Savage Scorpio

Wine went the rounds. Palines and other luscious fruits lay heaped on bronze plates, ready to hand. The people gathered here, and drifting in as the evening wore on, were all my comrades, gathered from many areas of Kregen. After the adventures in the Eye of the World, when I had been saved in the nick of time by these same lusty fighters, we were enjoying one last carouse, although the dismal news of Delia’s father laid a gloom across the meeting.

Inch had brought his lady newly arrived from Ng’groga, his home, a charming girl, all of six foot six in height, of a fiery nature and a bold eye, who, I felt with a twinge, would cut Inch down to size. Their taboos still operated, at least to some extent, for they could not be married until — and then so much metaphysical profound casuistry erupted about our thick non-Ng’grogan heads that we could only rock back and hold our sides and laugh. Inch and his taboos. .

I liked Inch’s lady, Sasha, and she quickly became a part of our roistering group. Of Sasha there is much to speak, later. .

My own Wizard of Loh — I say “my own’ but that is to pitch it too high, these famous wizards being their own men; but Khe-Hi-Bjanching owed not only his status but his life to me, and he proved trustworthy and loyal. Also, since those early days, he had matured. Now he was a wizard capable of extraordinary feats.

He listened gravely as I told him what the emperor had said and of Doctor Charboi’s reaction, and what I felt I ought to do. He frowned. He looked — and I was startled — he looked most confoundedly put out, frightened, even. This moved me to say, half-jesting: “What, Khe-Hi! A Wizard of Loh, scared of anything at all in the world! That is indeed a ponsho-bitten leem.” Which is to say, something so extraordinary as to be almost unbelievable.

“By Father Mehzta-Makku!” said Gloag, his bristle hide most carefully groomed, his whole appearance sleek and elegant as befitted my Crebent of the House of Strombor in Zenicce. “I would think three times before I accused a Wizard of Loh of being the cleverest man in all Segesthes — and then I’d hold my tongue.”

Khe-Hi-Bjanching wet his lips. “I own I am grown different from other wizards.” His voice held a flat deadness I did not like at all. “In the service of our prince I have grown into my powers. I am good. There is no sense in denying it. But I have access to some secrets I would not turn over, as I would not stick my head into a chavonth’s jaws.”

The racket around us in the snug subsided as they realized some serious talk was going on. They listened, soberly.

“Say on, Khe-Hi. You know, I think, what the emperor asked. You share Charboi’s apprehensions?”

“Apprehensions!” Bjanching gripped a fist on the sturmwood table among the wine glasses. “It is more than that. We wizards, well, all men speak of our art. We are adepts. Sorcery is child’s play to us. But if you seek out the Todalpheme of Hamal and they tell you — you will be as great a pack of fools as they!”

“But,” protested Seg. “The Todalpheme are good, wise savants. They predict the tides. They are sacrosanct. No man dares raise a hand against them. How can the Todalpheme be evil?”

“They are not evil, kov. Of course not. But a secret has fallen into their possession and they do not understand it.”

The samphron oil lamps gleamed on their faces. They sat and stood in a circle there in the private snug of The Rose of Valka in Vondium. I can see them now, so clearly. My comrades. Men and women who had gone through the fire with me, aye, and were to go through again — and damned soon, too. I am a lonely man, a true loner, as you know; yet I have been blessed with friends such as I believe no other mortal can ever have been blessed with. The charismatic power that clings about me, the yrium, so difficult to define and yet so starkly obvious when the truth is seen, that does not explain it all, not all. . Jaidur, my youngest son, sat very quietly for him, for the overturning of the misconceptions of his world were taking time to work through. My second son, Zeg, Pur Zeg, a noted Krozair of Zy of the Inner Sea, now the King of Zandikar, was away there in the Eye of the World, a great man, Bane of Grodno. My eldest son, Prince Drak, had been sent for. Vomanus of Vindelka, newly arrived from some far-off corner of Kregen, listened intently, and as the half-brother of Delia shared a lively concern over the fate of the emperor, who was not his father.

