Copyright © 1975, Kenneth Bulmer

Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1975.

This Edition published in 2006 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1

4EB, United Kingdom

www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 1843193965

Bladesman of Antares

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

Foreword

DRAY PRESCOT

Dray Prescot is a man above medium height, with straight brown hair, and brown eyes that are level and dominating. His shoulders are immensely wide and there is about him an abrasive honesty and a fearless courage. He moves like a great hunting cat, quiet and deadly. Born in 1775 and educated in the inhumanly harsh conditions of the late eighteenth-century English Navy, he presents a picture of himself that, the more we learn of him, grows no less enigmatic.

Through the machinations of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe — mortal but superhuman men dedicated to the aid of humanity — and of the Star Lords, he has been taken to Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio many times. On that savage and beautiful, marvelous and terrible world he rose to become Zorcander of the Clansmen of Segesthes, and Lord of Strombor in Zenicce, and a member of the mystic and martial Order of Krozairs of Zy.

Against all odds Prescot won his highest desire and in that immortal battle at The Dragon’s Bones claimed his Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. And Delia claimed him in the face of her father the dread Emperor of Vallia. Amid the rolling thunder of the acclamations of Hai Jikai! Prescot became Prince Majister of Vallia, and wed his Delia, the Princess Majestrix. One of their favorite homes is in Valkanium, capital of the island of Valka, of which Prescot is Strom. Through the agency of the blue radiance sent by the Star Lords, the Summons of the Scorpion, Prescot is plunged headlong into fresh adventures on Kregen in the continent of Havilfar. Outwitting the Manhounds of Antares and fighting as a hyr-kaidur in the arena of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa in Hyrklana, he becomes King of Djanduin, idolized by his incredibly ferocious four-armed warrior Djangs. But Hamal, the greatest power in Havilfar, is bent on conquest, and Prescot has slaved in their diabolical Heavenly Mines. Now, his mission is to discover the secrets of the Hamalese airboats for his own people

. . .

Alan Burt Akers

Chapter One

Into Hamal

All my thoughts centered on Hamal. There, in that progressive and yet violently barbaric country, I felt confident that the secrets of the marvelous airboats of Havilfar were to be discovered. And if I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, did not quickly guide this little flier out of the gale hurling me about the sky like a dead leaf, I was likely to discover the biggest secret in two worlds. Wind-driven rain razored against my face over the smashed windscreen. Rain soaked my hair and face and stung into my eyes. The little flier stood on her nose, dived, swooped sickeningly, flew upward, spun about like a child’s kicked top. I clung on, hoping to Zair the leather straps would stand the strain and not snap, to send me pitching into the hard ground beneath.

The darkness of the darkest of nights hung about me, and yet somewhere high above, the twin suns of Antares were flooding down their rich ruby-and-emerald fires. I dashed water from my face, and cursed, and thrust uselessly at the control levers. The flier did not respond. This was not the swift racing voller I had taken from Sumbakir, where she had been built. With my natural greed I had left that superb craft back home in Valka and had instead taken an ordinary little Hamalese flier, which had seen much use. My frugality was likely to cost me dear. With a shocked oath I ripped instinctively at the controls as from the gloom ahead a wide-branched tree whirled toward me. The tree appeared instantaneously from the murk and as suddenly was gone. The craft spun end over end above the tree. I felt the gonging blows of branches as they battered the canvas-skinned wooden frame. A rough-barked branch punched through and beat at my leg before that mad onward movement wrenched the branch free in a weltering sound of ripping canvas. Everything was streaming water, everything was in violent motion, everything was going up and down; the world spun dizzily about me — that wonderful if terrible world of Kregen, four hundred light-years from the planet of my birth.

In some fashion or other I had to land. More trees flashed past, their gray arms reaching out to destroy my frail craft. I peered ahead, drenched by rain and buffeted by wind, half deafened by the racket. At any minute I was likely to get myself killed and packed off to the Ice Floes of Sicce. There were certain things I must do before that happened, which, in the ordinary course of events, should happen in a thousand years or so.

“By Zair!” I shouted, and thumped the useless controls. “Go down, you onker!”

End over end the flier whirled from the darkness. Rain fell for a space, and then cleared, and I was blinking in doubled sunshine. A swift look to my rear showed the malevolent stormclouds boiling blackly as they poured over the land, darkening the greens and yellows below. I was low, perilously low. A circling gust had cast me from the main path of the storm. But the controls would not answer and the flier roared on, driven by the breeze, for she was of that build which is susceptible to winds. I looked ahead. The land spread flat before me, ocher and dun, with scattered clumps of trees, threaded by the sparkle of narrow watercourses. This was grazing land, I considered, and to confirm that observation I saw herds of animals, running. Far on the horizon lifted a range of mountains, glittering under the opaz fire of the suns. These, if my navigation had been correct, were the Mountains of the West of Hamal. I was heading due south, having come over the sea from Valka and penetrating well into the country down the hook-shaped expanse of water of Skull Bay. I’d never lift over those sharp fangs. This little voller would be driven directly onto the rocks. The gale had let me slip from its clutches, but I was still in danger. The flier remained now on an even keel, but as the wind pushed her, so she swung and drifted aimlessly. This would not do. I had come to this strange country of Hamal to discover what I needed to know about fliers so that my own country of Vallia might construct reliable models. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. Here I was, scheming to obtain the secrets of the vollers, being thwarted and threatened for my life by the very Opaz-forsaken monstrosity I wished to discover!

The crystalline glitter in the air with its mingling of streaming colors from the twin suns of Antares that, on a fine day, should be bottled up and shipped to Earth to banish all the fug and despondency — and to make the shipper a fortune — darkened again with sudden and ominous power. A swirling arm of the storm, wind-driven, black and boiling, swooped up abaft of me and in seconds I was once again enveloped in gloom.

The flier pitched about, corklike, and I knew that beneath now the keel, now the stem, now the ripped canvas decking, the ground streamed past, ready to shatter both my craft and me. This second tempestuous whirlwind howled past with maniacal force and rushed away ahead, leaving the flier to be sucked along limping in its wake.

The blackness ahead covered the land.

Rain had formed into torrential rivulets that joined and broadened and foamed in cataracts into the narrow streams. I saw herds of animals rushing in frenzy, their long horns an upthrust and savage forest of spears.

The ground rushed up.

I gave a last frantic belting to the control levers. To this day I do not know if my hammering made the difference, whether something freed itself in the mechanism, whether some other movement helped; but, for whatever cause, the nose of the voller lifted. For agonizing seconds I hung, still going down, still aimed to smash headlong into the earth. The stem rose a little more as I bashed the levers again and we were rising, and the ground sped past below, so close I could smell the scent of fresh rain upon dust. The voller rose and flew straight.

Maybe it was the merciless bashing I gave the controls; I do not think it was from any actions of the Star Lords or the Savanti.

The mountains were now much closer, the storm coalescing into weird black shapes as the clouds roiled against the rock faces. A column of black smoke attracted my attention, and a single look convinced me I was witnessing an all too familiar sight on many parts of Kregen. The world is beautiful and wonderful; it is also dark and terrible, and I have had my fair share of the vaol-paol — the end and the beginning, the light and the dark.

Delia had insisted I pack so much gear aboard the flier that I had teased her I would have no space for myself. And she had replied, unsmiling, that perhaps that would be a better idea than this insane, impulsive journey to Hamal to discover the secrets of their fliers . . . I took up the spyglass and clapped it to my eye, and with that old familiar, unthinking seaman’s instincts swaying the telescope with the swayings of my craft, I spied out the mischief ahead.

Well, it was no business of mine.

That was the first thought that crossed my mind.

Down below, still smoking after the drenching it must have taken from the rain squall, a village burned. Here in the northwest of Hamal, in this forgotten tongue of land that stretches between the southern end of Skull Bay and the westerly curve of the Mountains of the West, they build villages snugly. The dense tropical jungles lie to the north. Farther south the land is parched. Here is good grazing land. The houses of the village were built with their backs facing outward, in an oval formation. Their front doors opened onto the village square, and the well, and the shade trees, and the busy life of the community. One or two houses were of three stories, higher than the rest. But they were all burning. As I approached, I judged the walls to be mud brick; the roofs must have been of thatch, or leaves, for they had completely disappeared. Cow dung makes a useful roof. A number of people were running about, and it seemed to me they ran aimlessly.

No business of mine.

Even when the flutsmen rose into view, urging their fluttrells away from the smoke and down onto the frightened people, I still said it was no business of mine.

The flutsmen, as you know, are the mercenaries of the skies; mounted on their flying steeds, they hire themselves out to any who will pay the high cost of their employment. I guessed that this bunch had been hired by aragorn, slave-masters, to round up a fresh batch of slaves. I do not care for slave-masters.

I have not much time for slavers.

I would, given the circumstances, as lief split an aragorn in half as give him the time of day. Old customs die hard. Many men professing faith, men of integrity, can make out a good case for slavery. One useful test to put to them is to suggest that they take a turn at slavery themselves, put on the torque, the chains, the thongs, the yoked stick, carry out hard and unrewarding tasks with a beating for wages. I believe they might then suffer a change of heart, that if they were slaves they would see the old custom in a new light.

But . . . this was not my business.

I had not been bidden here by the Star Lords to save anyone from a cruel fate, so I needn’t fear their punishment for failing that task — to be thrust back to Earth, four hundred light-years away. I was a free agent. The decisions were mine. In this matter I was not a puppet.

Like old customs, old habits die hard.

I took up the great Lohvian longbow given to me by Seg Segutorio, who had himself built it with loving care, built it as only a master bowman of Erthyrdrin can build a longbow. I had practiced with this bow, and I knew her ways. I could split the chunkrah’s eye at unbelievable ranges. Each arrow had been manufactured under the intolerant eye of Seg. Each shaft was true, as near the others in weight and balance and size as any skill could make it by hand, without the standardization of mass production. Each shaft was fletched with the brilliant blue feathers of the king korf. Each head was of tempered Kregan steel, for Seg would acknowledge that high-quality steel did, indeed, possess advantages over his well-tried flint. There were heads for different purposes: wide-cutting flesh-slicers, narrow and heavy bone-smashers, thin bodkins for deep penetration, even a few blunted shafts for bird-ratching. I eyed the flutsmen.

So absorbed were they in their evil work they did not see the silent approach of my flier. Their fluttrells curved against the sky, swooping down. Ropes flew, barbed with cunning iron, and snagged screaming fugitives, upending them, dragging them through the dust.

The flutsmen had set the place afire, but the rain squall had swirled upon them, and now they were busy trying to bring their slaving activities back to the order I guessed they usually experienced. The rain had given the village a chance. I frowned. I could see no resistance. With a chance . . . surely there were men below with weapons, men who would fight for their women and children, for their own lives and liberty. The shafts were set before me, arrayed in their quick-draw sleeves along the rim of the voller. I took the first shaft between the fingers of my right hand.

This was no business of mine.

I should let the wind drive my craft on, past the burning village, past the flutsmen, past the shrieking people. If I was killed here, what good would that do my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains? How would that give the protection I owed to my young twins, Drak and Lela? How would my death here bring the prosperity I so urgently desired to my people of Valka and of Strombor, of Djanduin, and of the clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm?

At last I saw the foolishness of the question, for those wild clansmen are so perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, there on the limitless expanses of the Great Plains of Segesthes, and with Hap Loder to chivy them along when necessary, that I could, and did, Zair forgive me, leave them to their own rascally devices for seasons at a time.

No, with or without the Star Lords, with or without the Savanti, with or without all the duties I owed my people, this petty slaving affray below was no business of mine.

So I took up the first shaft, notched it, drew back the string, and loosed. The shaft took the nearest flutsman under the ear.

He pitched from his saddle, hanging from the clerketer, the straps beating in the wind as his mount reared aloft.

The next shaft dispatched a flutsman whose swung line had barbed a man, who simply sprawled forward, his hands clasped together, his body limp.

Then it was a matter of shooting as fast as I might haul the shafts from their sleeves around the rim of the voller, of drawing the string and of loosing. Shaft after shaft sped; I think only two missed their mark. Now the slavers could not fail to take notice of me.

Standing braced as I was in the tiny forward compartment, I must have presented a target to them they considered easy, a mere man to be swept away with a swift attack and a shower of stuxes. They hurled their javelins, true enough. But I snatched up a shield and hung it on my left shoulder. This was a trick I had been practicing, to the enormous amusement of Seg and my other friends in Valka, and, I admit, to the worried annoyance of Turko the Shield. Stuxes banged and slithered against the shield. I could still shoot. If a javelin was launched at my right side — and be very sure I kept a sharp lookout to starboard

— I could duck or sway away from its flight. Only three times had I to release the string of the longbow and so reach out and pluck the flying javelin from the air. These three went back whence they came, to bury their broad heads deeply into the bodies of their late owners.

Fluttrell wings blattered the air about me. Stuxes flew. Now the enraged flutsmen swooped in, closer and closer, and they tried to stick me with their long lance-swords. The blades sliced and slashed, and chunks of the voller’s wooden frame splintered and strips of the canvas cover ripped away. I let the great Lohvian longbow slide to the deck.

The feel of the longsword in my hands, as always, gave me that uplifting and yet fallible feeling I have so often described. With the naked brand in my fists I prepared to deal blow for blow. This longsword was a true longsword. It was not a Krozair longsword. But it was as close as I could make it in the smithy at home in the high fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium. Naghan the Gnat, the cunning armorer, and I, with the best swordsmiths I could find, had labored long to produce this weapon. I had debated whether or not to bring that true Krozair longsword with me but — for the same reasons I had brought this inferior flier, the same reason I wore a sober gray shirt and blue trousers over the old scarlet breechclout — I had decided not to bring that marvelous brand with the letters KRZY

incised on the blade.

Naghan the Gnat had proved a first-class armorer and swordsmith. Together we had folded and refolded the glowing metal, producing that cunning interlay of many thicknesses demanded of a true blade. With varying thicknesses of clay during the annealing process we had developed a diamond-hard cutting edge from the point up both edges, and that more tough and flexible central spine. We had labored amid heat and smoke and sweat to fashion this blade. It was as true a longsword as might be found outside the Eye of the World; but, even so, it still was not a Krozair longsword. But, here, in an affray with miserable aragorn-hired flutsmen, it would serve to lop a few heads, to dismember, to rip the smoking guts out of these evil slavers.

The feel of the silver-wire-wound hilt was all I needed to go to work. And then, in that moment when, with the blood singing through my veins and the beginnings of a juicy little encounter shaping up, I fancied I might discommode these cramphs, the flier jerked, yawed, flummoxed in the air, and then plunged straight for the ground.

In a matter of moments my flier would smash headlong into the earth and smash me along with it.

Chapter Two Flutsmen

That abrupt plunge earthward scattered the flying slavers away from the voller. Wings skittered sharply as the flutsmen veered away. One flutsman, however -— no doubt seething with anger that with all their vaunted prowess the mercenaries of the air had failed to dispose of a single flier — swooped upon me with a screech. He clearly intended to sink his long-bladed weapon into me before I struck ground. That suited me perfectly.

The intention suited me; not the execution of that design.

The ground leaped up toward me. The fluttrell barreled over, tasseled flying cloths fluttering, the straps of the clerketer holding the flutsman swinging wildly. The long lance, razor sharp, speared for my body. Where normally I would have buffeted it away with a swing of my blade, I let my body swing away. I shifted grips on the two-handed hilt of the longsword. With the sword in my left hand I braced, flexed my legs, and leaped.

For a single heartbeat I thought I had missed.

The flyer swooped down on me, the lance lashed past my side, and I sprang upward. My fingers clenched around the dangling wind-driven straps of the clerketer. I took a firm grasp and hauled up.

The fluttrell felt the extra weight come on, but a fluttrell can carry two as easily as one. His powerful talons opened for a moment where they were tucked up beneath his velvety-green body, and then, click, back they went, and with a strong beat of his beige-white wings he surged aloft. The flutsman looked down.

He was not a member of Homo sapiens. I had not previously met the particular race of diffs of which he was a member, and there was no time now to concern myself over that. Although I did have some slight interest to see if he would bleed red blood.

I started to hand myself up, straining on the straps.

