The Quest of Kadji
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Chronicles of Kylix #1
- Год: 1973
- Язык: английский
- Год: Five Star Paperback
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Quest of Kadji». Краткое содержание книги:
He dined alone that evening while the snow storm rose and raged beyond the shuttered windows. The friendly Easterling wizard, Akthoob, was not in evidence this night. And as the bony and talkative little old man was the closest thing to a friend he had yet made in this vast, bewildering, many-peopled metropolis, the Nomad boy felt oddly lonely as he ate his meal alone.
There was shouting in the streets and many horsemen rode by and the sound of blown bugles somewhat later, but the boy Kadji, nursing a frugal jack of ale with a full belly beside the warm hearth, paid no attention. Then, toward the first hour after midnight, the inn door came crashing open with a blast of icy air sand a flurry of swirling snowflakes, and the Easterling Akthoob, came in, white from head to foot with snow, his pointed nose, blue with cold, his slitted eyes watering, blowing on his frozen hands and stamping the caked snow from his fur-covered buskins.
Kadji hailed him. “Come, friend, share the fire and a jack of ale, for the uight is cold and dark.”
Suppressed excitement glittered in the slant black eyes within that long sallow face.
“Colder and darker than you think, young sir,” replied the little wizard in tense low tones.
“What do you mean?”
“The kugars have arisen. Holy Yakthodah lies dead in the Khalidûr, cut down by a kugar knife. And a kugar council rules golden Khôr this night!”
vi. The Death of the Dragon
ERE DAWN the word had sped to every corner of Khôr and not a miserable beggar shivering in his hovel but knew that the last legitimate heir of the dynasty was slain, that the great House of Azakour was extinguished at last, and a grim and bloody time of troubles had come upon the Dragon Empire. The savage and merciless struggle for power would begin now, and there were many men of Khôr who could well recall the terrible days that followed the death of Azakour Third twenty years agone, and how all of the Plains had been torn asunder by civil war until the discovery of a legitimate heir—even that same Yakthodah who lay now in state in the Throne Hall.
The facts behind these bloody and swift-moving events were easy to unravel. The kugars had seized power after the death of the Emperor Azakour, and only an army of Rashemba knights, lent to the Pretender, Yakthodah, by his supporter and father-in-law, the High Prince Bayazin, had driven the greedy kugars from the place of power. The Nomad warriors of the Great Plains had aided in that war, but no sooner had they assisted in establishing Yakthodah in his father’s holy throne, than the fickle Emperor, discovering he needed the friendship and the fat purses of the kugars to sustain him in the life of revelry and license he desired, had welcomed back with open arms the rich and powerful landowner class. From this point things had gone from bad to worse, even to the point of alienating, then outlawing, and finally making war against the stout and loyal-hearted Nomads.
But the kugars were not completely satisfied. They feared the influence of Bayazin, and the strong hold he had on the pleasure-loving Yakthodah. And recent news that Bayazin, with an army of his mighty Rashemba knights, was, now moving upon Khôr—ostensibly to pay a visit of state upon his royal son-in-law, and also to garrison the heartlands about Khôr. against the long-expected revenge of the Kozanga Nomads—drove the jealous and fearful kugars into open rebellion. Yakthodah had been assassinated by night in his own Throne Hall, and kugar mercenaries now held the Khalidûr fortress, and the gates of Khôr itself against the expected siege of Prince Bayazin.
In all the turmoil and chaos that made the very world echo to the collapse of dynasties and the battle of opposed regimes, what of the boy Kadji, Red Hawk of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads, and his sacred Quest to avenge upon the body of the man the world believed to be the True Emperor the stained honor of the Kozanga war clans?
What indeed? It would seem that a kugar blade had spared him the task his grandfather had set upon his shoulders.
He made up his mind swiftly, for time was very important: by noon, it might be, Khôr would be in a state of siege. If he were to act at all, be must do so now.
“Akthoob, have you still that pass which permits you entry into the Khalidûr?”
The old wizard shrugged bony shoulders. “This humble person has it here in his purse, young sir, but what good? I shall not now use it, as the Holy Dragon Emperor before whom I would have performed my small arts lies now stark and cold as last morning’s bacon… .”
“Does the pass describe the purpose of your visit?” Kadji pressed urgently through the fog of words.
“No, no indeed: it merely says that one Akthoob of Zool is given permission to enter into the Khalidûr and to come into the Throne Hall …”
“And it is dated?”
“Aye, young sir, but why all these questions? Oh, very well! It bears tomorrow’s date, as I told you when we talked …”
“You mean, today’s date, surely! For dawn is not many hours away, and the folk of Khôr reckon a day as beginning one hour past midnight, do they not?” urged Kadji.
“Very well, then, today’s date, surely, but why do you ask all of these questions …”
Grim purpose burned in the boy’s clear bright eyes, and determination could be seen in the firm set of his jaw.
“You are in my debt, are you not, Akthoob, for that I saved you a beating from the hands of that kugar bully, Jashpode, and mayhap saved your life, indeed?”
“Yes, yes, to be sure, young sir, but I do not—”
“I like it not, that I must force you to endanger yourself, old man, but my cause is very urgent, and as I see it we shall not be any great hazard, if all goes well. But now I fear I must ask you to absolve yourself of your debt to me, by doing me a favor …”
“A favor? What favor, young sir?” Curiosity glittered in the slant black eyes.
In short words Kadji answered him and watched the curiosity turn first to consternation, then astonishment, and finally—to terror.
vii. The Double Impostor
SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH, it proved no great task to enter the Khalidûr. True, the bridges that spanned the moat, and the gates and portals through which they must passed, were under very heavy guard, and those guards were not the burly, red-faced Rashemba knights (most of whom, Kadji learned, had been brutally massacred during the first swift, crimson hours following the assasination of the Emperor, and those survivors now disarmed, under guard, or fled) but nervous, truculent kugar hirelings.
The odd thing was that one glance at their pass sufficed to win them past guardpost after guardpost, and generally without any questioning at all. Kadji, garbed for this expedition in sober robes and betraying no signs of either his true Kozanga identity or his assumed Ushamtar guise, had frankly expected keen questioning to expose the falsity of their purpose. And while he did not expect arrest, he would not have been surprised had the guards at the very first checkpoint brusquely turned them back, refusing to let them pass.
In preparation for this he had bidden the old wizard to clothe himself inmost unwizardly raiment: sober and nondescript, but expensive garments in good taste.
As it was, their pass,—after all a valid one,—saw them through the hazardous moments of scrutiny and ere long they stood within the vaulted halls of the Khalidûr, and both of them could begin to breathe again.