Prince of Scorpio (7 page)

I tried to refuse, and saw the hurt in their eyes. I sat back in my seat and marveled.

This, I felt sure, was no outcome envisaged by the Star Lords or, given that I had completed what poor Alex Hunter had set out to do, the Savanti, either. But I have remarked before of this strange and frightening charisma I possess, unasked, unsought, that serves me sometimes so well and sometimes so ill. Now I could only stand before them all, and humbly take what they offered.

The rapiers leaped, glittering in the torchlight in that great hall.

“Hai, Jikai! Drak, Strom na Valka! Hai, Jikai!”

And so the seven hundred and seventy-eighth verse was added to the song.

The emblem of Valka is the reflex-compound bow, placed horizontally, half drawn and aimed upward. Vertically upon this is a trident, as though about to be shot from the bow. The Valkans are great fisherfolk. Also, up in the rolling hills and wild crags of the Heart Heights that form the broad central massif of the island, they are proficient bowmen, using not the great longbow of Loh and Erthyrdrin but the shorter, stiffer, compound bow of cunning double-reflex curves, such as is used by my clansmen.

We had driven our arrow storm into the aragorn, and they had shriveled before us. But, once on a time, Tharu ti Valkanium said to me: “We of Valka are great bowmen. Yet the Emperor keeps a personal bodyguard of the Bowmen of Loh. We are just a distant province, rich for plunder, ripe for slaves.”

And I had said to him: “You are great bowmen, still, Tharu; but no longer is Valka a province ripe for plunder!”

The other favorite weapon of the Valkans is the glaive. I do not mean by glaive a sword, in the archaic meaning of the word, gladius, a sword; but in the meaning in general use of a pole-arm, of the fifteenth century or so. The Valkan glaive is formed of a long narrow head, somewhat more robust than a bayonet, mounted on a shaft about five feet long. From the head along the sides run strengthening pieces of steel that serve also to prevent a slashing sword blow slicing the shaft in two. With the glaive the warriors of Valka go up against rapier men with complete confidence.

So, in the fullness of time I, Dray Prescot, of Earth, became Drak, Strom na Valka.

If there was any regret that my own name had, by a chance, not featured so far in Valka, I had quickly gone along with the name of Drak, for I saw that this might serve me well as a disguise and an alias when I penetrated Vallia. For the name of Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, would be that of a wanted man there.

Also, through this incident, I had discovered that titles — for what they are worth — were obtainable as much by merit and effort as by birth and heredity in Vallia. Once I had cleared Valka and established myself in fact as the chief of the island, and the whole people concurring, I became a Strom and no one would say me nay. I did discover that a great deal was owed to the panvals I had rescued; for they had joyed in arranging the contracts, bribes, and agreements in Vondium, and in obtaining the Emperor’s great seal and signature — Earthly custom is paralleled in this on Kregen — on the letters patent. The illuminated patent itself was kept safely locked away in the fortress of Esser Rarioch.

Now a Strom, with all the responsibilities of rebuilding the island’s economy and reinforcing her people’s confidence, I plunged headlong into work. Do not think I forgot Delia. More than once I took a boat out toward Vallia, to the west, and invariably the storm clouds gathered and the lightning and thunder roared and crackled menacingly, and the waves sought to smash the boat to fragments.

Valka was a rich province, as I found, and by management I made her richer and more pleasant. Also, storing up credit for the future I had sworn must come, I so arranged matters that the high assembly could function with greater and greater freedom and authority. Tharu ti Valkanium often told me I was placing power into their hands, whereat I would say: “And do you believe I do not trust you, Tharu? And the elders? After all we have been through together?” And, again, I would say: “One day, Tharu, I must leave Valka, for a space, and go upon a mission that is dear to my heart. When that day comes, I want the island to continue to prosper, andyou to remember me, so that when I return — with my bride — the whole future will be bright and glorious.”

“We will not forget, Strom Drak, we will never forget.”

