Alan Akers - Warrior of Scorpio

“I have told you, and told you,” he said in a voice that quavered as much from age as fear. “I cannot do it — you must believe me, Umgar Stro — there are some things forbidden and some things impossible for the Wizards of Loh.”

I took Bargo by the front of his leather tunic and I lifted his feet from the floor. My sword point nestled into his throat. He was very near death, then, and he knew it.

“Where is she, you fool? The prisoner, the girl — tell me, quickly!”

He gargled. He managed to spit out words. “This is the prisoner! By the snow-blind feister-feelt, I swear it!”

“There is another, rast! A girl — the fairest girl you have ever seen. Where?

He shook his head weakly, and his blunt snout wrinkled with his fear. His indigo hair hung lankly down his shoulders.

“There is no other!”

I threw him down and my sword struck like a risslaca; but in the instant of striking I turned the blade so that the flat took him across the head and he pitched forward and lay still without uttering a sound.

“You are not of the Ullars, Jikai.” The old man stood more firmly now, clutching his rags about him. His eyes in the random light from the fallen torch caught reflections and glowed like spilled wine drops in the wrinkled map of his face. His nose was long and narrow, his lips nonexistent, and the hair that wisped about his temples was still as red as any man of Loh’s. It looked blue-black in that half light, but I knew it was red.

“Have you seen another prisoner, old man, a girl, a girl so wondrous-”

He shook that head and I wondered why it did not creak as the cell door had creaked.

“There is only me, Lu-si-Yuong. Have you means to escape from this accursed tower, Jikai?”

“Yes. But I do not go without the girl for whom I came.”

“Then you will spend eternity here.”

In all the clamor of thoughts echoing in my skull I think I knew, then, that Delia was not here.

“You have been here long, old man?”

“I am Lu-si-Yuong, and you address me as San.”[3]

I nodded. The title of San was ancient and revered, bearing a meaning akin to master, dominie, sage. Clearly, this representative of the Wizards of Loh not only considered himself an important personage, but was indeed truly so. I do not mind using a title when it is earned.

“Tell me, San, please. Have you any knowledge of the girl captured by Umgar Stro and brought to this tower?”

“I, alone, of the prisoners was spared. The Ullars know of the powers of the Wizards of Loh and they thought to avail themselves of my services. All the other prisoners were slain.”

I stood there, I, Dray Prescot, and heard this old sage’s thin voice whispering words that meant the end of everything of importance to me in two worlds.

I wanted to leap forward and choke a denial from his narrow mouth, to grip his corded throat in my two hands and wrench words I must hear from him. I think he saw my distress, for he said, again: “I cannot help you in this, Jikai. But I can help in — other — ways if you will rescue me-”

For a moment I could not answer him, could not respond. My Delia — surely, she could not have been so wantonly killed? It did not make sense — who could callously snuff out so much beauty?

San Young was whispering again, bending stiffly to pick up Bargo’s spluttering torch. “They revel tonight, below. There are many of them, fierce, bold barbarians of the skies. To fight your way through them, Jikai, is a superhuman task-”

“We go up,” I said, and I was short with him. All my instincts clashed there, in that cobwebby tower cell of Umgar Stro, torturing me with indecision, with doubt, with a mad and futile rage. She must be here!

She must! But everything pointed to the opposite being true. This Wizard — why should he lie? Except, to cozen me into rescuing him!

I faced him. He had recovered his composure now, had drawn himself up so that the torchlight flowed over his gaunt features, over those wine-dark eyes, that long supercilious nose, that near-lipless mouth. He looked at me, clutching his rags, and he was well aware of the horror and superstitious awe in which common folk held the Wizards of Loh.

Indeed, there was power about him in an aura no one could overlook. Many and many a time have the Wizards of Loh performed deeds any normal man would dub impossible, and what their secrets may be are still a mystery to me. They demand and obtain instant obedience from the common folk — of whom, Zair be praised, there are many sturdy souls — and for the lordly of the land they reserve a kind of watching, cynical and amused tolerance, an armed truce of checks and balances of interest. Umgar Stro, for instance, could torture this old man to obtain his services, and his men might murmur but, being barbarians, they would not react in the same way that a man of Walfarg might. Once having obtained his services, Umgar Stro would have to kill him; for, judging by all the stories I had heard, if he did not then a retribution as horrible as it was inevitable would overtake him as surely as Zim and Genodras rose with each new day.

So it was that this Wizard of Loh, this Lu-si-Yuong, thought he could now safely dictate what was to occur.

He stared at me and I saw the torchlight flicker over his grimed yet pallid face. He took a step backward.

“Listen to me, San. If you speak true, if there is no girl prisoner here, then swear it be so by all you hold sacred of Loh. For, Lu-si-Yuong, if you lie to me then you will die — as surely as anything you know of in your world!”

His tongue rasped those wrinkled sandpaper edges of his mouth.

“It is true. I swear to you by Hlo-Hli herself and by the seven arcades, I am the only prisoner here.”

We stood facing each other for what seemed a long time.

I was scarcely aware when I lowered the sword point from his shrunken breast.

“Very well.” I could not break out, not now; I could not allow myself to despair and to abandon myself to my grief. Not now, not when faithful Seg orbited outside awaiting me, in mortal danger. “Come, old man. Pray to all your pagan gods you have spoken the truth — and yet, and yet I wish you lied!”

We left the cell and walked on the footprinted way between the dust and so up the spiral stairs, past the guardroom and up to the attic. For me, Dray Prescot, this was a skulking, an undignified way, of tackling my foes.

Thelda had told me Delia had dropped into a tarn and been drowned. San Yuong told me she was not here. Did they both lie?

I told Lu-si-Yuong to wait and went back to the guardroom and took up the two toonons. The bamboo was not a true bamboo but came from the Marshes of Buranaccl. I wondered what Seg would make of the weapon. My mind was beginning to function again.

Seg was mightily joyed to see us. He brought the corths in with supple skill and I bundled up onto the trapeze with the fragile form of the Wizard tucked under my arm. We swung away into the Kregan night and the glow from the twins rolled across the eastern horizon laying pink icing across the towers, battlements, and roofs of Rapa Plicla.

The strong vulturine-shaped wings of the corths beat up and down, up and down, and we rode the sky levels away from the fortress of Umgar Stro until we could alight in a clearing among tuffa trees and so rearrange ourselves for our flight back to Hiclantung.

Seg was very quiet.

He did say, savagely: “I would have welcomed an opposition back there. We need a fight, Dray.”

“Aye,” I said. And let it lie there.

I did not believe my Delia was dead. Not after all we had been through. Only when I held Umgar Stro’s throat in my fists and choked the truth from him would I believe. And, even then, even then, I would go on hoping. .