Scorpio Invasion (7 page)

Icily, he said: “They have twins, a boy and a girl.”

“My Val!” I felt the pleasure. “I have been out of circulation.”

“I told you. I don’t do lupu very well.” He was verging on the petulant. “Anyway, even if I was as good as Khe-Hi-Bjanching, I told you, I’ve given up being a wizard. Thaumaturgy and I have parted company. I’m going for a Bowman of Loh.”

“I’ll break your damn bow over your head, you ingrate! Didn’t I fish you out of a watery grave?”

And he laughed.

And I laughed with him.

“Well, now,” I said, presently. “Come on, Ra-Lu-Quonling. It’s vitally important I get a message through.”

“We-ell, I suppose I could try. You know, I heard the stories concerning the mages of whom you speak. I know what they do these days.”

“Oh?”

“They are among the most successful. They have as clients the royal and imperial house of Vallia.”

That was the way a Wizard of Loh would see the relationship, and, as I never forgot, it was the correct way. Khe-Hi and Deb-Lu were true comrades, that is so; but they remained Wizards of Loh.

“So I believe,” I said, casually.

“As I said, we are well-educated in Whonban. Even if I skipped some lessons, I never skipped current history. And I read widely.”

“Good for you, Ra-Lu. Now, you did say you would try—?”

“Yes. I will try to contact Khe-Hi-Bjanching. What message would you like me to give him, Dray Prescot?”

“Ouch!” I said. Then: “My name is Drajak ti Zamran, known as Drajak the Sudden. I would esteem it a favor if you could remember that. Anything else could prove embarrassing.” I added, menacingly: “For those who found out.”

“Very well. If you remember that I am Nath the Ready.”

“Oh, come on! Find a better name than that.”

“Well, yes, perhaps.”

“As to the message, ask Khe-Hi to contact Deb-Lu and arrange to send a voller — an airboat — down here. Send two so the pilot of the one I use can fly home. Have you got that?”

“Airboats,” he said, and the disgust dripped.

“You’d better also recommend that they don’t tell anyone apart from the Lord Farris. Otherwise we’ll have an invasion down here.”

“I don’t quite—”

“Never mind. Now, my lad, do your stuff — and you have my thanks.”

“I shall need a little more room.”

“Of course.” The clean crisp air of Kregen, only partially sullied by the smells of the river, whiffled up my nostrils most beautifully as we came up on deck. I breathed in. By Vox! This young feller-me-lad of a Wizard of Loh was going to fix my ticket, was going to arrange passage back to Tsungfaril, Mevancy, Llodi and all the others, back to intrigue and danger and death. Now he had committed himself he was spry about it.

We found a clear space at the rear of a ramshackle godown where the mud was not too thick. No one was about or could spy on us without being detected. Ra-Lu-Quonling squeezed his eyes shut, opened them wide, flexed his fingers, took three deep lungfuls of air, said: “Right.”

He squatted down and lifted his hands to his eyes, threw his head back, remained silent and unmoving. I watched him gravely. He began to tremble, his lithe young body vibrating under the yellow tunic. Slowly he drew his hands down his face. His eyeballs were completely rolled up so that his eyes were mere white blots in that tanned young face. His breathing slackened. Quietly I waited for the next stage in this process. With a strangled cry, a gasp almost of physical pain, Ra-Lu-Quonling staggered to his feet. The shaking of his body ceased. His arms lifted until they were horizontal and like a scarecrow caught in a wind he began to revolve, faster and faster, a whirling dervish spinning in the mud. Abruptly, his whirlwind motion stopped. He flopped down onto his haunches and put his hands flat on the mud. His head tilted back.

Both of Ra-Lu-Quonling’s eyes opened, not together, but one after the other. He stared balefully at me. I recalled the first time I had seen this process by which a Wizard of Loh went into lupu, when I had derided the whole notion, back then when with good old Seg I’d searched so desperately for Delia. The frail and not very competent Wizard of Loh Lu-si-Yuong had been unable to find her for me — and I struggling against what everyone said, that she was dead! — but he had warned us about Thelda’s danger. He had been an old man; this young whippersnapper was young. Yet both used almost identical methods of attaining lupu. Deb-Lu or Khe-Hi would go into lupu and wander around Kregen through the various planes as you or I might open a door and walk from one room to another.

