Alan Akers: Captive Scorpio

Useless to prate on about how I had warned him to keep himself safe and stay out of trouble. He had pushed to the forefront of the battle, convinced, determined. Now he was dead. We reached a stairway leading up and a gang of Falinurese sought to stop us and we carved a path through them. Bitterness directed our strokes, anger and vengeance and sorrow. We smashed our way through our foemen and raced up the stairs.

We cut our way through a confused and struggling melee of Layco Jhansi’s men fighting Hamalese. So Jhansi had sought the supreme power for himself. Ashti Melekhi. . Some veiled acts came clear. And Jhansi was interfering with the plans of Phu-si-Yantong. There would be no easy path to the throne for Zankov, for all he had slain the emperor, when faced with the dark and secret ambitions of Kov Layco Jhansi.

Up onto that high balcony we stumbled and so over and down to the niche where the voller nestled. Delia stood firmly at the controls. Queen Lush huddled on a bench, wrapping flying silks about her, weeping and weeping. Lykon Crimahan and the Lord Farris stared back and up, viciously, hungering for a head to appear over the balcony and so give them the opportunity to take one more blow at the hated enemies who had ruined all of Vallia for them.

“Jhansi,” said Delia. “He is proved foresworn. He must have given Ashti Melekhi her orders to poison my father.” She stopped, then, and her mouth trembled. “My father-”

“Take us up and away from this accursed place, my heart.”

“Yes, Dray, my heart. We will go. But — one day — we will come back. We must return. .”

I put my arm around her waist as she sent the voller slanting up in the declining rays of Zim and Genodras. The Suns of Scorpio flamed along the horizon and bathed the burning city in crimson and emerald fires.

“Oh, aye, we’ll return. I don’t pretend to be perfect — or even particularly cut out for the job — but all Vallia is captive to Phu-si-Yantong and the other villains now, and that is something I do not like and must, in conscience, try to alter.” I held my Delia as we shot away over the doomed city. “Anyway, there are the children to consider. What’s to become of them?”

“Outcasts,” said Lykon Crimahan, his voice faltering. “We are outcasts, unwanted, fated to wander forever-”

“I do not,” said the Lord Farris, “think so.”

“But Vondium is fallen. The emperor is dead.”

Farris pointed at me. “Not so! The Emperor of Vallia stands before you!”

I warmed to him; but it was nonsense. Crimahan put a trembling hand to his mouth, the realization of what he had seen and heard breaking fully into his consciousness. I saw the expression in his eyes, the shifting of the planes of his face, the dawning of painful emotions.

“That is of no consequence now,” I said in my rough old sailorman’s voice. “If I am emperor then I am emperor of nothing.”

Delia moved in my arm and looked up at me, the last of Zim’s glowing light rosy on her face.

“Vondium is doomed — but there are other places of Vallia.”

“Aye. We fly to Valka. We will collect Velia and Didi and Aunt Katri, for I am utterly convinced they are still safe. If Valka has been swamped by foemen, we will seek others-”

“Strombor?”

“Aye, my heart. Strombor. My enclave of Strombor will welcome us and will love Velia and Didi as they love you.” I looked away from her tear-filled brown eyes. It was in my heart to tell her that I would as lief remain in Strombor. I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, a Lord of Strombor. But — Vallia. That proud and puissant empire was torn and shredded from end to end. Could I, in all honor, turn my back on that agony?

And, so, I looked up. Against the sulphurous masses of smoke coiling from the burning city floated two wide-winged birds.

I knew them both.

Oh, yes, I knew them. That great hunting bird with the scarlet and golden feathers, circling high above me, was the Gdoinye, the messenger and spy of the Star Lords. And the white dove peering watchfully down was from the Savanti. So the two agencies who had directed so much of my life upon Kregen spied on me still in these last cataclysmic moments as a proud city burned and a puissant empire slid down into degradation and ruin.

The birds flicked their wings at me and circled and flew off once they were sure I had seen them. They reminded me of the continued existence of their masters. They did not speak to me. Delia turned the voller eastward, toward Valka.

The burning city dwindled away below, great and magnificent and reduced. I would have to tell Delia about Dayra, about Ros the Claw. I did not think she knew. One thing piled on another, and the importance of each became distorted with viewpoint and time and emotions. The fate of one wayward daughter set against the death of an empire. . Did they balance out?

I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, held my Delia close, close. Did anything else matter in two worlds?

“Empress-” gasped a soft, breathy voice. For a space no one took any notice. Then we understood. The understanding forced a small but significant change in my intentions. For her, I would dare anything.

. “Empress,” said Queen Lushfymi, pale, weeping, speaking through her sobs. “You will not cast me off?”

“Rest easy, queen,” said Delia, Empress of Vallia.

The flier hurtled out of the smoke into the east, and at our backs the Suns of Scorpio threw a last sheeting refulgence of jade and crimson into the nighted sky of Kregen.