Chapter 17

Of vines and exorcs

“The man’s a maniac!” I bellowed, leaping away from that swishing thraxter. “He’s mistaken me for somebody else!”

“I’d know you, Chaadur, in the mists of the Ice Floes themselves! Take him alive! Guards! Guards!”

“No, no, you onker!” I shouted, and the two Pachaks came running in, shields up, thraxters out, their tail blades coiled above their close-fitting helmets. If I couldn’t convince Pallan Horosh in the next half-mur that this Kov was mistaken, the Pachaks would attack and seek to overpower me.

“I know you, gul! Sumbakir knows you! You may have run away to Ruathytu and joined the political guls there — call yourself a Horter now, do you! By Hanitcha the Harrower! I’ll fry your liver for breakfast and gnaw on your bones for supper.”

He was quite possessed. Given that his wife had indeed been foully murdered — with her own dagger at the hands of Floy, the Fristle girl who had been one of Esme’s Chail Sheom — he was entitled to be angry to the point of madness. That he had proved himself to be a most evil Kov, joying in his power for the capacity it gave him for the infliction of pain, meant that sympathy for him came hard. One last try: “Pallan Horosh! Call this madman off or I will not be answerable for the consequences!”

There was little time to finish what I was saying as ham Feoste hurled away the chair that impeded his progress and lunged after me with his thraxter. I had to avoid that dangerous implement and watch out for the Pachaks. They were looking at the Pallan for orders.

Kov Ornol ham Feoste clinched it when he bellowed: “You know me, Hennard! I’m your cousin’s son!

I am the Kov of Apulad! This is a gul, a cramph, calling himself a Horter—”

I really believe it was mainly my own odd behavior since arrival here that tipped Horosh’s decision, that and the fact that the man calling for my head was a relation and a Kov.

“Take him, guards!”

So, feeling sorry for the Pachaks, I was finally forced into an action I had sought to avoid. The two Pachaks slumped to the carpets with a sighing wheeze from one and nothing at all from the other. Each Pachak wore a terchick through the eye.

“In Havil’s name!” screeched the Pallan, completely shattered, horrified. He began to yell for guards in a voice that quavered up and down the scale. The Kov of Apulad bolted for the door. He did not yell until he was well outside; he saved all his breath for running. I let him go. To the Pallan I said, “I’ll take that report now, and do my duty. You will have to explain the dead guards.” The Pallan stopped shouting to look at me, dazed. “They were good men. It is the fault of that foul Kov, and yours, that they are dead.”

“You . . . you . . .” He was trying to breath, to get the breath down into his lungs, wheezing and gasping. His head was hunched down between his shoulder blades and he rested both his hands, his arms at full extent, on the desk. He glared up at me and his eyes showed red-rimmed. “You . . . Naghan Lamahan . .

. you are a dead man.”

I picked up the report. “Not yet, and you look out for yourself — Hennard, was it? A most distinguished name.”

Outside I composed myself and looked swiftly around. Soldiers were running up from the left, over the yellow grass. Leading them, the Kov was still waving his thraxter and shrieking. He must have felt naked without his pet werstings.

The path to the right into the orchards lay open so I ran that way. The report I had thrust down into the breast of my shirt and the pasham in my pocket were far more important than an exhilarating interlude of swordsmanship now. As for the Kov of Apulad, the man was a blot, but I did not feel called on to deal with him. It could safely be left to the next slave revolt to see him off. All the laws on Hamal wouldn’t save him then.

I ran.

I ran into the orchard, with a definite plan in my head.

There were crossbowmen back there and a few bolts whispered past through the leaves. I jinked left-handed and so pelted on, through the leaves and their dependent pashams, still green and unripe. No time to stop to pick a basketful now.

The Kov was still yelling, his voice coming faintly and most irritatingly, like that of a nagging wife through closed doors, destroying the harmony of a home. “I’ll have you, Chaadur! You’ll wish you’d never been born! I’ll—” Well, thinking about it, I will not repeat his threats. They possessed nothing of originality to make them worth remembering.

The orchards here were planted for ease of upkeep, with wide lanes. I had to hurdle the bent forms of slaves as they weeded. Weeds drank too much water, which was precious on a volgendrin. The pack bayed after.

There would be no hope of reaching Liance. The mirvol would immediately be ringed by soldiers waiting for me to run that way. As you know, I can look after myself reasonably well in a little fight like this and can usually, although not always, make a break for freedom. The problem is always that of numbers. However hard a normal human being fights, in the end he can be swamped by numbers. It is only the heroes of myths and fables, the giant men of the dawn and the phantasms of sick minds, who can fight and fight and never be beaten.

And, anyway, if a hero can never be beaten, where is the interest, where the chivalry, where the sport, in hearing of his adventures?

I’ve always considered Achilles a real heel in comparison with Hector. You who have been listening to these tapes will know that I am merely making excuses for myself for what happened very soon after that . . .

The grass padded by underfoot. I wore the military boot of the Horter class, tall, black, and shiny, not too well adapted for running. The trees passed backward with hypnotic effect. It was highly desirable to jink from row to row to stop a clear shot, and soon the swods spread out to take a shot at me in whichever row of trees I ran.

When a bolt thwunked a trunk ahead of me, shredding bark and a yellow sliver of wood, I put on a burst of speed, angling through the trees, coming into each open row fast enough to be gone before the crossbows could be loosed. The way brought me to the very edge of the volgendrin, with a wooden fence rearing up before me. Beyond that fence lay thin air.

Up over the fence, with a grip and a twist, and I let myself down on the other side. There was perhaps a pace of ground here to give sufficient purchase for the fence stakes. I looked down.

It was a long long way to the ground.

A river trended slowly past below, with the green of trees and the lighter green of open spaces. I thought I could see a glimpse of sleek brown forms running, but it could have been a trick of the eye. I started to climb down the sheer face, which afforded jagged hand-and footholds in the striated strata of the flying island. Down I went, hand under hand, feet feeling for a purchase, down and down, and I looked aloft for the first fierce face to show over the fence.

This was a pretty little fix! I felt like a fly in amber. It seemed to me I climbed down that serrated cliff edge with all the speed and activity of a nonagenarian negotiating his seat from bed to bathchair. I didn’t dare take any chances.

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I said to myself. “The cramphs won’t get to me before I’m out of sight!”

In any event, only three crossbow bolts spattered down before I found a scooped hole in the rock. Here rainwater had gouged out a hollow in softer rock between shales. I flopped in, rested my back, and cursed. The moment I put my head out they’d shoot down. Some swod with an eye would feather his quarrel in my skull.

A slight overhang enabled me to look down, even if I could not in safety look up. So I looked down. The ground seemed no nearer, but there were definitely animals running through the open spaces down there. I saw they were animals very much like the cattle of Kregen, somewhat smaller than Earthly cattle, with short horns and, in this wild state, of uncertain temper. These were very much like the fine fat cattle that grazed so peacefully in Delphond.

The shadow of the volgendrin, moving like a demarcation line across the terrain, seemed to drive them to fearful flight, for they ran and ran to stay in the suns’ shine.

I admit I dwelt with some philosophical rancor on my plight. I do not run away very often or very easily. The old Dray Prescot would have stood his ground, unscabbarded the great longsword, and simply slugged it out . . . until he was rapped on the head and all the Bells of Beng Kishi rang in that thick and stupid skull of his.

Well, by using what brains I imagined I possessed, in running in order to escape with the report and the pasham, how had I improved matters?

This position was not even a standoff.

I knew what they would do. A voller would ghost along the cliff edge — and a flight or two of Gerawin as well, in all probability — and they’d simply shoot me full of quarrels. The angle of the suns, hidden by the bulk of the flying island, told me there were far too many burs before nightfall for me to last that long without discovery.

The lust for revenge consuming the Kov of Apulad escaped my calculations. A voller ghosted into view, flying along the edge of the volgendrin from left to right. It flew perhaps ten feet below the level of the hollow. I drew back. Maybe, just maybe, there would be a chance for life. They saw me.

The voller eased up. Gerawin, their purple and black feathers flying in the wind of their passage, circled ready to plunge in. Crossbowmen packed the deck of the voller. They had mantlets erected so as the craft rose level the men vanished from my view behind the shields; all I could see of them were the heads of the quarrels through shooting slits.

With a grunt I reached up and drew out the longsword. This was not a genuine Krozair longsword. This weapon had been created by Naghan the Gnat and myself in the smithy of Esser Rarioch. It was a superlative weapon, built as closely as I could make it to pure Krozair lines, of perfect balance and heft, with a pair of superb cutting edges. It would do enormous damage. But it was not a true Krozair longsword.

With the silver wire-wound hilt gripped in the cunning Krozair fashion, right hand up to the quillons, left hand to the pommel, with that spread of leverage between them, I stood up on the lip of crumbling rock and prepared to fight the last fight.

With the sword angled before me and vertical, I could bat away the flying bolts by quick delicate flicks of the wrist. They loosed, but the bolts hissed past on either side and not one came near enough to touch me. Bits of rock chippings flew.

A voice hailed from the voller.

“Chaadur, you who call yourself Naghan Lamahan. You have no chance. Give yourself up to the law as is proper.”

I considered this. Oh, yes, I, Dray Prescot, tried to decide if I should fling back defiance and fight until death, or if I should risk present capture for later escape.

The struggle between the Dray Prescots that are me — at least, at the very least, two of them! — was, believe me, of far greater virulence than any fight with steel swords could ever be. First I tried to stick to my guns. “I am Naghan Lamahan. That mad Kov is mistaken. Who is this Chaadur?”

“I know you, yetch!” That was the Kov, foaming at the mouth most likely. “Do you think I could ever forget you?”

He would have gone on, but I heard another voice, then whispers, then nothing as their voices sank. But I could guess easily enough that they were trying to calm the Kov so as not to excite me. I did not laugh, but this was a ripe occasion for a real belly laugh, if ever there was one.

“Give yourself up, Chaadur!”

The voller inched in. Another foot or so and I could leap the gap.

“Not while that cramph of a Kov remains out of a madhouse!”

More shouts and whisperings, and the voller edging closer, the watchful Gerawin circling . . .

“You have no chance of escape, Chaadur!”

About that time, realizing I had no bow, they took down a couple of the mantlets. I could see the Hikdar yelling at me, the pressing mass of bowmen, and Kov Ornol ham Feoste, too, shaking his thraxter at me, all on the deck of the voller.

No Hikdar, even an ord-Hikdar, was going to argue overlong with a Kov. And the voller inched in . . .

I had to consider the Gerawin most carefully. They would see the impossible situation in which I was held, and would know escape was impossible. All the same, being guards by nature, they would still be ready to hurtle down at the first suspicion that something had gone wrong. So I watched them circling for a while and, looking down, saw a couple spiraling up with great speed. Far below these two I saw other flyers spinning down to the ground, leveling off, planing with wings I felt my eyes must be deceiving me as to their span. I could see no riders astride their backs. The flyers’

wings were short, yes, but they were heavily ribbed with deep vees at the trailing edges between the ribs. They appeared to be hardly moving as the flyers planed down. Long whip tails flicked out into hard rearward-pointing spears.

They were aimed for a large open clearing among the trees in which the cattle animals — wild ordels —

ran in a breaking smother of heaving brown backs and upthrust horns. My eyes switched back, before whatever was going to happen down there took place, to the Gerawin and then to the voller.

The thing had stopped moving in. It hung just too far off for a certain leap without a running takeoff. The men aboard were all looking away from me. The Gerawin were swirling up, clumping together, stringing out from the lumps into fighting patrol vees.

No one needed to tell the Amak of Paline Valley, which lies close to the Mountains of the West to the north of these volgendrins, what was happening.

I heard sharp yells from the voller, sounds of violent argument. No genius needed to guess what that was!

Kov Ornol ham Feoste appeared on the coaming, one foot up and the leg flexed. He held a crossbow. Deliberately, he aimed at me. When the bolt flew I was ready and swatted it away. It caromed against the rock and fell far out, dwindling into a mere black speck before it vanished. The voller was moving.

The Hikdar shouted, impassioned, “He will stay, Kov, until we return! He cannot climb down! And if he climbs up . . .”

The Kov of Apulad had reloaded. He was not very quick. He took another shot and again I batted the bolt away. The voller rose faster now, the Gerawin up there in their fighting vees heading back across the volgendrin. The flier moved faster and rose out of my view.

I was left alone, perfectly trapped, to await the return of the soldiers and the law of Hamal. Well, not perfectly trapped. I could go on climbing down and fall off the bottom of the volgendrin. I could climb up and be taken prisoner by the guards waiting for me as I climbed over the fence. The deep booming gong-tones of bells reached me. Now the other volgendrins took up the alarm. The air vibrated with the tocsin notes. At Paline Valley we had our alarm gongs, also, and our watchmen with hammers and strong arms.

Then, gazing up into the brilliant sky of Kregen, squinting at an angle against the streaming mingled light of the twin Suns of Scorpio, I saw the oncoming black dots. The suns threw all my side of the volgendrin into shadow. But the brilliance of the sky by contrast made me squint hard. Yes. Yes, there flew the Wild Men from the Wild Lands. They had many names, mostly obscene. I clenched my fists on the longsword. These were men similar to those who had laid waste Paline Valley. Many of them were not really men at all; many were more kin to those dreadful crofermen living on the outer skirts of the Stratemsk in Turismond.

My place was at the side of men fighting to protect their lives and their property from the Wild Men. And here I was, skulking in a hole in the side of a flying island in the sky!

There had really only been two possible alternatives when the alarm bells rang and the Gerawin massed for battle. The attackers might have been flutsmen up there, those reiving mercenaries of the skies, or Wild Men. It would have been better by far for the Volgendrin of the Bridge and the other local flying islands if those alarm bells had heralded flutsmen! By far and far!

I remembered how I had promised to take the name of Hamun ham Farthytu in Hamal. Names are precious. I had brought some honor to that name, in the end, after all the playacting, and a marble monument existed in the Palace of Names in Ruathytu to the greater glory of Havil the Green and ham Farthytu. I think you will understand that the Havil part was anathema to me; the ham Farthytu I had come to regard with a strange affection, considering it was the name of a family of a country that was an enemy to my own country of Vallia.

So, with a blistering Makki-Grodno oath to clear the vocal chords, a dolloping spit on the hands, the longsword thrust away on my back, I started the climb again.

I climbed down.

I deliberately chose to leave that battle against the Wild Men from over the mountains. I deliberately chose to continue my quest for the secrets of the vollers and for the good of Vallia. Now that another chance had been given me I moved with exquisite caution. I tried not to tear my hands on the rock and I tried not to rip out my fingernails. My boots were inevitably ripped and, very shortly, now that haste had gone, I took off the boots and pitched them overside. They took a mortal long time to fall away to nothing.

I saw one of the mysterious winged flyers pounce on a boot and miss, then go planing on past, its little wings stiffly outstretched, deeply curved, supported on thick wingroots that sprouted like columns from its shoulder blades.

