Alan Akers - Warrior of Scorpio

One of the strange and, if the truth be told, weird, aspects of the Wizards of Loh was revealed in that grove of tuffa trees as we rested our corths and rearranged our flight program. Lu-si-Yuong, without a word of explanation to Seg or myself, squatted himself down on the ground in the pinkish light from the twin moons, composed himself and, lifting his veined hands to his eyes, threw his head back and so remained still and silent and unmoving.

Seg whispered: “I think, Dray, he is in lupu.”

“Oh?” I really hardly cared.

“Yes. They say the Wizards of Loh can see into the future-”

“A simple story for simple minds. The credulous will believe any mumbo jumbo and it puts a copper into the hands of clever tricksters.”

Seg glanced obliquely at me, his mouth open. He shut his mouth, and looked back at Yuong, and did not say what he so clearly thought. I had a mind to speak more kindly toward him, for he was of Loh, but I forbore. Delia! I remembered my anguish when among the tents and the wagons and chunkrah herds of the Clansmen of Felschraung I had heard my Delia was dead, and I recalled my determination to remain alive and fighting strong so that if, as I truly believed, she was not dead, I would be able to render her what aid I could. Now, as the Wizard of Loh went through his mumbo jumbo I made the same solemn vow.

Quietly, I said to Seg: “I came away from the tower tonight, Seg, for there were reasons why I should do so. I cannot believe that Delia is truly dead. I shall go on until I find Umgar Stro, wherever he may be. I think he was lucky not to be home tonight, and yet more unfortunate, too.”

“How is that, dom?” asked Seg in a neutral voice.

“I would have killed him tonight, stone dead. But if it takes me long to find him then there will be that amount more time in which to store resentment, and to think of ways of making him talk and — pay!”

Seg turned his eyes away from my face.

Lu-si-Yuong began to tremble. His thin shoulders shook and over all his scrawny body beneath the rags he shuddered and then he began slowly to draw his palms from before his eyes. His eyeballs were rolled up, displaying the whites like a bird-befouled marble statue’s, and his breathing had practically ceased.

“Lupu,” I said. “Is that it?”

“Aye, Dray, that is being in lupu. He is having visions. Who can tell where his mind is wandering now-”

“Get a grip on yourself, Seg!”

All the fey characteristics of his race predominated in Seg Segutorio now, all the dark and hidden lore in his native hills of Erthyrdrin pulsed and answered the weirdness of this old man, this San, this Wizard of Loh.

As the streaming pink moons-light fell upon that gaunt upturned face and turned those blind eyes into cracked yellow pits I looked about the grove of tuffa trees and at the three corths uneasily picking and pecking their feathers, and I, Dray Prescot of Earth, wondered at the faces of Kregen I had not yet seen. A gargling cry wailed from Yuong. His trembling ceased. Unsteadily, waveringly, he tottered to his feet. He opened his arms wide, the fingers rigid and outspread. Like some blasphemous cross he gyrated, like a cyclone-torn scarecrow, like a whirling dervish in the last stages of exhaustion. Then, as abruptly as he had begun, he sank down, resumed his contemplative position, and so lowered his hands flat to the ground and opened his eyes and looked on us.

“And have you looked into the future, old man?” I said.

“Dray!” Seg’s outraged cry affected me not at all.

San Yuong looked at me. I think, even then, he did not know how to size me up or to read me in the context of those people with whom he was accustomed to deal. I do know now, and admit it with only the slightest diffidence, that I must have been in a state of shock still, and hardly recking of what I did or said. In any event Yuong decided to treat me with caution. For this I was later duly grateful; at the time I merely remarked to myself that I must be wearing that old devil’s mask of a face again — and joying in it, Zair help me, joying in my pain.

“The future does not concern me at this moment, my friend. I shall thank you properly for rescuing me at a suitable time. What I have been discovering is how I will be received by Queen Lilah-”

“She does not blame you for the defeat of her army in the massacre,” I said. “At least, she did not mention you in that context — or at all.”

“She would not.”

“What have you discovered, San?” asked Seg.

“The Queen will need my guidance and advice in what is to come. But she was cold — distant and cold. There is a woman, another woman, they have fought bitterly-”

“Thelda!” exclaimed Seg. He stared at me in dismay.

I was intrigued. Could this old man in some way have seen what was even now happening in Hiclantung?

Impossible! But, remember, then I was young and new to the ways of Kregen and especially to the wiles of the Wizards of Loh.

“The Queen has imprisoned this woman, this Thelda, and she weeps for her lost lover.” Yuong canted his head so that his supercilious nose aimed itself over my right shoulder. “Perchance she dreams of you, Jikai?”

“If she does,” I said, “she does so without my permission.”

“Since when has a maid required permission to long for a man?”

I didn’t want to continue this, not with Seg looking and listening, so I went across to my corth and inspected its harness.

“Let us go,” I said. “If Queen Lilah has flung Thelda into prison we must get her out again. We owe her that much, at least.”

Seg vaulted into his saddle. His fist gripped into his rein knot — and his other hand made sure his great longbow was in position, handy as to bending and loosing, the feather of his arrows protruding from their quiver past his right ear.

I could see the irony in this situation; more than irony, deadly mockery of all I held dear. Here I was setting out to rescue my Delia from the clutches of a malevolent monster and instead was hurrying back to our friends to rescue a tiresome woman.

How all the Clansmen would have roared their appreciation of the joke — until I silenced them with my upraised sword!

We soared aloft with those initial convulsive rippling movements of the corths’ wide wings driving us low across the clearing until we had picked up enough speed to rise and bank out past the trees. I scanned three hundred and sixty degrees as I would have done the moment I stepped onto the quarterdeck of Roscommon back on Earth — only now I had to sweep again below as well as above the level of our flight height. It was almost with regret that I saw no pursuing impiters, no vengeful corths, no varter-towing yuelshi.

Had I been of the stuff from which the romantic heroes of Kregan legends are constructed — all manliness and pride and stoicism and lofty indifference to personal pain — I would not have felt then as I did, all the agony and the remorse clawing and tearing my spirit. I knew only that I must go on -

somehow.

We alighted on the outskirts of Hiclantung.

“If Thelda truly has been imprisoned by Lilah,” I said, “then it would be foolish simply to fly back when day dawns.”

“Yes,” said Seg.

I knew how he felt. His constant cheerfulness with me both heartened and saddened me, for Seg had tried most desperately to interest Thelda in himself and had as desperately failed. The corths snuffled around, ruffling their feathers, giving clear indication they wished to rest. I looked at Yuong.

“Tell me, San. Can you reach out with your mind and find the woman I seek?”