Alan Akers - A Life for Kregen

‘That is sooth. Tell me, from whom do you come?”

“We represent the Racters.”

“That I know. But who sent you? Who is still alive who commands your allegiance among the black and whites?”

“Those whom you met in Natyzha Famphreon’s garden, and others. We are a strong and virile party, and-”

“Spare me the boasting. Layco Jhansi will no doubt say the same of his powers.”

“That cramph!” burst out Strom Luthien. His narrow face betrayed all the bile in him. “He should be strung up by the heels and left to rot.”

‘Tell me, Strom Luthien. What does Natyzha Famphreon say to the new emperor? Or did she not give you a private message?”

Luthien allowed his thin dark moustache to lift at one corner. “Aye, she did. I give it to you under the code of heraldry.”

I nodded. “Speak.”

“When a leem leads a ponsho flock, the chavonths gather. But it is the Werstings who take the flesh.”

I did not laugh. The brazen old hussy! At least, she recognized that I was in sober truth comparable to a leem, a powerful and elemental force of destruction imprisoned in human guise and apostrophized as a leem, an eight-legged hunting beast of superabundant energy and incredible ferocity. She knew I was not the fake, the pseudo Hyr-Jikai, the publicity-created Prince of Power without a shred of Jikai about him that so many people in Vallia and other parts still believed me to be. And, as you will readily perceive, that did not verge on megalomania, on overweening pride, or on puffed-up vanity. No, by Krun! It was all those horrendous things rolled into one and spread out, like a mirror of truth, for me to stare at my own dark reflection and recoil from — if I still had the morality. But, I sensed dimly that I must distinguish between the sins of evil self-importance and a too-crazed ego-mania, and a sober understanding that to do the things I had set my hand to would demand, must demand, a man prepared to accept the darker destinies of humanity as well as the lighter. These thoughts were not pleasant, and Strom Luthien moved back a pace, his hand falling to the empty scabbard. He no doubt thought my displeasure had been occasioned by the words of Natyzha he had relayed. Well, he was wrong. But I did not disillusion him.

“Those are the words of San Blarnoi, I believe,” I said in that old nutmeg-grating voice. “Very well. Whatever I may decide about this offer of an alliance, there remains this. You may carry back to your masters this word: ‘A man pleads with his wife to do something and she refuses on the ground he is giving her orders.’” I glared hotly at the Racters. “You may tell all the Racters that the new emperor in Vondium is the emperor. There is no other. All their puppets have tangled strings. And there are regiments of fighting men with shears to untangle them — finally.”

Strom Luthien knew me of old. I do not think he had heard me talk like this before. He had not witnessed the gradual emergence of Jak the Drang.

And, I admit, and with perhaps not enough shame, that I welcomed the chance to let the Racters know the true position.

Luthien swallowed down and got out a few words.

“We will carry your message — majister.”

There was no sarcasm in that last word.

I nodded and left them. Before I could face the embassy from Layco Jhansi — and he deserved to swing high, as my men said — I went along to our private rooms. Delia was not there, for which I was thankful. I bathed my face and then found a cup of water and drank that, and spat, and so, pulling my tunic straight, marched off for the anteroom to the Samphron Hall.

This Layco Jhansi… His province was Vennar, immediately to the east of the Black Mountains, a land that gave him an ample income, being lush and fertile in areas which afforded good husbandry and barren in others, where mining brought silver and alkwoin and other valuable minerals to swell his coffers. His colors were Ochre and Silver. He had been the old emperor’s chief pallan, his strong right hand, and he had betrayed that trust. He had set Ashti Melekhi to poison the emperor and when that plot had been foiled had seized his chance in the Time of Troubles and struck for the power himself. He had taken over Falinur. He was, without a doubt, still a most powerful foeman. I wondered whom he had sent to talk business with me.

The ashy taste of smoke still clung about the anteroom as I nodded to the guards at the doors and went in.

Jhansi had sent five people to attempt to persuade me to ally with him. I knew only one, Ralton Dwa-Erentor, the second son of a minor noble, who might style himself Tyr because his father’s rank and his own title did not come directly from the hands of the emperor. Had the emperor bestowed the title, Dwa-Erentor would have been Kyr Ralton. I nodded to him, as politeness dictated, for he had proved himself a keen racing man, riding sleeths, a dinosaur-like saddle animal I do not much care for, and I fancied he hewed to Jhansi’s party because of his father. The leader of the deputation rose from the chair to greet me. He rose slowly. I allowed this. I would be patient, understanding, and I would not lose my temper. So I, Dray Prescot, decided. Ha!

This ambassador introduced himself as Malervo Norgoth, a man whose immediately striking feature was the thinness of his legs and the bulk of his body, which overlapped him on all sides like a loosely-tied haywain. His face bore traces of makeup. I eyed him as he spoke; but he piped up with a bold front, confident that what he had to say was of the utmost importance. Well, it was to him and his master, no doubt.

He wore hard-wearing traveling clothes of buff and gray, and, like his companions, his weapons had been removed. He was a Tarek — a rank of the minor nobility — no doubt created by Kov Layco Jhansi. He was a man whose own importance expanded or receded with the company he kept. And, it was perfectly plain from his bumptious manner, he regarded me as a fake-emperor and someone in whose company he might expand wonderfully.

As he made me the expected offer, I studied his companions. They seemed to me a bizarre lot. One of them, a very tall Rapa whose vulturine head was adorned with green and yellow feathers, and whose clothes hinted at armor beneath, grasped a long steel chain of polished links. The collar was empty, a round of bronze-studded steel. I wondered what manner of feral beast normally occupied that hoop of metal. The ring appeared large enough for a chavonth; probably it was a wersting, half-tamed and savage given half a chance. I doubted it would be a strigicaw.

The fourth personage was a woman, and, to be frank, she was one of the ugliest women I have ever seen. I felt quite sorry for her, for her personal appearance was clean and decent, good clothes, freshly cleansed face, tidy hair and impeccable fingernails. But the cast of her features resembled so much the stern-end of a swordship that I fancied she bore a deep-seated wounded pride under her harsh exterior. And the last of this deputation — the first, given their respective powers — stood looking at me from under wild tangled brows. His eyes were Vallian brown. But his face was the face of an ascetic, marked by lines of self-inflicted punishment, grooved with masochistic fervor. He wore a hitched-up robe of skins, pelts out. His head was crowned by a rawly yellow skull, the skull of a leem, as I judged, and ornaments and bangles dangled and clanked as he moved. His left hand grasped a morntarch, the crook garnished with brilliants and the shaft embellished with wrapped skins and the legs of small animals and a couple of rast skulls. The smell wafting from this sorcerer, Rovard the Murvish, assured him a wide berth, and the woman kept herself at the far end of the line from him. I wrinkled up my nostrils at his stink; but I gave no sign of the affront I felt he gave me, here in the imperial palace of Vondium. By Vox! I’d been flung down here before the throne in a much worse condition and stinking far higher. He shook the clattering morntarch, softly, as though to remind me of his powers.