Masks of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers

blew up then.
    “That’s it! By Horato the Potent! This is footling. Come on, let’s leave this pestilential place and set about our proper business!”
    By Krun! And wasn’t that the temptation!
    I said, “I believe our best ends will be served if we can prevent the union between Murgon and Dafni. As to any future marriage between Dafni and Pando, that is entirely a different matter.”
    “How serve our best ends?”
    I couldn’t tell Pando all of it. But, by Zair, I was in the frame of mind to cut through all this skullduggery.
    If Pompino knew the truth, he would change in his attitude to me, of course he would change. But then we might get things done quickly that now I had to beat about the bush to accomplish.
    With her smooth voice modulated and level, Dayra said: “If this Murgon takes Dafni, he wins her province, that will make him even stronger with the king, and the temples you speak of will proliferate and flourish...”
    “All the more to burn!” grunted Pompino. But Dayra’s words had made him think afresh.
    He drew his dagger. Mindi flinched back and half raised her hand. No one really believed she could turn him into a little green toad. But the thought was there, stark in our minds.
    Pompino presented the point of the dagger to Jespar the Scundle’s throat. His left hand seized the long beard and jerked the tump forward and up.
    “I am not a silly forest Ift, tump. I am a Khibil. Now you will tell me what I want to know.”
    Jespar strained on tiptoe. He remained calm.
    “You may kill a slave, Khibil; you will not then learn what it is you wish to know.”
    Oh, yes, tough these tumps; tough as the rock they dig their red gold from.
    I drew my knife; that broad heavy sailor blade caught a glint from the lamps and glittered. Jespar swiveled his eyeballs in my direction. I heard Dayra take a breath.
    On the footrail of Tilda’s bed, exposed by the drape of the clothes, the golden inlay gleamed lushly. The point of the knife slid in, I twisted, pulled, got the strip in my fingers and hauled. I was able to roll up a good arm’s length of the golden inlay into a bundle. This I held out.
    “You’d better put Jespar down, Pompino. You’ll have that beautiful beard out by the roots else.”
    The Khibil laughed. He socked the tump back onto the soles of his feet, and said: “Well, tump? Tell us!”
    Jespar the Scundle shook himself straight, grabbed the roll of the golden inlay, stuffed it away somewhere into his gray slave breechclout and drew the belt tight.
    “Yes, Jespar,” I said straightly. “Tell us it all.” For I had not missed the inner significance of the tump’s words.
    “That haughty Ift, Twayne Gullik,” he began. Then he realized just what I had said. He slid those deep eyes of his around to goggle at me again, and said in a rapid staccato: “The Ift shouted out Benorlad; but I knew the men in the silver leem masks had not come from there.”
    “Benorlad,” jerked out Naghan, his Fristle whiskers quivering. “That’s Murgon’s damned great fortress in his stromnate of Ribenor—”
    “Why, Jespar?” I said.
    “Why — wasn’t my second cousin’s wife’s brother there, with the men in the silver masks, with a chain around his neck and sitting on the back of a zorca? Tumps don’t ride so grandly. And we don’t like straying far. No, that wight Tangle the Ears — and I can’t say I care for him over much for he got disgustingly drunk when my second cousin was married — was being made to act the guide. They’re off to the mines up around the headwaters of the River Oonparl, up beyond Erronskorf.”
    I stared at Mindi the Mad.
    “You knew this?”
    She, in her turn, looked at Tilda. The gross form moved spasmodically as Tilda turned over, slopping wine, having had her say determined not to hear any more. Mindi took that as permission.
    “Since you have discovered where Murgon is going, through chicanery — why, yes.”
    “Then,” I said, swinging about and