If they were the exorcs the soldiers had mentioned, with dislike, they appeared singularly clumsy . . . I climbed down three hundred feet. Toward the end the way became extraordinarily difficult as the overhang of the island increased and the bottom rounded into a dish shape. Over the years any sharp edges had been worn away here at the bottom, and I had to grip, cling, and worm my way along fissures with my body braced, hands and elbows, knees and feet. Occasionally I had to pause and dig away to form a handhold with that sailor’s knife from the scabbard over my right hip. I persevered, there under that floating mass of earth and rock, and at last was rewarded. Sweat clung thickly to my forehead. I felt my arms had long since been wrenched from their sockets and were held only by the shirt. That shirt, the green dolman, the dark cloak, all were ripped and covered with rock dust and the mildewed droppings of the woflovols which inhabited every crevice.

But at last I saw what I searched for.

That spreading mass of vines and creepers which grew under the volgendrins and, in the case of the Volgendrin of the Bridge, joined two together, grew thin and brittle here at the edge. Most of the vines were dead. As I handed myself along I had to be most careful not to trust to a grip on a tendril that was brittle. The ground beneath would be damned hard. Soon the mat of vines increased in thickness and fresh plants showed green, some with orange and dirty-white flowers, here in the shadows, growing strongly with roots penetrating many feet into the rocky crevices, seeking the dirt and moisture there. Now the way was much easier.

Animal life inhabited the vines. I had a short, sharp fight with a spiny creature with six suckered feet; I dispatched it with the main-gauche. The place deepened with plant growth and became infested with insect life. This was about as far as I wished to go. Much later on in my story you will hear of what lay further into the viney jungle beneath the volgendrins, but at this time I was not interested in exploring. I found a good solid trunk of vine, as thick as a roston’s trunk, and swiped away until I had made a comfortable nest. Sitting there and looking down I could see the ground flowing past beneath my feet, that steady five knots taking us over river, lake, and forest, trending southward and eastward in the long Keplerian orbits of the volgendrins.

The first few hundred feet of vine was easy to find, merely by hauling it in and testing each length carefully. Some of it came away from its roots without trouble. To get some of it I had to crawl through the twisted jungly mass, most of the time upside down, and hack away with the dagger or the knife to free it. The rope lengthened. I took off all my gear, leaving myself clad only in a blue breechclout, a once-clean one I had taken from my rooms in the Kyr Nath and the Fifi. The longsword, the shirt, the dolman, the rapier and the cloak were all bundled up and securely lashed to the end of the vine. Then I lowered it down until it hung and dangled in the breeze. Then it was back to more vine cutting, hauling, and tying. A sailor uses a sailor’s knots; I had no fear the knots would slip, only that the vine might part. I had to judge the length carefully. If the bundle of my possessions caught on a tree, not only would I lose the lot, but the line might part anywhere up its length.

Finally, shoving the dagger and knife away — neither had broken, for which I gave thanks to Zair — I coiled about five fathoms of vine up around my shoulders.

The breath I took was a deep one.

A thousand feet, hand under hand, feet clamping as I went down! A long way. A damned long way. But down there the bundle swayed and gyrated at the end of the line, seemingly flying unattached through the air, as the line was barely visible at that distance.

Down I went.

My breath came raggedly and the sweat slicked thick and greasy. I took deep draughts of air, pausing more and more frequently. The wind swung me around and I revolved dizzyingly, praying the lashings above would not part. A roston’s trunk is mighty thick, but the strains I was imposing were tremendous. Down I climbed, hand under hand, and the ground slowly rose to meet me. I paused, dragging thick lungfuls of air past my opened lips, flicked the back of my hand across my forehead and eyes, and looked down. I studied the landscape.

Trees, a river, those brown humped-back wild ordels, grass, more trees. I wanted to pick my spot. A few feet further down and my legs wrapped around my bundle. I looked up. What a monstrous sight! A massive oval black shape, square in the sky, soaring up there, disdaining the pull of gravity! The volgendrin! Insupportable weight drifting through the air light as thistledown. The line vanished some distance before the twisted interlacement of vines at the bottom of the floating island. I caught the wind on my cheeks, looked down and ahead, and chose my spot. The knot with which I lashed the line over my shoulder to the main line was made with painstaking care. I did not wish to slip at this last point. The bundle was cut free. I hung on as we sailed over a tree, and then I cast my five fathoms down.

It did not reach the ground. Wind pressure curved the line away. I cursed. But there was nothing I could do about it. Down I would have to go . . .

I was concentrating so hard on the length of line, my bundle, the ground rushing past, that the first sign of the exorcs’ attack came with a harsh croaking cry.

My head snapped up.

A thing like a cat, the size of a large dog, with a green leathery skin, hook-clawed webbed feet, pricked pointed ears, a gaping mouth scarlet as the mouth of hell, fanged with four enormous canine teeth, and eyes like crimson pits, lanced ferociously at me. I got up my left arm and the thing spun away, screeching. I was astonished to see the left-hand dagger in that fist.

The exorc’s wings were almost rudimentary. Those thick columns rose from just behind its shoulder blades, one on either side of the spine, and the wings branched from them more like the antlers of a deer than the wings of a bat, but the likeness was plain. It could not fly back up at me. It planed on past, screeching, and the second one followed, hissing. I saw the whiplike tails, barbed, coiling for a slash, but the range was too great.

These exorcs were mere gliders: they could launch themselves from the volgendrins, but they could never fly back.

So that explained the reference to the cows.

Taking a fresh grip on the rope, jamming the main-gauche between my teeth, my lips ricked back in the old way, I shimmied down the last length of vine. I wanted to get onto terra firma as rapidly as possible right now!

A tree nearly got me but I lifted with bulging muscles and stuck my feet straight out. I received no more than I had often suffered at the hands of the bosun over a gun breech. The open space had gone, but another appeared ahead just past the trees. Even at five knots and with the wind I seemed to be racing over the ground. A river appeared and disappeared. I went down lower and braced myself, trying to remember to relax. Further down the grass hissed away. A stupid wild ordel rushed away before me, then a herd of them, running in panic. I was down now and they wouldn’t get out of the way. I felt the ground coming up with sudden treacherous speed and I didn’t bother to look up. The vine had parted. I was falling. I fell perhaps four feet to land astride an ordel, running, plunging, and racing in blind panic. It felt me on its back and it went wild as I grasped a chunk of mane. Like a bucking bronco it carried me crazily across the grass.

Trees showed ahead. I took a much firmer grip, bashed in my naked heels, yelled in the ordel’s ear and swerved him away. In the next second I was flying through the air — again — and rolling head over heels on the grass, winded and bruised but very much alive!

I sat up.

The ordels had reached some kind of sanctuary among the trees. They would have to come out to graze, and then the exorcs would get at them again. I looked up. Already the volgendrin was sailing on past. It was already beginning to take on the appearance of a black cloud in the sky, and other flying islands showed to left and right, bringing the perspectives into proportion. The suns blazed down gloriously. I stood up.

It seemed a good idea to put the clothes on, to put the dolman on as a pelisse, to fashion the cloak up loosely around my left arm, to see to the rapier and main-gauche, and then grasp the longsword in that cunning Krozair grip.

I did all this . . . and only just in time.

The exorcs swarmed down to attack.

They glided in, hissing, their fanged jaws wide, their ruby eyes like the lights of hell. The longsword could deal with them, shearing wings, heads, and legs. Four legs they had, with those nasty hooked claws, webbed, leathery, vicious. I took cuts; the clothes were ripped and blood marked my body. But the sword kept a ring of steel about my head, and dead and writhing exorcs littered the ground. I saw them running off on all fours, like cats after a fight with a dog, running to the monstrous cows which flew down to pick them up. These were the mothers. They could really fly. The exorcs hooked onto the cow’s underside and the broad wings flapped and away up to the nests under the volgendrin they went, so that their offspring could be launched once again to make the kill. The mother cow would then return to pick up the killers who could not fly and to feed on the kill. Covered in blood, ripped, scratched, weary, at last I saw the stream of exorcs dwindle. The volgendrin had passed too far and they were attacking a bunch of short-horned cattle in the next open space. I put the point of the longsword into the ground and leaned forward on the pommel, gasping for air. I suppose a four-armed Djang might have been ready for fresh combat instantly. I admit I felt wrung out. The strain of climbing down the vine had taxed me, the fight in its sheer insensate ferocity had drained me. I am, after all, only human. Those exorcs had glided in hissing like a constant succession of paper darts launched at my head. There had been no single instant when I could pause for breath. So I leaned and drew enormous gulps of air, my head hanging.

I heard the rustling and I lifted my head, which felt as though a damned volgendrin itself rested on my neck.

The Gerawin handled it all very smoothly, very professionally.

They alighted in a ring about me.

They had crossbows. Their tridents glittered in the light of the Suns of Scorpio. The leader advanced, his feathers flaring, his leggings tightly strapped around his bandy legs.

“You fight well, dom.”

“Aye,” I said hating the pant in my voice. “Do you wish to find out how well?”

“I do not think so. I would prefer, if you wish it, to put a score of shafts into you.”

“That might be preferable.”

He snickered. They are good guards, the Gerawin, if very much on the predatory side. Also, they consider their tyryvols to be the best flyers in all Havilfar. I believed my Djangs and their flutduins would disabuse them of that idea, but there were no friendly Djangs around their king now. There was only me, that onker Dray Prescot, who had escaped into captivity.

They made a rush at me from the front and I put up the longsword ready to take a few of their heads off. Their tridents flashed but they withdrew and the leader yelled, “Now, Genarnin the Chank!”

I swung around sluggishly. The iron links knocked me down. The iron chains wrapped me up. The longsword spun away. I was on my hands and knees, and chain after chain lapped me. Then I felt the grass against my cheek. I welcomed the dark advances of Notor Zan, but only to conceal from myself my own foolishness.

Chapter 18

A longsword falls

“You nurdling get-onker!” The Gerawin’s voice hammered close to my ear and I opened my eyes, feeling as sluggish as Tyr Nath after he’d drunk the sylvie’s poisoned cup in the Grotto of the Trell Kings. I was being carried along like a rolled-up carpet, swaying from side to side. I cocked an eye down. Below me lay a windswept, empty space beyond the slats and ropes; below that was the undulating mass of creepers and vines.

So I knew that Gerawin were carrying me across the bridge that gave this volgendrin its name. We halted and the bandy-legged flyer thus addressed shouted something about no sane man having to cope with such a bar of iron. His yells were the furious and desperate shouts of a man seeing vast unpleasantnesses fast approaching.

“You have only yourself to blame, Genarnin the Chank!”

The chank is that vicious white shark of the Outer Oceans of Kregen, a somewhat smaller cousin of the chank of the Eye of the World. The nickname is often given to men who possess that swift and deadly ferocity that marks them for small-sized killers.

Breeze fleered the trappings of the Gerawin, there on the bridge over the vine jungle far below. I felt the blood painfully pulsating in my body. My head rang with Beng Kishi’s finest reverberations. The bar of iron had caused trouble. I did not laugh, but the thought was in my head, somewhere, mixed with the woolly balls of fuzz that scrambled my brains. The Gerawin stopped and the leader bent his head to stare at one of the bracing rope uprights. It was slashed through, hanging by a single thread. So the old longsword still possessed an edge, then . . .

The Gerawin who carried the sword in so awkward a fashion looked properly horrified by what he had done. A mere single upright keeping the hand-rope fixed to the side-rope would never bring the bridge down, but I knew the laws of Hamal would be ferociously strict about the minutiae. The law would no doubt have already prescribed the very punishment he must undergo for exactly this misdemeanor. So, stopped as we were, I gave the Gerawin holding my legs a twisting kick, at which he fell back, yelling, grabbing for support above that windy height. The next Gerawin fell half through the slats of the bridge, over the edge, grasping it and screeching. The one with the longsword tried to run, but tripped. Then the familiar silver wire-wound hilt snugged into my palm grip and I turned, ready to slash them all —

and the damned bridge, too, so ugly was my mood.

The bridge swayed. Gerawin were running. I felt the breeze. The suns were declining now. Also, I felt most decidedly queasy. My legs trembled. My arms somehow brought the sword up with a speed I knew would mean my death in a fight. I shook my head and those old devil Bells of Beng Kishi rang and caroled, shooting silver and green sparks through my eyes. I felt as though a herd of stampeding chunkrah had trodden all over me.

The Gerawin, no doubt completely unprepared for an unconscious man to recover and get into action as fast as I had — and I, a Krozair of Zy, knew just how slow I had really been — nevertheless went methodically about their man-snaring again.

“Come on, you rasts!” I said. My voice sounded like a whistling faerling with an ague. “Fight like warriors!” That was pitiful, of course, but I threw it in as a player throws in his last charge of Deldars across the final drin at Jikaida.

They sneered at me. They were professionals. But, for all that it was perfectly clear they did not wish to cross swords with me. The great longsword — that bar of iron — kept them back. The iron chains flew again. The loops snagged. I struggled to free myself, hampered by the swaying bridge and the ropes and supports. More chains settled about me. I knew that running, fighting, defiance itself, were over.

With a last yell I stretched up tall, dragging on the chains. I whirled the longsword over my head.

“For Zair!” I shouted, and hurled.

The Gerawin flight leader was quick. He ducked. The longsword, a blinding bar of silver in the lights, for they had wiped it off, spun through the air. It arced high and then fell. Over and over it tumbled, glittering, a silver brand of silver fire falling away and away into the mat of vines far below.

“Zair rot you for a pack of cramphs!” I said. And then the last loop of iron chain sledged into my head and, once again, I plunged into the darkness of the enveloping black cloak of Notor Zan.

* * * *

During all my sessions in relating my life on Kregen I have attempted to speak the truth. No matter how fantastic what I say appears to be, it is the truth as well as I can express it. For the next few days of my life on that terrible if beautiful world I feel it expedient to gloss. I will cover the events as quickly as may be until I found myself back in Ruathytu, under strong guard, heavily chained but back to strength. The attack of the Wild Men on the Volgendrin of the Bridge had been beaten off with loss; my recapture had been a mere small incident. The Kov of Apulad, bearing down with all the authority of a Kov, had asserted his prior claim to my carcass and had insisted on taking me back to the capital for judgment. After he was through with me, he had told Pallan Horosh, the Pallan might have what was left to send to trial for the deaths of the two Pachaks.

So, here in Ruathytu, I was lodged in those grim, famous, horrific, and extraordinarily diabolical dungeons of the castle of Hanitcha the Harrower, the infamous Hanitchik. An unduly great part of my life has been spent in prisons of one sort or another. The Hanitchik was a most unpleasant specimen. Torture was a way of life. The food was atrocious, yet it always came up at regular intervals and was enough to keep body and soul together. The prisoners had the laws of Hamal to thank for that.

Escape, of course, was the primary concern.