That very expertise in thaumaturgy ought not to disguise the weirdness of it, the spine-tingling uncanniness of what these mages could perform.

Although, to be sure, Deb-Lu had been experiencing difficulty in getting through down in South Loh. Still, I had every confidence that this self-named Nath the Ready could reach Khe-Hi. After all, although I’d no idea where Whonban was situated in Loh, it couldn’t be all that far away from here, could it?

Quonling stared at me. He ought now to be coming out of it, having sent the message. He began to shake. I frowned. This, I did not remember. He opened his mouth.

A harsh rattling voice, deep in the bass register, issued from the lad’s mouth. “I see him. So that is the fellow.” The boy’s eyes were fixed burningly upon me. “After you treat your instructors with contempt you have the impudence to attempt to utilize your imperfect learning! You should know by now the way back for you is hard, very hard. Now go—”

All Quonling’s young features writhed and his tongue darted out to lick his lips and I realized he was trying to speak to the owner of that harsh and merciless voice.

“I am a Whonbim!” His own voice gasped the words. “I am merely trying to do a favor for San Khe-Hi-Bjanching. He will vouch for me!”

“San Khe-Hi does not know of your existence, outcast!”

So I saw what had happened. My Val! Young Quonling was doing his best in lupu to contact Khe-Hi and his message had been intercepted by this interfering, officious, overbearing jumped up Wizard of Loh teacher!

“Please — san — San Khe-Hi-Bjanching will—”

“Enough! By the Seven Arcades! Am I to waste my time prattling to a rebellious youngster who has no respect! You—”

I stepped forward and grasped the lad’s shoulders. I stared deeply into his eyes. On my face, quite without my own volition, that Devil Mask flamed out, that evil domineering look that has quelled many a proud spirit. Do not think I take any pride from that, quite the contrary; but the demon look of Dray Prescot has proved useful from time to time. As now.

“You do not give me a Llahal,” I said in that gravelly menacing voice of Dray Prescot. “You are a teacher who has failed with Quonling. I think it will go ill with you if you fail to pass my message to Khe-Hi.”

There was no immediate response from the harsh rattling voice. I was prepared to wait only for a certain number of heartbeats for a reply.

He clearly couldn’t know that; but he timed it so there were but three heartbeats to go.

“If you are who we believe you to be, your message will be passed.”

I said: “It is not for you to quibble. I am not in the habit of repeating myself, even for Wizards of Walfarg. I will say to you, you without a Llahal between us, you know what is said about teachers. Now contact Khe-Hi and send my message!”

The gasp from Quonling’s mouth could have come from the lad himself or his officious damned teacher. Either way, my words must have had some effect. Quonling pitched forward and put his young face into a patch of the more liquid mud we had tried to avoid. I caught his tunic and heaved him back. He was shaking all over now, and that was pure physical fear and reaction and not magical. By Krun! The poor lad had had a time of it!

He gargled a bit and I wiped the mud off. I wanted to know if that idiot teacher had sent the message.

At last he said: “I know what happened. I heard. But I do not believe. No, by Hlo-Hli herself, I do not credit it!”

“Has he sent the message, boy?”

“How should I know? I was disrespectful and disobedient, I know that. But I never went around uttering threats—”

“I seldom threaten. If it has to be done, I do it. Anyway, if you don’t know we can only find out by waiting. Who was that onker, anyway?”

“That? Oh, that was Gal-ag-Foroming, one of the head tutors. He has the heaviest and springiest cane in all Whonban.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “sometimes, I suppose, that is necessary. If he was any good as a tutor you’d pass your exams without the need of a cane.”

Although I told the lad this, I am well aware there are exceptions in the case of the genuinely thick. Not the cane, of course, but the passing.

“Oh, he’s clever, no doubt of that. Just that, well—”

“Some do, and some don’t,” I said. “In that game trying hard is generally not good enough. What is accomplished is far too important to have people who fall down on the job.” I looked at him, and saw he had regained his color. He was pulling bits of mud out of his red hair. “I thank you for going into lupu, Ra-Lu. You were taking a risk I did not appreciate. I shall not forget that.”

“Yes, well. I am more concerned about those plug-uglies who threw me in the water. They are aware my powers are strictly limited; yet they know I was to have been a Wizard of Walfarg and therefore they can punish me.”

“What for?”

“Many people, not all, pile the blame for the loss of empire upon the sorcerers of Whonban. That and the lack of airboats and saddle birds.”

