Fires of Scorpio Read Online Free Page A

of space to the planet of my birth.

Chapter two
    Of the donning of a Silver Mask
    The sea bellowed and roared less than a hundred paces off across a sandy beach, spuming in white foam fountains against jagged rocks that stuck out into the surf like the teeth of a Clawsang. Inland the jungle began where the beach ended, its greenery lush and profuse and deadly. Was I, then, still on the island of Pandahem?
    The Star Lords make no great fuss over the people they select to do their dirty work for them. As usual, I was stark naked. The scarlet breechclout and the Krozair longsword were gone. No doubt Seg was even now stooping to pick them up, bewildered by my disappearance. Well, now he knew who had taken me up and why I was gone...
    Farther along the beach a headland walled off what lay beyond and the jungle dripped over the beach. In the shadows lay an upturned ship.
    She was an argenter, a broad comfortable trading vessel, and clearly she had been there some time. Her upper works were vanished away — I did not think they extended down into the sand — and her keel was well-covered with green growing things. A group of people clad in brown robes hurried toward the ship and vanished into the dark opening cut into her side.
    Feeling exposed, I ran swiftly up the beach into the treeline. The vegetation here based on sand was sparse; I wondered which would win this eternal natural battle, the sand or the jungle.
    A pathway opened out onto the beach a few paces along and a further group of people walked out from the trees into the radiance of the suns shine. They talked together quite naturally, their voices a mere rumble, so that I judged they had no fear either of hostile denizens of the jungle or of enemies lying in wait for them.
    Now, being dumped down naked and unarmed to sort out a problem for the Star Lords has been my lot for a long time. I was not prepared to take it for granted. An order of precedence had to be established. First — just what was it that the Everoinye required of me this time? Second — I had to find a weapon. Oh, I am privy to the Disciplines and can throw people about in unarmed combat; but on Kregen a man without a weapon in his fist remains at a disadvantage. Only last would I worry about clothes.
    Edging closer to the trail, I stopped as three people walked along, deep in conversation. Their words came muffled. But, clearly, striking out as a risslaca’s tongue licks out, the words hit me.
    “My Flem! It is not to be borne!”
    And the quick answer uttered in temper: “You are right, By Glem! We will tell Pudor and have done.”
    “I am with you, in the name of the Silver Wonder!” said the third.
    I felt sick.
    Now I knew what I was up against. These people were worshippers of Lem the Silver Leem, an evil cult — evil as judged by ordinary people with ordinary morals and outlooks on human life — a cult dedicated to the overthrow of every other religion and the enslavement of all those who did not bow down to Lem the Silver Leem.
    The three men wore brown robes, decked with silver.
    They carried weapons.
    In that upturned ship they had set up their secret temple. Their confidence was plain. No one was likely to interfere with them here. And, also, if they were acting as they always acted during their religious observances, they’d have a baby in there, a child, and they’d slit its throat and disembowel it and offer up its heart to the blasphemous silver image of the leem.
    The task of stopping them from indulging in their other obscene practices and their orgies could wait. Right here and now I had to get that child away to safety. If this was not the task the Star Lords had set to my hands, then it was the task I set myself.
    And, as usual, this would be a task of the most difficult and dangerous nature.
    Once I had rescued the child and restored it to its mother — it, of course, because the baby could be male or female and of any race of diffs or apims — then I could set my face