Mazes of Scorpio Read Online Free PDF Page B

you and all your kind away.”
    “You mean you will go around murdering all the people you don’t like?”
    “No — it is not like that—”
    “Then what is it like?”
    “It is a Great Jikai!” [ii]
    I frowned. The misuse of the word Jikai does not amuse me.
    “I allow there are many princes and kings in this world who would be better off out of it. But not all. And not all the ordinary folk you people murder. You are drenched in blood, and most of it is blood of innocent people.”
    Now, Nedfar was a man of high principles, a man of impeccable integrity, as I knew. He had been talked to long and long before agreeing to become the Emperor of Hamal. But, for all that, he was a natural-born prince, a Prince of Kregen. Now he coughed a dry little cough and spoke firmly. “I am against the use of torture. It dismays and sickens me. But in certain cases—”
    Seg said, “Careful, Emperor. Dray is sensitive on that point.”
    Nedfar’s reply was brusque.
    “So am I, Kov Seg. But my good friend Trylon Agrival was foully murdered the other week by these monsters. He was a man steeped in the ancient lore of the Sunset People. Why should they murder him?”
    “Because,” burst out the woman, “he pried into secrets we were never meant to discover.”
    Extraordinarily difficult, by Krun, to argue against beliefs of this kind!
    But argue one must. At least, argue and talk and cajole. Torture — no. I’d have no part of that, and neither would Seg. And, while my regiments remained in Hamal, neither would Nedfar, comrade or no. And there spoke the voice of paranoia, loud and clear...
    I said, “I have struggled against unjust authority all my life. I have been slave. I have been whipped and tortured and chained in far fouler dungeons than any you may imagine, Mistress Pancresta. I do understand so much of what Spikatur Hunting Sword originally stood for.” I used the Spikatur oath. “By Sasco! I have fought alongside the adherents of Spikatur!”
    She looked surprised not so much at what I said, for that could all be a hollow shell of lies, designed to trick her, but at my use of the oath calling on Sasco.
    “What do you know, fool, of Spikatur?”
    So I told her what little we knew. The Spikatur Hunting Sword conspiracy had begun as a force to defeat Hamal. We believed it originated in Pandahem. It was made up of groups of people and owned no single leader.
    At this she leered at me, and her voice thickened.
    “This is all over now.”
    Seg whistled.
    I saw what she had let slip.
    She, too, saw. Her lids lowered over her eyes. Her mouth clamped to a bar.
    “We shall leave now, Mistress Pancresta. But we shall return. I need answers to those questions. If you know, I think it would be wise to answer.”
    “We of Spikatur Hunting Sword are not afraid to die for what we believe.”
    “I know,” I said, and we went out and left her alone. And then Nedfar, regal, dazzling in his robes, a prince, the Emperor of Hamal, turned at the door as the guards prepared to clang the bars shut.
    “Remember, Mistress Pancresta. Dying is easy. It is of the manner of dying that you should think.”
    Seg started to say as we walked up that dolorous corridor: “You wouldn’t really—” Nedfar shook his head.
    “Of course not. But dark thoughts loosen tongues.” The whole scene here distressed me, because a woman was incarcerated, because we were trying to force her to reveal what she had sworn to keep hidden, because the naked face of force was being used. But remembering old Trylon Agrival did make the point. He had been a Vallian, visiting Hamal and seeking to uncover the riddles of the past. He was gentle, absorbed in his work, a man out of the run of politics. Nedfar and Agrival had struck up a firm friendship. Agrival had tended to wander off into ruins, poking and prying, trying to read the old inscriptions. Such a man was very far from the lordly ones of Kregen, rubbing the noses of the poor in the dirt.
    Yet the