Savage Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page B

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 Aphrasöe, 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 Aphrasöe, 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 Aphrasöe.
    “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,