The fluttrell’s large head-vane turned and the flutsman put his own head down in a perfectly instinctive way to avoid the vane, and so I got my feet into the straps and took another purchase for my fist. Again the flutsman looked over the side. From the streamlined helmet covered with velvety-green feathers the flaring, clotted mass of multicolored ribbons flicked and fluttered most bravely. He had stowed his lance-sword into its bucket and had drawn his thraxter. This was a wise move on his part, for the straight cut-and-thrust sword would be of more use to him now. I inched up another hold.

Against the wind-stream clatter he shouted down: “Apim! Crawl up to die, rast!”

I am apim, a member of Homo sapiens. A rast, as you know, is a disgusting six-legged rodent infesting dunghills. I have been called a rast many times on Kregen, and no doubt will be so called for a goodly number of times yet; so that the word meant nothing.

Since I didn’t know from what race of diffs he owed his parentage, I could not goad him with a racially pointed insult. It is my custom not to tell a foeman what I am going to do unless some good end is served. He was clearly expecting me to lift myself up to get at him, when he would incontinently take a slash at my face, hoping to finish me with one blow.

The longsword in my left fist whirled around, flat against the slipstream. The blow was judged to a nicety. The keen blade sliced his leg, cut through the bone, sliced the flesh on the other side and did not so much as touch a feather of the fluttrell.

The flutsman yelled.

While he was caterwauling away I hefted up again, took my last grip around his waist and, with a thrust from my feet, toppled him over on the opposite side.

He hung dangling, screeching. The thraxter whirled wildly from its thong to his wrist. I slashed the clerketer and watched the slaver fall to the ground.

At a much later stage of my career they had no need to tell me: “Don’t sit and watch your man flame to the ground; keep your head turning! Watch up sun!”

I kept my head turning then as I had learned long ago on Kregen. I clamped my knees to the fluttrell and urged him sideways and aloft, and I kept my head down. The flashing glimpse of mirror-bright steel whickered past as a lance-sword missed.

The longsword glimmered with blood. Without compunction I wiped it on the velvety-green feathers of the flying mount before I thrust it into the scabbard. Delia had supervised the stitching of that scabbard; I would not willingly foul her work with gore.

The situation had now taken a piquant turn.

The fluttrell with that awkward head-vane is not a favorite flying mount, in my view; but I had put my hand to a task and so must go on. The great Lohvian longbow had taken its toll of slavers. The longsword had taken more. Now I went to work with an aerial weapon, the long lance-sword of the flutsmen, so like the toonon of the Ullars of Northern Turismond. We battled there in the sky, and now I made it my business to swoop down low and so chop the flutsmen in the act of barbing potential slaves. There is a saying on Kregen that a flutsman would not walk across the road to pick up a purse of gold. Of course not; he would fly across, just as a zorcaman would ride across. But, even so, a number of these aragorn-hired mercenaries had landed and leaped off their birds to round up the slaves. Angling my wind-eater down toward them, and spearing a flutsman as he tried to stop me, I dived on them. There was no subtlety in my handling of the bird; he recognized the hands and knees and feet of a rider who knew what he wanted and knew also unpleasant ways — as well as pleasant ones — of obtaining the desired result. The fluttrell gave no trouble and I was able to wheel and guide him about the sky as though we had been in partnership for seasons of fighting.

The slavers below saw me coming and lifted their weapons.

I guided the wind-eater directly at them, swinging him low, forcing him down. And as I did so I leaned over and bellowed close alongside his head so that he could hear.

“Tchik!” I yelled at the bird. “Tchik!”

At that command the fluttrell went wild.

Down came his talons that could sink into oak.

Out they stretched, clawing, sharp, ferocious, deadly.

The flutsmen yelled and some scattered, some stood their ground, and these either died under the diabolical claws of the bird or were slashed by the lance-sword. Up and up we swooped at the end of the run. The fluttrell needed no order from me to bank on a wing and come sliding around for another pass.

When a flutsman gives that dread order to his wind-eater, “Tchik,” the monstrous bird becomes a killer. The problem, as I knew, is to bring the bird back under control again. Seldom can that be achieved while still in the air. I did not attempt it. I forced the bird down to where a group of flutsmen clustered, caught in the open and unable to run for their own mounts. Flutsmen, caught afoot!

What a moment!

They screeched as those vicious claws sank into their bodies. The lance-sword scythed into them. Back and forth my mount flew, raging, mad with killing frenzy. I kept a sharp eye aloft at the few remaining flutsmen, for I was puzzled by the fact they had not used their crossbows. Truth to tell, I had not seen any crossbows strapped to their saddles. As you know, there are crossbows and crossbows in Havilfar, and flutsmen boast of the quality of theirs. (In later seasons I experienced a whole band of these mercenaries of the skies who refused to use crossbows because they were not of the very finest manufacture. Other flutsmen disown the crossbow because of its difficulty in spanning while airborne, although you who have listened to these tapes[1]will know it is a trick that can be learned speedily enough.) Around me in the air the flutsmen raged to strike the single blow that would free them from my encumbrance, and thus allow them to get on with their rapacious plundering of human flesh. For the people shrieking in such mortal fear below were apim, were Homo sapiens. While I fought to keep the slavers away I saw something of the victims below, and I formed an idea why they had not fought back. They all seemed to be either old men and young boys, or women and children. I heard some of them yelling as I swooped over their heads: “Jikai!”

“Hai Jikai!” they were yelling, some in feeble croaks from narrow lips. “Jikai . . .”

In this stupid affray against these devils of slavers that was the first time any idea of calling it a Jikai had crossed my mind. Was it a Jikai? To dub any feat of arms a Jikai meant it was a superb example of honor and glory and nobility, as well as a crafty use of downright cunning where necessary. You will know how I regard the use of the word Jikai, and so I decided there, as I swooped and fought, that this might be a little Jikai, a very little one . . .

And so, thus boasting to myself, I came to grief.

A stux transfixed the throat of the fluttrell. The broad and heavy head of the flung javelin jutted through, clotted with blood. The fluttrell would have been hard to manage, anyway, after his ferocious primeval instincts had been allowed full play in tchik, and so that stux was one way of settling the matter. I half fell, half leaped off, sprawling head over heels onto the dust. There was no time to lie winded. How different the scene when viewed from the ground than the view aloft!

A pack of people were already chained. Slavers were strutting past them, some flicking whips, some beating them with the flats of their thraxters. The lance-sword was much too unhandy a weapon down here.

I took the longsword into my fists again, and charged.

This time the flutsmen must have decided to get rid of me as the first priority. I had been hampering their operations and they had so far not killed me. They had tipped me out of my voller, they had brought down my wind-eater; now they would cut my legs from under me, and see how I liked that. A bird with widespread wings dived for me, skimming the ground, his legs tucked up. The flutsmen with slaves to carry back to whatever hell-hole they had oozed from would not risk crying “Tchik!” to their birds. The problems of bringing the fluttrells under control after that ferocious call had clamored bloodily in their pin-brains were too long-winded. This is just another reason why the fluttrell does not appeal overmuch to me, magnificent bird though it is. Some of the other flying animals of Kregen can do a bloody enough job of tchik and still be guided by their riders.

Now I could swat the long tongue of the lance-sword away and fling myself sideways and, leaping up, slice the longsword in a stroke that parted torso and thigh. That is a canny stroke when given to a rider on the ground; it is more difficult and thus more aesthetically satisfying when delivered to a rider flying. Then the swordsman must fling himself, all doubled up, under the flashing wingbeat and time it just right if he does not want his head staved in.

My head remained intact.

Other flutsmen attacked.

They came singly, and then in pairs, and threes.

About this time I knew that eventually one of them must finish me. It was not that I was growing tired —

for tiredness is a sin I do not admit into my consciousness — but that the odds were stacked. Amid a welter of flashing steel one blade would slip past as I dealt with another and so drink my life’s blood. The fury in me would have melted the Ice Floes of Sicce.

That I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, should perish thus miserably!

The battle roared on. Men were yelling. Women were screaming. The flutsmen shouted strange high oaths calling on their gods and saints and devils, and rushed at me, and fell before the level, lethal sweep of my longsword.

But, for all that, a stux grazed across my chest, drawing a line of blood. That came from leaping away from three stuxes flighted together at my back. Now, had Turko the Shield stood, superb in his muscled strength, in his wonted place at my back, those stuxes would have been deflected and I would not have turned into the glancing blow from the front. The shield in the voller had gone down with the rest of my belongings. She hadn’t smashed up, but in the scant seconds I’d had before tangling with the flyer I’d seen she’d cracked up with due finality. So the battle roared on. These slavers, from whatever racial stock they came, were scrawny fellows, much addicted to beads and chains and flourishing trinkets of silver and brass. Twice I was able to let slip my hand and so, reaching out, grasp a string of beads, and jerking the fellow in, give him a knee in the groin, and thunk the hilt of the sword down onto his leather-capped head. They didn’t get up again, after that treatment.

Still and all, time was running out for me. This wouldn’t go on for very much longer. A few shouted words from a huddled group of slaves — although, truthfully, they weren’t slaves yet, nor would be until I was dead — revived me.

“Hai Jikai! Fight, Jikai, fight the evil rasts!”

Well, it seemed that even if these poor people were the old and the young, the women and the children, the sick and the lame, and could not fight in deeds, they could fight with words. What those oldsters started in catcalling the slavers would have done credit to the flintiest hearted paktun in all Kregen, and a paktun, a mercenary who has gained renown far above the mass of his fellows, knows a juicy vocabulary indeed. I braced myself again and struck and struck. About me whirled the beige-white wings of the fluttrells, feathers flurried in the power of their smiting, bringing thronging memories of other combats against other flying monsters of the skies. The scene in the dusty outskirts of the burned village, which stood at the head of a valley trending from the foothills, must have made a macabre sight. A lone man, blood splashed, his brown hair wild, the long brand in his fists stained with gore, jumping and dodging, smiting and slashing, always on the move, always striking out with ferocious blows that degutted and decapitated, this man must, I think with no little remorse, have struck terror into the hearts of the bravest of the flutsmen. But, to give them their due, they did not flinch from their assaults.

A line of tethered flyers with their rows of saddles already half full of dazed and unhappy captives waited to the side. These extremely large flying beasts were rofers, able to carry whole families through the upper levels. I maneuvered myself toward them, past chopped slavers who sought to bar my path, and soon came up to the first rofer. He was a docile enough beast and did not try to bite me as I struck down his rider and began to slash the thongs fastening the prisoners. They gaped at me.

“Run!” I bellowed at them as I freed them. “Run and hide, get to safety!”

I had to dodge a flying stux then, and the shaft thudded into the earth. An oldster with white hair — which meant he was two hundred years old at least — quavered at me as he slid from the high saddle.

“And you, Jikai? And you?”

A javelin hurtled toward the oldster. I took a step and with that old Krozair skill beat the stux away so that it caromed over and flew upward again.

“Never mind me, dom! Run!”

The fugitives could scarcely comprehend what had happened to them. They scrambled down. What with slashing at binding thongs, and beating away javelins, and striking down flutsmen foolish enough to come too close, it was a warm few minutes’ work. I bellowed at the people again, yelling at them in fury.

“By Vox! Run, you famblys! Get to safety!”

A fambly is a gentle word for a genial kind of idiot, an affectionate insult. They ran. The oldster lifted his empty hands.

“By Hanitcha the Harrower! Were I but a hundred seasons — no, fifty seasons, by Krun! — younger than I am, I would seize a weapon and join you! Hai Jikai!”

There was no time for heroics.

There was precious little time left for anything.

The very fact that these miserable slavers were bothering to capture old folk meant they were mean souled, and desperate for slave-fodder. Only slavers frantic for the foul substance of their foul trade would trouble to enslave these old folk. There were a number of young mothers there, clutching their babies to their bosoms, and these would fetch a high price on the block. Fresh blood dripped from me, and now much of that blood was mine.

I missed a stux and a wing of the wicked broad head sliced my left shoulder. I cursed. The oldsters and the youngsters and the mothers were running for the head of the valley where palines grew in luxurious and yet ordered abundance. I could see the gorgeous glow of the yellow berries and I would have given a very great deal indeed to have a mouthful to suck on, there in the heat and dust of the press. And the press was all against me, all against a lone man. I swirled the longsword and I husbanded my blows, and no longer allowed the blade to strike deeply enough to dispatch my man. I had noticed that the flutsmen’s heads had been lopped off as I struck, and I knew that to be the signal that I was consciously exerting too much strength, and thus betraying the growing weakness overtaking me. This could not go on much longer.

Then I saw the final mark of doom.

Over the ordered rows of the yellow-berried paline bushes flew a great crowd of mirvols. The brilliance of the riders’ clothing and armor gave me no hope. They swept on effortlessly, their weapons winking on the backs of the flyers, brave in the mingled streaming light of the Suns of Scorpio. They swooped down in a maelstrom of flashing wings to finish me.

I felt a blow sledge across the back of my head. I felt it very briefly. My skull is thick, but the blow felled me. And, as I pitched forward into the blackness of Notor Zan, I had the last thought that, anyway, all this had been no business of mine.

Chapter Three

“That, Notor Prescot, is your problem.”

The wonderful world of Kregen under Antares possesses, besides the twin suns, seven moons. When all of these nine luminous bodies are below the horizon there rises Notor Zan, the Tenth Lord, the Lord of Blackness.

I clawed back out of the star-spangled black cloak of Notor Zan to hear a gruff but firm and kindly voice saying: “So you still live, Jikai. Truly, your gods hold you in high favor.”

Even then I was canny enough, through the clanging resonance of all the bells of Beng-Kishi, that carillon ringing in my skull, to understand that this man was not prepared to commit himself to mentioning any specific god or spirit or guardian. He would no doubt wish me to commit myself first. My eyes opened and I blinked.

He was not a flutsman.

He was apim, like myself, a tall, well-built, grave man, with eyes that showed a deeper pain, even, than that caused by this attack on his village. For I could now guess what had happened. The maelstrom of mirvols which had swept about me had borne, not reinforcements for the flutsmen, but the returning warriors of the village. And so it proved. I had been dragged out from the corpses, washed, placed in a bed in the chief house, watched over, my head bandaged and my various cuts doctored, and now, here came a fusty little doctor bearing his linen-covered tray of needles. My host said in his grave way: “Allow Hernli to see to you, Jikai, and then, when you are recovered, it will be my privilege to talk to you.”

I did not reply. The doctor was already sticking his acupuncture needles in me, and twirling them, and with that amazing fluency that never ceases to astonish, he banished my aches and pains. I do not smile easily, but I cracked a grimace for the doctor, at which he started back, and said, “Are you still in pain, Horter? That is strange, for I have found the lines with exactitude—”

“No, Doctor,” I croaked out. “You did fine.”

Then I went to sleep.

When I woke up I lay for a considerable time, content just to lie there and take stock of my surroundings. A makeshift frame roof had been flung over the burned shell of the house. From the few items of furnishings I guessed the houses had been luxurious — truly luxurious — within their mud walls. You can never judge the interior of a house from the exterior, although an approximation can obviously be reached, and I judged these people to be well off, comfortable, living with a high degree of sophistication, basing it on their ancestral riches of vast herds of cattle, the enormous profusion of paline bushes, and — and what? With cattle and with palines a village is rich indeed, and by good business dealings may acquire whatever they need. Certainly, I had seen to it in my redevelopment of Valka after we had banished the aragorn, and in the work in Djanduin after the disastrous civil wars, that building up the cattle herds and planting palines had figured very high up on the list of priorities. And, anyway, these people would keep other animals and grow other crops as well. No, they weren’t poor. When a young girl, rosy with shyness, came for me and I shambled out into the shafting rays of the twin suns and looked about on my way to take the baths of nine — for the complex of the bathhouses down by the stream had not been burned — I saw more of this place.

I will say at once that I liked the spread. In the days that followed as I built back my strength I explored Paline Valley — for that was the name of the estates — in the company of a man for whom I developed a growing friendship and affection. This was Nulty, a loyal body-servant to the lord here. He was a great shambling fellow, with a shock of hair, bulbous nose, and a pair of sharp eyes, and he came up to the middle of my chest. He was originally a gul — that is, a craftsman and no slave — until he had taken service with the lord here.