Yes, we were a ruffianly crew. The others of whom you know were there, and there were new faces, also — Dray, Seg’s son, and his twins, Valin and Silda. They listened avidly and spoke little, conduct very becoming. Seg had named his firstborn son Dray when he thought I was dead. This Dray’s real name was Seg, of course, as the firstborn, so that he might carry on the Torio. Valin was a good Vallian name, and Silda was the name of Thelda’s mother.

We argued on, with the wizard genuinely concerned to deflect us from what increasingly we saw as the only way to aid the emperor. But you who listen to these tapes know far more than my comrades there in the comfortable snug of The Rose of Valka. Only I understood with Delia what the Wizard of Loh was hinting at. When the emperor’s daughter had fallen from a zorca, he had raised heaven and hell to find a cure. He had been put into contact with the Todalpheme of Hamal through an airboat salesman, for at that time Vallia and Hamal were on more-or-less speaking terms. The information had cost a great deal. The Todalpheme of Hamal, it was rumored, knew also of a fabled land where miracle cures might be effected. Delia had been taken through the various secret channels in a flier and had at last reached Aphrasoe, where the Savanti had been too long in making up their minds whether or not to cure her. So I, that uncouth sailor, Dray Prescot, newly arrived from Earth and out of the thunder of the broadsides as the seventy-fours drifted down into the battlesmoke, had taken it upon myself to cure Delia. That I had done so, and into the bargain assured her of a thousand years of life, was past history. But the whole business was wrapped about with mystery. During my journeys on Kregen I had asked always for news of Aphrasoe, the Swinging City, and no one had even heard of the place. To me, then, it had been paradise. And I had been thrown out of paradise. But real life had caught up with me and engulfed me, so that, for me, Paradise was Valka and Strombor and Djanduin and the Great Plains of Segesthes. I speak, you understand, of the time in Vondium when the emperor lay dying. Fragrant Azby, the other places, what has happened to me since — ah, well, all that must wait its due turn. Even when I had at last discovered that the Todalpheme of Hamal had been the ones responsible — or, at least, could put me in touch with the ones responsible — I had been in no case to prosecute further inquiries or do any more about it. Real life has a habit of rolling along everything before its onward surge, ambitions, dreams, nightmares, the daily grind.

The gravity of the burden of our conversation was lost upon no one there. The light from the mellow samphron oil lamps gleamed upon our faces, and reflected without edged menace from scabbarded blades. The menace breathed all about us in the night of Vondium, under the seven moons of Kregen. Even those two rogues sensed the atmosphere. One drinking happily, the other drinking, but seeming somewhat empty without a wench on his knee; my two favorite rascals, Nath and Zolta, understood what went forward here. And how they reveled in this whole new world outside the inner sea! Any fears I had had that they would be overawed, fail to fit in, become dejected and morose, had evaporated. Nath and Zolta! Fine, fearsome, rascally rogues, my two oar-comrades — and great-hearted Zorg dead and gone and food for chanks in the Eye of the World.

“I know, Dray,” said Vomanus, carelessly, popping a paline into his mouth, chewing and swallowing -

a barbarous habit, for the paline is a berry of superlative performance on a man’s digestion: “I know what the emperor did and said when Delia crippled herself falling off that damned zorca. For a start he had the beast’s throat slit. But this Opaz-forsaken airboat salesman was eager to sell, and we poor fools of Vallia eager to buy his rubbish.” The old sore spot again. . “He gave names and addresses to the emperor, and Delia was sent, all neatly packaged. The fellow was some kind of defrocked Todalpheme acolyte, I believe. Came by his information evilly, I’ll warrant. Still, it must have been successful.” And Vomanus smiled broadly at my Delia as she regarded him gravely, thinking of those times. We had told no one of our experiences in Aphrasoe.

“So we do the same,” I said. “We take the emperor to this place known to the Todalpheme’s contacts. We effect a miracle cure, also.”

“Aye!” they shouted, ready to brave a world.

“But,” said Seg. “How do we start? You saw how those rasts kept him mewed up.”

“Aye. But we can find a key to open the cage.”

“I would have thought, Dray Prescot, that the emperor’s daughter and the Prince Majister, her husband, could take the emperor to a doctor without such a to-do!”

Thus spake Thelda.

Seg started to say something; but, quickly, Delia broke in gently to say: “We will, Thelda, my dear, we will. And you will aid us, I know.”