Just in case you have forgotten — and I most certainly had never forgotten — it is written in the laws of Hamal that the nearest relative of a murdered person may choose between certain dire tortures which may then be inflicted upon the murderer before he is dragged off to be hanged. I fancied the Kov of Apulad would decide on the most unpleasant tortures the law allowed. The trial, with which I will not weary you, wound its way to its inevitable conclusion. Stoutly protesting that I was not Chaadur at all, I was indicted by the Kov. Now that he had taken up his new post under the Queen, his weight and prestige were fully sufficient to have me condemned. Even during the proceedings, which were carried out with a great attention to scrupulous fairness in every detail, even though the whole affair’s outcome was cut and dried before it began, thus making a nonsense of the very justification for laws at all, I mulled over Ornol ham Feoste and his new appointment. He had been in charge of a small voller factory in Sumbakir. It had all been very provincial. Now, after the death of his wife Esme, he was here in Ruathytu high in the Queen’s favor and even more strongly connected with the vollers.

On Kregen two and two make four — sometimes.

The Nine Faceless Ones who chose the high nobles to oversee the secrets of the vollers must have chosen this Kov Ornol ham Feoste. There seemed no other explanation. So as the guilty verdict was brought in by the three judges — they did not run to the jury system in Hamal for all the laws — I had found another piece of the jigsaw. It appeared it was going to do me no good at all. It certainly wasn’t going to stop what the Kov planned to do to my hide. Because like any normal human being I did not believe I was going to die just yet and that must mean I would escape in some way, I had refused to offer up the alias of Hamun ham Farthytu as an alibi for myself. If Rees and Chido were apprised of my plight they would be there to do all they could, and I fancied their testimony might shake the hard identification of the Kov. This was comforting. One of the turnkeys, an apim with one eye and a crippled left leg, smashed that bubble.

“The Queen’s happier’n a vosk in swill,” he told me as I took my regulation one bur of exercise in the enclosed yard, roofed with iron bars, the suns invisible and only the streaming mingled opaz light falling across the grim stone walls. “The army o’ the north’s won the big victory we’ve all waited for.”

I felt the chill. I swallowed.

“Yes,” he went on, chewing his cham from one cheek to another. “Havil smiled on us. Those rasts of Pandahem were all smashed up. It was a great victory.”

“Where was this?”

“Oh, I dunno. Those foreign places is all the same to me. By Kuerden the Merciless! The stories! The army chased after ’em for three full days. The loot! If’n I had both my eyes and a sound leg I’d a bin there, believe me, with my sack stuffed with gold and jewels — ah! It don’t bear thinking of.”

It certainly didn’t bear thinking of. But I had to think. And there was more.

“The Queen — may Havil bless ’er! — is going to be crowned Empress! That’ll be a sight! Ruathytu’ll go mad. The procession will take all day to pass, an’ I’m going to see it, right from the top of the Hanitchik.” He chewed. “Well, that’s my right, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Was it only the Pandaheem? Any other . . . ?”

“Oh, you’ve heard the tales, too, have you? Yes, they say there was an army out of Vallia. Rasts of Vallians! May Hanitcha harrow ’em to hell!” He chuckled and spat. “All smashed up. Tumbled back to a place they call Jholaix — they’re hiding out there now. All we’ve gotta do is go in and finish ’em.” He spat again. “I’ve heard of Jholaix, not that I’ve ever bin able to afford to drink of it, never not once in my whole life.”

Thus spoke Nath the Keys, my jailer and an enemy, yet just an ordinary man. One of the most telling indictments of the gul Chaadur had been that he had pretended to be a Horter. The official torturing was scheduled for three days away.

I could delay no longer. Rees and Chido, and the others who had known me in Ruathytu as the Amak of Paline Valley, must be called on. Hamun ham Farthytu must be used as an alias. I should not have delayed so long. The remnants of the armies of the countries of Pandahem, and my army of Vallia and Djanduin, were penned up in the extreme northeastern corner of Pandahem, in Jholaix. One final battle would destroy them utterly and put the whole island into the power of Hamal. My place was with my army.

Having reached that decision I called for Nath the Keys and he was there already at the cell door, swinging his lamp and jangling his keys.

“Stop your bawling, Chaadur! Your time has come, there’s no sense in kicking against it, lad. You did a foul murder and now you must pay the price.” Soldiers with iron chains stood with Nath the Keys.

“But,” I said stupidly, “there are three days.”

“Naw. Naw, lad. The Kov’s in a hurry, like. It’s now.”

They dragged me out and I fought, so they wrapped the iron chains around me and knocked me out. When I came to I was chained up to the stake in a small courtyard of the Hanitchik with an assembled party of gloating nobles and Horters, with the guards . . . and with the black-and red-robed tormentors. Kov Ornol ham Feoste was in a jovial mood. He had brought a group of friends. He called out, “I have chosen well for you, Chaadur, murderer!”

They had gagged me so I couldn’t yell back. I glared in murderous fury on this miserable Kov, but I could not break the chains.

The fires banked red in their braziers, the hot irons glowing. The tongs, the knives, the scalpels, the screws, all were at hand. The Kov sat back on the front chair, upholstered in green brocade, and he lounged in fine style to enjoy the spectacle. Those with him, sitting on chairs placed in the spots reserved for them, perked up at the prospect of a bur or so of pleasure. I looked at them as the chief torturer advanced, holding a tiny knife. He wore a black hood and his eyes glittered at me from the holes cut in that ominously black material.

I looked at the assembled nobles and Horters of Hamal and I considered once more that the country was evil, that this glittering, decadent city of Ruathytu was evil, and that the greatest evil of all was Queen Thyllis herself. There were one or two men there I had seen during my days in Ruathytu; but not one I had known well enough to imagine he would recognize me as the Amak of Paline Valley. My position was such that I would joy in being recognized as someone — anyone — other than Chaadur, the condemned murdering gul.

My wish was so rapidly fulfilled I wondered if the Everoinye or the Savanti had a hand in it. But, apart from what I suspected they might have been doing lately, the Star Lords and the mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasöe left me strictly to my own devices on Kregen. They would let me be tortured and killed if they had no immediate need of my services.

Sitting two places away from Kov Ornol, a man lounged in his chair. I recognized him as my gaze passed along the nobles. He wore a natty costume of blue, gray, and black stitched into a hexagonal pattern very like the hide of a chavonth. He looked a lot like a sleek, treacherous chavonth lounging back, this man I had rescued from the snows of the Mountains of the North at the behest of the Star Lords.

So I stared at him as the little knife in the leprously white hand of the torturer sliced toward my skin for the first cut. I was stripped naked. My body glistened with sweat. The gag choked me. I know my eyes must have held all that old powerful look of the devil as I gazed at Naghan Furtway, he who had once been the Kov of Falinur.

Now my comrade Seg Segutorio was the Kov of Falinur, and this Naghan Furtway a fugitive from Vallia, a man who must be riddled with anger and resentment. Once before he had unmasked and betrayed me, there at The Dragon’s Bones.

Would he recognize me again?

Naghan Furtway had once held enormous power as a Kov of Vallia. His passion for Jikaida had been inordinate; I had played him enough times in the Mountains of the North, waiting for him and his nephew Tyr Jenbar to regain their strength and for Genal the Ice to take his icy load down the mountains, to know he played as he lived, hard, ruthlessly, without mercy.

Yet he had raged at the cramphs of Havilfar for selling us defective airboats. Clearly his disgrace and flight had changed his mind. He was here in Ruathytu for no good purpose. He had become a renegade. The knife pricked my skin, slid, cut, and withdrew with a sparkle of my blood on the tip. This would take a long time.

I watched Naghan Furtway.

The knife cut again, cunningly, painfully.

Naghan Furtway stood up, drawing that chavonth-patterned cape back, resting his hand on the hilt of his rapier. The knife licked out and the pain stung. Soon that pain would coalesce from many tiny pains into an insupportable agony.

Kov Ornol looked up, frowning.

“Sit down, Horter Furtway. There is much to come.”

So they knew, here in Hamal, who Furtway was.

“I think not, Kov.”

“What in Havil’s name do you mean! As Malahak is my witness, Horter Furtway, this cramph of a Chaadur suffers torment to my orders before he dies.”

“I think not, Kov. This man’s name is not Chaadur.”

Kov Ornol spluttered. “That is what he says, the lying rast! You believe his story?”

“No. For I know him, aye, I know him well.”

“That is nothing to me. He murdered my wife and has been adjudged guilty. I will have what the law allows—”

“I have the ear of the Queen. I think she will not be pleased if you persist, Kov Ornol.”

That was threat enough to make any man think twice.

Between these two, the Kov and the ex-Kov, there was a great gulf. For all his bluster, cruelty, and evil, Kov Ornol ham Feoste was a mere blunderer, an oaf, compared with the refinement of cunning and calculation of purpose of Naghan Furtway. The sheer hardness of the man in the chavonth-patterned clothes blunted all Kov Ornol’s bluster.

“The Queen must be informed at once.” Furtway was looking at me much as a leem stares at a ponsho.

“If you persist, Kov Ornol, the Queen will order done to you what you do to this man.”

“You cannot speak to me like that! I am a Kov of Hamal! I know—”

“You know nothing, Kov. The situation between Hamal and Vallia is what concerns us here.”

“You are a Vallian disgraced and thrown out of your own country!” Ornol blustered on, very plum-colored of face, struggling to rise and confront Naghan Furtway.

“So I know what I am saying.”

The tormentor and his little knife withdrew, thankfully. He wasn’t going to commit himself until the argument was settled.

Ornol ham Feoste gestured with irritated anger at the torturer. “Get on with it! Take no notice of this fool of a man who thinks he is a Kov still! Cut him!”

“I will tell you, Kov Ornol, since you are bent on running headfirst into mortal danger. The Queen will want to deal with this man herself, personally. She will excuse no one who balks her of that. I tell you, you foolish man, and you will not listen.”

Kov Ornol puffed himself up and half drew his thraxter.

If he set to with Furtway the latter’s rapier would spit him before he could call on Malahak as a witness.

“Guards!” bawled the Kov of Apulad, this foolish, incensed, half-demented Ornol ham Feoste.

“Then you will have to know and see the truth, and the error you fall into Kov Ornol. And once I tell you, the guards must seal this yard and the Queen must be told. At once! There is great danger here for us all.”

“What in a Herrelldrin Hell are you talking about?”

“This man, this murderer you call Chaadur, is a man the Queen will give great riches for. And I am the man — remember that, Kov Ornol, and you who sit here — remember, I am the man who brought this rast to justice.” He swung around, the chavonth cape flaring. He pointed at me, evil triumph lending him a spurious but frightening dignity.

“That man is Dray Prescot, the Prince Majister of Vallia!”

Chapter 19

Empress Thyllis takes me for a stroll through Ruathytu

King Doghamrei slashed me across the face and screeched: “You lie, cramph, you lie!”

Queen Thyllis sat forward on her crystal throne, with the golden steps, the zhantil pelts, the Chail Sheom chained in their golden chains, and the manhounds lolling fearsomely below her. She propped her chin on one white hand and regarded me with those slanting emerald eyes.

“Bagor ti Hemlad!” she said. “What you say cannot be believed, for you could not have survived.”

I’d felt pretty rough, I can tell you. This cramph Doghamrei had drugged me and had me thrown burning from a skyship, as I have told you, and I suppose it was natural that Queen Thyllis should not believe that. She was far too wily a bird to believe what King Doghamrei said. She had that onker’s card marked. He was the King of Hirrume, a moderately sized kingdom within the Empire of Hamal, and he hankered after getting rid of the Queen’s husband, the King who was a mere cipher and a friend of Rees, and then King Doghamrei planned to marry the Queen and settle himself in comfortably as Emperor. I fancied that Thyllis, with her intuitive grasp of affairs, kept her husband under strict control as a counter to this idiot Doghamrei, who still had adherents and men who would cry for him. So, feeling weak, I lolled against the guards and used them to prop me upright. The torturer and his knives had done no real damage; my weariness came from many sources of punishment over the past sennights. I’d bellowed to the Queen what Doghamrei had done when I was being played with by the Queen, and she, not really finding it possible to believe what I said, while certainly not believing what Doghamrei said, chose a middle course and beckoned to Naghan Furtway. Furtway approached the golden steps. The slanting emerald eyes regarded him, and before she spoke the white pointed teeth bit onto a full moist lip.

“So you claim Bagor ti Hemlad is the Prince Majister of Vallia?”

“I know nothing of this Bagor, Majestrix.” Furtway spoke up. “But this is Dray Prescot. I know.”

“Majestrix!” brayed Ornol ham Feoste, struggling forward. “The cramph is Chaadur, the murderer of my wife!”

The Queen regarded the two of them in turn, and then looked at me. “So the man who is Bagor ti Hemlad, and with whom I have an account still open, is Chaadur and also the Prince Rast of Vallia, hey?”

The situation would have brought that marvelously delightful tinkle of laughter to my Delia’s lips. Even I could see the humor of it, and I was pig in the middle. They were debating here in the great hall of the palace, debating on a man who had three names, and all wishing to claim him as theirs. The Hammabi el Lamma contained many a dark secret and many a hideous story; I doubted if the stinking place had witnessed such a farce before. I had acted like a great onker here once, dressed in ridiculous and humiliating clothes. I had been hairy them. My beard now, although nowhere near as long, presented the Queen with strong memories of Bagor ti Hemlad, that was sure.

Across the shining marble lay the slab covering the hole beneath which grew the leprous-white syatra. Men and women who made mistakes and displeased the Queen were popped down there . . . All these people knew they plotted on the knife-edge of disaster.

So, as I glared up at the Queen and pondered if I slew her now would that materially assist Vallia, I was aware that my Delia would laugh in amusement at the situation, but would feel absolute horror at the plight of her husband. Thank Zair, she was safe in Valka, in Esser Rarioch, and her women would be readying the layette. Doctor Nath the Needle and Thelda would be there, and Aunt Katri, also . . .

“Bagor! Do you wish to feed the syatra?”

“No, Queen.”

“Are you Chaadur?”

One lie was as good as another.

“No.”

“Are you Dray Prescot?”

I stared up at her. Could I deny it? I saw the green glitter of her eyes, the corner of her lip caught between her teeth, the way she leaned to look at me, the betraying movement of the golden bodice. And I saw that she already knew the answer. Other men besides Naghan Furtway must have come to Hamal, fugitives from Vallia. There was his nephew Jenbar for a start. Possibly Nath Larghos, who had been Trylon of the Black Mountains, was here. I’d knocked his eye out and maybe he was dead. Anyway, Inch was now Kov of the Black Mountains. There must be others of the third party who had escaped. They were hatching a plot here, that was certain; but more immediately they could identify me. I was sure they already had. That would be Queen Thyllis’ way.

