The Quest of Kadji by Lin Carter Read Free Book Online Page A

days ago, and now was here in mighty Khôr?
    The snow was thicker now. Great parties of kugars were moving through the slushy streets in the direction of their quarter, which ringed the central Khalidûr like a half-moon. All day he had seen the kugars gathering into the capital and had thought but little of it, save to keep a wary eye out for the Highborn Cyrib Jashpode, the young kugar lordling whom he had angered and fought, and with whom he guessed there would yet be a final reckoning.
    He dined alone that evening while the snow storm rose and raged beyond the shuttered windows. The friendly Easterling wizard, Akthoob, was not in evidence this night. And as the bony and talkative little old man was the closest thing to a friend he had yet made in this vast, bewildering, many-peopled metropolis, the Nomad boy felt oddly lonely as he ate his meal alone.
    There was shouting in the streets and many horsemen rode by and the sound of blown bugles somewhat later, but the boy Kadji, nursing a frugal jack of ale with a full belly beside the warm hearth, paid no attention. Then, toward the first hour after midnight, the inn door came crashing open with a blast of icy air sand a flurry of swirling snowflakes, and the Easterling Akthoob, came in, white from head to foot with snow, his pointed nose, blue with cold, his slitted eyes watering, blowing on his frozen hands and stamping the caked snow from his fur-covered buskins.
    Kadji hailed him. “Come, friend, share the fire and a jack of ale, for the uight is cold and dark.”
    Suppressed excitement glittered in the slant black eyes within that long sallow face.
    “Colder and darker than you think, young sir,” replied the little wizard in tense low tones.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The kugars have arisen. Holy Yakthodah lies dead in the Khalidûr, cut down by a kugar knife. And a kugar council rules golden Khôr this night!”
    vi. The Death of the Dragon
    ERE DAWN the word had sped to every corner of Khôr and not a miserable beggar shivering in his hovel but knew that the last legitimate heir of the dynasty was slain, that the great House of Azakour was extinguished at last, and a grim and bloody time of troubles had come upon the Dragon Empire. The savage and merciless struggle for power would begin now, and there were many men of Khôr who could well recall the terrible days that followed the death of Azakour Third twenty years agone, and how all of the Plains had been torn asunder by civil war until the discovery of a legitimate heir—even that same Yakthodah who lay now in state in the Throne Hall.
    The facts behind these bloody and swift-moving events were easy to unravel. The kugars had seized power after the death of the Emperor Azakour, and only an army of Rashemba knights, lent to the Pretender, Yakthodah, by his supporter and father-in-law, the High Prince Bayazin, had driven the greedy kugars from the place of power. The Nomad warriors of the Great Plains had aided in that war, but no sooner had they assisted in establishing Yakthodah in his father’s holy throne, than the fickle Emperor, discovering he needed the friendship and the fat purses of the kugars to sustain him in the life of revelry and license he desired, had welcomed back with open arms the rich and powerful landowner class. From this point things had gone from bad to worse, even to the point of alienating, then outlawing, and finally making war against the stout and loyal-hearted Nomads.
    But the kugars were not completely satisfied. They feared the influence of Bayazin, and the strong hold he had on the pleasure-loving Yakthodah. And recent news that Bayazin, with an army of his mighty Rashemba knights, was, now moving upon Khôr—ostensibly to pay a visit of state upon his royal son-in-law, and also to garrison the heartlands about Khôr. against the long-expected revenge of the Kozanga Nomads—drove the jealous and fearful kugars into open rebellion. Yakthodah had been assassinated by night in