We were in Hamal, which is a mighty empire on the southern continent of Havilfar, and these people were all Hamalian — people for whom I had formed an ambivalent attitude. They professed the state religion of Havil the Green. Still, at this time, Green was anathema to me, although I was, I think truly, learning. There were other religions: the finer and purer religion of Opaz —

the great Twinned Invisible Spirit, so predominant in other and nicer parts of Kregen — had a small following in Hamal, generally in secret; and, too, the evil cult of Lem the Silver Leem was edging in with lures of cheap passion, quick wealth and dark arts, ousting devotion to Havil the Green. Like it or not, religion has a potent power in the material world as well as the world of the spirit. So I knew I must tread carefully in my dealings with these folk, as I had earlier when I had spent a fruitless sojourn trying to find out what made a voller tick. My own flier was a total wreck. The gear had been taken out and stacked in a room that had been given over for my use. This meant, of course, that they knew I was not Hamalian. Delia had stowed away much besides food and good clothes — weapons strange in Havilfar. The Lohvian longbow, for one. The longsword for another. Also she had packed four rapiers and four left-hand daggers. Much of my personal gear — the razor, the toiletries, the shoes, the wide Vallian hats — proclaimed me a foreigner. So: “And, Notor Prescot, are you to visit our capital city of Ruathytu on your travels? I wish you would remain here with us in Paline Valley for a time.”

I was sitting munching on palines, which are superb, and I looked up as the lord entered. I did not stand up. I must have been half mad at the time, what with this and that and the fight, and I must have blurted out my name when they asked me. I have had many names, and so far have told you of only a few of them. Now the lord, whose name was Naghan, sat beside me and took up a handful of palines.

“You are very kind, Notor Naghan. Paline Valley is charming. The coolness of the valley after the veld, the greenness of the trees — and the palines! — all tempt me. But, as I said, I am a traveler.”

“Come, Notor Prescot! You are the Lord of Strombor. We have dealings, here in Hamal, with your great enclave city of Zenicce, far away on the continent of Segesthes. Here we are isolated from the main currents of political life in Hamal. We tend our flocks and grow our crops, and we grow rich, and essentially we must protect ourselves.” He paused then, his grave face growing longer and more savage. He was thinking that protecting himself came high. He and his fighting-men had been away, flying their mirvols to check a predatory band of the wild men from over the mountains, outside the sway of the Empire of Hamal, when the slavers had struck. The slavers must have been preparing to attack the village and then no doubt had been of two minds when the fighting strength had flown off. To take up the poor residue would not bring much in the way of sales figures, but the catch would be cheaply won. We all knew the decision to which they had come.

This Naghan was a Notor, a lord, and his rank was that of Amak. An Amak is one rank below an Elten, and an Elten is two ranks below a Strom. Although he was of the minor nobility, he was unquestionably a noble. He had discovered I was Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, and that placed me at once far higher in this scale of nobilities. I felt obscurely embarrassed about this. As I have said, a lord of one of the enclaves in the city of Zenicce ranks as a king, and is often given the courtesy title of prince. Lords of Zenicce tended to regard other ranks as baubles — and I had more than once affronted my friends by hinting that to a clansman a lord of Zenicce was a poor thing. But, I must be honest, I feel always for my clansmen, for Strombor, for my island of Valka, and for my country of Djanduin a special kind of affection.

I, Dray Prescot, am also a Krozair of Zy.

And if I think back on what I have just said, and realize how many times I say “my” this and “my” that, you will take me for an egomaniac. So it was that I was polite to Amak Naghan, and talked with him, and learned of his estates here in Paline Valley, and of his problems. Of all these problems, chief above all, was the problem of his son Hamun. The lad was effeminate. Well, here on Earth that is no great matter. It is something a father can learn to understand. But on Kregen, that world of which I then knew so little and even today know barely much more, there are very few places where an effeminate lad, son to a noble, can hope to survive. Here right on the border of Hamal, with the Mountains of the West hard up southerly of the estates, was no place for a lad who could not wield a sword and stride a mirvol and fly to face the enemies who would take from him his birthright. There are many customs and laws on Kregen regarding inheritance. It is not necessarily lawful for a son to succeed his father in all his titles and estates; they have to be fought for. By these means new men and women are continually pushing up from below, but the laws of inheritance check what might become a situation of complete anarchy. If a man simply cut down Amak Naghan he would not automatically become Amak in his turn. Kregen is far more subtle in her ways than that. So Hamun ran a serious risk.

“In the capital, Ruathytu,” I had said, once, “wouldn’t he find people like himself? It is a civilized, policed, orderly city. The laws of Hamal—”

“The laws! Aye, the laws are strict in Hamal, Notor Prescot. Exceedingly strict. But I would not send Hamun there.”

I knew — better than Naghan — the strictness of the laws of Hamal. He had not labored in the Heavenly Mines with a number branded on him. I had. I knew about the Hamalians and their lawful ways.

“But, Notor Naghan,” I said, controlling a surge of desire to clear out at once, “Ruathytu is renowned for its graces, its architecture, its baths, its aqueducts, its sports, all things to make life for a lad like Hamun—”

“Do you think, Notor Prescot, I would allow my acquaintances in the city to know I fathered a son like Hamun?” His face was graven now in lines of pride and fury and shame. “I have the honor of my family close to my heart. We have the honor of being a ham family — we place the ham before our family name. No, Notor Prescot! I, Naghan ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley, will not be shamed before the empire by my son!”

There was nothing to say to such granite conviction, such iron will. He was demanding from his son that which the boy could not give him. It was rotting away the life of Amak Naghan. At last came the day when I firmly resolved to leave. Delia had placed plenty of money in the flier. She had had the forethought to make most of it up from Havilfarese currency, fat golden deldys, shining silver sinvers, and a lesten-hide bag of bronze obs. To make the appearance of a traveler more effective she had thrown in a few coins of Pandahem and Murn-Chem and Balintol. Coins, gold especially, find their way all over Kregen from the mints of their making, and merchants have little scales set up to check weights; a cunning merchant can tell the value of a gold coin and its percentage of impurities and alloys to perfection. Of course, the word for carats in Kregish is not carats. So it was that there was money for me to buy a mirvol.

Naghan ham Farthytu drew himself up with a grave and haughty look. Like many people out here in the frontier sections he often wore a long white robe, comfortably slit for arms, girded with a golden tasseled cord. His jeweled curved dagger depended from gold chains. His scarlet slippers were studded with gems, embroidered with gold lace. Around his neck a chain of beads blazed with the richness of gold and the scarlet of scarron — that incredibly beautiful gemstone of so fine and fierce a scarlet that is prized above diamonds.

“I do not wish to believe, Notor Prescot, that you insult me with intention.”

I took his point.

The upshot was that because I had fought for Paline Valley they conceived themselves in my debt. Besides giving me a mirvol, the finest flying specimen they had, they heaped gifts upon me that further embarrassed me.

I stood by the mirvol. He was a fine flying wonder, and no mistake. Beside him the pile of my belongings stretched lengthways and broadways and high. As I stood there, Hamun ham Farthytu, with his mincing walk, came up with a small carved set of miniature pieces for Jikaida, the board game that is so much a way of life in many parts of Kregen.

“My village owes you a great deal, Notor Prescot.”

I stared at the pile.

“And how, good Hamun, am I to load all this mishmash onto the back of this single mirvol, and find a space myself?”

Hamun was not like his father. Had I been speaking to Naghan I would never have said that, for I knew Naghan’s reply, as mine would have been in like circumstances, would be a quick: “You shall have as many flying steeds as you require to carry you and your belongings safely.”

“That, Notor Prescot, is your problem,” Hamun said.

In all probability he would have made a good monk, or a stylor, or an actor — although you have to be tough to be an actor in some of the more ferocious Kregan plays — but he was an Amak’s son and therefore he was destined to fight his way to his own nobility.

Now I discarded everything that was not essential. On Kregen that meant everything except weapons and a little food and money.

“Remberee, Notor Prescot!” they called after me as I mounted into the air. “Remberee!”

“Remberee, Paline Valley!” I shouted back.

The wide wings of my mirvol carried me high into the air bound for Ruathytu, capital of Hamal, shining and resplendent under the Suns of Scorpio.

Chapter Four

Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley

Strange are the ways of the Star Lords, as I have many times found out to my cost. Strange, too, are the ways of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, those mortal but superhuman men and women of the Swinging City, where I had bathed in the sacred Pool of Baptism of the River Zelph and so secured a thousand years of life and bounding good health. But, strange, too, are the ways of pure ordinary fate. Simple, disinterested fate for once took a hand in creating conditions that afterward would profoundly affect my life on Kregen.

Chance alone made me realize as I winged through the level air that the hilts of four rapiers were revealed as the slipstream threw back the flap of cloth in which they were wrapped. Delia had placed in the voller four rapiers and four main-gauches. I had promised to give Nulty a rapier and left-hand dagger. He had expressed interest in them, saying that rapier-and-dagger fighting was all the rage among the bloods in Ruathytu, so he had heard, and he had a mind to see what all the fashionable fuss was about. So — how could it be I carried four sets?

Nulty deserved to have my promise to him honored.

With a half-reluctant pull on the guiding reins I wheeled the mirvol in the sky and winged back toward Paline Valley.

If you have listened to these tapes of my life on Kregen you will already have guessed what chance had let me in for. Kregen is a world that demands the utmost from a man or a woman. Half measures will bring only catastrophe. I knew that when the slavers had attacked, a messenger had somehow scrambled off astride a volclepper, one of those small and exceedingly fast flying animals of Havilfar, and had succeeded in reaching Amak Naghan ham Farthytu as he was marshaling his warriors. Their return had saved their village and saved my life.

But the wild men from over the mountain had not thrown away the chance thus vouchsafed them. They had visited Paline Valley.

They had destroyed, they had wasted, they had not cared to take prisoners for slaves; preferring to slay, they had obliterated that smiling valley. I came in on the tail end of the fight and was able to speed the wild men on their way with biting shafts. A slight struggle followed as I mopped up a party assaulting the Amak’s house which, burned and crumbling, still held men and women who resisted. In a wild skirling of blades, I went through the wild men, smelling their stink, seeing their knotted braids of black and greasy hair, sundering their shields, lopping heads, degutting. It was all a dreadful reprise. But, this time, there was a still more dreadful difference.

When the last of the wild men made his decision to stay and be killed or take flight and save his skin, I turned to the barricaded door and bellowed in a cracking voice: “They are gone! Open up! It’s me, Dray Prescot.”

The door did not open.

I heard a thin and scratchy voice — Amak Naghan’s voice.

“We are all — sore wounded — Notor. Near to death. We — cannot — open the door.”

The last of the wild men had gone and I felt they wouldn’t stop running until they were safe beyond the mountains. I looked around. A fallen beam made a handy battering ram.

“Stand clear of the door!”

“We — cannot stand—”

Smash went the beam at the door. The sturdy oak creaked. Lenk wood, it was, bound and barred with iron. Smash went the beam. These people had been good to me and I felt a cherishing affection for them. Now they were all slain. The door went in with a splintering ripping and I plunged through. They must have crawled here after fighting hard and long and, covered in wounds, barred the door and sunk down to rally for the final attack. Nulty lay to one side, unconscious, breathing like a blown stallion, his body a shiny mass of blood. Other men and women were there, all wounded. In a corner lay a pile of bodies. To one side lay the corpse of Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak’s son. I bent to Naghan.

“It is finished, Dray Prescot. All done.”

“No, Naghan.” There was a pitcher of water, and I moistened his lips. He tried to drink, but only choked and coughed. His wounds were dreadful. “No, Naghan, my friend. You will recover. Paline Valley will bloom again.”

“We saw you fighting — through the chink in the door — we saw you. You are a great Jikai, Notor Prescot. But it is all finished. The honor of the family of ham Farthytu no longer matters.”

“Oh yes it does!” I said to him sharply. I thought he was dying, and no man should die without some hope. “You leave a great name, a name of which to be proud.”

My Anglo-Saxon forebears would have understood that, to die well and leave a good name. His head rolled restlessly from side to side. I do not think he was in pain; that had numbed in these final moments.

“Our name will be forgotten, Dray! Obliterated! For my son is dead.”

There can be few words in any human tongue more dreadful than those: My son is dead. Before I could answer, Naghan went on: “He did not die well. He ran and hid. The wild men found him. They mocked him. They — they had sport — with him. I died, then, I think, before I bit the sword.”

“Rest easy, Naghan—”

“I shall never rest, Dray, in this world or on the Ice Floes of Sicce.”

So, there, in that shambles, chance played a card that put the idea into my head. It existed, of itself, full-grown like Athena in less than a heartbeat.

Naghan ham Farthytu was dying. His thoughts clouded. His stern grave face slackened, and spittle and blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He started to choke and I eased him. He was no longer truly of the world of Kregen.

I said: “Naghan ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley.” I spoke with formality and he responded to my tone. “If you will it so, your name will not be forgotten. It will be regarded with the honor and respect it is due.”

He was dying. But he was past my foolish notion of going to Ruathytu and there erecting a monument to him and his family, a noble marble cenotaph in the Palace of Names. His bloodied hand lifted and grasped my sleeve. I bent closer. He rasped out the words, now, spitting blood, struggling to force his dying body to obey the commands of a brain abruptly clear and utterly determined. So, I truly think, chance brought me to that spot, and to the last words of a dying noble, and chance made me anticipate what he would say, what he would ask, even as I discarded the notion of erecting that monument in the Palace of Names as the only thing I might do for this man.

“Dray Prescot! You are a man of honor, a Jikai. It is my dying wish you take upon yourself the name of ham Farthytu! I would think well if the empire saw in you and your prowess the name of ham Farthytu.”

I hesitated. Stealing names can be habit-forming.

But Naghan gripped my arm, and his lined face implored me. He whispered weakly now, obsessed with his idea and his wishes, quite unable to see past his own desires to the problems attendant on the other side of the question. This was a thing he would never have asked of me in life. In death he had a privilege.

“You will do this for me, a dying man, Dray Prescot?”

Still I hesitated.

Then: “Yes, Naghan. I will.”

His sigh started deeply and finished in a choked fit of bloody coughing. But he would not let me go. His grip tightened feverishly. We must have made a macabre pair, blood everywhere, dead men and women scattered about, and, at his feet, the dead and dishonored body of his son.

“Dray — Dray — promise me, promise me by your god, you will take the name of ham Farthytu—”

How cheap to have betrayed him! To have promised by Havil the Green! He would have believed —

and I would be just as foresworn when I broke the oath.

“By Opaz, Naghan, I will use the name in Hamal. I will go to Ruathytu and there I shall be Naghan ham Farthytu.”

“No! No!” He tried to shake me, and his hand merely fluttered. “No, Dray! My son! My son!”

And then I saw what he truly wished.

I thought of my own father, and of the scorpion that killed him. I marveled. And then I thought of my little Drak — and I understood.

“Very well, Naghan. I will take the name in Hamal of Hamun ham Farthytu.”

“Yes, yes, Dray.” He was going. “You will be Amak. Amak Hamun. I wish — wish it so . . .”

I stayed with him until he died.

When he gave the last death rattle, a sound I have heard many and many a time, I stretched, for I had held him at the last to ease him, and Nulty from behind my shoulder said: “He was a good man, Notor Hamun.”

I looked at Nulty.

His broad-barreled body with its glossy covering of blood made a ghastly sight.

“I thought you were dying, Nulty.”

“No, Notor Hamun. This blood is from the wild men, may Hanitcha harrow them to hell! I had a crack on the head, I think.”

“You called me Notor Hamun.”

“I heard what the Amak said.” Then, because Nulty was no slave but a free servitor, he could add: “I wish you well, Amak. Havil the Green could not have chosen better.”

If he could read my mind on what I thought of Havil the Green he’d change his tune!

So . . . while I spent my spying expedition in Hamal I was to be Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley.

The incentive to carry on my work had received an enormous boost. Over the matter of names I have always been choosy. A name is a precious commodity; abstract, it yet holds a potent sway, and in many minds of Kregen, no less than minds of Earth, is regarded as a solid and material object, a thing to be grasped and, once grasped, to give power. To those who wish for success, the remembrance and the efficient handling of names are essential.

We went outside and, in truth, Paline Valley was a sorry place. Nulty and I spent only the briefest of spells in cleaning ourselves, not sparing the time to take the baths of nine, then we set to the mournful burying. When all was done we rested and ate and drank, and, then, just sat. Nulty, a blocky man of great strength both of body and of mind, had the pragmatic Kregen way of regarding disaster and death. He was not in shock. At least, I did not think he was. He surprised me, at first, when he spoke his mind; but on reflection what he said made the soundest common sense.