So I stared up at her and pushed myself upright from the guards, plunking my chained fists on my hips. She saw my face. She did not flinch back, but — and I admit now I enjoyed it — her eyebrows drew down as though in sudden pain, and her teeth bit so hard she drew blood from that ripe lip.

“You stupid onker,” I said. “Queen Thyllis. Vallia has thrown out these rasts, and now you plot with them. They are failures, and so are you. Your evil Empire of Hamal is doomed. Vallia will crush you like a fly.”

I was not too happy with the fustian this time. It had not boomed and rolled out. It did not convince me. Thyllis was offended, but she was not convinced either.

“So you are the Prince Majister of Vallia!”

“Aye!”

“And you think I shall ransom you? Demand a huge sum from that evil Emperor, so you can sail home to plot against me?”

“You can try to extract ransom from the Emperor, if you wish. You’ll waste your time. If you want ransom—”

“Ah, but, Dray Prescot! I shall not ransom you!”

In my heart I knew she would never let me out of her clutches for ransom. I wondered what the Emperor, that dread ruler who was Delia’s father, would do if he had this woman, this Queen Thyllis, penned in his dungeons in his capital city of Vondium.

She threw a sweetmeat to one of her jiklos; it lifted its maw and caught the fragment out of the air, chomped once, and the piece was gone. It wore gold necklaces, I noticed, but the bands around the creature’s neck and the attached chains were of solid steel.

“Shall I feed you to my jiklos?”

I didn’t bother to reply.

At my back the great hall was packed with courtiers, soldiers, guards, and the petty clients from the lands owing allegiance to the Empire of Hamal. They made a gorgeous picture of barbaric magnificence. The Queen would not be hurried. She wanted to make the most of her bur of triumph.

“Would you fight in the Jikhorkdun?”

I was tempted to say “Put a sword in my fist and see!” But I ignored her. Her personal bodyguard, stalwart apims clad in the beautiful mesh link mail manufactured in some of the old countries bordering the Shrouded Sea, stood lined out on either side of the throne. Feathers and golden ornaments made them popinjays, but they could fight well enough, I knew. The Chail Sheom, lovely and yet pathetic in their scraps of sensil, glowed with beauty in chains along the steps. The zhantil-skin pelts reminded me of the magnificent wild animals slain to provide a touch of grandeur to the surroundings of this evil woman.

“Answer me, nulsh! Is it the Jikhorkdun?”

“I do not care,” I said at last. “Hamal is finished, whatever you do to me.”

“Liar!” she screamed suddenly, and painful blood flooded into her white face. The green eyes blazed. She beat her fist on the arm of her crystal throne. “Liar!”

“You’re a fool,” I said, and leaned back on the guards to rest my legs.

“We have smashed the armies of Pandahem — aye, and your raggle-taggle bobtail of an army from Vallia! Now we go forward into Jholaix and all Pandahem will be mine! Mine!” She was panting. “As for Vallia! We’ll attack Vallia and smash that Lem-forsaken blot from the face of the world!”

“If you trust in Lem,” I said, “you’re more of a fool than I thought.”

She almost lost control. But she was a Queen. She had suborned good men to put her on the throne. Rees had fought for her. She forced herself to lean back, to let her hands uncurl from fists to claws. She smiled. “I know what I shall do with you, Dray Prescot, Prince of Cramphs! But first you shall taste the cup of bitter humiliation while I drink from the cup of victory!”

I did not know what she meant then, but two days later — days spent in a hole in the wall below the palace — I found out.

It is in the nature of a man to be himself, despite himself, and it was in the nature of this woman Queen Thyllis to be a bitch. Also, and this seems unarguable, it is in the nature of a victor to be seen to be victorious.

I was dragged out. They did not remove the chains. They cleaned me up and fed me so I felt better. The stone walls of the dungeons dripped with moisture, niter-gleaming. The guards contained many more diffs than there had been before in the Hammabi el Lamma. A little Och came forward with a strip of red cloth. My blue breechclout was taken away and the red cloth was wrapped around me. It was not the old brave scarlet, but it was red. In the circumstances I took no great heart from that. I suspected the reasons for the red, and I did not like them at all.

They gave me a huge breakfast of slursh and red honey, then a Brokelsh, cracking off jokes typical of the witticisms of his race, sawed off a quantity of my hair and beard. They handed me a skin bag of wine

— a foul red rubbish from the lees of all the barracks, I suppose — but I drank it off. They gave me a handful of palines. They wanted me sober and able to appreciate what was going on. Then they led me aloft with the iron chains, up the narrow stairs, slimed and gloomy. By this time I had fathomed out what was going on.

It was, given the circumstances, both obvious and simple.

I will not go into all the doings of that day. It was a day of Hamal’s greatness. Queen Thyllis celebrated a huge triumph. She gave public thanks to Havil the Green for the victory of her armies before she finally took the crown and the scepter. At last she sat on the throne, the Empress of Hamal. Her husband the King went through all the procedures as a pale shadow hovering near, deferred to by those of lesser ranks, but a cipher, a puppet, a pawn, there only for the legality of the whole proceedings. Thyllis had adapted with great cunning all the high thrones, daises, and platforms on which they rode as well as the boloth palanquins, so that she always sat higher than her husband the King. The procession was vast, glittering, magnificent, superb. It wound slowly through all the chief thoroughfares and boulevards of Ruathytu. I knew many of them well as we went along. All the vantage points were loaded with sightseers. Every foot of the way was crowded with people shouting and cheering.

“Hamal! Hamal! Thyllis! Thyllis!” And how triumphantly she must have heard their new yell: “Empress!

Empress! Havil keep the Empress Thyllis!”

Dust puffed despite the slaves and their swinging watering cans. The suns shone down. The flags flew. The trumpets shrilled. Bands played all the famous marches of Hamal, swinging down boulevard after boulevard, circling the kyros and the Jikhorkdun and the merezos. On and on went the procession, animals caught for the display, chained slaves, the trophies of battle, loot taken from the despoiled palaces of Pandahem. Regiment after regiment marched, and even in my state I could observe that many of the regiments were brand-new, composed of young men from the guls. Probably there were clums there, also, for Hamal had formidable population resources if she admitted the despised clums to the ranks of her army.

Cavalry trotted. I wondered if Rees was there, so I asked my guards, to be told no one had heard of him. They were all new men . . .

Above us in the sky flew the vollers and the flyers, creating patterns against the opaz glare, a proud symbol of Hamal’s might. The noise of cheering buffeted every step of the way. As for Thyllis, true to form, she had bedecked herself in gorgeous simplicity. A long green gown, loaded with gems, fitted the needs of the occasion with a singular appropriateness. She looked regal — no, rather, she looked imperial!

How superbly she aped those notorious Queens of Pain of Ancient Loh, aped them and surpassed them!

Her howdah aboard a massive boloth which swayed along on its sixteen legs had been so lavishly decorated I wondered how many families of guls might live for how many years on the value of the jewels and gold alone. She sat high. She sat with only a feathered fan behind her head so she might be seen by everyone. The sight of that barbaric magnificence must have thrilled everyone who watched. For the cruel empress of a cruel empire, the Empress Thyllis was supreme and superb. After all that long procession of booty, slaves, and soldiers had wended for bur after bur through the streets of Ruathytu, Empress Thyllis in her fantastically decorated howdah aboard the equally fantastically decorated boloth followed. Apart from an honor guard of zorca cavalrymen who brought up the rear, she let everything precede her and so lead on in a mounting frenzy of expectation to her own glittering arrival. A space had been left between the last marching body of men before the boloth. These last were her personal bodyguards in their link mesh, and others marched on either side of the boloth, with zorca-mounted officials. In that space a single calsany trotted along. People guffawed when they saw that beast of burden, the lowliest of the low, trotting along with down-bent head, always ready to accept the beatings with sticks which were the lot of the calsany.

Chained to the tail of the beast, dragged along, went the man who was known to the crowds as the Prince Majister of their hated enemy Vallia.

How they booed as I was dragged past, trying to keep on my feet, being dragged by the chains and the tail of the calsany. Every time the calsany became frightened by the noise and the close-pressing throngs he did what all calsanys do when they are startled.

The cramphs of Hamal had not forgotten a thing.

Lashed to the harness of the animal in an upright position a flagstaff nodded along. Someone had told them, Furtway, probably, and they had stitched up a red flag with a yellow cross. This fluttered from the staff atop the calsany’s back as I stumbled along at the rear.

So, I, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia, took a proud part in the coronation procession of the Empress of Hamal, and I stumbled along with Old Superb flying over me. I do not believe I wish to dwell more on that day.

It was absolutely certain that if Rees, Chido, Nath Tolfeyr, Casmas the Deldy, or anyone of that circle of friends and acquaintances I had made in Ruathytu, saw me as I staggered along, the chains clanging and hampering me so that often I fell and was dragged before I could claw up to my feet again, then they would never recognize this man at all. It makes sense. If you see a man you know to be the Prince Majister of Vallia, all filthy and grimed, chained and humiliated, dragged through the streets at the tail end of a calsany, how could you possibly for a moment imagine he was Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley? No, there was no risk that I would be mistaken for the Amak. The day ended at last. Thyllis had spent four burs in the Great Temple of Havil the Green being crowned, and I had spent the time getting my wind back and slopping up a bowl of slursh, without red honey this time, and no palines either. The guards looked curiously at me. But they must have seen walking dead men many times before, working as they did for the Empress Thyllis. At the end of the day when the twin suns of Antares at last sank I was carted off, still in my chains, and thrust back into my hole.

The gloom of the dungeon matched my thoughts. I had felt no humiliation, no shame, during that parody out there in the streets of Ruathytu. Anger I had felt, of course. Determination to bash a few skulls and escape, yes.

But the Opaz-forsaken chains would not yield. I could not bend or break them. What Thyllis had in store for me next would be physically unpleasant. The psychological unpleasantness she had already handed out would have pleased her, no doubt assuming me to be crushed in spirit. But that kind of naked display of power offends me. Taking no material store in it for myself, it could not inversely harm me. Had Thyllis been in my position on that day she would have been asphyxiated with shame and humiliation.

Dark figures moved into view under the single torch and I bawled down at them.

“Jump to it, you rasts! It’s time for supper and I’m famished!”

But it was not my guards who stepped forward into the torch light.

“Dray Prescot?”

I did not answer.

The cloaked figures moved closer. There were half a dozen men in bulky armor beneath their cloaks, with naked thraxters in their hands. They were Katakis. Their bladed tails curved above their heads. Blood shone thickly on four of the blades. There had been four guards on duty in this deep inner cell. These Katakis I ignored. I stared at the man, powerful, hard, arrogant, who led them. Strom Rosil na Morcray, the Kataki Chuktar.

I looked with a swift searching stare for his employer, Vad Garnath, for that cramph would know me as Hamun ham Farthytu.

This Kataki Strom would not know my face, for when we had clashed in Smerdislad I had been wearing the Dudinter mask and he had thought me to be Quarnach Algarond, the Vad of the Dudinter District, of Ba-Marish. I knew this man to be violent and dangerous, a lethal tool in the hands of unscrupulous men, a man who would turn on them to his own profit. The Katakis are slave-masters, expert in the manipulation of slaves, as I have said.

He spoke again, harshly, impatiently, flicking a whip against his boots.

“You are the man they call Dray Prescot?”

“If you watched my little promenade today you would not need to ask the question.”

He drew in his breath with a hiss.

“I see the wizard was right!” He gestured to his men. “Unchain him.”

I rubbed my wrists when I was freed. They were raw.

“There is no time to dillydally. We have bribed and killed our way here. Grak!”

There it was again, that slave-driving word . . .

So they shepherded me along the runnels and the corridors and we met no one except the four guards they had slain to gain ingress. We came out under the light of the moons at that very same postern where King Doghamrei had sent me off with Ob-Eye to set me alight and dump me overside from a skyship. A voller was waiting. We clambered aboard and the flier leaped aloft.

“You do not ask why we rescue you?”

“No doubt you have your reasons.”

Again he drew in his breath with a hiss.

“I was waiting for my supper,” I said, just to keep him on the boil. “Do you have anything aboard?”

They rummaged out a wicker basket and I set to on bread, cold vosk, and palines. They did not know what to make of me, and that suited me. I of course could have no idea what their plans were. For sure, the wizard, this certain Phu-si-Yantong of whom I then knew nothing, must consider me vital to his mad schemes of taking over Hamal and through me controlling Vallia. It seemed to me as I ate and thought that he must no doubt consider me the only man in Vallia who could hold the empire together after the old Emperor’s death. If I died, he would be faced with the task of controlling many splinters. Through me he could run the entire place. As I say, I did know this of the Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, even then: the man was a megalomaniac of the highest quality.

The notion crossed my mind that if he was a megalomaniac for wanting to run Vallia, what did that make me? I had no desire to run the place, however, and I wished Delia’s father long life.

“You will be required to do certain favors for your rescue,” said the Kataki Strom in his hissing voice.

“But for me and my masters you would be unpleasantly dead on the morrow.”

I munched vosk, swallowed, and took a fresh bite.

“You act very coolly. When the wizard has dealt with you you will fly a different wing.”

“As to that,” I answered, “I am my own man.”

“No longer!”

He wore a thraxter. His tail was bladed. There were five others similarly armed with him. Their shields ranked around the coaming of the voller. I was not feeling on my top form. Zair knows, I had been through much. But the old Dray Prescot began to struggle and fight his way through all the good intentions I had been trying to impose on myself. I had been kicked around and tortured — only the beginning of that, I grant you — and hung in chains. I was feeling mean. Very mean. The only gratitude I felt to these Katakis was that I wouldn’t slay them unless they forced me. Over our heads the Maiden with the Many Smiles and She of the Veils shone down lambently. Their gold and pink light fuzzed the edges of the voller and shone on the close-set helmets of the Katakis and their bladed whip-tails.

I said, “You rescued me. For that I give you thanks. But you did not rescue me because you were sorry for my plight. If you have a quarrel with Thyllis I am not your pawn.” That should make them think I did not know the fuller plans of the wizard.

“What are you talking about, Prescot?”

“I have given you thanks. Now you had best set the voller down and let me go about my business.”

Strom Rosil laughed. His Kataki tail lashed above his head, very deadly in the golden pinkish light. Ruathytu fled past below. The familiar streets and kyros vanished with the domes and towers into the pinkish haze.

“You are coming with us to receive your instructions.”

“I think not,” I said, leaning forward, very smoothly, very fast, and drew his thraxter from the scabbard. They are man-managers, the Katakis. But they had none of their damned iron chains with them now. We fought.

The tails of the Katakis are superb weapons, but they have their limitations. Against my thraxter their thraxter-work could not stand, and the straight sword chunked into the throat of the man who threw himself at me in front of his leader. Rosil staggered back. The voller bored on. The next came at me and I ducked his tail, slashed it off so that the bladed tip spun far out into the void. He screamed. I stuck him through the throat, also, for these cramphs wore armor. The next two sparred for a moment and I leaned to avoid their thrust. I took a tail blade on my sword and so slashed across and down. Then, shortening the sword, I drove it in low and deep enough on the second one. That left two of them with Rosil raging to get at me. He snatched the thraxter from the hand of his man and the blades crossed and twinkled in the pink moonslight.

