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:
“When did this Masked Prophet appear in Chemedis?” asked Kadji, frowning.
Akthoob told him, and the boy warrior did some quick calculations. The date of the messiah’s appearance was about the time Shamad could be expected to have reached Chemedis, had he in fact traveled on into the east, instead of turning back. And it was not unlike the clever opportunist, having won but failed to hold one throne, to gamble for another… .
“I suppose it could be him,” the boy muttered. “But have you any other reason to suspect the Masked Prophet to be our quarry, beyond the mere coincidence of dates?”
Akthoob had indeed. “As proof of his god-given and sorcerous powers, the Prophet goes ever accompanied by a tame and subservient demon … a Serpent Demon, this person has been told … and Yakthuul the caravan-master, the source of this information, has seen this strange and hellish monster, and describes him shudderingly as hulking and anthropoid, but glittering in blue scales—”
“—Zamog!” Kadji exclaimed. “It must be he!”
Akthoob nodded, a smile of satisfaction on his thin lips.
“So this lowly one surmised,” he purred.
v. Caravan Trail
KADJI WAS elated with this clue to Shamad’s whereabouts, although it would pose a bit of a problem to pluck his enemy from amidst the court of the Ja Chan. That problem, however, they would face when they came to it. But the assumption that the Masked Prophet of Kamon-Thaa and Shamad the Impostor were one and the same man was too logical to overlook, and worth a trip to Chemedis to investigate.
Akthoob arranged passage for his friend and himself with his fellow countryman, Yakthuul, whose caravan was bound east on the Grand Chemedis Road and would pause for a time in the city of the Ja Chan before continuing further east and north to the kingdoms at the world’s remote edge. They had little gold left, but Yakthuul could always use a wizard to read the omens and ward off evil spirits, and another warrior handy with axe and sword was always welcome, as there were bandits aplenty who devoted their time to raiding the infrequent but always wealthy merchant caravans. Thus they rode out of the little town of Ambar under a grey and bleak dawn.
Yakthuul the caravan master was fat and sleepy-eyed and rode in a comfortable carriage drawn by the shaggy little ponies of the eastern plains. This was due not only to his fondness for the bodily comforts but because he was too fat to sit astride a horse. Kadji held little converse with the merchant, who had a sort of suave contempt for the raw young kingdoms of the west, and considered Nomads of the plains like Kadji little better than barbarians, devoid of culture or history. But Akthoob was often invited to partake of the merchant princeling’s hospitality and came reeling back to the little tent he shared with the Red Hawk much the worse for liquor, night after night. Yakthuul, it seemed, was given to a potent beverage common in the kingdoms of the east, but unknown in the west. This powerful liquor was distilled from a fruit wine and was a heady intoxicant.
It was on one of these evenings when Akthoob had imbibed a bit more freely than was his wont, that Kadji conceived of a clever plan. The boy warrior thought often of the flamehaired girl, Thyra, and of the mysteries surrounding her, and the enigma of her true identity. He was convinced that the old Easterling wizard knew or suspected her secret, although he concealed it from Kadji and would not divulge it. Thus one chilly night in early spring when they had been riding the caravan trail for two weeks, and Akthoob returned to their tent very much the worse for the potent alcoholic beverage, Kadji got him talking and maneuvered the direction of the conversation toward the girl Thyra and the surprising knowledge of the healing arts she had displayed when he lay ill almost to the point of death from the terrible wounds he had sustained in the camp of the villainous Perushka.
“Odd that a Princess of the Blood should know how to care for an injured man with such skill,” he said, when the garrulous and drunken old wizard had begun to talk of Thyra.
“Ah, more than odd, yes,” murmured Akthoob sleepily. “This humble person knows little enough of the healing science, but he knows that it is performed with herbs and elixirs, not with …” and here he used a word which meant ‘the-sending-forth-of-the-soul’ “…‘twas White Magic the young woman used, not medicine … aii, she is not what she did seem to be, although this one cannot guess why she did lie to us… .”
It came out slowly that Akthoob suspected Thyra was not the Princess she had claimed to be, but one of the White Witches of Zoromesh! Kadji bit his lips, and murmured more questions into the ear of the sleepy old wizard.
“The honorable youth could not speak of his love for the maiden for his vows forbid it … aye, but little did he suspect that the same holds true for the young woman, if indeed she be of the Zoromesh covens … for they are sworn to perpetual virginity.”
Kadji suppressed a gasp of amazement. Sudden understanding flooded his mind: it was not to be wondered at, that a wall of silence and misunderstanding had risen between him and the girl, forming a breach between them.
He, sworn to chastity for the duration of his sacred Quest, could not display the growing love he felt for the flamehaired girl … and She, sworn to virginity by the vows of her sorcerous sisterhood, was equally bound. But—neither had known of the other’s vow; and both misunderstood the silence between them for lack of response!
He groaned and bit off a savage curse. O, the folly of it all!
Each, bound by vows which forbade the expression of the affection they felt, had not understood the other to be similarly bound—had not understood why the other had not expressed that affection—had grown hurt, then angry, then bitter.
Kadji put his head in his hands. Thyra was gone and he would not find her again in the wide-wayed world. She would never realize that he, too, felt the stirrings of love. The irony of the dilemma was cruel. But life itself is cruel, as the boy warrior was beginning to discover.
vi. The White Witches
THE NEXT morning they rose, Akthoob with an aching head and a queasy stomach, feebly swearing that never again would he imbibe so freely of Yakthuul’s fiery brandy.
They breakfasted over a smoky fire and Kadji confessed that he had pried the truth out of his comrade the night before. Akthoob was glum and dispirited, and not entirely from the after-effects of his drinking the night before. He had hoped to spare the boy’s feelings by keeping from him his suspicions that Thyra was an impostor and had lied to them.
Horns blew from the forefront of the caravan, and creaking wains began drawing into line for the days’ journey. They hastily crushed out their fire, saddled up, and mounted to join the wagontrain. As they rode in the wake of a huge wain, Akthoob miserably revealed the full weight of his suspicions.
“This miserable person suspects the purposes of the noble young woman, although he has not dared to give words to them ere this,” he muttered. “Now they matter nor, nor can they deal the honorable Kadji greater hurt than his heart has already sustained.”
He then, in his flowery and indirect mode of speech, explained the whole story for the first time.
The wizards and sorcerers and magicians of this world of Gulzund, he told Kadji, are organized into various fraternities and guilds, among them being the White Sisterhood of Zoromesh.
Although his homeland lay very far to the east, in the northern land of Zool which lay above the Yan Than Mountains near the Frozen Country, and though he had not previously visited the world’s west, old Akthoob knew by reputation of this Sisterhood.