel-guts, and let the problem solve itself!”

“Aye,” Shangkar laughed, slapping his axe-hilt with a broad palm. “That’ll end the question, quick enough!”

“Silence! I am Master here, not you clog-witted puppies.”

Tonguth subsided, rumbling, and Shangkar glowered sullenly. Drask swept them with fierce hawk-eyes. Then his laughter rang harshly across their silence.

This is the solution I might have expected from such as you,” he said, curling a contemptuous lip. “A knife in the belly … is that your answer to the problem—to any problem, eh?” He laughed again, mocking them from his high place. “It is this swift and scarlet solution to problems that keeps such as you where you belong, whimpering at the heels of such as I!” Imperiously, his cold voice rang out, lashing them with stinging sarcasm. “I, Drask, Lord of the Varkonna-clan, did not whelm half the Riftworlds without learning some modicum of reasoning. To realize bold dreams such as mine, to fulfill the great destiny of we who lesser men mockingly call ‘the Rim-Barbarians‘—I need men! Clever men, not oafs whose only way out of a problem is on a sword-edge! Men of intellect, cunning—wit. Men who possess the ‘civilized’ traits of imagination and vision. Men, in a word, who can use their heads for something more than just an empty receptacle in which to wag their tongues!”

“Men like this one, Dread Lord?” Abdekiel interposed smoothly, with an insinuating shrug towards the gaping Piper. “Men like yonder woman-gutted, whimpering clown?”

“Perhaps.” Drask brooded on the little man, gold eyes hooded thoughtfully. “Perhaps … I may have a use for even him. Men are tools, fat vulture, shaped and honed by Destiny to different purposes. In the hand of a master craftsman, each tool—however weak—may serve some use.”

“Beware the tool turns not, and cuts the hand that wields it!” Shangkar growled.

“You need men about you that you can trust,” Tonguth said flatly. “Call me dullwit if you will, Master, but I still say: shove a yard of steel through his guts, and let’s have done!”

“You may be right. We cannot probe forever into this matter. And we do not seem to be turning up the truth.” Drask stared thoughtfully at the Piper.

“I wish I knew that you lied, or if I could trust you,” he said, half to himself.

Now desperation flared in the Piper’s white face, and his eyes burned feverishly, confidence in the outcome of this inquisition ebbing from his spirit, even as the color ebbed from his paling features.

“Lord!” he cried, shaking his head wildly, torchlight glittering from the dull copper ring in his left earlobe and from the leaden periapt that dangled against his naked breast. “Lord,” he babbled, spittle flying from his thin lips, eyes glaring as if he truly saw the headsman’s scimitar hovering above his lean throat. “I do not lie! No traitor, I—but your most loyal and humblest servant! It was her—” he leveled a shaking finger at Lurn where she stood silent, white-faced. “That thieving, clever-tongued wench—she hid herself in my hamper!”

Abdekiel’s chill eye narrowed, as he watched the little Piper fighting for his very life with persuasive words. Something—something—what was it he had seen?

“—She herself has told you, Great Master, that it was not I!” Perion babbled on, falling to his bony knees, pleading with lifted hands. “Put her to the Test—put her to the torture, the great, ungainly slut! But blame not humble, lowly Perion—poor, spat-upon Perion, reft of all his treasures—his lovely little lamp, his F-Faraz carpet!”

Watching him narrowly, the Warlord frowned. If this were acting, he had never seen the like. He could almost find it in his cold heart to believe the wretch groveling there before the Balance of Zargon, kneeling in His holy place before His awful visage of two-colored stone—sobbing and gibbering for his life. Surely his words are truth. This cannot be mere art, mere pretense—!

” … I swear! By the Balance of Zargon—the Blood of Thaxis’ Scarlet Spear!” the Piper shrilled … and again, with the violent motion of his head, the earring caught a vagrant glint of light.

And Abdekiel saw it. And the gleam flashed triumphant in his black, slit-eyes.

At last! he thought, cold joy searing through him like a draught of heady wine.

“Perhaps, after all, my art can uncover the truth you seek. Great One!” he said calmly, benignly. A chilling smile spread slowly over his colorless lips—and the strange, muted triumph in his tones arrested the attention of all, which had been fixed on the begging words of the Piper.

“Warlord—behold!”

With the speed of a striking serpent, his hand flashed out and tore the copper ring from the Piper’s ear!

There was a long, breathless moment of silence—shock-surprise. Then—

“Ahhh!”

The gasp of surprise came from a dozen lips … and a shudder ran over the assemblage.

Before their eyes, the scrawny form of the Piper— changed!