“You ungrateful cramph! Is this how you repay our guile and cunning in freeing you?”

To confuse him further, I said, “Thyllis probably paid you well to lay this trap, kleesh.”

He did not like that.

His man flung himself at the controls and the voller lurched and swooped down. Trees flicked past, dusky golden blobs in the shifting light.

“Get behind him, onker!” bellowed Rosil.

He was a fine fighter, and his tail was a marvel. I missed a slash at the tip and had to jump, weave, and parry to avoid his counter. The voller skidded along the ground, a cornfield going past with a loud hissing of broken stems. The last man tried to obey his leader and brought his tail up through his legs in that deadly stabbing thrust. I swirled the blade down, lopped the tail, and swung back to Rosil. He looked around. The voller came to rest. He had four dead men and one holding a bladeless tail, looking stupidly at the blood gushing out of the stump. The Kataki Strom was a cunning and resourceful man. I did not doubt his courage. Evidently the Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, had studied the Prince Majister of Vallia most carefully, but he had not discovered that I could be an onker when it came to taking orders. He must have realized I was some kind of fighting man; Strom Rosil knew that, now. With a baffled yell he sprang over the side of the voller and vanished into the moons-shot darkness. He yelled back:

“Your day will come, Prince. The wizard will cut you down to size!”

His tailless man followed.

I had command of the voller.

I threw the thraxter down into the blood-reeking pit and hauled the bodies out, tossing them overboard. I kept all the weapons, and I chopped all the tail blades off, too. Then I set the controls and up we went, the silver boxes performing their usual uncanny function, sending us fleeting over the surface of Hamal.

I set the course.

Peacefully, equably, feeling a lot better, I sent the voller speeding north to Pandahem and Vallia.

Chapter 20

Armada against Havilfar

“You have done wonders, Majister!” I said, for the hundredth time, feeling the breeze on my cheek and joying in the free onward rush through the air.

“Most of the credit belongs to your sage, San Evold. But for his tireless energy the fleet would not be ready.”

“But it is ready,” I said, overjoyed. “And now we will show those cramphs of Hamal what real fighting men of Vallia are like.”

All about us in the air floated the new sailing navy of the Vallian Air Service. The ships were mere wooden boxes, built in great speed, built solidly and crudely, built to fight. Each ship was upheld by a pair of silver boxes produced in the workshops of Valka. Those boxes held only half the secrets I had sought, for they would only lift a ship into the air; but with the promise of the remaining four minerals dazzlingly before us for the future, these crude ships made a proud sight as they flew from Vondium, the capital of Vallia, to Jholaix, which lies in the northeastern angle of Pandahem. The new ships flew in long strings, towed one behind the other behind a voller equipped with genuine vaol and paol boxes for forward motion. We flew crosswind. Each of the ships had been equipped with masts and sails; that task had been easy for an ancient seafaring nation like Vallia. The skills of centuries of ship construction had gone into these vessels’ masts and sails. Mind you, the hulls were different, for you cannot lift an ordinary wooden ship into the air without it falling to pieces without the water to support it.

Each ship consisted of a simple slab-sided wooden hull, heavily built to keep its shape when in the air. The masts rose from the deck, three of them, fore, main, and mizzen. The masts were joined at the top by a smaller box-like construction which gave strength to the whole. And from every bulwark and top these sailing ships of the air sprouted catapults and varters.

We flew south over the sea.

Jholaix in northeastern Pandahem lies something like three hundred and forty dwaburs from Vondium in Vallia.

With us came all the flutduins Naghan Kholin Donamair, that majestic fighting Djang, could scrape together. They were housed in various of the ships and would take wing when the action began. There were Crimson Bowmen of Loh. There were regiments of my Valkan Archers. There were fighting men of my freedom-fighters, fierce active men who had won Stromnates and were not likely to forget the glories they had won under Old Superb. There were mercenaries of many and many a race, and notable among them the Chuliks recently hired, and the Pachaks I so much valued for their loyalty. But there were Rapas, Brokelsh, Womoxes, and plenty more, and we were blended into a fighting force the like of which had seldom been seen before in Vallian history, certainly not since the time of the Emperor’s great grandfather and the period of the troubles. That ancient history, too,-could serve a purpose now. At my side Seg, the Kov of Falinur, said, “You took a chance. If Tom ti Vulheim cannot hold them until we arrive—”

“He is Tom Tomor ti Vulheim now, the Elten of Avanar. And he will hold long enough for us to reach him.”

No one needed to be told the importance of an open bridgehead. If the Hamalians swamped over the last defenses of Pandahem we would have a much tougher job landing. For the flying ships were also packed with men. I had seen what could happen in a sea battle when the decks were crowded with useless soldiers.

Delia’s father had attempted diplomacy and had been met with a hostile wall of contempt and hatred from Thyllis, secure in her newly won power. She had taken Pandahem and was Empress of Hamal. The Vallians were next on the list. The Emperor had had little trouble in persuading the Presidio and his nobles of the necessary course. Even Kov Ulverswan of the Singing Forests had admitted he could see no other recourse but an all-out stoppage of the Empress Thyllis — now. I had seen my Delia. She had chided me. I had chided her. We were both consumed by a love that joyed and feared in the doings of the other lest disaster strike. I had given instructions that were totally unnecessary to Doctor Nath the Needle. Thelda had fussed, and Seg had laughed and drawn her away. Aunt Katri had been coping with the twins. All in all I had spent a hectic time since my return to Valka in the voller so thoughtfully provided by Strom Rosil na Morcray, the Chuktar Kataki. Work had been going on all day and all night since that first successful experiment with the flying boxes in Esser Rarioch. The fleet had been cobbled together. The task could not have been accomplished without cutting every corner. The hulls were mere wooden boxes, sturdy and reinforced with crossbeams, and the sail plan had been ruthlessly simplified. Many a mast and sail had even been uprooted from a seagoing ship and transferred bodily to the aerial sailing ships. Two things are worth recounting here, and the first made me look at the Emperor with fresh eyes. He was a much-feared man. His powers, for all the Presidio and the nobles plotted against him, were immense. He had told me that his secret agents in Hamal — and that was the first I’d heard of them, by Zair! — had fought their way through to the cell to find dead guards and no sign of the prince they had come to rescue. Their report had reached Vondium after my arrival. But, as I say, I looked afresh at Delia’s father.

The other event was altogether more strange. Strange and shuddery, to me, a plain sailor man of Earth who had become a warrior of Kregen.

Walking in our sweet secret garden among the flowers, I had felt an odd, chilling shiver in the air, most eerie, and had looked up. I was walking alone, for I needed to think about the sailing ships of the air, and I saw the figure of a man standing against the red brick wall with its freight of perfumed flowers. He was indistinct, vague and blurry, as though a mere reflection in a pool of water. As I looked up he disappeared. Disappeared. I started forward at once and the rapier flicked from the scabbard. How could he have reached the gate so rapidly? Besides, the door was locked and only Delia and I held the keys. Perhaps I was overwrought, strained far more than I realized, and the man had been a mere figment of my senses, tired and weary as I was. He had worn a long robe of black and green, with a wide cummerbund of red-gold. The vagueness of the vision — for it could have been nothing else —

prevented any clear definition of his face. I merely had the impression of great force and power. Troubled — I had no wish to lose my faculties at so important a moment in history, when the fate of empires hung balanced — I did not mention this occurrence to anyone. I had walked back to the long open terrace overlooking the Bay and Valkanium. This terrace supports that smaller, more private terrace higher up on thin white columns entwined with vines. It is a pleasant place for those of the fortress who care to stroll in moments of leisure. I saw San Evold Scavander in deep conversation with the Emperor’s personal wizard and, not caring for conversation at that time, turned to go another way up to my rooms.

“Prince!” And Scavander approached, his face betraying a mental struggle. “My Prince—”

“Yes, Evold?”

“San Deb-so-Parang has told me of something . . . something you should hear.”

I think I guessed then, but my ugly old face betrayed nothing. “San,” I said to the Wizard of Loh, this Deb-so-Parang. I have said he was a pleasant old buffer; although he had failed to warn the Emperor of the plot of the third party, he was a useful man to have around the court.

“Prince . . .” He hesitated.

“Go on.”

“Men say many things about the wizards, my Prince. Many are untrue, and many are true. By the Seven Arcades! I have no wish to alarm you at this time.” He licked his lips. Then: “I have a duty to the Emperor . . .”

“And he is my father-in-law.”

“Quite so.” He took a breath. “I have felt an intrusion here in the fortress of Esser Rarioch. It was fleeting. It was, I cannot be mistaken, the visitation of a wizard in lupu.”

“Do you know the wizard?”

“No. There seem to be many new wizards these days. The older ones die . . .”

“We’re all mortal, San.”

“I am not mistaken. A wizard was spying here.”

“If you feel this visitation again, San, you must tell me.”

We talked for a space then. But I knew what had happened. It was frighteningly obvious. That infamous Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, had placed himself in lupu, that trancelike state in which the wizards may often see at a distance, and had paid me a visit. What he had seen I did not know. I wondered if a sword might not help to dispel the phantom.

Deb-so-Parang spread his hands. “Many of the wizards practice swordomancy. Some are very cunning with its use. I cannot do this myself, which is annoying.”

We talked about swordomancy, often called gladiomancy, and I gathered a further inkling of the powers of the Wizards of Loh, powers that, as I have indicated, may be seriously overvalued but powers which nevertheless remain frighteningly real.

I did not mention Phu-si-Yantong’s name to Deb-so-Parang.

I wondered just how skilled a swordomancer Phu-si-Yantong might be. So, as we sailed on through the bright air toward Jholaix and a battle for empire, I had much to think of beside the strategy and tactics of the coming engagement. As we neared the northern coast of Jholaix, which juts proudly forth from the main island of Pandahem, I thrust concern for Delia, dark thoughts of wizards and swordomancers, from my mind. Now every nerve, every sinew must be bent to the struggle, every thought for the victory we must win.

A swift-winged patrol of flutduins scouted us; quick, agile forms among the clouds. They must have seen our banners. Every ship carried her proud freight of colors. The yellow saltire on the red ground floated from every ship. Many of the vessels flew Old Superb, those vessels from the Valkan yards crewed by Valkans. Many of the other provinces of Vallia were represented, a brilliant plumage of color fluttering in the wind of our passage.

Against the very circumstance of that flutduin patrol I had caused to be flown in the bows of the lead ships the brilliant orange of Djanduin. The Emperor might twist his lips and make funny remarks about my being some sort of king of Djanduin, but he cocked his old eagle face up at those fliers, and I guessed what he was thinking.

Very soon Kytun Kholin Dom and Tom Tomor flew up to the armada. I greeted them with relief. Tom alighted with a sigh of gratitude; flying monstrous great birds of the air comes strangely to those unaccustomed to that mode of travel.

We talked there on the quarterdeck of that selfsame flier my men had taken in Hyrklana. It was now the Emperor’s flagship. He had named it Jen Drak for the mythic hero of Vallia. For myself I had chosen to fly in one of the new sailing vessels, and it had been named Vela. Before I left the flagship to go aboard my own ship we talked, there on that windy quarterdeck.

“We still resist, Majister,” said Tom, standing very straight before his Emperor. “Your arrival is barely in time.”

“Aye,” put in Kytun, very martial in his trappings, his harness and weapons about him. “Aye, Emperor. We fight for you because the King wishes. But you must take your share now.”

I interposed as smoothly as I could. My Djangs are not a mealy-mouthed bunch when it comes to talking to foreign royalty.

The plans were laid. In truth there was little else we could do but what we did. We put our trust in the Invisible Twins made manifest in the everlasting glory of Opaz, and we flew down to battle. The Hamalians had seen the imposing armada flying through the air toward them. I confess that as I took a small two-place flier from Jen Drak to Vela and saw that mass of ships spread out through the air my old heart gave a skip. The ships were stringing out, still under tow, to land their troops for the field battle. Then they rose again, sometimes somewhat jerkily as the tow lines came on, and soared up to take their battle stations.

If Kov Hangol, the Hamalese Pallan of the northern armies, thought we would enter action in long lines under tow, where he could swirl around us and cut us to pieces, he was the idiot Rees had named him. All our sails had been furled. Now, as the Hamalese sky force rose to challenge us, the orders were given.

The towropes were cast off. The agile sailors from both below and aloft cast loose the canvas and muscular heaves sheeted it home. The yards braced around. The canvas filled and the sails bulged proudly.

Very few nations of Kregen know anything of balloons and, I fear, many writers on this our Earth know nothing of balloons, either. One so often hears of balloons and airships being equipped with sails and acting like ships on the sea. This is not possible, of course, for no tacking is possible, and balloons and sails will all be swept away downwind. The two silver boxes which held us in the air, although they gave us no directional movement, did serve, as I have said, to grip the fabric of that force which upheld us. In my mid-nineteenth century understanding of the universe I thought of this in terms of the boxes latching onto the ether, so that when in line they acted as the keel of the vessel, dipped into the ether, affording us the necessary grip to tack windward. There was a little leeway made, of course, but these sailing vessels reacted better in the air than their counterparts in the sea below. With the sails sheeted home and the yards braced hard across the decks, the wind pushed us so that we skated along well up into the wind, like an orange pip squeezed against a window.

By turning the silver boxes, that window could be turned to take full advantage of the wind. I felt I could bring the heads of these vessels further into the eye of the wind than ever I had done with the sauciest schooner, certainly four points off.

No, if we had sailed balloons or airships with sails, as so many foolish people pretend to have done, we’d have tumbled away downwind in the stupid tangle that should reward all such idiotic stories. But, and now the real business would begin, we had nothing like the agility and maneuverability of the vollers. I had impressed the skippers with the absolutely vital necessity of maintaining formation. We must sail as a great armada. We must keep our line, distance, and formation. The ships we had knocked together were large. They carried a lot of men. Their weaponry was enormous. We must sail in lines and shoot down the enemy fliers with catapults and varters. Our small force of Vallian Air Service vollers would do all the dodging and maneuvering that was necessary. We provided the weight and punch. When my men saw the Hamalese skyships rising they understood the battle that lay ahead. These ships were like the ones which had sunk the Vallian galleon before I had smashed them. They were strong, powerful, well-armed, and armored. We would be at a serious disadvantage. One thing was in our favor: we could shoot the massive Vallian gros-varters. The Hamalians did not possess that superb weapon. Turko the Shield grunted when he saw that array rising through the level air toward us.

“You remember to keep to this shield, Dray.”

“I shall try to remember.”

I do not wish to dwell overlong on the battle. It came to be known as the Battle of Jholaix. Down there the vineyards smiled up, row after row of luscious grapes waiting to be made into the wine which was justly famous all over this continental grouping of Paz. Making wine was a far better occupation for a man than killing other men in the air above the vines. By far.