Already, the girls were preparing the elaborate dresses and jewelry and all things needful that the Stromni, my bride, would require. Erithor of Valkanium could not make a song about that triumphal return yet, but he would strum out a merry tune, and hum words beneath his breath. When the girls of the place begged him to continue he would laugh and say: “Not so, you handmaidens of frivolity! I but tune my strings against the day the Stromni comes!”

How could I tell them that this Stromni was a princess, was the Princess Majestrix of all Vallia?

One day, among a group of friends on the terrace of Esser Rarioch with all of Valkanium spread beneath us and the suns of Antares blinding back from spire and tower and gabled roof, and the wide sweep of the bay beyond where the sea sparkled its impossible Kregan blue, I began idly to hum and then sing a few snatches of
The Bowmen of Loh.
There were no ladies present, and we had been drinking the strong red wine of southern Valka, a vintage called Vela’s Tears, after the maiden who features in the music drama
The Fatal Love of Vela na Valka,
a drama which you may imagine is highly popular on Valka itself.

Erithor drew his slender fingers across the strings of his harp with a harsh and jangling discord.

I looked up in surprise. They were all looking at me — Tom, Tharu, Theirson, Logu, and even Borg, who was a Vallian, stared also — and I looked at them in surprise.

Tharu said: “We do not sing that song in Valka, Strom.”

I never apologize. It is a weakness. I said: “The song is mild and harmless, but if I have offended you, my friends—” And then I stopped. We had sung songs together a hundred times more bawdy, and they had not complained.

“The Emperor keeps a personal bodyguard of Bowmen of Loh. Therefore we do not sing that song.”

I nodded. “I see. Rest assured, it shall remain among the great unsung epics.”

At this they all laughed. On Kregen there are many classics that are honored more in the breach than the observance in their rendition, as on Earth. The tension of the moment was broken, but I was displeased. I like that song. It reminds me of Seg Segutorio, and that memory, then, was bittersweet and full of a masochism I relished as a punishment. I was young then, as you know, young and headstrong and foolhardy, although trying to control myself. I could take pride that I had not, back in Theirson’s village, rushed with empty hands on the aragorn. I was learning, slowly. What was more disturbing was the evident antipathy these good people of Valka had for the Emperor’s choice of a personal bodyguard. I welcomed their hatred of the Racter party, who, although never in the open, were the instigators of the slaving raids, for they gained much of their wealth thereby. I did not relish this hatred of my beloved’s father.

For all that I would have to walk in and teach him how to behave to a son-in-law, a prospect full of unpleasantness.

This incident, I believe, finally made me make up my mind to act positively. I had been growing lethargic — oh, not in the amount of work I dispatched each day, but in the attitude I had adopted. I love Valka and I could see all the fantastic promise of the island even then. I had become wrapped up in the place. I saw it as the home to which I would bring Delia of the Blue Mountains in triumph as my bride.

Encar of the Fields came in then with a query about the new acreage of samphron trees we were clearing — from the gnarly-trunked samphron trees we pick glossy purple fruits which the watermills crush into fragrant oil — and after Encar waddled Erdgar, fat and out of breath, with a problem on the supply of shaped and seasoned knees for the new ships he was building down in Valkanium’s dockyards.

“Erdgar,” I said. “There is a journey I must make. I shall need your best-found ship.
Rose of Valka,
possibly? And fully-provisioned.”

“Rose of Valka,
”wheezed Erdgar the Shipwright. He took a glass of wine, sniffing it appreciatively. “Aye, she is fleet and well-found and might venture into the Southern Ocean, if needs be.”

This was a neat way of asking me my destination. The breeze blew on that high terrace of Esser Rarioch and the scent of yellow mushk, clustered with bees in its shelter, smelled very sweet. My friends were relaxing after the day’s toil; soon we would go down to the great hall to eat and drink and sing the old songs — and the new, aye, the new! — and life was exceedingly good.

“Zenicce,” I told Erdgar. “I will go to Strombor.”

This, as it seemed to me, was a cunning plan, for I might thus be able to detour the gales that prevented me from reaching Vallia. And I had a hunger to see Strombor again.

“Strombor! The devils of Esztercari drove out the good folk of Strombor! There was a story that they had in their turn been driven out. I pray the invisible twins it is so.”

