Read Online Mazes of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alan Burt Akers
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Everoinye had used to mean the pictures, I did not know it and couldn’t reproduce it. Afterward, when I discovered alternative meanings for the word “screen,” that still was not the word. That came much later. So I looked and the continents and islands of the antipodes swam before my gaze.
“That configuration of lands is very like Paz. We call it Schan. It is a use name. The Fishheads who raid you in Paz sail from the coastal areas. There are many other peoples of the islands and continents. Unpleasant people. Now look at the center picture.”
The sea sparkled blue, almost as though it moved and struck the suns light from wave tops.
I peered more closely and then, miraculously, the sea seemed to swarm away around each side of the picture. It was as though I were falling down into the oval frame.
I jerked back in the chair.
The sea came very near. It was clear and sparkling.
A fleet sailed that sea.
A fleet of squat, square, unlovely ships, with high poops and chunky bows, bristling with armaments. I knew the waterline would be sweetly curved, the underwater parts marvels of naval construction. The masts, tall, after the fashion of poleacres, bore the tall, narrow, slantingly curved sails of the Shanks. They did not so much catch the wind and belly out, as on ordinary vessels, as take the wind and plane it over their curves as the wind planes over a gull’s wing.
“I see them,” I said. “Fishheads, Leem-Lovers—”
“Yes. They sail to Paz. They follow the advance guard which you defeated on the sands of Eurys.”
I shook my shoulders.
“I did not beat the Shanks alone. There were many with me, men and women, all brave and valiant, and all who shared in the victory—”
“Yes, yes. Paz turned out its finest.”
“I would not forget that.”
“The Shanks have been driven out of some of their homelands. They intend to take yours.”
I put my fingers to my forehead, and rubbed.
By Krun! I was tired!
“I, for one, cannot condemn them for that.”
“If you understood more, you would—”
“Mayhap. All the same, if they try to steal what belongs to Paz, they must be stopped. Or,” I added, hoping for a miracle I knew would not be vouchsafed, “perhaps, they could be assimilated, somehow — we have lands they could settle.”
“They intend to slay you all. They do not believe in half measures.”
So the ugly business persisted, the desires of men that drove out all feeling, that blinded to all save personal gain.
“And,” I said, and the weariness slurred my words, “in the half of the world you call Schan there are many more nasties behind the Shanks.”
“Very many.”
“Is there an end? Will it ever stop?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“When Kregen becomes as the Everoinye and the Savanti wish it to be. Those desires clearly conflict at the moment; when they are as one, the business will end.”
“I thought the Savanti merely wished to make the world over—”
“The Savanti wish to make the world of Kregen a world for apims alone. We believed you understood that.”
It had been there, a black thought in my mind, to be driven out and banished. Much had pointed to that reading of the way the Savanti operated. They sent their Savapims out into the world to preserve an apim way of life. They had recruited me from Earth, to be a Savapim, and I had failed them and been driven out — rather, I’d told them to keep their paradise and had escaped with Delia. Now I saw the truth. And I sorrowed, for I had loved the Savanti and their Swinging City of Aphrasöe.
I took a breath.
“This is bad news. Tell me, Everoinye, why do you open up these secrets to me now—?”
“We grow old, Dray Prescot.”
The fear in me took a strange turn.
If the Star Lords could grow old, perhaps die, how would that affect the fate of Kregen?
“I have a thousand years of life because I bathed in the Pool of Baptism in Aphrasöe. You, Star Lords, must have many and many a thousand years of
“That configuration of lands is very like Paz. We call it Schan. It is a use name. The Fishheads who raid you in Paz sail from the coastal areas. There are many other peoples of the islands and continents. Unpleasant people. Now look at the center picture.”
The sea sparkled blue, almost as though it moved and struck the suns light from wave tops.
I peered more closely and then, miraculously, the sea seemed to swarm away around each side of the picture. It was as though I were falling down into the oval frame.
I jerked back in the chair.
The sea came very near. It was clear and sparkling.
A fleet sailed that sea.
A fleet of squat, square, unlovely ships, with high poops and chunky bows, bristling with armaments. I knew the waterline would be sweetly curved, the underwater parts marvels of naval construction. The masts, tall, after the fashion of poleacres, bore the tall, narrow, slantingly curved sails of the Shanks. They did not so much catch the wind and belly out, as on ordinary vessels, as take the wind and plane it over their curves as the wind planes over a gull’s wing.
“I see them,” I said. “Fishheads, Leem-Lovers—”
“Yes. They sail to Paz. They follow the advance guard which you defeated on the sands of Eurys.”
I shook my shoulders.
“I did not beat the Shanks alone. There were many with me, men and women, all brave and valiant, and all who shared in the victory—”
“Yes, yes. Paz turned out its finest.”
“I would not forget that.”
“The Shanks have been driven out of some of their homelands. They intend to take yours.”
I put my fingers to my forehead, and rubbed.
By Krun! I was tired!
“I, for one, cannot condemn them for that.”
“If you understood more, you would—”
“Mayhap. All the same, if they try to steal what belongs to Paz, they must be stopped. Or,” I added, hoping for a miracle I knew would not be vouchsafed, “perhaps, they could be assimilated, somehow — we have lands they could settle.”
“They intend to slay you all. They do not believe in half measures.”
So the ugly business persisted, the desires of men that drove out all feeling, that blinded to all save personal gain.
“And,” I said, and the weariness slurred my words, “in the half of the world you call Schan there are many more nasties behind the Shanks.”
“Very many.”
“Is there an end? Will it ever stop?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“When Kregen becomes as the Everoinye and the Savanti wish it to be. Those desires clearly conflict at the moment; when they are as one, the business will end.”
“I thought the Savanti merely wished to make the world over—”
“The Savanti wish to make the world of Kregen a world for apims alone. We believed you understood that.”
It had been there, a black thought in my mind, to be driven out and banished. Much had pointed to that reading of the way the Savanti operated. They sent their Savapims out into the world to preserve an apim way of life. They had recruited me from Earth, to be a Savapim, and I had failed them and been driven out — rather, I’d told them to keep their paradise and had escaped with Delia. Now I saw the truth. And I sorrowed, for I had loved the Savanti and their Swinging City of Aphrasöe.
I took a breath.
“This is bad news. Tell me, Everoinye, why do you open up these secrets to me now—?”
“We grow old, Dray Prescot.”
The fear in me took a strange turn.
If the Star Lords could grow old, perhaps die, how would that affect the fate of Kregen?
“I have a thousand years of life because I bathed in the Pool of Baptism in Aphrasöe. You, Star Lords, must have many and many a thousand years of
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