“Now you are Amak Hamun, and I am the only survivor here, and it is fitting I should tender you my allegiance. I had been charged with the old Amak’s son . . . to no avail.” He hesitated.

“You do not have to excuse him to me, Nulty.”

“It is not that, Notor. The old Amak is dead. Amak Naghan is dead. But there is now a new Amak, Hamun, Naghan’s son.”

“That is not true,” I said. I sighed. “But that is the way Naghan wished it to be.”

Nulty fingered his thraxter, that straight sword of Havilfarese fighting-men, where he had cleaned it with spittle and brick dust. His words were meaningful.

“Amak Naghan desired that his son should bring honor to his name. I follow his son, now, and I pledge my sword to the same high purpose. Amak Hamun, Naghan’s son, will bring honor.”

I took his point. I was in no frame of mind to argue with him. So I said: “Very well, Nulty. You may come with me to Ruathytu.”

“Yes, master,” was all he said. It was sufficient.

Chapter Five

Birth of a yokel at the shrine of Beng Salter

In the full determination to discover the secrets of the fliers of Hamal I made no urgent rush to the capital city. Nulty and I took our time. We had three mirvols between us, one the magnificent animal presented to me by Amak Naghan, the other two lesser beasts rounded up by Nulty after the raid, all that were left of the remudas perching on the mirvol towers up by the highest slopes of Paline Valley. There was no rush because it was necessary for me to learn as much as I could of the country. We swung slowly southward and eastward, for the capital, Ruathytu, is situated at the junction of the River Mak, the Black River, with the larger River Havilthytus, some sixty dwaburs inland from the eastern coastline. We had, according to Nulty, about two hundred and sixty dwaburs to go to the city in a direct line — as the fluttrell wings, in Hamalese vernacular. This 1,300 miles or so we greatly lengthened by making detours and visiting many of the towns and cities en route, and of generally, in Nulty’s case, getting over the shock of seeing his home so brutally destroyed. He had had no wife or children, desiring none; all he had cared for had been the old Amak and, as I knew, his son, Hamun. So we wandered along our way, and we had a few fine adventures, too, which I will not mention now but many of which would undoubtedly form vastly exciting stories in their own right.

Again I was reminded how strange are the ways of chance.

Because it was the fashion out on the frontier territories to wear a white robe, cinctured in with a tasseled cord, I had tried the fashion and found it convenient. The hem of the robe came down to just above my knees. Nulty, whose own robe was more in the nature of a smock, insisted I wear the gold-and-scarron chain of beads we had with reverence taken from Naghan. The scarrons blazed a true and brilliant scarlet. Because I have a fondness for the old brave color, as you know, I was persuaded to wear them, and the curved gold-and-jeweled dagger, and the gold-and-scarlet slippers. To Nulty this attire was proper for an Amak.

To me, it was light and comfortable, for, remember, on much the same latitudes far to the west lie the great deserts of Loh. Loh as a continent of mystery possessed great fascination for me. One day, Zair willing, I would go there and discover if all that men whispered about those secret walled gardens, and those girls with the veils, and all the other mysteries of Loh were really true. Nulty didn’t care much for Lohvians. And he did not care much for the Pandaheem, either, the people of that large island off the northeast coast of Loh, and just over the equator northwest of Havilfar. The chance of my attire came one day when, along with a party of pilgrims, we flew out to visit a shrine reputed to possess quite remarkable healing properties, through the magical powers of the bones of a Beng buried there. A Beng is, to give a near approximation, a Kregan saint. Nulty wanted to know if this notoriously powerful Beng Salter’s bones would cure a pain in his left hand, where the fingers, from time to time, abruptly cramped and the palm of his hand contracted, so that he had to bash it against a wall to flatten it out.

We landed by the simple marble shrine before the cleft in the rock, where a waterfall tinkled. Water is precious in these latitudes of Hamal. The grove was a pleasant and sweet-smelling place, and the aura of peace came fresh and comforting, so that no one objected when the guardians insisted we remove all weapons before entering.

Normally, of course, no one would voluntarily relinquish his sword on Kregen. But here, with the benign, smooth-faced guardians in their long robes, and the holy softness and tranquility of the scene, no one objected. There were about a dozen of us as we went into the shrine, carefully observing the fantamyrrh as we did so. Inside the place was cool with shadow, somnolent, tranquil, and I felt that faith would have a chance, here, to work its wonders.

The ritual was gone through by those who had come here with intent. We as mere onlookers watched. I hoped Nulty would find his cure.

The feeling of peace came to me, I remember with perfect clarity, with a benediction. This, in truth, was as life should be lived. Life was not always a mad business of rushing and pushing about, of flashing swords and flying bolts, with blood and death as permanent companions. I felt this pleasant relaxed emotion so strongly that I was perfectly well aware I was weaponless, and I did not mind. As we watched, those who had earnestly besought the dead saint to cure them rose and shuffled back, and already one or two were disappointed, one or two beginning to rub feeling back into a hand or limb they had thought paralyzed.

Nulty was working the fingers of his left hand, but he had not suffered an attack for some time, and so there was no real way of checking the efficacy of the Beng’s bones.

A man — he was apim — dressed very beautifully in dandy clothes jostled me as I turned for the exit. This fellow wore a blue shirt whose front foamed in a veritable avalanche of lace. His waist was nipped in by a massively wound cummerbund of bright green, and his gray trousers were strapped beneath his shoes. Over his right shoulder ran a brilliantly embroidered baldric. The scabbard was empty. These things I noticed about him, as well as the interesting fact that his face was far too apoplectic a red for his own good, his blue eyes protruded in an altogether repugnant way, his dark hair was cut too short for good taste, and his whole demeanor suggested a man of viciously quick temper. He gave me no time either to curse him out of my way or to apologize. I scarcely think I would have done the latter, and the former accorded ill with my euphoric, benign state of mind.

“Onker!” he bellowed. “Get out of my way, you rast!”

And, incontinently, his right hand whipped across his body and groped for the hilt of the sword that was not there.

I did not move.

“Cramph!” he said. He was panting, and into those protuberant blue eyes flushed a betraying bloodshot glare. “Stupid clumsy yetch!” And then he realized he was not grasping the hilt of his thraxter. Other people stopped to look. The fellow saw I had not moved. He brayed his contempt. “Ninny! Nulsh! You are a nothing! I can see from your clothes that you are no fighting-man! A warrior takes up arms—”

Soft-spoken guardians appeared, their robes rustling. I let them hustle me away, for I did not wish to kill the fool in these hallowed precincts.

When we were outside I retrieved my weapons.

Nulty came up, rubbing his hand, frowning.

“Tell me, Nulty; who was that cramph who insulted me?”

“I do not know, master. But he has departed. He and his retinue left in a fast voller.” And Nulty snickered, flexing his fingers. “You’ll never catch him on the back of a mirvol.”

Something of the tranquility of that place clung to me still, for I answered, and I admit with astonishment even as I spoke: “Let him go, Nulty. If he crosses my path again I’ll settle accounts then. Now I need a good long drink, and a full plate of cold vosk and a few loloo’s eggs — with a salad.”

Later we discovered the man’s name was Strom Hormish, from a town called Rivensmot in a small kingdom of the Empire of Hamal. I brushed the pesky idiot from my mind. I had cold vosk and loloo’s eggs to deal with, and although I did not care to spend the required amount to buy a flagon of wine of Jholaix, we drank a rather good local vintage that commended itself to us against parched throats. Nulty was beginning to get the hang of some of my idiosyncrasies.

“That idiot Strom Hormish took you for a spineless weakling, master. You did not immediately reach for your sword, as a fighting-man would do instinctively.”

“Am I not then a fighting-man, good Nulty?”

He made a comical face. “That is not what I mean, Notor.”

“I know. But — what did he mean about these clothes?”

Here Nulty’s face registered further aggravation.

“I am told that the — would you call them sophisticated? — people of the cities laugh at our clothes.”

He went on to wax enthusiastic over the white gown, cut to tunic length, as I wore it. He mentioned the different styles, and the embroideries, and all these names had meaning, but I will not weary you with them now. “So, because of your clothes, he thought you—”

“A yokel!” I brayed out, enraged.

“Aye, master.”

And then — I swear it as Zair is my witness! — once again chance threw an idea into my blockheaded skull. Through two chances I had a scheme. I wore clothes that dubbed me a yokel, a simpleton from the sticks. And I had not betrayed the hallmark of the warrior.

From these two things I could construct a device that should serve me in good stead in Ruathytu, and, into the bargain, afford me some considerable amusement.

Truth to tell, I needed a good laugh about then.

As you know, I, Dray Prescot, do not laugh easily. But I had been living in Valka with Delia, and we had the twins to occupy us, and what with this and what with that, I had been laughing so that the laugh lines had managed to find a lodgment in my grim, ugly old face. Seg and Inch had been there too after we had returned from Migladrin. For the various reasons of state, of politics, of economy, they had had to return to their Kovnates, and so, as was my wish, I had come to Hamal alone.[2]

So I nodded and said very seriously to Nulty: “Very well. I shall wear the clothes of a yokel and a simpleton. And I shall watch my sword hand with great attention. And you, good Nulty, brag no more of our fighting prowess, and give no one any idea that Hamun ham Farthytu is familiar with a sword.”

“Yes, master, as you command,” said Nulty. But I could see he was much put out by having the cool and comfortable clothes of his home regarded so contemptuously. A yokel. Well, so be it. I could play the part, and I fancied I could carry off the simpleton part of it with far too uneasy an ease . . . We flew on apace toward Ruathytu, the capital, and I own to the traveler’s curiosity to see places of which he had heard much. I will not weary you with all the strange creatures and peoples and customs I encountered en route; suffice it to say that whenever it is essential for you to know, then I will talk of these things. There came a day when, with Stormclouds darkening the sky and the first heavy spatters of rain smoking into the dust, we alighted at an inn in some half-forgotten little town in the center of Hamal. We were within the boundaries of the Kovnate of Waarom, for, as I have mentioned, the Empire of Hamal is made up of a number of kingdoms and Kovnates owing allegiance to the Emperor of Hamal. Waarom was a dusty, idle, listless place, populated by peoples of a number of different racial stocks, and I believe the chief industry was ponsho farming, with a little surface mining here and there. Nulty and I needed fresh leather bottles of wine and provisions of various kinds, and so we were not too particular. Outside the inn on perching towers the various flyers huddled up against the rain with flurried feathers, their backs turned to the wind, shaking membranous wings.

“Look at them, master!” said Nulty, giving his mirvol a slap to send him scuttling up onto a vacant perch.

“This is a miserable dump, and no place for an Amak.”

“Miserable or not, Nulty, it is a roof over our heads.” I sent my first-class mirvol up onto his perch on the tower. “Although I could wish for a covering for our mounts. A poor place, indeed, this” — and I turned to look at the sign swinging over the amphora placed at the door — “this Crippled Chavonth.”

When we approached the entrance I ducked my head, for the doorway was made deliberately low with a massive oak beam, and went inside followed by Nulty.

The floor was sanded, the tables and settles of cheap purtle wood, the pine already splitting, the goblets of inferior pot-clay and crude as to shape. The wine was just drinkable; the ponsho chops, though, were tender enough, cooked by a smudge-cheeked girl in a flour-and-blood-stained apron. Nulty and I ate and drank in a companionable silence, while the other travelers in the room, apim, like ourselves, with only a few diffs to enliven the scene, talked in low voices. More than once I saw a pair of eyes lift to stare at the low ceiling.

This inn was strictly a place to take a meal, to buy provisions, and to leave. The Crippled Chavonth. Kregans have a delight in names. The local ponsho farmers, we learned, caring for their flocks, produced an animal with surprisingly high-quality fleece, and the chavonth, that powerful six-legged hunting cat with fur of blue, gray, and black arranged in a hexagonal pattern, has a partiality to fat ponshos. The local infestation of these predators had come about through an airboat crash. The voller had been bringing in prize specimens of chavonths for the Arena in Ruathytu, and after their liberation they had bred and increased and had come finally to terrorize the countryside here in this dusty little town of Urigal in the half-forgotten Kovnate of Waarom.

The ponsho farmers in this duchy of Waarom must have given uncomfortable little grimaces when they looked up at the sign of The Crippled Chavonth, no doubt wishing it to be so in fact. Peoples and animals are spread bewilderingly over the surface of Kregen, it often seems scattered at random, with only the haziest controlling influence of local evolution to be discerned. Much of this scattering of races and species, I believe, is due directly to the influence of the Star Lords; but quite a bit results from accidents like the one that brought hunting chavonths here to Waarom. The light coming through the low windows darkened and turned a deep umber. For a time, as the storm thrashed past overhead and the rain lashed down, the light vanished, and the pot-man brought out a few earthenware lamps. We finished our meal and then bought provisions to carry us through for the remainder of our journey. The storm grumbled and banged, but slowly the light came back and the lamps were extinguished. This was not one of the seasonal monsoon areas of Kregen; this rain was welcome in so dusty a Kovnate. The lingering after-rain smell carried overtones of quenched thirsty earth and green growths.

The landlord was not immediately available for us to pay the reckoning. Heavy thumps sounded from the room overhead, and then doors banged, and footsteps clumped down an outside stairway, and loud voices lifted outside. There was a confusion of shouting, laughter, and that particular kind of freewheeling, innocuous oaths that some men adopt in the presence of ladies.

“Fetch the mirvols, Nulty.”

“Yes, Notor.”

Nulty went outside — he did not have to duck his head — and I strolled after, expecting to find the landlord dealing with his important guests, who had been decently housed in the private upstairs room and served personally.

The twin suns streamed down welcome rays, and the air sparkled with brilliance. The pot-man dodged after me. He did not dare to touch my elbow to halt me.

“I will take the reckoning, Notor.”

This suited me, and I paid him, using a few sinvers from the vosk-skin bag at my waist, for I had not as yet adopted the Hamalese custom of wearing an arm-purse.

“Thank you, Notor, may Havil the Green smile upon you, Notor, Remberee,” the pot-man rattled off in a monotone.

I stepped outside the paved area before the door. Over at the perching tower flyers were being brought down and there was a flourishing of cleaning cloths as their feathers and hides and scales — for the different species — were dried after the rain and polished and made presentable for the great lady and her retinue who waited with growing impatience.

I looked at the arrogant, brilliant group of people.

They were apims.

The men were hard featured, fair of hair, thick of jaw, clad in flying leathers adorned with much jewelry and gold lace. Their weapons were those of Havilfar. The girl who was the center of this brilliant group appeared to me, grown somewhat cynical in the ways of the mundane world, I fear, as completely out of place in that company. Her bright fair hair gleamed in the lights of Antares. Her small face, pert, with rosebud mouth, pale blue eyes, and a creamy-white complexion, seemed to me that of a child let loose in a world she did not comprehend. She was beautiful, in a china doll way, someone you might admire from a distance but scarcely wish to touch.

She wore the pleated and flared skirt adopted by young girls of Hamal. It reached down halfway to her knees and glowed more with brilliants and stitchings of precious metals than with its original pale blue color. Her white shirt, also, overflowed with cascades of frills and lace. Over the shirt she wore a bolero of magenta. Flung back from her shoulders her short flying cape hung now demurely, folds of fluttrell-green. Astride her bird that cape would sweep back most proudly. Then all my attention was taken by the birds the handlers were bringing from the perching tower. Nulty was being forced to wait before he could fetch our mirvols. I saw these white-feathered birds and I marveled. I had not seen their like before in Hamal.

All of pure white were these birds. Large, they were, powerful, streamlined in body, and with wide pinions that could sustain them and their riders in level flight for dwabur after dwabur over the world of Kregen. All of pure white save for their legs and beaks, which were scarlet, are the streamlined bodies and the quadruple-wings of these magnificent saddle-birds. These are the famed zhyans, and in money value alone one zhyan is worth ten good-quality fluttrells. So I looked with the keen interest of the flyer as the zhyans were brought down, dried and cleaned and polished, and I saw the huge birds were in a vicious temper.