The outcome of this battle would be decided in the air.

The land forces we had set down, in conjunction with those already there, ought to be able to stand off the army of Hamal. Only the gigantic skyships and the agile vollers of Hamal had given them their easy victories. I was as well aware as anyone of the professional expertise of the Hamalese swod, but now he faced fighting men backed by the terrible Lohvian longbow and cavalry mounted on nikvoves. It seemed to me, as we sailed through the thin air, that if the air services could only pull out every stop and really go for the Hamalese skyships we would win. It would not be easy. I looked along the line of ships, noticing with critical appreciation their line and dressing, and I must say I thought of the times I had done this, back on Earth, gone sailing down to action in the rigid lines prescribed by the Sailing Instructions. How different this was from a swifter fight on the inner sea! Or, come to that, a battle with the swordships up along the Hoboling Islands!

The Hamalese skyships held no strict formation. Confident in their power and no doubt somewhat incredulous of what must appear to them to be a succession of sailing boxes, they bore on. Our nimble vollers were going ahead. The flutduins were winging forward. Many a man there carried an earthenware pot filled with combustibles which would spell the end for a proud Hamalese voller. I looked aloft.

Up there the protecting formations of vollers and flutduins prepared to prevent the Hamalians from flinging down their own pots of fire. Grimly, I knew that many a fine flying wooden box from Vallia would burn this day.

No, I will not dwell on the battle.

The skyships attacked in a fine display of panache and daring, and we shot them out of the sky. Ships burned. Vela almost burned but the fire-fighting parties managed to extinguish the blaze except for the loss of our mizzen. Seamen now proving themselves to be first-class airmen rigged a jury mast. Arrows and bolts crisscrossed through the bright air.

Our gros-varters wrought frightful execution. I saw a fine Jiktar smeared into a red and greasy lump on the deck before me. At once the Hikdar leaped forward to take his place. What was left of the body was heaved over the side. The battle went on. The gros-varters more than avenged that Jiktar. I saw a hurtling rock smash clean through the iron grille surrounding the controls of one skyship. It dropped and the next smashed into it. A flyer astride his flutduin, his four arms most useful, swooped in like a dart and dropped a pot of fire. Both ships burned.

We bumped the lead skyship and a roaring torrent of Valkan swordsmen flooded over the bulwarks. Somehow or other they were led by a maniac called Dray Prescot, wielding a longsword built by Naghan the Gnat, a longsword sister to that one lost in the mat of vines of the Volgendrin of the Bridge. The skyship was taken.

The breeze did not fail us. We could not make the speed of the Hamalese vollers and we could not sail against the wind, but before the Hamalese Air Service decided they had had enough we had burned or taken over half of them. The rest fled. The Emperor in Jen Drak — a very fine craft built in Hyrklana but less than half the size of the Hamalese skyships — led the pursuit. Our fliers took more Hamalese vollers before the last remnants fled over the horizon rim.

Korf Aighos had fought with his Blue Mountain Boys in the land battle. Balass the Hawk had seen the regiments he had trained fully vindicate our belief in them. With the techniques adapted from the rigorous training of the Jikhorkdun and the drillmasters from Djanduin, those blade comrades of mine from Valka had successfully employed their newfangled shields and the sword we had improved over the thraxter and the clanxer. Under their proud red and white standards of Valka crowned by that loyal bird, the valkavol, they had met the iron men of Hamal face to face and whipped them. The seven-foot-tall streak of Inch at the head of his Black Mountain Men had been foremost in the battle. With that Saxon ax of his blurring a deadly arc in the forefront, who could doubt the victory? Inch, the Kov of the Black Mountains, fought well that day.

The mercenaries earned their hire, and many of them won the coveted honor of being dubbed paktun. So the armies of Vallia advanced in their might and the field was won. Seg Segutorio and Tom Tomor ti Vulheim observed the fantamyrrh as they came aboard Vela. They were smiling. I held out my hands. There was no need, at that moment, to say anything. Much in the way of clearing up remained to be done.

There were men with me to attend to that now.

The Hamalese sky force had been swept away and the Emperor’s tent was set up with the orderly rows of vines and their luscious grapes as background. The old devil sat there in high state to receive his various chiefs. Representatives of the nations of Pandahem came to him. With the news of this victory spreading across the island the Hamalese garrisons had to shut up shop and return home, or face extinction in blood. I saw with great satisfaction this beginning of a new era in relationships between Pandahem and Vallia. There would be misunderstandings in the future, for that is the way of mankind, but the beginnings of a true understanding had been made. This afforded me great comfort, for much of my apprehension for the future centered on the shanks coming over the rim of the world to attack us here in Paz.

As for Pando and Tilda, they arrived with their King Nemo among all the Kings, Kovs, and high nobles of the nations of Pandahem. And then — explain it how you want, for I can’t — I could not face them. With Turko the Shield, my staff, and a small group of my closest friends, I went aboard a small voller and we sailed back with all speed to Valka. I hungered to see Delia. The Emperor and the representatives of the Presidio could handle the new turn in the affairs of the world of Kregen quite well without me. All I wanted in life existed with my Delia, my Delia of Strombor, my Delia of Vallia. I knew that Queen Thyllis, now Empress, her vaunting ambitions blunted for the moment, would conclude a peace with Vallia. The distances involved made that certain. She might even totter, for a tiny moment only, on her throne. Then she would recover herself and set about creating new forces. That seemed sure. But it was equally sure that much time must pass before these two, Hamal and Vallia, would be at each other’s throats again.

Most of my work in Havilfar had been completed. I looked down from the voller as we rose into the air. There were enormous shouts of “Hai Jikai!” as we soared aloft. “Hai Jikai! Prince Majister! Jikai! Hai Jikai!”

For the very first time on Kregen that great call reached me blunted, meaning less than it should. The glittering forest of upraised blades below, the banners, the shouting, all dropped away as we rose, for all the High Jikai I wanted waited for me in Esser Rarioch, my high fortress overlooking Valkanium in Valka. I was not finished with Havilfar. From my first encounter with the enormous continent, with the Manhounds of Faol, I had been employed on many different schemes; the latest, discovering the secrets of the vollers, had been only one. I fancied a small, swift party might visit the Volgendrin of the Bridge and bear off a sack or two of pashams. Evold Scavander would cough and sneeze and set to work on them. We might not be able to build perfect fliers in Vallia yet, but we had done very well indeed with those we had built. We would succeed in the future, by Zim-Zair, yes!

As we soared back home it seemed to me that what I had done in Havilfar was like weaving an intricate pattern, that the different colors and designs each held its own significance and the totality would create an overall picture. The Star Lords, most certainly, had an idea of what that picture was, despite my defiance of them. I had a thousand years of life to look forward to. If that vast continent of Havilfar held no more adventurings, dangers, and sheer zest of living for me, then the future looked dark and dull indeed.

The Great Armada from Vallia had dealt with Hamal for the time being. But Hamal was only a part of Havilfar. That splendid and enormous continent must exert continual pressure on world events in the land masses of Paz, half the world of Kregen. I knew that. But I had finished most of what had consumed me in Havilfar. The outstanding accounts remained and would be settled; I did not forget them. But mostly my mood this moment was a heady one of victory. For now I could lay down that burden begun with the commands of the Star Lords in distant Faol. They had not interfered in my life for a long time now with their old intemperate demands. They would return — I was not fool enough to believe they had finished with me.

But in these my recent dealings with Havilfar I must have been successful. Failure would have flung me back four hundred light-years across space to the world of my birth. Ahead lay the long-delayed investigation into the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, and my possible return to the Swinging City. Much of my interest in them had waned in the swift rush of events in Kregen after I had been thrown out of Paradise. Was even Aphrasöe so much of a paradise beside my island of Valka, beside Strombor, beside Djanduin?

As for the Eye of the World and Nath and Zolta! Ah! There was a thought to set the pulses thumping!

In our swift passage across the face of Kregen beneath Antares, my old scarlet and yellow flag, Old Superb, fluttered and rustled in the wind.

With my friends about me — hard-won, enduring, precious friends — I stepped from the voller on that high landing platform of Esser Rarioch. The day beamed superbly about us. I had to speak to Delia about the plans I had for young Drak. She had her own plans for Lela, that I knew. And there was — or were — the new arrival — or arrivals — to cherish. There was as much to be done at home as ever there was in adventuring with a flaring cloak and a glittering longsword beneath the Moons of Kregen, across the broad and dangerous lands of Havilfar. She ran out to greet me, radiant, gorgeous, that brown hair with those outrageous chestnut tints lighting up in the mingled opaz radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. Her brown eyes met mine with the look of homecoming. She held out her arms to me.

“Delia,” I whispered, holding her close. “My Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains!”

“Dray . . .” She would not let me go. “Oh, Dray, my Krozair!”

A GLOSSARY TO THE HAVILFAR CYCLE OF THE SAGA OF DRAY PRESCOT

References to the six books of the cycle are given as:

MHA: Manhounds of Antares

ARA: Arena of Antares

FLA: Fliers of Antares

BMA: Bladesman of Antares

AVA: Avenger of Antares

AMA: Armada of Antares

NB: No words are given which appear in the two previous glossaries to the Saga of Dray Prescot: that for the Delian Cycle in Volume #5 Prince Of Scorpio , and for part of the Havilfar Cycle in #7 Arena Of Antares .

A

Admiral Constanto, The: An inn in Valkanium.

Adria, Cleitar: A hyr-kaidur in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa.

Algarond, Quarnach: Vad of the Dudinter District of Ba-Marish. His identity was taken by Prescot to penetrate the fortress of Smerdislad in Faol to rescue Saffi from the Manhounds. (AVA) Alley of Cloves: Narrow street in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu in which stands the inn The Kyr Nath and the Fifi.

Ama of the Shining Hair: Daughter of a poor man in a Vallian story. Amak: Rank of nobility below Elten.

Apulad: A Kovnate in Hamal.

arbora: A bird whose bright plumage is used for helmet decoration. Arnor, Island of: Lies on the east coast of Havilfar to the north of the mouth of the River Havilthytus. Asshurphaz: A Warrior God of Djanduin.

Avanar: An estate in Valka near Vulheim.

Aymlo, Dorval: A Lamnian merchant of Ordsmot rescued by Prescot from the Manhounds of Faol. (MHA)

B

Ba Fela: A free city on the west coast of Havilfar.

Bagor ti Hemlad: Alias used by Prescot in Hamal.

Balass the Hawk: A hyr-kaidur of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa who escaped with Prescot. His home is Xuntal. He helped train up Prescot’s new army of sword and shield men; a good comrade. Balintol: Southern sub-continent of Segesthes.

Balkash: A Stromnate in Falinur in Vallia.

Ba-Marish: A free city on the west coast of Havilfar opposite Ng’groga. banber: A superior cucumber.

Bandermair, Kharon Wonlin: A Djang bought by Prescot in Ruathytu and freed from slavery. (BMA) Barflut the Razor Feathered: A flutsman’s oath.

Barfurd: An oath of the Hamalian army.

Bartak the Hyrshiv: Twelfth son of Bartak the Ob. Escaped with Prescot from the Manhounds. A brokelsh from Hyrzibar’s Finger. (AVA)

binhoy: A deep-hold square-built cargo flier of Hamal.

Blessed Xerenike: A minor religion of Havilfar.

bobs: Nickname for Valkan medals. The official name is: The Strom’s Medal for the Valor of a Warrior Heart.

Boulevard of the Goldsmiths: One of the wealthiest boulevards of the sacred quarter in Ruathytu. Brand, Avec: A gul of Orlush in Hamal who traveled and worked on vollers with Ilter Monicep and Prescot. (FLA)

Brodensmot: A town in Hyrzibar’s Finger in southeast Havilfar.

C

Cafresmot: A military headquarters town in Djanduin.

Capela, Encar, Kov of Faol: Master of the Manhounds of Faol.

Capnon, King: King of the Canops defeated in battle. (ARA)

Casmas the Deldy: A banker and loan shark and bookie of Ruathytu.

cayferm: Mysterious gas affording half the power to a voller.

Chaadur: Alias used by Prescot as a gul in Hamal.

Chan of the Wings: A loyal merker of Djanduin who first raised cry of: “Notor Prescot! King of Djanduin!”

chank: Vicious white-shark of the Outer Oceans.

Chavonth Chamber: Informal conference hall in Esser Rarioch.

Chelestima: Sister to Chido ham Thafey.

Chezra-gon-Kranak: An evil deity of the Katakis.

Chimula the Sumptuous: Alias used by a Chulik Kovneva in Smerdislad. (AVA) clanxer: A common sword of Vallia similar to cutlass.

clef: West.

clum: One of the great mass of very poor people in Ruathytu, free but often no better off than slave. Conelawlad: A town of Hamal.

Coper, Ortyg Fellin: Once Pallan of the Highways of Djanduin, rescued from a burning inn by Prescot, made regent of Djanduin when Prescot as king left the country. An obdjang and a good comrade. Corg: Deity sworn on by the seafarers of Vallia.

Court of the Stux of Zodjuin: Outer court in Palace of Djanguraj.

Crebent: castellan, bailiff.

Lykon Crimahan, Kov of Forli: A Vallian noble hostile to Prescot.

Crippled Chavonth, The: A low-class inn of Urigal in the Kovnate of Waarom in Hamal. Cup Song of the Och Kings, The: An Och drinking song.

D

Dancing Rostrum, The: A fashionable dancehall of Ruathytu.

Dawn Lands: Earliest settled portions of Havilfar around the Shrouded Sea. Now a confused quilt of many independent countries.

Deb-so-Parang: The Wizard of Loh at the court of the Emperor of Vallia. Derson Ob-Eye: Guard in employ of King Doghamrei who set Prescot alight and threw him overboard from a skyship. (BMA)

Djan: The Supreme Being in the Pantheon of Djanduin.

Djan-kadjiryon: The Warrior manifestation of Djan.

Djondalar: A Warrior God of Djanduin.

Doghamrei: King of Hirrume within the Empire of Hamal.

Domon, Lara Kholin: A rich and high-spirited young lady of Djanguraj. Donamair, Naghan Kholin: Djang brought by Prescot to Valka to train a flutduin force. Dorn, Kytun Kholin: Djang warrior noble who fought for Prescot and loyally supports O. Fellin Coper in military management of Djanduin during Prescot’s absences. A good comrade. Dovad: Town of Hamal situated on River Mak by lake and waterfall.

Drak: Prescot and Delia’s eldest son, twin to Lela.

Drak na Vallia: A marching song of great popularity in Vallia. The swods in the ranks call it Old Drak Himself.

Dray: Seg and Thelda’s eldest son, the Strom of Balkash.

Dudinter: Electrum.