Tharu drained his glass. “Many of us were born of parents who escaped from Strombor.”

My surprise was complete.

It made sense. Valka lies about a hundred and fifty dwaburs southwest of Zenicce. And the Stromboramin were likely to stick together in the urgency of their departure in the few ships available to them in those days of horror.

While Erdgar the Shipwright wheezed and fussed over
Rose of Valka
I took a journey into the Heart Heights in connection with the construction of a new dam. I found I welcomed these duties of economist, husbandman, canalmaster, and organizer of a province. My party of engineers, secretaries, and supply officers traveled into the interior in a narrow boat. Through lock after lock that had been recently repaired and put back into service we mounted the ladder of water. The weather remained wonderful, the crops were ripening, there was not a slave within sight, and my only regret was that my Delia of Delphond was not at my side to share all these delights with me.

One warm and pinkly-golden evening as the Maiden with the Many Smiles and She of the Veils floated together in the sky I walked for a space on the canal bank, sunk in thought.

The glorious pink and golden evening turned blue with a lambent refulgence of blueness I recognized with a savage surge of feeling. I looked up. Against the starshot sky with those two moons of Kregen floating so serenely I saw the luminescent blue outline of a gigantic scorpion.

This was the sign! This scorpion with arrogantly upflung tail was the sign that in some way either brought me or indicated I was to be brought to Kregen. I had seen this phantom sky scorpion on Earth. Now I was seeing it on Kregen!

The old familiar blueness enveloped me and I was falling and twisting with the blueness roaring in my head — and I did not struggle, I did not shout my defiance, I merely waited for what the destiny of the scorpion would bring me.

The scorpion and the glacier

It is not my intention to speak freely or to go into details of my life here on this planet of my birth. Although I usually returned to some crisis or other and I spent some exhilarating years here, to put it mildly, my chief interest and absorbing passions were ever fixed on the planet of Kregen orbiting Antares in the constellation of Scorpio four hundred light-years away.

Often I would stand and gaze into the starry sky, hoping and praying that the lambent-blue form of the ghostly scorpion would once more summon me, naked and unarmed, and pitch me headlong into bloody and violent adventure. The man whose name I do not mention who held my growing fortune in trust for me served me faithfully and well, and his descendants after him. He was always pleased to see me and asked no questions I could not answer. He and his sons knew of this habit of mine of looking up at the stars, but they passed no comment. I know they understood I was not as ordinary mortals.

I found myself in Paris during the July days of 1830.

There was a time loop involved here; I had had the word from the Gdoinye as to that. I did not understand what was involved then; and even today, the mechanics of time distortion remain vague. I had spent more Terrestrial-span years on Kregen than there were between my first arrival there floating down the River Aph to Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, to meet the Savanti in 1805, and 1830.

Caught up in the excitements of the dismissal of Charles X and the installation of Louis Phillipe, I played a part. Only after the seventh of August, however, was I free and able to walk alone by the Seine. The blue lambency caught me up swiftly, and the scorpion drew me willingly across the parsecs, hurtling through the empty dark to resume my destiny upon Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio.

Even before I opened my eyes I knew I landed in a part of Kregen I had never visited before.

The cold cut in like scalping knives.

As usual, I was unarmed, naked, left entirely to my own resources.

I felt free, overjoyed, triumphant, profoundly thankful.

What, I wondered, was the emergency that had brought me back this time?

Whatever it might be I would deal with it as fast as I could and then, ascertaining just where I had been flung on this terrifying if beautiful world of Kregen, make my way to Vallia, march into Vondium, and confront the Emperor, demand from him his daughter in marriage. Yes, I had hesitated and hung back long enough. Only the gift of a thousand years of life had made what I had done possible. But my patience had run out. By Zim-Zair! No matter if the Emperor was belittled in the eyes of his daughter, and thereby I ran the risk of hurting her feelings — I had absolutely no fears that I would lose her love, as she knew she would never lose mine. I would take that risk and inflict that amount of pain on my beloved, believing sincerely that she would understand I moved not only for my own pleasure and greed and pride, but also for her sake as well.

I opened my eyes.

I shivered.