As well they might be, considering they are basically aquatic birds, with a great love for lakes. These zhyans had been called on to fly over dry dusty Waarom. The rain had given them a memory, a remembered longing for wide expanses of water. In bodily form the zhyan is not unlike a Terrestrial swan, although the feet bear taloned extensions, very fierce. And the beak, although of the wide and flattened variety of swimming birds, has a swanlike knob much enlarged into near raptor-like proportions, with a vicious, down-curved, meat-tearing hook. These very large saddle-birds of Kregen must, by the very laws of nature, have bodies of lesser proportionate bulk than their smaller Earthly counterparts. Their size lies in their length and in their wingspread.

Nulty stood at the side, fuming, waiting to get at our mirvols, as the zhyans were brought down. One zhyan struck with a hiss at his handler. The man, a gul in a brown smock, staggered back, yelling, his arm slashed.

One of the brilliant gallants, hitching his sword out of the way, strode across, bellowing. A kind of order was produced, and the swaggering group mounted up. I watched as they did so, noting the birds, looking at them rather than the aristocratic onkers mounting up.

The zhyan is noted for its short temper. That is, perhaps, the greatest failing of the magnificent bird. Conscious of his own superiority, the zhyan does not like to be hustled. Maybe, had that girl out there been Delia, and I in command, I would not have allowed her to mount her saddle-bird. Oh, she would have flashed those gorgeous brown eyes of hers at me, and called me a fussy old hairy graint; and, I like to think, she would have mastered the zhyan with all that consummate skill of hers. But this girl was no Delia.

I, Dray Prescot, am an onker, a get-onker! What girl in two worlds can ever match Delia, save my Delia of Delphond!

Almost in the saddle, the girl moved with a clumsy lurch that snapped the self-control of the zhyan. It lashed ferociously at the two handlers, first left, then right, cutting them with that deadly razored beak, stretching them senseless upon the muddy ground. It fluttered its two pairs of wings, a massive and —

even in the abrupt horror of the moment — a beautiful movement. The girl pitched off. She screamed. She tumbled in the useless flailing straps of the clerketer, twisted and fell beneath the hooked beak of the zhyan.

The bird’s bright intelligent eyes told me that he would take his revenge for past insults now. Well, it was no business of mine.

The men were yelling and one jumped forward, a flying-stick uplifted. Flying-sticks are the invention of any of a hundred foul devils of Kregen. I never used one. If a flying mount needed a lesson, as they sometimes did, in obedience, there were other and less unpleasant ways than to thrash the poor beast. This man was caught across the face by the slashing hooked beak. He had no time to scream. He spun about and bright blood spouted from his ruined face.

Uproar burst about the perching tower. Men were yelling, women screaming, and the mud churned as the zhyan clamped his massive claws down. The girl dangling beneath him encumbered him. In the next second he would either rip her slender body to pieces with his claws, or tear her head from her shoulders with his beak. The pandemonium grew — and yet after the awful finish of the one who tried, no one else showed the determination to rush in to help.

Still, it was no business of mine . . .

I ran forward.

“Help! Help me!” the girl screamed.

She dangled there, half upside down, her brave clothes spattered with mud gobbets thrown up by the claws of the maddened bird. His beak flashed toward me, hissing.

Dodging that lethal beak on its long serpentine neck was something like slipping an arrow or a spear. I checked in my rush, so that the beak struck where I would have been. I thumped my fist against the side of his head, feeling the solid thunking sledge of the blow. I grabbed the girl. She was incoherent with fear now, a gibbering shrieking bundle. My sailor’s knife whipped from the sheath over my right hip and slashed through the tangling lines of the clerketer. I kicked the zhyan in the belly, and kicked again. If he took off now we were done for.

He hissed. I crooked the girl in my left arm. If I had to kill this beautiful white bird, I would have to do so; I would prefer to let him live to recover from his fit of bad temper. There was no way past his beak. He curved his head down on that long neck, beneath his body, and darted at me again. The girl hampered me, but I flashed the knife at his beak, and chipped the side, and he hissed, and withdrew. With a savage lunge — and savagery was needed here to spring us clear — I went out from under the bird, rolling head over heels, clasping the girl, feeling her heart beat in panic against mine, her fair hair clouded about my face.

Hands grabbed me and pulled the girl away.

“We’ve got her, dom!”

I let her go, heaving up on a knee, ready to flash the knife before me and so keep off that wickedly darting beak.

There was no need.

That gorgeous bird, that scarlet-billed, scarlet-clawed, pure white zhyan, lay jerking in the last throes of death.

Crossbow bolts showed uglily in his feathers, studding his white breast obscenely, with red blood befouling all that beauty. He hissed, and shuddered, and died.

I stood up.

The girl had fainted. Her women were caring for her.

The men with the crossbows were stowing their weapons away alongside their saddlebows. The fine-clothed gallants were shouting and gesticulating. The landlord was wringing his hands. The scene sickened me.

Here came Nulty with the mirvols.

“Mount up, Nulty. Let us drive into the clean air, away from this — this—”

“Yes, master,” said Nulty.

We took off astride our mirvols, and soared up into the clean air of Kregen.

Chapter Six

Concerning seven obs and a duel

Ruathytu, the capital city of the Empire of Hamal, was a place where, if you were reasonably wealthy, you might enjoy a sumptuous time. Of course, if you happen to be wealthy in almost any place and at almost any time you may enjoy a sumptuous time, so you may think it unnecessary for me to call your attention to the matter. The truth was, in Ruathytu at that time, I came across an altogether too familiar and horrible phenomenon of our Earth that, until then, I had not encountered on Kregen. In Sanurkazz, in Magdag, in Vondium, in Zenicce, all wonderful cities of Kregen, there were lords with incredible wealth; their retainers and followers, who were sufficiently provided for; and fat shopkeepers, innkeepers, and the superior craftsmen; then there were slaves.

In Ruathytu there were guls running the gamut from master artisans to laborers only a step removed from slavery. Beneath the skilled guls a great mass of poverty-stricken free men existed in Hamal. They were free, and they took a pitiful pride in that, but they were poor and in an ill season they would die of starvation or disease, and few of them could afford a doctor, even of the faith-healing sort. Slaves performed most of the truly unpleasant tasks, of course, as was common on Kregen; but many and many a free man or woman desperate for food would labor alongside the slaves. So it was that as Nulty and I stabled our mirvols in a public perching tower where they would be under cover, and took our first sight of the city, I was struck by the marked divergence of fortunes here, many races intermingled in every walk of life holding their own converse rank by rank, and each section sundered from the next by iron barriers of wealth.

This may seem so common a fact of life on two worlds as not to merit comment; but my experiences of Kregen had shown me that a man might progress on that marvelous and yet terrifying world: progress materially and spiritually, gaining not only wealth but prestige and affection and a place in life that did not necessarily put down another fellow being. The slaves made this easier, of course, and I do not seek to deny that unpalatable fact. However, it does not deflect me from the perhaps impossible task of erasing slavery altogether within a foreseeable time. The clums of Hamal were not slaves; no man might enslave them without just cause or rivet an iron collar about their necks; the clums were free men and women. That they did not have the slaves’ advantages of a place to sleep and food from masters with their welfare at heart made no difference to them. Better a clum than a slave!

Human beings of any race were constantly needed to feed the insatiable demands of the Arena. The clums would volunteer for the Jikhorkdun only in extremis. Willing hands were constantly needed to keep running the many ever-flowing, artful fountains; clums would do this work for a pittance. They would do whatever they had to, to survive; but, all the time, they were clums, free and not slave. One of the ever-present dreams of a clum was to gain wealth and skills enough to become a gul. Nulty, once a gul and now a faithful servitor to a noble, turned up his nose at the city.

“The place stinks, master.”

I knew what he meant.

“It smells pleasant enough, Nulty, with all the fountains and the armies of cleaners. There are flowers and

fragrant bushes everywhere, and the white walls are scrubbed each day—”

“That, Notor, was not what I meant.”

We found a comfortable inn catering to the more permanent kind of lodger. The inn was called The Thraxter and Voller, a clean house with a clientele composed mainly of high-ranking Horters, Tyrs, and Kyrs, people of the same rank as myself in my guise as Amak Hamun, an Elten or two, and a Strom who made no secret of his higher rank and so was condescending or contemptuous to the rest. I steered clear of him. A Strom is more like an Earthly count than an earl. I have always felt earls far superior to counts. For the first few days I felt my way around the city, learning. The city proper is situated in the fork between the two rivers, but the environs spread around for some distance, traversed by wide avenues along which the young bloods would race their saddle animals. Aqueducts bring in plentiful supplies of a crystal water from surrounding hills. The climate is equable. There is a considerable waterborne traffic down to the sea, and also inland along both rivers. I had taken a trip on one of the three-decked flat-bottomed boats on the Black River from Dovad to Hemlad. I had not cared to retrace my steps when with Ilter and Avec I had wandered Central Hamal in areas southerly of the Black River.[3]

Once I had a firm impression of the city, once I felt I knew my way about, I would start inquiries concerning the vollers.

No sense of impending doom darkened those early days in Ruathytu, and I admit, not without a proper sense of shame, that the sight of beggars, and of poor ragged starving people, came to seem to me merely an unsavory part of the city’s life, quite distinct from me, completely unnatural on Kregen and yet something I was forced to accept here. The depth of my purse as Amak of Paline Valley would have clothed and fed a derisory percentage of those in need. I had given alms in such a fashion as to raise the supercilious eyebrows of the Strom lodging at The Thraxter and Voller. Then I reconsidered. I took a common course of action — or non-action. I did not give away my goods to the poor, I did not even tear my cloak in half. I had given a very great deal, and then I considered what I was doing. If I had nothing, how could I prosecute the designs that had brought me here? The greater plans I had were a part and parcel of a grand design that would free not only the slaves but also these clums. So I had to harden my heart.

If you think that was an easy task, then I think you have not read me right . . . Like any fashionable gentleman of Hamal I walked abroad with my thraxter belted to my waist. The other non-Havilfarese weapons were safely stored away with our other belongings, under my bed. I looked a perfect Horter of Hamal — if I say a perfect gent, you will understand. I continued to wear the short white tunic with the embroideries, the gold-and-scarron beads, and I practiced smoothing out that old devil look on my face.

Nulty would say to me, “You feel sick, master?”

And I would growl back, “No, you mutinous fambly! Can’t a man put on a pleasant expression for a change?”

“Oh, Notor,” he would say, “was that what it was?”

Still, I persisted.

I was put to a stringent test.

The Thraxter and Voller stood in a quiet street beneath the upflung face of one of the sheared-off hills between the two rivers. Higher terraced houses were bowered above the inn in bushes and vines and flowers. The street was lined with high-class shops, although not of the very highest class, which were to be found within a smaller enclave at the very point of the V-junction of the rivers. It was not unusual to see clums crossing the end of the street where a main thoroughfare crossed on the northwest axis of the city, halting, and turning, and venturing a little way down our street, their hands open and cupped. Shopkeepers would send out assistants to beat them off.

I saw a young girl of no more than five or six, dressed in a single filthy garment, ragged and falling to pieces, pulling her brother who might have been a year older in a little wooden cart on wooden wheels. He had no legs, and his body was wizened and lopsided. He drooled.

“Spare an ob, master,” the little girl was saying, as she pulled her brother along. What good was an ob, one of those universal bronze coins, to her?

To give her a silver sinver, or a golden deldy, would have been foolish. I turned out my vosk-skin bag and found seven obs. Seven. The Kregish word for seven, as you know, is shebov.

“Here,” I said. The correct word to use in addressing her completely escaped me. “Here. Here are shebov obs.”

She looked frightened.

“I only asked for one, lord.”

“Take the seven, and hide all but one. Go on.”

“Yes, lord.”

She took the money and I turned away, for the sight was beyond my bearing, when a Rapa, his fierce birdlike beaked face furious, rushed from a shop doorway. He brandished a broom. He wore shopkeeper’s clothes, and an apron spotted with preserves and jam and marmalade.

“Get away, vermin! Clear off or I’ll beat you.”

The girl cowered back, then tried to run, and so, stumbling, tripped over her brother’s cart. The Rapa started to bring his broom, a sturdy implement, down on her prostrate form. A crowd had gathered. I stepped forward and caught the broom. I did not break it, either in my hands or over the Rapa’s head.

“Let her get up and go in peace, dom,” I said.

He started to yell at me, saw my clothes and the jewels, saw the thraxter at my side, and so, suddenly bowing and rubbing his hands together, he backed away.

“Certainly, Notor, as you command. A mere nothing — a clum where she should not be.” Then, because he knew I was in the wrong, he plucked up courage to say: “My broom, Notor?”

I threw it at him, not hard.

A coarse laugh spurted at my back.

I turned around slowly.

The Strom from The Thraxter and Voller stood, eyeing me in great derision, laughing, taking a bellyful of delight from my antics.

“By Krun!” he bellowed. “A dirty little clum-lover!”

The Horters and Horteras in the crowd laughed at this.

They were all well-dressed, fashionable, well-off Hamalians, although not the racy, sporty set of the sacred triangle by the two rivers. Now they jibed at one of their own wealth and class going out of his way to assist a clum.

I did not say anything.

I put that idiotic smooth bland look on my ugly face and, I suppose, it succeeded only in infuriating the Strom further.

“You idiotic cramph!” he shouted. He waved his fist at me. “You encourage these vermin into our streets! They bring filth and disease with them! If you love clums so much, take your precious perfumed self down to their hovels.”

This, I could bear.

I turned to walk away.

A woman in the crowd, vastly excited by the spectacle, shouted: “Is that all you can do, coward?

Stinking clum-lovers!”

Again, I would take no notice. I would not jeopardize my mission for the sake of these fools. The Strom laid an elegant hand on my shoulder. He pulled me around to face him. He was a big, limber man, well set up. He carried his thraxter swung low on workmanlike lockets. His dress was gray, foppish, but practical when it came to leaving his sword arm free.

“Coward!” he shouted full in my face. His breath was unpleasant. “Rast! You do not walk away when the Strom of Hyr Rothy speaks to you!”

I said, “I have nothing to say to you.”

Looking back, I recall that scene vividly, and also I experience again my shame: my shame at not holding steadfast to my purpose but, instead, of allowing the ordinary, arrogant, intemperate Dray Prescot, who is — alas! — perhaps the only real Dray Prescot, to overwhelm this new meek and mild image I had sought so hard to attain.

“Well, I have something to say to you, you insolent rast!” He shook me. “I am Lart ham Thordan, the Strom of Hyr Rothy. You do not turn your back on me, yetch! I have seen you, Amak, and I know what sort of repulsive vermin you are! You will crawl to me, and beg my forgiveness! You will—”

At that point I leaned on my arm. My arm pushed forward my hand. My hand happened, for some reason, to be doubled up into something you might call a fist if you were uncharitable. The leaning arm and fist somehow found their way to this Strom’s belly. It was not a hard lean. He choked a little, and his eyes filled with water. He had a naturally high color — these people so often do — and his apim face turned deeper red and the veins on his forehead glowed like coiled serpents. I walked away.

I was followed by boos and yells and catcalls.

Well, as Nulty said, reproachfully: “You broke your own promise, Notor!”

“Aye, Nulty, I did.” I threw the thraxter on the bed in my room and stretched. “I think I know what the rast will do now.”

“He is a Strom. You are an Amak. He will consider his dignity so soiled he—”

“Confound these stupid ranks!” I bellowed, “I don’t give a lead ob for them!”

He looked at me with what I took to be a reproachful glare, and I knew he was thinking of the old Amak. A loyal man, Nulty.

“For shebov obs, Notor,” he said.

“I know!”

“He will challenge you.”

The laws in Hamal are strict and multipurpose and, as in so many countries where the wealthy also flaunt their power, blatantly favor the moneyed of the land. Dueling is still a recognized social phenomenon, although hedged about with regulations, and in all due formality a challenge would be presented from Strom Lart which I must answer.

“He will challenge you, Notor, and you must answer. How will you maintain your deception then?”

“I do not think that possible.”

I’d humbled myself and then, when the first real test came along, I’d failed. Ignominiously failed. To my surprise Nulty brightened up remarkably. He started singing that old risqué song about Fanli the Fristle fifi and her regiment of admirers. I looked at him. He caught my eye, and stopped singing, and then with a dirty chuckle said: “I shall be heartily glad to see you acting the real part of the Amak of Paline Valley!”