“I’d have thought a Wizard of Loh could take care of himself. They strike mortal fear into the hearts of folk outside Loh, believe me.”

“Why do you think we always seek to practice overseas?”

“That makes sense. And if you’re half-trained, then—”

“Oh, I’m more than half-trained. The interim exam I failed was a mere trail-blazer for the finals. Those, I could have sailed through.”

“Says you.”

“I cut classes, yes, chasing that fickle Pynsi, and my frustration made me disrespectful. But I studied hard to catch up when Pynsi betrayed me.”

“H’m,” I said, using that old quarterdeck procrastination. “We’d better decide what we’re going to do with you, hadn’t we?”

I unbuckled one of the swords I’d taken from those two dozy guards, Lin and Hwang, after I’d disposed of the lily pad on my head. Both weapons were lynxters, the straight cut and thruster of Loh, and there was nothing to choose between them. I handed the sword to the lad.

“Here, Ra-Lu. It does not do to go unarmed on Kregen.”

“That is true.” He took the lynxter. “Still, I’m more of a dagger man. Although the bow is the prime weapon of all.”

You can’t argue with the Bowmen of Loh over that question.

He buckled the sword on and suddenly looked up.

“All right, then, Dray Prescot, Drajak the Sudden. I shall call myself Rollo. From Ra-Lu — see?”

I nodded. “A fine name. I knew a splendid artist, Rollo the Circle. He could draw a—”

“I know. So could our art master, Tun-du-Haffyien. Perfect.”

I was taking to this young scamp. He knew who I was, and had read those outrageous romances about the Dray Prescot in the scarlet breechclout and ferocious Krozair longsword who went swinging about the world of Kregen righting wrongs, defending the weak and rescuing damsels in distress. Yet he treated me with indifferent ease as an equal. I liked that. Also, he may have dodged classes; he was almost a fully-fledged Wizard of Loh. He still had a very great deal to learn and master in his arcane arts. Even Deb-Lu and Khe-Hi and Ling-Li developed their skills as time went by. But he was not the loutish ignoramus deserving of being thrown out of Whonban.

“All right,” I said. “Rollo what?”

“Oh, I’ll think about that later.”

Maybe that was one of his problems. That he put things off.

“I have,” I said, changing the subject to one of vital importance. “I have just one gold piece, two silvers and seven coppers. You, I take it, have no cash.” This was what was left of the guards’ purses.

He shook his head. “You take it aright, Drajak.”

“If the message got through to Khe-Hi and if Deb-Lu gets it, and if so when the Lord Farris sends the two vollers — well by a Herrelldrin Hell! We may have a long wait ahead of us, Rollo my lad!”

He nodded, suddenly glum. In truth, the prospect was not pleasing.

“Anyway,” I said, voicing an itch that had been worriting away at me. “How did that lot find out you were a Wizard of Loh?”

He looked resentful. “I had a bad dream and started up, yelling damn fool things that branded me. There was no denying it.”

“Well, don’t have any bad dreams around me, sunshine!”

“Not if I can help it, Sudden.”

As I say, a sprightly young spark.

The plan I concocted was simple. Keeping out of the way we found cheap lodgings. I’d have preferred to have found another boat and gone on downriver; but we had to stay here to await the airboats. The nightly charge was one short silver. One of the silvers I had was short, the other broad, so that was three nights at least. We’d have to eat on the coppers and use the gold, changed into silvers, to keep a roof over our heads. “We will have to pull our belts in, my lad.”

“I’ve been hungry before.”

One scheme I’d immediately thought of and then reluctantly discarded was to march out into the country and camp rough. Decadent and decayed though Walfarg was, they continued a strong patrol and watch force and vagrants were harshly dealt with. This is not uncommon. I did not wish to spend the time waiting in the local lockup, which looked unhealthy.

If it came to it, mind you, we’d have to do that. We’d be fed. And we’d have to break out when the vollers arrived.

If they did.

The time it would take for a voller to fly down from Vallia would depend on her speed. I felt I could rely on Farris to send the fastest he could spare. The problem lay in what he could spare. There continued to be trouble in voller manufacture. Emperor Nedfar of Hamal was doing what he could, and his son Tyfar, and Delia and my Lela were out there by the viciously hostile Mountains of the West of Hamal trying to sort out the problem. I fretted over their welfare.