The Eyes of Sarsis Read online

  THE EYES OF SARSIS

  ANDREW OFFUTT & RICHARD LYON

  © Andrew Offutt & Richard Lyon 1980

  Andrew Offutt & Richard Lyon have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as authors of this work.

  First Published in 1980 by Pocket Books

  This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  To the Grand Masters who taught us all,

  L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP and FRITZ LEIBER

  Table of Contents

  BOOK I

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BOOK III

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BOOK I

  The Leftward Eye:

  SCARLET VISIONS

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Here, kitty kitty!”

  As Darganda of Reme was not a skilled thief or even cutpurse, he specialized in the robbery and murder of drunken sailors. It was hardly a rewarding occupation; by the time his victims were drunk enough that he dared attack, they often had little left worth stealing. Indeed, Darganda had done death on five men this month to so little profit that he’d have starved by now, were it not for his second occupation or rather “occupation”: cat butcher.

  Once again he lurked in an alley behind a tavern in Reme, chief port and capital of Ilan. His stomach was growling, and it was too early in the evening for seamen to be helpless with drink, and Darganda was pleased to see himself approached by a cat. The wiry man fingered his knife eagerly. Keen of edge and needle-pointed, it was the weapon of a true grub, the street assassins that infested the city. Darganda was no warrior to keep his blade all shiny and eye-catching; it was dull and lackluster as the eyes of his habitual victims. Few had seen the blade, though many had felt it. They did not remember.

  “Here kitty kitty — come here and let Darganda cut your darling throat.”

  He saw that the animal was sleek, well fed, without scar or blemish. Its fur was-pure white, long, and rich as sable. Clearly this was no alley beast, but the pampered pet of some aristocrat. He waited. It continued to pace toward him mincing with tail high while it stared at him with big luminous eyes green as gems. Musing that the pretty thing would yield a tender stew indeed, Darganda was startled to note that it wore some sort of necklace.

  This’ll be the first time I ever robbed a cat!

  He reached forth his arms and the cat, obviously expecting to be petted, hopped into them. Darganda cradled the animal in one arm while he drew his knife. It was then that he received the next to last surprise of his life; he looked closely at the cat’s necklace.

  The grub expected a cut glass trinket worth a few coppers. Instead he gazed, intoxicated, upon a faultless diamond of a thousand winking facets, wide as a man’s thumb and blazing with internal fire. A king’s ransom, Darganda thought, for his thoughts, like his sparse converse, went little beyond the most standard of clichés. The sale of this treasure — here, in his arms! — would bring more gold than a man could carry! The feet of the wiry little thug of Reme were set on the road of Empire, sure!

  Like many another worthless harbor rat, Darganda imagined himself a great man denied opportunity by cruel circumstance. Now destiny seemed to open its door. Bustling to enter, he saw himself as a successful bandit chieftain, and then as a robber baron; general of a vast conquering army, he burned, pillaged, enslaved whole nations. He dreamed of himself as emperor. He visualized scores, countless beautiful slavegirls to do with as he pleased. No no: noblewomen, for was he not emperor?

  The myriad vainglorious dreams burst like bubbles, in the alley behind the Wayfarer Tavern.

  All this was provided he was not killed and robbed of the jewel before he departed this alley! With his new wealth, every men was his enemy. Every face that of an enemy , he thought; every hand raised against me ! All will want to steal my treasure from me !

  His rat’s eyes ranged their gaze up and down the alley to assure himself that it remained deserted. A bit of lamplight crept from a high rear window of the tavern. The only other source of light was the full moon, a silver skull suspended high in the sky. The tavern’s rear door represented a threat; at any moment it might disgorge attackers. Hugging his cat, his prize and his treasure, Darganda moved deeper into the shadows. It was imperative that the white cat die silently.

  “Nice kitty, kitty … ”

  Darganda petted the cat, which purred luxuriously. Its large green eyes stared luminously into the grub’s. Like the diamond, the cat’s eyes seemed to hold cold fire prisoned within. Staring into them, Darganda did not notice that the diamond was changing. One by one, each of its thousand white facets was turning into a blood-red star.