By his lights, it was clear, I had not been truly honoring my promise to Amak Naghan. I had tried to explain, but full explanations were impossible. A few tentative inquiries had shown me that to discover the secrets of the vollers I must penetrate not just into the buildings where they were manufactured here in Ruathytu — for I guessed they would be little different, if on a larger scale, from the works at Sumbakir

— but past them and into the inner secret places where the silver boxes which gave lift and propulsion to the fliers were filled. This, as you will hear, was only half the truth. The challenge was brought by an Elten and a Kyr, both very stiff and formal, and I agreed to fight Strom Lart on a morning two days later in a hall of his choosing. These occasions often attracted visitors, and the owner of the hall would charge admission to defray the expenses of rental. The Elten said, “Amak Hamun. My principal directs me to inquire if you have knowledge of the rapier and the left-hand dagger. He is desirous of sharpening his skill.”

“Is he aping the ways of the young bloods, then, Elten? Is the Havilfarese thraxter no longer good enough for him, then?”

“Fashions in these things change, Amak. The nobility has taken up the rapier with great enthusiasm. It is fashionable. If you have no knowledge of rapier work—”

“I care not what weapons the fool chooses—”

“Amak!”

“Go back and tell the onker I’ll kill him even if he chooses wooden spoons.”

“Brave words!” The Elten spoke with a pronounced sneer. He did not look at my face, and I made a great effort to smooth out that old devil’s expression I knew must be disfiguring my features. When he did look at me he saw a man who, in his eyes, was a weakling trying to bluster. “I think, Amak Hamun, you will be very sorry you crossed words and swords with Strom Lart.”

Because of this stupid quarrel I had to cancel a planned expedition to the small coastal town of Denrette, which stands where the River Havilthytus empties into the Ocean of Clouds. The river mouth opens out to the sea just to the south of the island of Arnor. At Denrette lived the Todalpheme who calculated the tides and the movements of the great waters.

Nulty said, “You will not travel now, Notor?”

“No, Nulty, may Havil the Green twist the eyeballs in the sockets of this onker Strom Lart. No, I will not travel now.”

Truth to tell, much of that old urgency to go and find out from these Todalpheme — who might be the very ones I needed to talk to — just what they knew of the Savanti and the Swinging City of Aphrasöe had left me. I would find out one day. Right now my life on Kregen had taken turns that would have astounded me in those days when my main desire on the planet was to find my way back to the Swinging City of Aphrasöe and the Savanti . . .

The day of the duel arrived and Nulty saw to it that I had a fine breakfast of fried vosk-rashers and loloo’s eggs and after the last of the superb Kregan bread — done in a Hamalese fashion quite pleasant

— smeared with honey had been eaten, a delicate china cup of Kregan tea and then a silver dish of palines to munch finished the meal. He checked my clothes. I had chosen to appear in very rich, sober style, with a subdued flash of ruby in place of the scarlet. I belted on my thraxter, and the straight sword of Havilfar seemed to me the proper instrument with which to show a Hamalese Strom the error of his ways. We stowed all our gear away safely, paid the lodging bill, and then went down to the hall of duels. The scene presented itself at once as macabre and exciting.

The seats surrounding the flat central space were filled with citizens. The betting was light. Everyone gave the Strom every chance. This was more in the nature of an exhibition than a duel, and many of the bets were on just how the Strom would humiliate me before the final stroke. The due ceremonies went ahead. Judges and referees were appointed and a doctor was in attendance. So far everything went along coldly and with formality. The Hamalese system of dueling bears some resemblance to encounters here on Earth, with the system of seconds standing in for the principal if he is absent. Since I had no seconds, and no one volunteered, and Nulty was only a servitor, the Strom waived some of the protocol. Instead, he sent the Elten across with a rapier and dagger, with the injunction that he, as the party to choose weapons, chose these. Since it was clear I did not possess rapier or dagger I might be allowed the loan of these.

Well, the fool would find out soon enough the truth. I have already told you of my beliefs in this vexed question of sword-fighting. One day, I think, I will meet a man who is better than I am. Or, perhaps, a woman. Then I shall face the greatest fight of all. Each time I fight I am aware that this may be the last time. I am not so egomaniacal as to imagine I am the best swordsman of two worlds. Besides egomania and megalomania, that would be plain sinful pride and stupid into the bargain. This Strom Lart looked strong and quick and clever; he might best me.

Expectancy caught up everyone. The crowd grew impatient. The high-ceiled hall rang with muted echoes. Lart glanced across at me, and flicked his rapier about as though he knew how to use it. I heard men talking in the nearest seats, saying that I was doomed, that the Strom would cut me up into fancy shaped pieces and feed me to the dogs.

Opening off the main hall of challenge were a number of smaller rooms, for dressing, for religious observances. A plan occurred to me whereby I might get out of this with a whole skin, not slay the Strom (for this was a duel to the death), and at the same time preserve my image as a weakling and no true fighting-man.

“I will spend a few murs in seeking the assistance of Havil the Green,” I said. That was obscenity to me, then, enough to make me wince. Of all the multiplicity of gods and godlings on Kregen, only Zair and Opaz had made any real impact on me, and, then, mainly for their parallels to my own inner beliefs. Havil the Green could go stew in his own juice for all I cared.

Perhaps, to be fair, I should add Djan to that short list of Kregan gods; for Djan was dear to my people of Djanduin. As for the beliefs of my wild clansmen of the Great Plains of Segesthes — that crazy harum-scarum bunch is enough to drive the bravest of men to the nearest dopa bottle. This list, I hasten to add, refers to my religious evolution on Kregen up to this time. Krun, of whom I have not spoken, was to come.

“Very well.” Strom Lart’s acquiescence was relayed to me by the Elten. “But, for the sake of Havil, do not take long.”

There were two meanings to that. I frowned. Then I took myself off, out of the central space, between the seating, and so through a short corridor to the room which had been furnished in green, with all necessary things provided, as a shrine to Havil the Green. The state religion of Hamal was safe, at the least, if nothing else.

Fully intending to spend a few moments in mock prayer and then return to disarm in some clumsy fashion and wound sufficient to halt the bout, I turned into the shrine. So fast, it came! So rapidly and without the slightest warning! No giant scarlet-and-golden-feathered bird of prey swooped over me. No slow growth of a blue radiance appeared to suck me down into emptiness.

I saw the scuttling form of a reddish-brown scorpion.

It stood with its arrogant tail upflung, perched on the very nose of the statue of Havil the Green with its encrustations of precious stones. Samphron-oil lamps cast gleams that broke and splintered from the brilliance of diamond and emerald and many another gem. The idiot face of Havil the Green stared down on me, and squatting on that Rapa-beaked nose of his — a scorpion! The wagon-wheel of eight arms stretched from the statue. Its face showed that admixture of racial traits, a morphology that, at least in this ten-foot-tall statue, betrayed only idiocy to my intolerant eyes. This statue was insignificant compared with that enormous and truly gorgeous statue of Havil the Green which Delia and I had encountered in the fortress of Hakal in Huringa in Hyrklana. That statue had seen us beset by neemus, those black-furred cats of vicious temper and sadistic power.

Far rather would I have faced a dozen deadly black neemus than that single solitary scorpion!

So fast it was. One moment I saw the scorpion, the next the reddish-brown form vanished and the world turned a radiant blue.

In my helpless falling I had time for one thought, one thought only, as I was pitched out of Kregen and back to Earth.

Delia!

Chapter Seven

The Scorpion brings travels and discoveries

There was no sense in it!

No sense at all. That Opaz-forsaken cramph of a scorpion! One day I’d put my foot on the foul red-and-brown thing and twist and crush and so squash the thing flat! So help me!

Even as I raged thus to myself, and looked about the planet of my birth again, I knew the day would never dawn. I thought so then. I am not so sure now. If I did smash my foot down on the scorpion, and so deal with it in such wise as would kill a normal scorpion, would this messenger of the Star Lords die?

If I loosed a shaft at the scarlet-and-gold raptor, would that superb bird die?

I did not know . . . I do not know . . . All I knew then was that for some reason I had been flung back to Earth.

Oh, yes, I landed in a peck of trouble and sorted it out, and then haunted the night beaches, forever looking up toward that glinting spark of light upflung so arrogantly in the tail of the constellation of Scorpio. Up there, on a planet circling that twin star, four hundred light-years away, rested all I wanted in two worlds. Call me selfish, if you will. I do not care. Take the Prince Majisters, the Kovs, the Stroms, all the gaudy panoply of rank and wealth and privilege I had earned there on that perilous and profitable world of Kregen — take them all away. I hungered only for Delia, for my Delia and our twins, Drak and Lela.

A ghost of remorse would overtake me as I considered my friends there: Seg Segutorio, Inch of Ng’groga, Hap Loder, Prince Varden Wanek, Gloag, Turko the Shield, Kytun Kholin Dom, my friends of Valka and Djanduin, and Korf Aighos, and even Nulty; and there was my stepbrother-in-law, Vomanus of Vindelka, who wanted, I knew, to be a good friend and yet whose reckless ways took him off to the far corners of Kregen where he might swing a rapier with that raffish carelessness of his. Oh, yes, remorse would overtake me as I realized I would forgo all their friendship if I might once more clasp in my arms my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

And, hungering as I did, could I ever forget that I, Dray Prescot, was also a Krozair of Zy?

The days on Earth passed in gray despair. I had cleared up the trouble here. (I will concern myself in these tapes mainly with what transpired in my career on Kregen, except when something I believe will interest you occurred to match). Then partly to give myself something to do, thereby driving away the insanity that threatened, and partly because I was genuinely interested in finding out what I could of the Savanti, I set out on a little detective work.

The Star Lords, the Everoinye, seemed to me to be above inquiry.

The Savanti, those mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasöe the Swinging City, seemed subject to investigation.

I went hunting Alex Hunter.

Rather, since he was dead on a Valkan beach on far Kregen, decently buried by me with two prayers said over him, it was his memory I hunted, what there was to know about him in the minds of those who had known him.

Money matters were carried on for me by the descendants of that man, whose name I will not mention, whom I had met on the field of Waterloo. I was now remarkably rich. It meant nothing, of course; it still means nothing compared to the greater glory of Kregen. But my Earthly wealth gave me the means to carry out my search.

The trail began in Paris and took me to New York. After a month of inquiries, of checking public records, of following up leads in school and college and U.S. Army records, I felt I had indeed discovered the Alex Hunter who had been employed by the Savanti in their crusade to cleanse the world of Kregen.

As a grim old Army major said: “He was posted missing, Mr. Prescot. There was Indian trouble. There always is. But we had high hopes of the boy. You say you knew him?”

I dissimulated; but the picture became clearer. Alex Hunter had been a young shavetail whose career seemed marked for high command. Eager, alert, efficient, he had made a first-class officer. I remembered his fair hair, those keen blue eyes, the supple strength of him. How he had been recruited by the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, I did not know. But he had been taken to Kregen, and no doubt had passed his test down the River Aph with flying colors, as I remembered, as I remembered! Then the Savanti had appointed him a tutor, given him a genetic language pill, trained him in the martial arts. They had no doubt explained to him in full their plans for Kregen, plans at which I could only guess, for the Savanti had booted me out of the paradise that was Aphrasöe, the Swinging City.

What I did know without doubt was that Alex Hunter had appeared on a beach in Valka, charged by the Savanti to rescue a shipwrecked party of political prisoners from their guards. He had been doing well. He had fought gallantly; as he had said of my fighting, so I could say of his, that he had fought merrily. But his lack of experience had betrayed him. A cruel javelin had smashed its steel head through his body.

Either the Savanti themselves, employing me out of desperation, or the Star Lords with their infinitely more devious ways, had flung me onto that beach to save the situation. I had done so. And I had won my island of Valka. But the strangeness of walking a New York street, and of seeing all the wonders of mid-century America growing before my eyes, made me ponder long and long the reasons that most surely existed for all that the Star Lords did.

The Savanti, I felt sure, wished to make Kregen a civilized world. This is a laudable object. Just what the Star Lords wanted, I did not know. But it was clear their plans were long-term. The people I rescued from death at the behest of the Star Lords would be growing up now, and their fates must influence the fate of the world.

Here, on this Earth, how many people who vanished had been taken to Kregen by the Savanti to join their great crusade?

And I, Dray Prescot, had been found wanting and had been kicked out. Thoughts such as that would send the claws of madness striking through to me. Was I to remain for the next thousand years, left here to rot on Earth, to destroy myself in futility on the world of my birth?

I left the Western frontier, where I had felt strangely at home in the harsh conditions so similar to many of the Kregan frontiers, and I took a southeasterly swing and was in Virginia when the blue radiance took me — blessedly — back to Kregen.

Opening my eyes, I saw that I was naked. That was normal. I think the Star Lords knew of that tickling feeling I had that I would think the less of them if they provided me with a handy sword, or shield, or helmet, when they brought me to Kregen to untangle the latest problem hurled at me. The problem I had to sort out this time was so absurdly simple that I was sure the situation had been contrived by the Star Lords merely to bring me once more to Kregen. Maybe, I thought, as I stood up and stretched in the glorious mingled opaline light, maybe they required me to be here on Kregen. Certainly, facing a little four-armed Och, for all that he carried the small round shield of the Och, and a spear, and a thraxter belted to his waist, was not of the order of problems I had previously encountered. The Och was a slaver and he was driving a heavily chained coffle of Djan girls to the beach where a low two-masted vessel waited. Now the Djangs are an especial joy to me, as you know. They are apim, just like Homo sapiens, but they have four arms apiece. They are the most ferocious fighters. Their girls are exceptionally beautiful. They are much prized. They do not travel very far from their own country of Djanduin, which is situated in the southwest of Havilfar.

I am the King of Djanduin.

The ten girls would have given the Och guards a nasty time if they came too close, and the Ochs were driving them along well out of arms’ reach. I thumped the nearest Och over the head. An Och has six limbs, the central pair used indiscriminately as either arms or legs; a lemon-shaped head with puffy jaws and lolling chops; and he is not above four feet tall. Agile, determined fellows, Ochs are cunning and dirty fighters, and used over many parts of Kregen as mercenaries — although, to their constant annoyance, they are not ranked in the top class. Consequently, they may be hired more cheaply. I had had experience of Ochs. The second one flew at me now and I slid his spear and thumped him, too. I picked up his spear, flung it at the third Och. The fourth and fifth hurled their spears and then rushed with their thraxters low, their little shields low, and daggers in their middle limbs’ dual-purpose hands. I swirled a trifle with the dead Och’s thraxter, caught their blades, swirled some more, and then — flick!

flick! they were down and I could run across to the girls.

One of them, whose name I afterward discovered was Rena, recognized me. She yelled. Her shout was one of absolute joy.

“It is the King! It is Notor Prescot, the King of Djanduin!”

Seldom have I had a homecoming to Kregen like that!

The chains could be unlocked with keys taken from the Ochs. Rena said: “Those other Djan-forsaken Ochs will be upon us.” She snatched up a thraxter. “By mother Diocaster! Let us serve them finely chopped into a Herrelldrin hell!”

“Are there other slaves already aboard, Rena?”

“Aye, Majister.”

“Then we must free them, also.” I had to speak cleverly. “Where is your home, Rena?” I could not ask with cunning if she expected help, and thus gather some idea of where we were, for she might think I was reluctant to fight without the promise of help. I know, now, that my people of Djanduin would not think that of me; but in those days I was a new king in Djanduin.

Before she could answer, another girl, brandishing a spear, shrilled: “The rasts of Ochs! They run to attack!”

So we went to. Of that smart little fight I need only say that two of the girls were lightly scratched; none was, thanks to Djan the All-Glorious, killed.

We went down to the ship and released the prisoners there and as we all came up onto the beach, rejoicing (and I had flung a scrap of orange cloth about me to hide my nakedness), a skein of flutduins, those special and superb flying birds of Djanduin, soared over us and we were surrounded by a patrol of Djang warriors. We were on the north coast of Djanduin, and the water to the north was the Lohvian Sea. No one was at all surprised that the king had turned up to rescue his people from the slaving Ochs who had slipped in to raid by night, and were about to push off for their foul nests on the Lohvian shoreline across the sea.

Amid great rejoicings and much singing and laughing and drinking of toasts, the freed people were conveyed back to their village. I promised to have money and supplies and food sent down to restore the place after the attack. Then, surrounded by Djang warriors, astride our flutduins, we flew for the capital city of Djanguraj.

