Scorpio Invasion [Dray Prescot #40] by Alan Burt Akers

Author:Alan Burt Akers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Publisher: Mushroom eBooks

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Chapter twelve

Through the apple green and rose pink of a splendid Kregen morning the voller soared on westwards. A voice at my back said: “So there you are!"

Slowly, I turned from the controls to look back, slowly, for the boiling fury inside me had to be contained. He stood there, not smiling and not frowning but wearing a sorrowful expression designed to cut me to the quick. His lower body shimmered and was not fully realized. His upper body seemed to float lopsidedly about and small curly blue flames lapped it in a waver of fire.

“You beastly, ungrateful, conniving hulu! You—you—” He could not go on. He was panting. His lupal projection showed that clearly enough.

The relief must have showed on my face, for just as I was about to speak he burst out: “By Lingloh! I see you are overjoyed to be rid of me!"

In a voice perhaps harsher than I meant, I said: “You have a job to do. I did not ask you to come adventuring with me. But as you have volunteered yourself for the task then you must buckle down to all of it."

“Oh, yes! I am to wet-nurse a gang of your jurukkers whilst you go flying off into wonderful adventures—"

He saw the lash of genuine anger in me as I ripped out: “So you really think I want to go flying off like this?” The bitterness in my words made his lupal projection flinch back. “Don't you think I'd far rather be at home, like any sensible person?"

He recovered himself from that blast of bitter anger. “Perhaps. Not everyone wants to skulk by the hearth—"

“You have a great deal to learn, Rollo. I just pray you stay alive to learn it."

All the same, there was truth in what he said. The trouble was not so much that I was flying off into some kind of adventure, as that I did not have Delia to share the excitements with me. That I'd never dream of taking her with me now, into the perils I foresaw ahead, was beside the point. Adventure, as I have said, is great on your own, when you can expand the chest and breathe the wonderful air of Kregen—even if down here in Tsungfaril a slick of sandy dust seemed always to film your tongue. And adventure with a few blade comrades is splendidly fine. It is the quality and intent of this so-called adventuring that dictates its values.

Maybe he saw some of that in my face, for he said somewhat surlily: “I intend to stay alive to my full allotment of seasons, thank you."

His image began to break up. As he'd admitted, his command of his own kharrna was still erratic. His kharrna would, one day, under the tutelage of Deb-Lu, become the powerful force it was in my comrade Wizards of Loh and then, like them, he could project his image in so concrete a form as to fool onlookers that he really was there.

“Remberee—” he called, and I replied as the last vestige of him winked out.

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