Dwadjang: Name given to the four-armed Djangs.

dwazn: Twenty.

dwaznob: Twenty-one.

dyrolain: Fat and nourishing bean favored by mirvols.

E

Ehren, Captain Lars: Captain of Vallian galleon Ovvend Barynth. Elten: Title of nobility between Rango and Amak.

Endo, Lorgad: Lamnian merchant of Vallia who assisted Prescot. (AVA) Eomlad: Town of northern Hamal to the east of Skull Bay burned during the revolution that brought Queen Thyllis to power. (BMA)

Esme: Kovneva of Apulad, slain by her slave girl, the Fristle Floy. (FLA) Eurys: Vadvarate on coast of southeast Hamal opposite Niklana.

Eurys, Vad of: Chido’s father. (AVA)

Exand, Jiktar: Commander of the fortress guard of Esser Rarioch. (AMA) exorc: A dog-sized cat with green leathery skin, hook-clawed webbed feet, four legs, gaping mouth with four enormous canine teeth. Rudimentary wings deeply scalloped on trailing edge mounted on two thick columns rising just abaft shoulder blades. Barbed whip-tail. Must glide down onto prey and is then flown back to eyrie by mother for fresh attack.

F

Faerling Throne: Name given to throne in Djanguraj.

Fahia, Queen: Fat and pathetically unpleasant queen of Hyrklana. (ARA) Falkerdrin: A Kovnate of Vallia, with extremely rich lands.

fambly: Term of affectionate abuse without rancor.

Famphreon, Natyzha, the dowager Kovneva of Falkerdrin: Noblewoman of Vallia of very great wealth, controlling her son the Kov, the Pallan of the Armory, with a rod of iron. Bitterly opposed to Prescot and his schemes.

Fanli the Fristle Fifi and her Regiment of Admirers: A risqué song. Farthytu, Hamun ham, Amak of Paline Valley: A real identity given to Prescot by the old Amak on his deathbed, in honor, and used by Prescot in Hamal.

Farthytu, Naghan ham. The old Amak of Paline Valley, slain with his son Hamun during a raid by the wild men from the west. (BMA)

Feoste, Ornol ham, Kov of Apulad: A noble of Hamal connected with voller manufacture who believes Prescot as Chaadur slew his wife.

Five-handed Eos-Bakchi: A Vallian spirit of luck and good fortune. flutduin: A powerful and superior saddle flyer of Djanduin.

foburf: Small four-legged mammal of the taiga of S. Havilfar with superb glossy black fur much used for flying furs.

Forli: Kovnate of Vallia often called The Blessed Forli lying on an eastern tributary of the central river. Foul Fernal: A demon of Havilfar.

G

Gerawin: Short squat diffs with thin bandy legs, from Gilarna the Barren. Armed with long thin flexible swords and tridents. Immensely efficient guards working with army of Hamal. ghat: east.

Gilarna the Barren: In Hamal, home of the Gerawin.

Gleen the Envious: A minor spirit of deviltry in many of the pantheons of Kregen. Golden Talu, The: A high-class tavern and restaurant in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. grak!: A cruel and ugly word used by slave drivers as they crack their whips, meaning: “Hurry!”

“Move!” “Jump to it!” “Work ’til you die!”

gul: A poor freeman of Hamal with some rights; often a tradesman.

H

Hall of Notor Zan: All black hall of judgment in Hammabi el Lamma. ham: Middle name of the most ancient families of Hamal.

Hangol, Kov: Newly-appointed Pallan of the armies of the north of Hamal fighting in Pandahem. (AMA) Hanitch!: Battle cry of the warriors of Hamal.

Hanitcha the Harrower: An avenging spirit of punishment much respected and sworn by in Havilfar, and whose name is much used in threats.

Harding: A tutor of Aphrasöe.

Harshur, Rees ham, Trylon of the Golden Wind: A noble Numim of Hamal, a remarkable man, brave and generous, a Bladesman with Prescot and a good comrade to Hamun ham Farthytu. Havil the Green: Supreme deity over much of Havilfar, whose worship is the official religion in Hamal and Hyrklana and elsewhere.

Headless Risslaca, The: A constellation seen from Kregen.

Heart Heights of Valka, The: A marching song of Valka.

Heavenly Mines: Mines of S.W. Hamal producing one of the minerals used in the flying boxes of vollers. A place of horror.

Hemlad: A town of Hamal to the east of Dovad.

hersany: Heavy, ugly, six-legged saddle-animal with thick coat of chalky-white hair, of Pandahem. Hestan, Garnath ham, Vad of Middle Nalem: A noble of Hamal and deadly enemy of Rees, employs the Kataki Strom Rosil and is associated with the Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong. Hirrume Warrior: Hamalian skyship belonging to King Doghamrei destroyed by Prescot. (AVA) Hito the Hunter: Guardian spirit of the treacherous guides of Faol. Hoko the Amusingly Malicious: A minor spirit of deviltry in many of the pantheons of Kregen. Horosh, Pallan Hennard: Official in charge of production on the Volgendrin of the Bridge. (AMA) hulu: One who is a bit of a villain and a bit of an idiot.

Hyr-Jiktar: Colonel in Chief of regiment.

Hyr Khor: A large island off the west coast of Djanduin, north of Uttar Djombey, contains the Kharoi Stones, Prescot is the Kov.

Hyrzibar: A shishi of mythology exclusively serving the minor godlings. Hyrzibar’s Finger: A long promontory of S.E. Havilfar above Quennohch. I

ich: Suffix to a title indicating the second twin, icha feminine.

Ifilion: A kingdom on the east coast of Havilfar between the northern and southern mouths of the River Os. Has retained its independence.

Insur ti Fotor: First lieutenant of the galleon Ovvend Barynth. (AVA) Iyam: Nation of North Pandahem lying between Lome and Menahem.

J

Jagdur, Nath Djin: A Dwadjang, once Kov of Hyr Khor, for a brief space King of Djanduin, leemshead, disowned by his tan, slain in the ritual fight in the Sacred Court of the Warrior Gods. (FLA) Jaws of Nundji: A high pass in the Mountains of Mirth.

jen: Lord; A Vallian term equating with the Hamalian Notor.

Jen Drak: The Emperor of Vallia’s flagship in the Battle of Jholaix. (AMA) Jholaix, Battle of: In which the flying Armada and ground forces from Vallia, with the Pandaheem, defeated the Hamalese army of the north leading to an uneasy peace with Hamal. (AMA) joat: Powerful and superior saddle animal used by cavalry in Djanduin. Jynaratha: Island off east coast of Vallia from which Prescot was taken by the Scorpion of the Star Lords back to Earth. (MHA)

K

Kaerlan the Merciful: Beneficent spirit much called upon by the masses in Hamal. Kaidun, By: A kaidur oath.

Kardo: Son of Melow the Supple, twin to Shara.

Kataki: Diff with thick black hair oiled and curled, low brow, flaring nostrils, gape-jawed mouth with snaggly teeth, wide-spaced eyes narrow and cold. Has a long whip-like tail to which is strapped a steel blade. Slave-masters seldom found as slaves in any part of Kregen, the Katakis are formidable fighting men.

Katri, Aunt: Aunt to Delia, the emperor’s sister. Kind and warmhearted. Kavinstok: A Vadvarate of Vallia.

khand: Guild, caste or brotherhood of profession, trade or calling. Khe-Hi-Bjanching: A Wizard of Loh.

Khokkak the Meddler: A minor spirit of deviltry in many of the pantheons of Kregen. kish: steam.

Kodar ti Vakkansmot: Chief of Prescot’s corps of trumpeters.

Kolanier, Rogan: Zan-Chuktar commanding Army of the East of Djanduin, deceived by Nath Jagdur and Gorgrens. (FLA)

Kov Logan na Hirrume and the two Fristle fifis: A legendary story of Havilfar. Krozair Cycle, The: The Third Cycle in the Saga of Dray Prescot.

Krun, By: A Hamalese oath.

Kuerden the Merciless: Malignant spirit much used in vilification by the masses of Hamal. Kyr Nath and the Fifi, The: An inn in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu with a convenient tree for secret comings and goings much used by Prescot during his days of espionage. Kyro: Square, plaza, piazza.

L

Lamahan, Naghan: Name used by Prescot as merker on Volgendrin of the Bridge, borrowed from alias of Gordano ham Thafey, Chido’s cousin. (AMA)

Lament for Valinur Fallen, The: A famous song of Valka telling of early defeat and final triumph. Largan the Rule: Palace architect of Vondium.

Latimer: Voller owner and shipping merchant rescued by Prescot from the Manhounds of Faol. (MHA) Lay of Faerly the Ponsho Farmer’s Daughter, The: A merry little ballad concerning a Fristle fifi. Lela: Daughter of Delia and Prescot, twin to Drak.

Leotes ti Ponthieu: A Bravo fighter of Zenicce, master swordsman, as a Bladesman in Ruathytu defeated by Prescot. (BMA) (AVA)

Lesser Sharangil Archipelago, The: A considerable grouping of moderately sized islands in The Shrouded Sea.

Lilah, Princess: Princess of Hyrklana rescued by Prescot from the Manhounds of Faol. (MHA) Livahan, Nath ham, Kov of Thoth Uppwe: Known as Nath the Crafty in Ruathytu. Has an obsessional hatred for diffs. (AMA)

looshas pudding: A succulent dessert much favored in the army.

Loxo!: The call shouted by link-men to attract customers.

M

Mag: Twin brother to Mog, High Priestess of Migladrin. (MHA) (ARA) Mahmud, Orlan, nal Yrmcelt: Young Horter and courtier of Hyrklana. (ARA) Mak, River: Rises in the Black Hills of Hamal and empties into the River Havilthytus at Ruathytu. Black waters, whence its name.

Malab’s Blood: Deep purple wine of Hamal, not favored by Prescot.

Malahak: Spirit of Hamal called on as witness to actions.

malsidge: Melon-sized, tart fruit with green flesh and brown wrinkled skin, an anti-scorbutic. Martial Monks of Djanduin: A semi-religious order of men devoted to Djan. Habitually shave their heads.

Mask of Recognition: A blazing golden mask worn by Prescot at the Battle of Tomor Peak. (AMA) Matoc: A non-commissioned officer.

Med Neemusbane: A young Miglan who went with Prescot and Turko the Shield through the syatra-guarded passage into Mungul Sidrath (ARA)

Melow the Supple: A jikla whose twins were eased into the world of Kregen by Prescot, and who is now a part of the household of Esser Rarioch.

Memphees: A poison distilled from the tree Memph, with additions of the cactus Trechinolc. It saps the strength and can kill.

merezo: Circus or hippodrome for zorca and sleeth racing.

merker: A messenger usually flying a vol or fluttclepper.

Merle: Daughter of Trylon Jefan Werden.

Middle Nalem: A Vadvarate of Hamal west of the Black Hills.

Migshaanu: The deity of the religion of Migla, proscribed by the Canops but successfully restored by Prescot. (MHA) (ARA)

Mindner, Felder Kholin: Dwadjang, Jiktar of Prescot’s flying forces in the struggle for Djanduin. Cousin to Lara Domon.

Mog: Crone-like witch rescued by Prescot from the Manhounds of Faol. Chief Priestess of the Miglish religion of Migshaanu the All-Glorious. Called the Mighty Mog, or Mog the Mighty. (MHA) (ARA) Monicep, Ilter: A gul of Orlush, a smith, nephew to Avec Brand. Traveled with him and Prescot in Hamal and then built vollers in Sumbakir. (FLA)

Morcray: Home of Strom Rosil Yasi, the Kataki Chuktar.

Morro the Muscle: Deity of the Khamorros.

Mother Diocaster: Goddess of easement and fertility and womanhood in the pantheon of Djanduin. Muruaa: A volcano that erupted and partially buried Orlush in Hamal, where the Star Lords set a task to Prescot’s hands. (FLA)

“My wings are yours to command”: Ritual response of the merkers.

N

Naghan the Gnat: A superb armorer rescued with Prescot from the Jikhorkdun of Huringa and now armorer in Esser Rarioch.

Naghan the Wily: Valkan song telling how the rich and ugly silversmith of Vandayha, Naghan the Wily, was trapped into marriage by Hefi, daughter of a bosk herder.

Nalgre the Penitent, Bridge of: Bridge over the Black River in Ruathytu due south of the Kyro of the Horters.

Nath the Arm: Kaidur trainer for the Jikhorkdun in Huringa. (NB: Nath the Arm does not appear to have had the same powers or possibilities of bargaining as a Roman lanista, and he disappears abruptly from Prescot’s story in Hyrklana.) (ARA)

Nath the Guide: A treacherous Guide of Faol. (MHA)

Nath the Keys: Turnkey in the dungeons of the Hanitchik, with one eye and a crippled leg, gruffly pitying Prescot during his imprisonment awaiting torture and hanging for murder. (AMA) Nath of Thothangir: Rescued by Prescot from the Manhounds of Faol. Prescot believed this name used as an alias. (MHA)

nidge!: A Djang insult.

Niklana: Small island to the north of Hyrklana. An exception to the usual rule that nik as a prefix means half and as a suffix small.

nikvove: Half-size vove without fangs and horns.

Nikvove of Evir: Galleon of Vallia burned by Hamalian skyship. (BMA) Notor Zan: The Tenth Lord, the Lord of Darkness. Rises when there are no suns or moons in sky of Kregen.

Nulty: Retainer of Paline Valley, privy to secret of Hamun ham Farthytu appointed by Prescot as Crebent to Paline Valley. A loyal man.

Numim: A diff of powerful physique and lion-like face with great golden mane and whiskers. The Numim girls are very beautiful.

Nundji: Once a warrior god of Djanduin but because of his evil jailed by the other warrior gods in a leem-hell.

O

obbie: Slang term of swods for an ob-Deldar.

Obdjang: The two-armed gerbil-faced Djang of Djanduin, not a warrior but one of the executive and administration Djangs.

Obfaril: Young lad rescued with Prescot from Jikhorkdun in Huringa. His burning desire to become a kaidur changed to an interest in vollers as part of household of Esser Rarioch. Nicknamed Oby. Obquam, Strom of Tajkent: A flying man of Havilfar who assisted in the rescue of Delia and Prescot and their friends from the Jikhorkdun of Huringa. Not a volrok. (ARA)

Ogra-gemush: Island kingdom slightly isolated from the Hoboling Islands to their northeast in the Sea of Opaz.

Ombor: Mythical flying monster of immense size and fiery heart, who dying is yet reborn, whose breath scorches cities, whose tears water the oceans, whose hearts beat for all humankind. Gives name to enclave of Strombor in Zenicce.

Onglolo: Constellation of Kregen.

Operhalen: A noble House of Zenicce, colors blue, green and ivory. ordel: Cattle animal of Kregen, similar to Earthly shorthorn.

Os, River: Very large river of Havilfar rising in the Mountains of the West and flowing eastwards to empty into the Ocean of Clouds by two large mouths opposite northern Hyrklana. Called He of the Commendable Countenance.