Kytun Kholin Dom, that true friend and mighty warrior, greeted me with quick and affectionate happiness. He grasped my single apim right hand in his two djang right hands, and with his upper left hand he clapped me on the shoulder, and with his lower left he punched me in the stomach with the abandon of reunion. I punched him back, for these things mean much, and then turned to see the Pallan Ortyg Coper hustling in, his gerbil-like face twitching, squeaking his excitement.

“We saw you off in the voller, Dray,” he said. “And, now, here you are back again! Lahal and Lahal!

Welcome indeed!”

Before I had time to greet him I was engulfed by a squeaking and crying mass and there was Sinkie, Ortyg’s little wife, kissing and sobbing and vowing that, by all the flowers of Djanduin, she was the happiest woman alive to see me again.

Well, you can imagine, we had a reunion, and my friends who were in the capital came hurrying into the palace and that night we enjoyed a sumptuous feast. The country prospered. Wise government by my regent, the Pallan O. Fellin Coper, backed by firm and fair authority of K. Kholin Dorn, ensured that the ravages of the civil wars were being repaired. After my sojourn on Earth, to come back to Kregen in such style as this! It all seemed too marvelously perfect for me — except that Delia was not at my side. The desire to see her again overpowered me. But there was work still to be done in Djanduin. And as I was so relatively near to Migladrin, I could fly there and see if our work was bearing good fruits. So, in due order, these three things were done by me . . .

The news of Kregen rushed upon me in a great nostalgic flood of remembrances. But there were new and uneasy signs abroad. I was told that the supply of vollers had dried up. Hamal refused to sell any further examples of fliers to anyone. Hyrklana, that island realm which was the second chief supplier of fliers, was now able to see profit in selling to Hamal, its deadly rival. I wondered what Queen Fahia of Hyrklana was about, selling to her enemies, but guessed she needed every last ob she could scrape up for the glory of her Arena in Huringa.

All the rumors, the uneasy speculations, had their center of origin in Hamal. As Kytun said, drinking in his luxuriant way: “Those cramphs of Hamal are at the bottom of it, Dray!

They are power-mad. With all their laws you’d think they’d have more sense.”

“It is true,” said Ortyg, brushing his beautiful white whiskers. “Their path of conquest seems to be ordained to them by their Havil the Green. They are spreading south of the River Os—”

“Oh, Ortyg, dear, they have been doing that for seasons!”

“Yes, wife, yes. But they are now striking west over the mountains — and Zodjuin the Stux knows what they’ll find there — and also are attacking South Pandahem.”

These things I knew.

But then, very gravely, Kytun said: “They have taken most of South Pandahem. That is the last information.” Pandahem, the large island northwest of the continent of Havilfar, is split into north and south by mountains. I sat up as Kytun went on: “They are now invading Yumapan, in the far west of Pandahem. It is certain they will swing north into Lome—”

“Iyam lies east of Lome,” I said. “And then Menaham — The Bloody Menahem! — and if I know them and their rulers they’ll seek to conclude an alliance.” I frowned. I knew these countries, and I knew that to the east of Menaham lay the country of Tomboram. The damned Hamalians could bring in troops by sea or air to hit Tomboram from the east as their victorious armies, with The Bloody Menahem as allies, swept in from the west. Well, all that would take time. I had my job to do in Hamal, which was now of even greater importance.

I knew people of Tomboram. I knew Pando, the boy Kov of Bormark, and his mother, Tilda the Beautiful, Tilda of the Many Veils. I would not stand idly by if they were attacked.[4]

So, and not without a sense of desolation at what evils the price of friendship in high places can bring to the simplest soldier, I made cunning question of my Djang friends. Would they fight the Hamalians if I were to ask it, fight them on behalf of a boy Kov and his mother in far Pandahem? It was obscene of me to suggest this; and yet I knew with a heavy heart there would be much fighting before Kregen was made a world where a mother need not fear for her daughter, a father not fear for his son, where the slavers and the power maniacs had been banished. In this, no concern for the requirements of the Star Lords or the Savanti swayed me; this was necessary if those parts of Kregen I loved were not to be overrun and enslaved.

For North Pandahem lies perilously close to Vallia.

Vallia and Pandahem were enemies, through forces which were as much ironically stupid as through any other rational reason, for their maritime and colonial and economic rivalries could be adjusted given compassion and tolerance, and even though I was Prince Majister of Vallia, still I would fight for Pandahem against an outside invader. This might bring the two islands closer together in concern. I would like that. The Hamalians would not sell vollers to Pandahem. Was that because they wished to keep from them this means of aerial warfare, and, thus weakened, be easy meat for invasion and conquest? But then

— Hamal was now refusing to sell Vollers to Vallia, a traditional market. This, surely, was the preliminary to attack!

“You look thoughtful, Dray,” said my chief minister and now my regent, Pallan O. Fellin Coper. “Djangs are a bloodthirsty lot, as you know. I am a civilian and I—”

“Aye, Ortyg!” said Kytun, lifting his flagon. “You leave the fighting to us! And very sensible that is, to be sure. Dray,” he said, and he quaffed and set the emptied goblet down. “Djangs survive only by fighting well. If you have enemies we will fight them — aye! Even beyond the Ice Floes of Sicce!”

“Good Kytun, I don’t think we need to go there, just yet.”

I had discovered what I had already known to be true. These fearsome Djangs would fight for me, if they clearly saw my cause was just. I had little doubt that could be made plain. Deliberately, I steered the conversation away.

In the high-arched banqueting hall of my Palace of Illustrious Ornament in sprawling, arcaded, windy Djanguraj, the noise of laughter and singing brought aching memories of nights of carousing in the high fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium. It brought memories of those luminous nights with my clansmen on the Great Plains of Segesthes under the seven moons of Kregen. And, too, and with an especially keen nostalgia, it brought flooding back vivid memories of roistering away in Sanurkazz on the inner sea with my two favorite rascals, my two oar comrades, Nath and Zolta. Ah! Time is a relentless monster that devours us all.

And sometimes the thought of a thousand years is insupportable to me, and then I think of Delia, and I know the thousand years will be all too short . . .

So I turned the conversation and I talked of affording better protection to our northern shore against slaving raids from Loh. I had at that time never been to Loh save for a short stop at Seg’s country, Erthyrdrin, when I had thought him dead . . . I would go there, one day.

“We are still a long way from the kind of land we would like to see,” O. Fellin Coper said, and we plunged into discussions of ways and means and where the money was coming from and all the problems of managing a country.

Oh, yes, I acted the part of the King of Djanduin, and, as is the way of these things, acting was not necessary. At this time on Kregen the lands of Strombor, Valka, and Djanduin meant most to me, for the peoples of those lands looked to me not only as their leader and the man who would guide them and devote his life to them, but mostly, I like to think, because they regarded me as their friend. I do not make friends easily. I had been blessed and doubly blessed on Kregen with true friends . . . I had also picked up a few enemies on the way. A goodly number of those were dead, and of those who remained there were some who were to do me great mischief, as you shall hear . . . Because I was the King of Djanduin there was no difficulty in finding me a flier in which to travel to Migladrin. Any guilt I might have felt about depriving my country — a country, remember, of which I was a relatively new king — of a precious voller was more than overcome by the attitude of the Pallan of the Vollers, who would have taken amiss a decision to fly to Migladrin astride a flutduin. The Pallan of the Flyers — an office created by me to foster the breeding of first-class strains of birds — kicked a trifle; but he could see that long journeys went faster with vollers than with flyers. I sorted out a few last-minute problems and took my leave. At the last moment it was decided that a small group of Djangs, of both racial stocks, would accompany me to establish friendly relations with the Miglas. This suited me very well. I was now consciously beginning that wide-ranging system of establishing friendly relations between the various countries of this continental grouping. Of this I will have much more to say later. For now I flew to Migladrin, saw old Mog — called Mog the Mighty — and met my friends there again. Then, leaving the Djangs to diplomacy, I took off for Valka.

All this high-level politicking was intensely interesting, but I hungered to hold Delia in my arms again. In Valka I was greeted like some hero returning home, which embarrassed me mightily. After the junketings, which, you may well imagine, went on for a long time and embraced a continual round of banquets and feasts and entertainments, I had to confess to Delia, rather miserably, that I had failed.

“You see, Delia. It is even more important, now that Hamal refuses to sell us fliers, that we must learn to build our own.”

We were sitting on our favorite terrace high in the fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium and the sweep of the bay. Drak and Lela were safely sleeping after all the excitement of seeing their father —

and did they chatter and jump up and down! The streaming mingled light of the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, fell about us in the early evening. Soon it would be night, one of those sweet soft nights of Kregen when the moon-blooms open their petals and drink the moons-light, and the sky is filled with the pink radiance of the moons. I sipped a fine Jholaix, a wine with few equals.

“But, dear heart,” said Delia, her sweet face troubled, “is it ethical to steal this secret from the Hamalians?”

I knew what she meant.

I tried to explain.

“In the normal way, no, of course not. But think how Hamal has behaved. Not only do they charge inflated prices for vollers — and remember, I have seen them built and built them with my own hands! —

and refuse all service, they deliberately manufacture them with built-in faults. I am now absolutely convinced of this.”

“But, Dray, that is—”

“I know, Delia. But it is so. And we all know the fine men and women who have been killed in faulty fliers. This is murder. We owe it to the memory of the dead and to the well-being of the living to make sure a voller is safe in the air.”

“This all sounds high and mighty, you great shaggy graint! But the fact remains. You are stealing a secret from another country so that you will not have to buy their goods.”

My Delia, my Delia of Delphond, has a confoundedly cutting way with her at times! She put her pretty rosy finger right on the central core, on a fact that had troubled me. I tried in my gruff way to explain that, as far as I could see, the Hamalians had forfeited all rights to their own secrets, through their despicable use of them. “If they treated us fairly, there would be no need to steal the secret. They are a nasty lot, anyway — well, most of them — and they have done me mischief and will seek to do so again.”

“I know, Dray, you do not seek to justify your actions by talking of revenge.” Delia spoke with just enough hesitancy to make me sit up and take notice. She is the most beautiful woman in two worlds. She is also shrewd, clear-sighted, realistic — and maddeningly romantic, too! — and clever enough to tie in knots the smartest politicians and lawyers of those same two worlds.

“Revenge is for the softheaded, Delia,” I said. I drank some wine to break up my words. “Oh, I know I’ve thumped a few heads when I was annoyed—”

“I believe you have.”

“Yes, well. This is taken by me to be a matter of state. If Hamal attacks us — as I believe it will — we must have vollers to defend ourselves. I can find vollers only in Hamal.” She sat there, looking at me, her glorious brown hair with those dazzling auburn highlights catching the last of Zim as the red sun sank in swirls and floods of orange-and-crimson fire. She wore a simple sleeveless gown of white sensil, soft and clinging, without any jewels save a tiny brooch I had given her pinned to the left shoulder. That brooch blazed now in the fiery light with brilliant orange, yellow, and blue gems in the hubless spoked wheel within the circle.

“And, you great onker,” she said, her face radiant, “what of your fat friend, Queen Fahia of Hyrklana?”

I laughed.

I roared with joy.

“She’d feed me to her pet neemus, and those black-souled cats would chomp me with great delight. No, if I am to discover high state secrets — and those damned silver boxes are just that — I need freedom of movement. As Amak Hamun ham Farthytu, I can move around Hamal.”

“We might consider,” she said, putting her head on one side, “whether it might be an idea to import the rank of Amak into Vallia. I will talk to Father. It would reward many good men and their wives.”

“It’s a thought, Delia. An Amak’s holdings need be only an estate, not a village, even. Something a little grander than a Tyr, which is really a title only.”

So we talked on in that glorious evening as the suns sank and the Twins, the two second moons of Kregen eternally orbiting each other, rolled by above our heads casting down their gold-pink light. We had much to say to each other. But, true to my determination to do all I could for my island of Valka, the following days saw my preparations being finalized. I would use the flier from Djanduin. Once again Delia made up gear for my travel. I kissed her and held her close, I kissed the twins, Drak and Lela, and then I stepped aboard the voller, observing the fantamyrrh, and as I rose into the clear air I shouted down.

“Remberee, my Delia!”

“Remberee, Dray, and mind you come back in one piece!”

Chapter Eight

Trylon Rees of the Golden Wind — lion-man

To fly off and leave my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains! Just to sail away like that, leaving my Delia with all her beauty and love and sound common sense and untold flights of romantic happiness! What a fool I was! What an onker, what a get-onker! I turned the flier around over the sea westward of the island of Astar, isolate and remote, and swung back. What were state secrets and high politics compared with Delia — Delia, Princess Majestrix of Vallia!

Away over on my larboard lay the island of Pandahem, where Pando was no doubt attempting to shore up his Kovnate against his foes, and Tilda, Tilda of the Many Veils, was trying to support him and fighting against taking too much drink. I must visit them soon. But the Opaz-forsaken rasts of Hamal were attacking northward over the mountains in Pandahem, and soon they would conquer North Pandahem as they had subdued the South. Then it would be Vallia’s turn. How could I take my people of Djanduin, my people of Valka, up against the Hamalians without a strong air service? Oh, yes, the Vallian Air Service was strong and devoted and would fight. But I had seen the sky ships of the Hamalians. Against them the poor fliers the Hamalians sold to other countries would stand no chance. Against them flutduins would hurl themselves in vain. And Vallia, that great island of which the smaller island of Valka was a Stromnate, possessed no aerial cavalry at all.

No.

No, I could not selfishly return to Delia and let the world of Kregen go hang. I must turn this pitiful little voller about, and head south again, flying over the Southern Ocean to the continent of Havilfar, and to Hamal.

It was a doom laid upon me.

Because I had no heart to fly near the devastated ruins of Paline Valley, this time I took the little flier in over the northern coast of Hamal close by the town of Eomlad to the east of Skull Bay. Below lay thick impenetrable jungles and the heat persisted. Eomlad was situated inland on the banks of a wide sluggish river and as I passed I saw smoke and flames rising in the sultry air. Shades of that earlier visit!

This was, again, no business of mine. This time, I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, forced my voller on and left the burning town. I had business in Ruathytu.

Every instinct in me warred together. I wished to go to Eomlad and help. I knew that time was running out for my mission to be of use. Hamal’s attacks on Pandahem, leading to an invasion of Vallia, would not cease because I went to a burning town to see what help I might render. Anyway, the fighting was over. I had seen the swarms of sky ships departing. What had been going on there I did not know; I would discover all that concerned me at the capital, Ruathytu.

The burning and sack of Eomlad, a famous occasion, was a symptom of a great event that directly assisted me, as you will hear. I flew on, filled with the urgency of my quest, determined this time to allow no obstacles to stop me, obstacles like, for instance, a red-faced onker of a Strom with a grudge. Well, men grow corn for Zair to sickle, as they say in the Eye of the World. From Eomlad, the capital, Ruathytu, lies due southeast a distance just over two hundred dwaburs. With the shining level spear of the River Havilthytus in view along the southern horizon and with a luxuriantly growing farming area below, with small tributaries flowing south into the Havilthytus, their banks dotted with the white-walled, flat-roofed houses of villages, the confounded voller gave up on me. With some exertion and a masterful display of the aerial skill taught me by Delia, I brought the flier to earth with a bone-shaking jerk. I had plowed a nasty-looking furrow through a field of rich crops, and I knew the farmer would not be pleased.

I need not have worried about that poor devil of a farmer.

Even as I jumped from my ruined craft I saw evil tongues of flame burst from his flat roof, shimmering palely in the glow of Zim and Genodras, the two suns that are called Far and Havil in Havilfar, and greasy smoke broke away in puffs downwind.

So familiar are scenes like this in my homecoming to Kregen I had to remember that I was here because I had willed it, and not through the summons of the Scorpion. I ran toward the burning farmhouse. For my playacting part as Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley, I wore a crisp new white tunic run up for me by Delia’s sewing maidens. A rather handsome bead necklace of gold and rubies hung around my neck, borrowed from Delia’s gem casket. But, because I had taken my leave in Valka, I wore belted to my waist a rapier and a left-hand dagger, the Jiktar and the Hikdar. As I ran I saw men fighting, and women running, and I heard the bestial sound of combat. Why I embroiled myself in a single burning farmhouse when I had flown past a burning city I leave to others to explain; my flier had broken down here and so here was where action lay. The situation had to be sized up. I dare not plunge in on the wrong side; my mission in Hamal meant too much for silly mistakes like that.