  The cat stared, the diamond blazed, and the thug raised his knife. He placed sharp edge to pulsing throat.

  “Nice kitty, this won’t hurt you a bit.”

  His words were entirely true. A single swift movement drew knife’s edge across throat, severing the jugular vein. Blood bubbled. The cat sprang from the man’s arms and Darganda collapsed into the filth of the alley. It was then that Darganda made his tardy discovery, the last surprise of his life: the throat he had just cut was his own.

  While his blood poured forth onto the ground, he saw the cat clean itself of the few droplets that had spattered its gleaming coat. Though Darganda’s eyes closed then, his ears heard for another moment. The last sound he heard was the cat: it was lapping and purring as if drinking the finest cream.

  Its meal finished, the cat turned from the corpse. Fastidiously it cleansed its whiskers and button nose of scarlet stains and, with the easy natural grace of its kind, paced down the alley until it was beneath the tavern window. An effortless leap carried the animal up onto the sill. There perched the white cat, surveying the tavern called Wayfarer.

  The scene within presented a paradox. The tavern’s patrons were pirates, hard and gristly. Grizzled sharks of the sea. Yet seated in the place of highest honor at the very head of the Table of Captains was a woman of both youth and beauty. Her hair was misty sunset and her eyes flashing emeralds; a black cloak was furled back to display a superb body sparsely clad in a tight green shirt and short skirt, both of silk.

  A newcomer might well wonder why this choice morsel remained untouched in the very midst of a hungry wolf pack. A more discerning eye would provide the answer: those round arms concealed muscle and the woman’s beauty drew attention from strength and speed. Too, the hilts of the rapier and dagger at her belt were worn from use. All were wolves here; one happened to be she-wolf.

  It was a measure of the daring of Tiana, Captain of Vixen, that she left her crew behind and came alone to such a den. This night she was manifestly enjoying herself. Her fellow sea-wolves listened with awe to her adventures, roared at her jests and ribald jokes, and were fervently diligent in keeping her wine-cup brimmed. This homage she accepted as her due, for Tiana knew she was the best of the pirates who sailed from Reme.

  She knew what she looked like, too, and was well pleased with the knowledge; naturally these men cherished some childish plan to get her helpless with drink and rape her — for after all, she thought, who did not! — but she knew too that she could and would drink them all under the tabl
e. They were only men.

  All laughed at someone’s joke, and their host nervously wiped his hand in his apron. The trouble with these damned boisterous, murderous, scarred, hard-drinking sharks was that their money was so good!

  Tiana lifted high her mug without spilling a droplet of wine, despite its just having been filled to the brim by a hairy-chested ox who had lusted after her for years — and who now watched not her face or arm or the mug but the interesting lines of stress that leaped up in her blouse with her movement.

  “Ha!” she cried. “I know not about your ship Black Sword, Mandias, but as for my ship … I am the vixen of Vixen !”

  Again laughter rose loud, and the white cat completed its observations.

  It jumped down and walked unnoticed toward a dark corner of the inn. There squatted Arond, former pirate turned beggar by one swordcut several years agone; now he waited for such food as fell to the floor. This he did by smell and touch, for his eye sockets were empty pits of darkness. The cat halted before the beggar and stared up at his face. The diamond at its neck was a shining silvery white — that was slowly turning red in the way of a crystal goblet being filled with crimson wine. Somehow the blind man sensed the cat’s silent approach. Had anyone noticed, he’d have seen that Arond was frightened by what he sensed.

  None noticed. Tiana held all attention; Tiana and the goblets and mugs on the Captains’ Table. She had been asked to relate how she had despoiled the Tomb of Kings up in Calancia of Nevinia. Captain Tiana Highrider did love to tell that tale, assuring all that she had known no fear even when buried alive and later menaced by the bestial ghouls that awaited her within Nevinia’s good earth.

