Read Online Mazes of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online
Authors: Alan Burt Akers
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becoming senile? Were they fumbling? They had made mistakes before. They had made a mistake with a time loop, and dropped me down into the wrong time, and, correcting that mistake, had given me all of Djanduin. Perhaps their powers were failing?
Anyway, they hadn’t given me the Kingdom of Djanduin. That wonderful country had come my way first through boredom and then through duty. I was the King of Djanduin.
The chair passed on along the crimson floor, and the vaulting rolled past above, and the whitely glittering star constellations changed and glowed and shone with supernal fires.
Another chair passed, going by in a flicker of movement.
The occupant was a man, an apim like me, a member of Homo sapiens. I add the sapiens in deference to our old friends the Neanderthals, who in these later times have become far more exciting than of yore. He sat hunched, looking ill. He was, as he would have to be to be a Kregoinye and perform the will of the Star Lords, a big strong fellow with a powerful face. His hair was long and blond and confined in braids beneath a steel helmet. His face bore the scars of battle. He wore a badge upon his chest, a thing of gold and silver threads in the form of a rampant graint. The ferocious crocodile-headed bear leered at me as the man whisked past.
He was gone, and I twisted my head around to stare after him.
He stared back at me, turning to look aft. He smiled.
I returned his smile.
This man, this blond warrior with the graint badge, was the third Kregoinye I had seen. The second was Strom Irvil. The first was Pompino, that foxy-faced Khibil of unusual talents, with whom I had shared many adventures. Would I encounter Pompino here? I looked forward to that meeting with genuine joy.
As for this third Kregoinye — his hard warrior face bore marks of illness, deeply indented lines, and a pallor that floated his tan like scabbed paint. What, I wondered, had happened to him? Then I banished all other thoughts, to concentrate on what was happening, as the chair bore me, with horrible suddenness, into total blackness.
Somewhere a loon laughed like a demented creature.
Or, more likely, someone screamed in torment.
Or, that horrendous noise could more likely be merely the hissing rush of the chair, screeching as it bore me on into the unknown.
Sparkling motes of light danced before me, thin and scattered at first, but thickening, dancing in clumps and gyrating nodules of fiery brilliance. We rushed on and through them, motes of diamond dust, brushing them aside in whirls of sparkling specklings. I drew a breath. The dots of light swung away from us. Rather, we swung away from them, surging out to hiss along an ebon floor, with all the sparkles massing and banking away to the left.
The chair stopped.
I turned my head away from the sparkles and looked to find what I expected to see.
Framed in their thick silver rims, three pictures adorned the far wall. Oval pictures, three of them in a line along the blackness, each showed a different face of the planet Kregen.
Silence dropped down. I could hear my harness creaking as I breathed, and that displeased me, a professional fighting man.
Each silver-framed picture showed an aerial view of Kregen. That on the extreme left showed the familiar outlines of Paz, the side of the world I knew.
There were the outlines of the continents of Havilfar, and Loh, of Segesthes and Turismond. The islands, too, showed clearly, Pandahem and Vallia — I stopped for a moment to dwell on Vallia. That small island at the eastern seaboard was Valka, with Veliadrin to the west. Valka! Well, my home was a long way off now, farther off even than from the flier taking Seg and me north across Hamal.
Funny. Here was I, looking down on a picture of Havilfar, and Seg and I were flying across that land.
He would be gripped in a stasis, unmoving, the butter knife in his hand, all unknowing of where I had gone.
But would he?
Perhaps he merely moved and had his being in
Anyway, they hadn’t given me the Kingdom of Djanduin. That wonderful country had come my way first through boredom and then through duty. I was the King of Djanduin.
The chair passed on along the crimson floor, and the vaulting rolled past above, and the whitely glittering star constellations changed and glowed and shone with supernal fires.
Another chair passed, going by in a flicker of movement.
The occupant was a man, an apim like me, a member of Homo sapiens. I add the sapiens in deference to our old friends the Neanderthals, who in these later times have become far more exciting than of yore. He sat hunched, looking ill. He was, as he would have to be to be a Kregoinye and perform the will of the Star Lords, a big strong fellow with a powerful face. His hair was long and blond and confined in braids beneath a steel helmet. His face bore the scars of battle. He wore a badge upon his chest, a thing of gold and silver threads in the form of a rampant graint. The ferocious crocodile-headed bear leered at me as the man whisked past.
He was gone, and I twisted my head around to stare after him.
He stared back at me, turning to look aft. He smiled.
I returned his smile.
This man, this blond warrior with the graint badge, was the third Kregoinye I had seen. The second was Strom Irvil. The first was Pompino, that foxy-faced Khibil of unusual talents, with whom I had shared many adventures. Would I encounter Pompino here? I looked forward to that meeting with genuine joy.
As for this third Kregoinye — his hard warrior face bore marks of illness, deeply indented lines, and a pallor that floated his tan like scabbed paint. What, I wondered, had happened to him? Then I banished all other thoughts, to concentrate on what was happening, as the chair bore me, with horrible suddenness, into total blackness.
Somewhere a loon laughed like a demented creature.
Or, more likely, someone screamed in torment.
Or, that horrendous noise could more likely be merely the hissing rush of the chair, screeching as it bore me on into the unknown.
Sparkling motes of light danced before me, thin and scattered at first, but thickening, dancing in clumps and gyrating nodules of fiery brilliance. We rushed on and through them, motes of diamond dust, brushing them aside in whirls of sparkling specklings. I drew a breath. The dots of light swung away from us. Rather, we swung away from them, surging out to hiss along an ebon floor, with all the sparkles massing and banking away to the left.
The chair stopped.
I turned my head away from the sparkles and looked to find what I expected to see.
Framed in their thick silver rims, three pictures adorned the far wall. Oval pictures, three of them in a line along the blackness, each showed a different face of the planet Kregen.
Silence dropped down. I could hear my harness creaking as I breathed, and that displeased me, a professional fighting man.
Each silver-framed picture showed an aerial view of Kregen. That on the extreme left showed the familiar outlines of Paz, the side of the world I knew.
There were the outlines of the continents of Havilfar, and Loh, of Segesthes and Turismond. The islands, too, showed clearly, Pandahem and Vallia — I stopped for a moment to dwell on Vallia. That small island at the eastern seaboard was Valka, with Veliadrin to the west. Valka! Well, my home was a long way off now, farther off even than from the flier taking Seg and me north across Hamal.
Funny. Here was I, looking down on a picture of Havilfar, and Seg and I were flying across that land.
He would be gripped in a stasis, unmoving, the butter knife in his hand, all unknowing of where I had gone.
But would he?
Perhaps he merely moved and had his being in
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