Otbrinhan: Chief of Yuccamots who extended hospitality to Prescot and the shipwrecked crew of Ovvend Barynth. (AVA)

Ovvend: A Kovnate province of Vallia to the west of Delphond.

Ovvend Barynth: Galleon of Vallia saved from burning by Prescot but subsequently driven ashore and wrecked. (AVA)

Oxkalin the Blind Spirit: Minor godling of chance, appealed to by gamblers for good luck. P

Pachak: Diff of middle height, with two left arms, a whiplike tail equipped with hand, straw-yellow hair. Very highly-valued as guards and mercenaries, intensely loyal, favored by Prescot, who believes their berserker rages when fighting are part of their carefully controlled image. Highly skilled fighters. Paktun’s Promenade: A marching song of Kregen.

Palazzo of the Four Winds: Palace in Djanguraj.

Paline: Maid to Rosala of Match Urt. Taunted Prescot in his rescue, urging and mocking him with the Jikai. (BMA)

Paline and Queng, The: A tavern in Djanguraj whose obdjang landlord made the best vosk pie in the city. (FLA)

Paline Valley: An estate in northwest Hamal close to the Mountains of the West. Prescot became Amak in curious circumstances.

Panshi: Prescot’s chamberlain in Esser Rarioch.

parclear: A sherbet drink.

pasham: A honey-melon-sized fruit smelling like old socks and tasting like the sweepings of a totrix stable. Processed for use in voller production.

Pastale: A wine of Segesthes, the export monopoly of Operhalen.

Paz: The grouping of continents and islands of Kregen including Loh, Segesthes, Turismond and Havilfar; and Vallia and Pandahem.

Pe-Na, Planath: A Pachak, Prescot’s personal standard bearer.

Pereth, Kov: Commander of the armies of the north of Hamal, relieved of command by Queen Thyllis. (AVA) (AMA)

Persinia: Promontory of southern Segesthes between Port Paros and Balintol, north of the Undurkor Islands.

Phu-si-Yantong: Wizard of Loh.

Piraju: Island of the Risshamal Keys off northeastern Havilfar.

Planath the Wine: Proprietor of The Loyal of Sidraarga in Yaman (MHA) Podia: A Lamnian village on the island of Shanpo in the Lesser Sharangil Archipelago of the Shrouded Sea.

prianum: Shrine, one for each color, for trophies received in the Jikhorkdun. The priana in Huringa were: Green, the Emerald Neemu; Blue, the Sapphire Graint; Yellow, the Diamond Zhantil, and Red, the Ruby Drang. This last was Prescot’s color.

Pride of Hanitcha: Hamalian skyship destroyed by Prescot. (AVA) purtle: Cheap pine wood of the taiga of Southern Havilfar.

Q

Quaesa: Feather-brained apim girl rescued by Prescot from Manhounds. (MHA) (ARA) Que-si-Rening: A Wizard of Loh.

Quivir: A Stromnate within Prescot’s island Kovnate of Zamra.

R

Radak the Syatra: An enormously powerful wrestler from a semi-barbarian tribe living close to the Mountains of the West in Hamal. Bested in a contest with Rees, he subsequently refused to attack Rees’s people and took refuge in the estates of the Golden Wind. (BMA) Rango: Rank of nobility between Strom and Elten. Feminine is Ranga. Ranjal, Stromich: Twin brother to Strom Rosil na Morcray.

Ranks: The four main military ranks on Kregen are often abbreviated as: Chuktar — Chuk. Jiktar —

Jik. Hikdar — Hik. Deldar — Del.

“Rank your Deldars”: Usual challenge to open a game of Jikaida.

Rapechak: A Rapa who escaped with Prescot from the Manhounds of Faol and who was believed drowned in the River Magan after escape from Mungul Sidrath. (MHA) (ARA) Rashi: Wife to Rees, Stromni of the Golden Wind.

Rees: Son to Rees, nicknamed Reesnik. Slain by assassins of Vad Garnath (AVA) Resplendent Bridzilkelsh: A brokelsh spirit used as oath.

Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls, By: A Rapa oath.

Rig: A Warrior God in the pantheon of Djanduin.

Risshamal Keys: Strings of many islands stretching like fingers from the northeast corner of Havilfar. Riurik, Vangar: The Strom of Quivir, owing allegiance to Prescot.

Roban: Younger son to Rees.

Rogahan: Nicknamed Wersting. A Deldar of varters, a fine shot.

Rogan, King: Husband to Queen Fahia of Hyrklana, a nonentity. (ARA) Rosala of Match Urt: Beautiful but icy-cold maiden of Hamal appealed to Prescot acting as Hamun for help. Taken from intended marriage with Casmas the Deldy. (BMA)

Rumferling, Naghan Stolin: Chuktar of the army of Djanduin, assassinated by the leemsheads. (FLA) S

Sacred Court of the Warrior Gods: In the Palazzo of the Four Winds in Djanguraj where Prescot fought the last fight with Nath Jagdur.

Saenda: Hare-brained apim girl rescued by Prescot from Manhounds. (MHA) Saffi: Golden lion-maid, daughter of Rees. Abducted by Vad Garnath and brought back from Cripples Jikai in Smerdislad by Prescot. (AVA)

Savapim: Agents of the Savanti.

sazz: A fruit-flavored sherbet drink.

scarron: Brilliant scarlet jewel of great value.

Scavander, Evold: Wise man of Valka, given courtesy title of San.

Scented Sylvie, The: A riotous tavern of the sacred quarter in Ruathytu. Schtump!: Abusive way of saying clear off or get out.

Sea of Opaz: Extension of Southern Ocean between Vallia and Pandahem. Secret Lore of San Drozhimo the Lame, The: A book of wisdom composed a thousand years ago by the sage Drozhimo.

Sensil Quarter: One of the districts of Ruathytu famous for its manufactories turning silk into sensil. Shanpo: Island of the Lesser Sharangil Archipelago.

Shara: Daughter of Melow the Supple, sister to Kardo.

shif: Contemptuous term for serving girl or slave wench.

Shining Quarter: Situated on a slight eminence inside the Walls of Kazlili in southwestern Ruathytu, occupied by wealthy horters.

Shinnar: An Och village on the island of Shanpo.

Sidraarga: In conjunction with Magoshno, subsidiary deities to Migshaanu of Migladrin, although the connection is unclear.

Singing Forests, The: Kovnate province south of the Mountains of the North in Vallia, rich in valuable timber.

Sinkie: Charming wife to O. Fellin Coper.

Skull Bay: Sickle-shaped bay on north coast of Havilfar.

slursh: A rich form of porridge, superb with red honey.

Smerdislad: The fortress city of the Kov of Faol.

Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie: A drinking song of Kregen which always causes great merriment among the swods by reason of the refrain which goes: “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.”

Song of Tyr Nath, The: A marching song derived from the myth cycle, The Quest of Tyr Nath. Sorah: A prosperous island of The Shrouded Sea, headquarters of the slave trade carried on by the Katakis in that area.

South Lohvian Sea: Sea between Loh and Havilfar.

stavrer: The size of a wolf with a fierce wolf-head, eight legs and stumpy tail, variously marked and colored, a loyal watchdog.

Stikitche: Assassin.

Street of Sweetmeats: Street of the sacred quarter in Ruathytu off which is the alley containing the tavern Tempting Forgetfulness.

Street of Threads: Street of tailors in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu opening off the Kyro of the Vadvars.

Stuvan: A middling quality wine.

Sultant, Nalgre, Vad of Kavinstok: An unpleasant noble of Vallia who led the aborted deputation to Hyrklana and gave Prescot trouble.

Sumbakir: A provincial town of south-central Hamal where Prescot worked as a carpenter in the voller yards. (FLA)

swod: A private soldier, a ranker, one of the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry). Swords, Bridge of: Connects the soldiers’ quarters north of the Havilthytus with the sacred quarter of Ruathytu.

T

Tarnish: Nation to the south of the Tarnish Channel.

Tarnish Channel: Large bay and inlet of the Ocean of Doubt in southwest Havilfar. tamiyan: Tree with bright yellow blossom.

tan: A Ddjang’s house or clan indicated by middle tan name.

Tancrophor: Country famous and infamous for its pearl fisheries in The Shrouded Sea.

“Tchik”: Command given to a fluttrell that turns the big bird into a savage killer. Thafey, Chido ham: Good-natured idler of Ruathytu’s sacred quarter. Holds a courtesy rank of Amak and will become Vad on his father’s death. Friend of Rees and Prescot. thoth: South.

Thraxter and Voller, The: Comfortable inn in the Horters Quarter of Ruathytu where Prescot first stayed in the city.

Thyllis: Queen of Hamal. Seductive, vicious, violent, evil. Crowned empress during enormous celebrations in which Prescot played a part.

Thyllis the Munificent: A goddess in an ancient myth whose story was much favored by Queen Thyllis. Tilly: Golden-furred Fristle fifi rescued with Prescot from Arena of Huringa and now part of the household of Esser Rarioch.

toc: copper coin worth one sixth of an ob. In Hamal the slang name is Havvey — a bitter and mocking reference to Havil the Green.

Tolfeyr, Nath: Bladesman of Ruathytu who befriended Prescot.

Tomor Peak, Battle of: Fought in Tomboram in Pandahem when Prescot and the small army of Vallia and Valka with Djang aerial cavalry defeated the Hamalian flank force of the army of the north. (AMA) tralk: Six-legged risslaca with wide horny crushing mouth and two enormous armored pincers. Size of a horse and varicolored.

Trechinolc: A cactus. A constituent of the drug Memphees.

Tridents, Kyro of the: The imposing paved square surrounded by colonnaded shops standing at the foot of the descent from Esser Rarioch.

Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable, By the: A Kataki oath.

Triumph of the Gods. The: Song cycle celebrating local legend of Djanduin. Tryfant: A diff not much larger than an Och, foppish, well led will put in a wild enough charge; but disastrous in retreat. Prescot says he has no great feelings for them one way or the other. tsu-tsu: Tree giving a nourishing nut favored by Mirvols.

Tulema: Dancing girl from a dopa den rescued by Prescot from Manhounds of Faol. (MHA) Turko the Shield: A Khamorro, a high kham, escaped with Prescot from Manhounds and aided him in Mungul Sidrath. Has a mocking way with him. Goes always at Prescot’s side in battle carrying his huge shield. A good comrade.

Tyr Korgan and the Mermaid: A rollicking song of Kregen.

U

Ulverswan, Nath: Kov of Singing Forests in Vallia. In opposition to Prescot in his schemes to aid Pandaheem against Hamal. (AMA)

Under a Certain Moon: Once upon a time.

Unglue your wings: Havilfarese expression for hurry up and get started. Urigal: Dusty little town in the Kovnate of Waarom in Hamal.

urn: North.

Uttar Djombey: A large island off the west coast of Djanduin, south of Hyr Khor. Kytun Kholin Dom is the Kov.

V

Vakkansmot: A town of Valka.

Valinur: A ruggedly beautiful area of northern Valka.

valkavol: Small red and white bird of Valka, harmless unless attacked. Then becomes frighteningly ferocious. Symbol used atop Valkan standard poles.

vaol-paol: The Great Circle of Universal Existence. In voller production of silver boxes, the vaol boxes contain the mix of minerals, and the paol boxes contain the cayferm. Vela: Prescot’s sailing flier in the Battle of Jholaix. (AMA) verss: Finest white linen.

Volgendrin of the Bridge: Flying island of west Hamal. Volgendrin often shortened to vo’drin. (AMA) Vorgar’s Drinnik: Wide parade ground, the Mars Field of Valkanium. Vyborg: A Kovnate province of Vallia.

W

Warrior Gods of Djanduin: Victorious martial array of the pantheon of Djanduin. waso: Five.

Wazur: King of Ogra-gemush.

“Wenda!”: Let’s go!

Werl-am-Nardith: A minor religion of Havilfar.

weyver: A long and wide voller, shallow and without a deck, with a small control cabin amidships. Used as barge. Called Quoffas of the Sky.

Wil of the Bellows: A young Djang armorer working with Prescot.

Wolfgang: A Savapim, from Germany, working for the Savanti and encountered by Prescot in Ruathytu. (AMA)

X

Xanachang: The paradise of the mythology of Xuntal.

Xarmon: Prescot’s groom at the Battle of Tomor Peak. (AMA)

Xilicia: An ancient kingdom bordering The Shrouded Sea. One of the countries manufacturing the superior mesh link mail.

Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword: A deity of Xuntal.

Y

Yanthur: Rough country of Havilfar between Gorgrendrin and Migla.

Yasi, Rosil, Strom of Morcray: A Kataki and a Chuktar in the army of Hamal, tool of Vad Garnath’s, slave-master, bitter foe to Prescot.

Yellow Unction: A mellow wine of Kregen.

yrium: A word of profound and complex meaning: force, power conveyed by office or strength of character or given to a person in a way that curses or blesses him with undisputed power over his fellows.

Yuccamot: A sleek, otter-like diff with broad flattened tail. Live in villages along the Risshamal Keys, fishing, friendly, and proud of their webbed feet. Welcomed Prescot when shipwrecked. Yurncra the Mischievous: A Minor spirit of deviltry in many of the pantheons of Kregen. Z

Zamra: Island off the east coast of Vallia. Prescot is Kov.

zan: Ten.

Zhantil and Sword, The: A brightly glittering constellation of Kregen. zhyan: A very large very fine saddle bird of Havilfar. Pure white with scarlet beak and claws, with four wings. Most highly prized. Prescot says one zhyan in money terms is worth ten first-quality fluttrells. Their only drawback is their short temper.

Zodjuin: A Warrior God of Djanduin, perhaps the most favored by fighting men, who bellow, for example: “By Zodjuin of the Stormclouds!” or “By Zodjuin of the Silver Stux!”

About the author

Alan Burt Akers is a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer. Bulmer has published over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com

The Dray Prescott Series

The Delian Cycle:

Transit to Scorpio

The Suns of Scorpio

Warrior of Scorpio

Swordships of Scorpio

Prince of Scorpio

The Havilfar Cycle:

Manhounds of Antares

Arena of Antares

Fliers of Antares

Bladesman of Antares

Avenger of Antares

Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

The Tides of Kregen

Renegade of Kregen

Krozair of Kregen

Notes

[1] Jen: the usual word for lord in Vallia.

[2] Nikvove. The word nik, when used as a prefix seems to mean half. When used as a suffix it carries a more general meaning of small or diminutive. I believe this to be a correct interpretation of Prescot’s use of the word. As for Planath Pe-Na, the Pachak, and the affair of the Burned Man at Twin Forks, this is lost. [A.B.A.]

[3]See Avenger of Antares, Dray Prescot #10.

[4]See Bladesman of Antares, Dray Prescot #9.

[5]See Fliers of Antares, Dray Prescot #8.

[6] Wenda: Let’s go. Hurry.