  No one saw Arond’s ugly face while his fear became terror. He drew breath to scream, but his face went blank and his cry emerged only as a muted whimper that was hardly as loud as Mandias’s sudden burst of laughter, across the room. Rising slowly, Arond walked to the rear door of the Wayfarer. The white cat followed closely, tail high. Arond was not feeling his way; he walked as swiftly and surely as a sighted man. He opened the door unerringly and he and the cat passed into the alley. No one saw. The cat’s tail-tip twitched as it followed the blind former pirate to the bloodless corpse of Darganda.

  Even a sighted man could not have detected the grub’s knife in the darkness and filth of the alley; Arond picked it up without hesitation.

  As he walked back to the inn’s door, the cat sprang onto the windowsill. It sat once more surveying the tavern, tail moving only at the tip. The Wayfarer’s vein-faced proprietor was just taking away the empties in exchange for the new crocks and jugs of wine and ale he set upon the Captains’ Table.

  “You were entirely naked?” This from Cap’n Barkis, called the Weasel.

  “I had a ribbon in my hair,” Tiana said blithely, and eyes rolled.

  Three doors holed the inn’s walls; front, rear, and side. While Tiana continued her story, a man entered by each door, simultaneously. By the rearward exit Arond returned. He moved toward the Captains’ Table in an uncanny manner: unseeing yet unerring. Truly his walk had become the old confident swagger he’d affected as one of the sea’s boldest pirates. He’d been a bold one, aye, before he had several years ago forgot himself and sought to seize the ship of his fellow corsair Caranga, whom Axond had dared call Black Caranga.

  In by the side door, meanwhile, came a man unknown to the pirates of Reme; a tall, slender, hawk-faced fellow he was, with dead eyes cold as a virgin’s bed. He walked with an oddly liquid limp. The lean body shifted ultra-lithely from side to side as though he were powerless to control it.

  He went unnoticed, as did Arond, because of the advent of the third man.

  This one thrust himself boldly through the front doorway, where he stood a moment to survey the place. Though he was not over-tall, his broad powerful shoulders seemed to fill the doorway. Gray traces gleamed in his black, tightly curly hair. Otherwise he was as a slice of night confidently entering the Wayfarer; this man’s face and bare chest, loose leggings and boots were all black as coal.

  Striding into the tavern as though he were its owner, he bellowed greeting to fellow pirates. They called back in happy camaraderie: “Ho, Caranga! About time!”

  The white woman and the black man could not have been in greater contrast save had she been blond. Yet she smiled and called, “Father! You’re just in time! Do try Cartro’s roast beef — it’s truly excellent tonight!”

  The newcomer thus addressed glanced at the inn’s host, smiled, and nodded. Cartro bustled to his kitchen. The flame-haired pirate queen was starting to create a place for the black when an expressionless voice spoke, from her right.

  “Captain Tiana Highrider, I have something for you.”

  She turned questioning face to the stranger. While his eyes looked at her with neither emotion nor recognition, he extended a scroll of parchment. Tiana automatically reached for it — and the attack came, a sudden and complete surprise. Arond sprang.

  The stranger had no chance to evade the knife the blind man thrust unerringly into his heart. Whirling, the beggar stabbed at Tiana. She was just able to twist aside and grasp his wrist. She forced the arm down while her knee shot up. An audible snap accompanied the breaking of Arond’s arm. Yet his fist remained clamped around the knife while with his other hand he reached for the woman’s neck.

  Tiana dared not release the knife-hand, broken or no. She stepped toward her attacker. As Arond’s left hand closed about her throat, she kicked him in the groin with a small foot shod in a large, square-toed boot. The murderous beggar showed no sign of having noted the blow that was a standard part of Tiana’s fighting repertoire — and always effective. Not this time. Arond’s fingers contracted about her neck like iron bands while his broken arm strained to drive the knife at her.

