Masks of Scorpio Read Online Free PDF Page A

when I said this would be simple, I erred.”
    I didn’t laugh; but you had to hand it to my comrade.
    “You said, if I recall, that we would recruit a fine gang of rascally fellows, go across and bash Strom Murgon, burn all the temples to Lem the Silver Leem, sort out who married who, and then go home.” I counted off the points on my fingers. “We have a few fine fellows; we could do with more. Strom Murgon more bashed us than the contrary. We have burned one temple here, and there are more hungry for the flames. And as for who marries who—”
    “Tell me,” said Dayra, “about that.”
    “Oh,” said Pompino. “Kov Pando and Strom Murgon both lust after the same girl, the Vadni Dafni Harlstam. Both want her estates. There are the Mytham twins, Poldo who himself yearns for Dafni, and Pynsi who wants Pando to marry her.” He gave his whiskers a fierce upward brushing movement. “It is all very simple, as I said.”
    Dayra put a finger to her lips and regarded Pompino calculatingly. “Simple?”
    “Of course.”
    “And the rest of it. You really do go around burning temples of the Silver Wonder?”
    “The quicker they are all burned the sooner the air will smell sweeter.”
    I made a small sound, a hesitant beginning to an expression of my personal doubts that burning the temples of the evil cult would change the minds of the worshipers.
     
    Pompino glared. “Oh, yes, Jak, I know your views! But if there are no temples—”
    “They will build more,” said Dayra.
    “Then we’ll burn them and perhaps deal more harshly with the cramphs who chant the praises of torturing and cutting up small girls into smaller pieces, may Armipand take ’em all into his black jaws!”
    As he spoke so my comrade looked at Dayra. His foxy face showed a shrewd scrutiny. No fool, Pompino the Iarvin, as his name testified; I thought he would not penetrate very far into her secrets. He waited a moment, and as neither of us spoke, he nodded. He was about to go on when I interrupted his train of thought.
    “We may burn temples as much as we desire. We must win over the credulous fools who believe the nonsense they are told. And that means—”
    “That means,” said Dayra, interrupting in her turn, “finding who gives the instructions.”
    By the way she used the word we understood she meant instructions to imply far more than simple orders.
    “The priests, the chief priests,” said Pompino. “Aye, we’ll find them. And I, for one, know what to do with ’em!”
    He spotted Captain Linson approaching, and finished: “Well, we’d better see about sailing again. Now we’ve lost the treasure these sea-leems will be a fine cutthroat crew, I think. Anyone who crosses them will rue the day.” He went off to speak with Linson about resuming our interrupted voyage.
    Dayra said: “Jak — when mother was chained up, there at the Sakkora Stones. And Barty died—”
    “Was treacherously stabbed in the back with a poisoned dagger, girl!”
    “So you say—”
    “So it was!”
    “I had to go off — if you were there—”
    “Oh, yes, I was there, with a damned great arrow through my neck. You were concluding the legal wrangle about marrying Zankov—”
    “I do not think I ever really wanted that, for all my words at the time. At any rate, I never did.”
    She looked splendid with her heightened color and the spirit in her; I remembered how she had warned Zankov not to harm Delia. As they say in the Eye of the World, only Zair can tell the cleanliness of a human heart. She spoke in a rush, emptying herself of this particular emotion.
    “And Barty? I know it sounds stupid, banal; but tell me, for I must know. Did Barty suffer at the end?”
    “The poison worked swiftly. He might well have died from the blow alone; he did not suffer, thanks be to Opaz.”
    She made a sideways, empty gesture. Down by the water’s edge they were hauling a boat out, and splashing, and calling to one another. The camp site was being broken up,