  While Tiana fought horror and death, the man she’d called father was far from idle. He charged with a bellow, scattering men and tables like a bull elephant on the rampage. As Arond’s fingers squeezed more tightly about Tiana’s throat, the burly man’s heavy cutlass flashed up and down to sever the beggar’s arm just above the wrist.

  “I should have killed you that other time, damn you! My sweet Tiana told me I — Susha’s paps!”

  Without the slightest expression of pain, Arond dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  His fingers, meanwhile, continued to contract about Tiana’s neck. She tore at the severed hand while her face darkened. If anything, the thing’s strength and lust to kill had increased with its disconnection from its arm. She could not breathe. Her lungs were afire and the lights of pain flashed before her eyes.

  With the world a swimming blur, she somehow managed to force her fingers beneath the crushing thumb. Only by pulling back with all her strength did she break the strangling clutch. Instantly the hand was limp and lifeless.

  Immediately Tiana squatted by the body of Arond. Her considerable skill at battlefield surgery was of no use, she swiftly ascertained; no life remained in the beggar.

  “This death,” she muttered, “is as unnatural as the life of his hand.”

  He showed no wounds that should have proven instantly fatal; in any case she knew that the body always struggled to retain life, if only briefly. The beggar her foster-father had once blinded — in self-defense, without having sense enough to give him another stroke, damn it — had shown no pain, no struggle. The moment he could no longer attack, his life had ended.

  “It’s almost as if … as if he was discarded,” she muttered; “a broken tool no longer useful to … the owner.” She looked up, frowning, as two big black hands came down to her.

  Caranga helped her up. “Well, daughter, your sweet old father saved your life this time!”

  “Thank you, father. I do wish you’d just … waited.”

  “But this dog attacked you!”

  “He’d not have done, if you’d killed him years ago instead of letting him go because he was blind and … helpless ? Besides, if you’d just give
n me a minute, I’d have disarmed him. Then he could have answered my questions. It wasn’t as if I was afraid , after all.”

  “Of course not. What questions?”

  “To begin with — how does a man without eyes see so perfectly?”

  “My dear nosy daughter,” Caranga snorted, “stick to honest piracy like a good fellow, and leave black mystery alone!”

  “You’re a fine one to use ‘black’ as an adjective, my dear interfering fa — ”

  “Captain Tiana,” the flat expressionless voice said, from behind Caranga, “I have something for you.”

  The reformed cannibal turned respectable pirate whirled; he and his adopted daughter stared at the stranger. He still stood upright, despite Arond’s stab wound — which was bleeding only a little. With a “Here,” he placed the scroll in Tiana’s hand. “For you. It’s a map of possible interest.” Then he lay down on the floor on his back. He straightened his legs with the thighs together, closed his eyes, and folded his arms over his chest. And he was motionless.

  “G’night Caranga, Tiana,” Captain Mandias of Black Sword said, and in departing he started a general movement throughout the Wayfarer.

  Caranga did not answer; swearing under his breath, he had squatted to examine the supine messenger. He heard his daughter’s awed voice.

  “Has all the universe gone mad? Arond should not have died and did, on the instant. That one’s wound should have been instantly fatal. For that matter — Father? Why did he bleed so little?”

  Caranga ended his examination and straightened. “Did you note this man when he entered — how he walked?”

  “Only as he approached me. He had an odd limp. His upper body seemed to — to slip from side to side.”

  “Ah yes. So I’d expect — his spine is broken. Was broken. To answer your questions: if the universe has not gone mad, this inn has. I for one will no longer be a patron. Your, ah, message-bearer’s wound was not fatal, and he bled so little because … this man has been dead for several hours.” Caranga watched her face closely. She took what he said; he had raised her well to join the family business, and she was strong, for all that she’d been born a duke’s bastard and left to die. “Now, daughter, if you will take my advice for once: burn that scroll, unopened. Whatever this evil affair is, we’re best out of it. And here. The Wayfarer’s gone as bad as the Smiling Skull we used to frequent — till you burned it.”