There was, to my mind at least, no question which side to take.

The flutsmen were going about their work with dreadful efficiency.

These mercenaries of the skies are a fascinating phenomenon of Havilfar. If you pay them they will fight for you. This is true of the many various sorts of mercenaries on Kregen, yes; but the flutsmen consider themselves a cut above every other kind of fighting-man — and in this, as I had shown and was to show with greater severity, they were wrong.

Most of them were off their fluttrells, the birds chained down out of the way of the fighting, and the riders were shooting with crossbows at anyone who tried to break out of the flames. Familiar scenes! Horrible scenes! I had no business here and should get my tail out of it as quickly as possible; but, like the onker I am, I jumped in, flickering my rapier and main-gauche. Three flutsmen went down, narrow-bladed steel thrust through their midriffs, before any of them were aware of me. Cutting down the odds is one way of staying ahead. Three of them wielding thraxters came at me: Rapier and main-gauche against thraxter . . . Well, the thraxter is a vertical-bladed weapon, and the rapier a horizontal-bladed weapon. The left-hand dagger gave me an advantage, but two of the flutsmen carried shields. It was warm work. I skipped and jumped, and braced away the seeking blades with my left-hand dagger while the rapier slid in, smooth, low, deadly, and so whipped out, glistening with blood. The fight did not last long.

A crowd of flutsmen took the sky amid a rustling of wings. I was alone. This meant that succor for the farm was at hand — or so I thought. I walked across to the door, which was just slaking into gray-and-black ash where the different woods had burned away. I could see no one alive. Inside the house lay a charred mass of burned bodies, most unpleasant, and I backed out. The suns still shone. The breeze blew. The smell of the crops reached in over that charnel-house stink. I went around the corner of the building to the stables, for youngsters often hide there during raids, and at first could see no one. I wiped my weapons on a piece of cloth hanging from a nail in a beam. There were no animals in the stables. The smell of urine and dung and straw hung rich and earthy on the air, and the flat evil taste of charred wood drifted from the husk of the house.

A pile of straw moved. A hand showed and, even as I watched, the hand gripped my ankle. I saw the straw slide away and I was staring down into the face of a Rapa, his fierce beaked birdlike face bloody and gashed, one eye missing, and in the remaining eye a dying glare of mad, vengeful terror. He gobbled at me, and blood ran greasily.

“Yetch! Nulsh! By Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls! You will die!”

“Steady, dom!” I spoke with some acerbity. “I’m on your side.”

He did not hear me. His grip was just tight enough for me to have to kick harder to free myself than I would wish to kick a dying man. The Rapa’s wounds were very terrible, and he lurched from his hiding place, the straw falling away and glistening red with blood. I forced myself to remain upright, but I was not going to allow him, dying or not, to continue to grip my ankle. He was trying to trip me, and his strength would not have matched a woflo’s.

Like a stupid onker, I stood there with a dying man hanging on to my ankle and feebly trying to pitch me over. I heard two voices, two short sentences, the second following hard on the heels of the first: “Hai Jikai! For the Emperor!” And then: “Your back, dom! Look out!”

Then someone hit me under the ear. He hit hard enough for me to go headfirst over the prostrate Rapa, to break his grip on my ankle, to send me pitching into the bloody straw. I spat mouthfuls out, and in my head those famous old bells of Beng-Kishi rang and rang and dizzied me. Blearily I looked out on the stables.

The wounded Rapa was now dead. Another Rapa, dressed in blood-smeared half-armor, was also dead, his head near severed.

I blinked, I swallowed. Then I put a probing finger very gingerly to the tender spot under my ear, and I winced.

“He didn’t pay quite enough for your passage to the Ice Floes of Sicce, dom! Or else you have a skull as thick as a vosk’s!” said that second voice.

“As stupid as a vosk’s,” I said, staring blearily up at the man who boomed in so jovial and stentorian a voice, the man who had shouted to warn me, the man who had dispatched this poor pair of Rapas. He was not apim. He wore bronze lorica and helmet, with workmanlike straps of plain leather. He held a thraxter, shining with blood, in the professional grip of the fighting-man. In his helmet feathers glowed, brave feathers of purple and gold. He wore greaves, and they were gilded and shining. His face showed the glorious golden mane, now mostly confined beneath the helmet, and the equally glorious golden beard under his chin, of the Numim. He was not apim, like me. As I have promised you, I introduce types of people on Kregen when they impinge on my story. I had met Numims many times: they had served with Viridia the Render; they had marched under my flag, Old Superb, many times; I had fought with them and against them. The nearest approximation to their faces I can give you is to liken them to a human lion. If I refer to Numims as lion-men, you will understand why.

Now this Numim yelled at me as he put down a hand and hauled me to my feet.

“I can see by your clothes you are no fighting-man, dom!” He took in my rapier. “And I see you have taken up this fancy notion of the young bloods. Rapiers and daggers, they’re all the rage with the young aristos in Ruathytu these days!”

He pulled me up and I winced as pain flowed over my scalp. I brushed bloody straw away, and so the Numim must have taken flutsmen blood upon my white tunic for Rapa blood from the straw. Many races do not have red blood on Kregen, but red is the color mostly seen on battlefields.

“You did well, dom!” the lion-man roared again. He was in high good humor. Truth to tell, I seldom knew when he was not in high good humor. “We cleaned out this rast’s nest of emperor’s men; cleared them out with fire!”

“The Rapa shouted for the emperor,” I said, cautiously.

A thought occurred to him, and he drew himself up. “Llahal and Llahal,” he said, with the double-L

sound that is the greeting for strangers upon Kregen. “Your name?”

I knew he was an important personage, from the ornamentation of his dress and the jewels in the hilt of the thraxter. As part of my plan I would humor him.

“Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley. Llahal.”

“I am Rees ham Harshur, Trylon of the Golden Wind.”

So we made pappattu.

“You are fit enough to move, Amak Hamun?”

“I can move. But my voller cannot.”

He laughed. The Trylon of the Golden Wind was seldom able to pass a bur without breaking into great gusty laughter.

“The flutsmen are as always anxious to earn their hire. You must accept my hospitality. I return to the city now that our work here is done. I was checking its thoroughness when I came across you. You are keen, I will say that, Amak; but not overly skilled, by Krun!” He was laughing away now. “To be caught and held by the foot by a stinking dying Rapa while another clouts you over the head! That is a story!

You were fortunate he hit you with nothing worse than a wooden beam.”

“Yes,” I said.

We went out into the suns-shine to his voller. A Trylon is the next rank of nobility above a Strom. He was an important man. These Numims are a boisterous crowd, and they do not share that strong attribute of Earthly lions — they are not lazy. Trylon Rees was a bundle of energy.

“I had best fetch my things from my—” I began.

He waved a gauntleted hand most airily.

“Leave them, Amak Hamun. We will send a voller from the city to collect yours and bring it in. Climb aboard.”

Observing the fantamyrrh, for I did not wish to offend this lion-man, I stepped aboard his flier. She was a nice handy craft, with a smart Hikdar as captain, and a crew who wore the purple-and-gold favors in colored feathers and in scarves around their waists and shoulders. We went into the cabin and the voller lifted off for Ruathytu.

What Trylon Rees told me as we lolled in the cabin, drinking wine, a nice light pale yellow vintage from Barrath, interested me mightily. The emperor had been overthrown. Now Hamal was ruled by Queen Thyllis, who would soon be proclaimed empress. She was the old emperor’s niece, and she was, by the Trylon’s account, a remarkable woman. Any hopes I had that the outward expansion of Hamal’s frontiers and the consequent eternal wars would now cease were crushed as Rees said: “The old emperor was past it. He was leading us to disaster. Now that we have cleared him and his followers away — you had a hand in that, Amak, and therefore you have our thanks — we can get on with the job of prosecuting the war as it should be fought.” He shook that massively maned head. “Although I like a good fight, man to man, I am not overly fond of war.”

“You share my sentiments, Trylon.”

“What! You relish a fight — ah! I see.” He winked at me. “You would be a young blood and ruffle it with the best in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. Well, we shall see what we shall see.” He poured more wine. “But as to this Krun-forsaken war — if only the rasts of Pandahem would leave us alone, we would not be under the necessity of fighting them.”

“Do the Pandaheem then war on us?”

I’ll admit now, that I slid in that word “us” very smartly indeed, getting my tongue around it and so squashing the “you” I had been about to say.

“You know they do, Amak!”

It was no part of my plans to fall out with a powerful man who could materially assist me to betray his own country.

“Of course. I was just wondering if, perhaps, the empire is not too far stretched—”

“Ah!” He leaned forward. “There you touch upon the nub of the question. We are stretched, but the empire is strong. There are thousands of clums available to fill the ranks of the army. And we can call on the guls, if need be. And we have wealth enough to hire mercenaries from overseas. We shall fight on the three present fronts — aye! And if necessary we can open more fronts to destroy our foes!”

You can’t really argue coherently against a belief like that. You have to show a fellow the error of his ways. One way of showing him would be to provide Vallia with a strong and reliable air service. So I nodded and said words to the effect that the new queen would bring good fortune to the empire. He looked at me with those great golden eyes of his very shrewd upon me. He sipped wine, and, deliberately, put the goblet down. “I’ve taken a fancy to you, young Hamun,” he said. There was no incongruousness in the statement to him. He was a good foot taller than I was, broad, bulky, and powerful. He was just leaving youth behind and entering into the full power of his prime. He was also very rich, and a Trylon. So he tended to treat me with a proprietorial air that, you may imagine, irked me. However, I dissimulated, for I had need of this Numim in my murky plans. I, Dray Prescot, patronized by a Numim Trylon!

He went on, speaking carefully: “This new queen of ours we’ve just put on the throne. We’ve done the best for Hamal. But, young Hamun, you take the advice of a man who knows a thing or two. Look out for her. Steer clear of her. She eats young ones like you before breakfast.”

I did not press him on the point. This new Queen Thyllis of Hamal did not figure in my plans. So began a phase of my life in Havilfar that amuses me each time I recall it. Had Trylon Rees of the Golden Wind not turned up I would have found another high-ranking personage to vouch for me. I needed to get near those in power. I knew that the secret of the silver boxes would give me control of the manufacture of vollers. And, remembering my doing in Magdag, when I had lived the life of ease in the Emerald Eye Palace during the day, and had slipped out to the warrens for nefarious schemes by night, I fancied I knew a trick or two that would do nicely for these arrogant lords of Hamal.

Chapter Nine

“We’ll make a Bladesman of you yet!”

“No, no, no, Hamun! Your body behind the line! The arm straight before you lunge!” Rees flicked his rebated point away from my chest where his stop thrust would, had the point been sharp, have skewered me. He laughed even as he looked crestfallen. “I swear by Havil the Green — and no man should have to do that, by Krun! — you grow worse every day instead of better!”

He stripped the mask from his massive lion-face and hurled it at one of his slaves. The light from the southerly-aspect windows lay cool and shadowless within the salles d’armes. I stripped my mask off in turn. Had I pretended too far? Had I been too clumsy for belief? It is a sobering task to have to fight, even in practice, with a man and allow his point to reach in past your guard and thunk against your chest. It gave me a shivery queasy feeling, I can tell you.

“We’ll make a Bladesman of you, yet, Hamun!” boomed Trylon Rees. “Ho there, you rascals. Wine!”

His slaves bounded up with wine and clean cloths and sponges dipped in aromatic oils to cleanse him. From his seat under the windows Nath Tolfeyr laughed. “You’ll never make a Bladesman of friend Hamun!” Nath Tolfeyr was an indolent-seeming youth, with long arms and legs, an apim, and very skilled with the rapier and main-gauche. He wore gaudy clothes, all frills and bows and lace, and a hard-brimmed hat with a square outline and round upon the head . . . very Spanish. “Never, I swear by Le — by Krun! — never while there are two suns in the sky.”

I did not miss the hesitation as Nath Tolfeyr changed the god he would swear by, as I had not missed that betraying hesitation before, and I filed it away. Tolfeyr was one of many young men who had taken up with extraordinary excitement and energy the exercise of rapier play. The thraxter as the chief sword of Havilfar had developed from its own origins; now these sporting young men felt they needed a new pastime. Duels were common. Ruffling the streets, bravo-fighting, riots, all these things flourished in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. I had been inducted into this magic circle as the friend of Trylon Rees, a great brawler, and everyone recognized me as his protégé. In addition, when my flier had been brought in and I had been found rooms in the fashionable inn patronized by Rees, and I was able, unostentatiously, to show I had money and was wealthy enough to ride and shoot and play and ruffle with them, they accepted me. But as to my prowess with weapons, they laughed and jested and, probably but for the protection of Trylon Rees, would have sought to amuse themselves by cutting up my hide. I was properly contemptuous of the lot of them. For one thing, with their famous empire at war on three fronts, what were they doing at home?

Their lives consisted in the main of drinking, gambling, racing, wenching, and fighting. Some of these occupations may be pleasant, too many and too often and the pace destroys, the sport palls, the fun goes out of it all. These young men kept up their facade of great and luxurious amusement and smothered most effectively the boredom from which their kind suffer as an epidemic. The infection brushed me, but I had work to do and so was inoculated.

There were certain taverns they would frequent at certain times. There were various unpleasant forms of animal combat. There was the Jikhorkdun, the great Arena of Ruathytu; I went there with a professional interest, as you may well imagine. The shouts of “Kaidur! Kaidur!” as a kaidur performed well stirred the sluggish blood and brought phantasmal memories rushing in of the Arena in Huringa in Hyrklana. This Arena in Ruathytu in Hamal was much grander and larger — and messier. I saw the new queen there, this Queen Thyllis. Very smug and supercilious, she looked, and very beautiful, with more than a hint of cruelty in her lips; her tongue caught between sharp white teeth as the swords went in and the bright blood spurted. She had many slave girls in chains. She had male slaves, also, in chains. Everyone yelled when she appeared, standing up and giving the Hamalese salute, and again when she left, surrounded by her retinue. I did not see the sleek, shining forms of coal-black neemus, those gorgeous and lethal hunting cats that surrounded Queen Fahia of Hyrklana on similar occasions.

This Queen Thyllis was named for a goddess in an ancient myth. Thyllis the Munificent had been born to a god and a goddess and had been locked into a lenken chest, bound with iron, and nine bronze locks. She had been cast into the deepest depths of the Ocean of Clouds, but instead of drowning had been suckled by the green-and-turquoise deep-sea-god. She had grown into the most beautiful woman beneath the sea — and whatever race happened to be telling this story, then she was of their race, also (unlike many legends and myths which have identifiable central figures). And then, Under a Certain Moon, Thyllis the Munificent had broken the nine bronze locks and sundered the iron bands, and her dazzling beauty brought the whales to fawn upon her, and to give her assistance to the surface, where she waded ashore. She took the sword of the swordfish with her, for he, poor beast, perished of love, and she walked into the palace of her father and mother, the god and goddess, and she did to them what they had done to her. She did this with the help of the whales and the sword of the swordfish and a colony of local godlings, who lived on a nearby hill and who hated the god and goddess, her mother and father, because they would not let them play upon the hill near the palace.

Well, no one knows the names of the goddess Thyllis’ parents to this day, for they are banished. This Queen Thyllis was inordinately proud of the story and her name, foolish woman; and even at the distance in the Arena between our respective seats, I could see Trylon Rees was quite correct to warn anyone to give her a wide berth.

One night, after a day when everyone had been sated by a particularly horrific bloodletting in the Arena, and when the largest moon of Kregen, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, was already setting, and the fourth moon, She of the Veils, had not yet risen, with the Twins, the two second moons, not due to rise until later still, I prepared myself in my private room in the inn . . . After the Jikhorkdun I had been beset by the very question that had kept me on tenterhooks, and for which I am sure you have been waiting.

In the long corridor beneath the private seating we strolled along, Rees and Nath and the others, gorgeously attired in our foppish clothes, our rapiers and daggers swinging from baldrics or belts in exaggerated display, the scent bottles to our noses. Oh, we must have made a pretty picture! A smiling ruffler stepped to my side, his rapier hung ridiculously low, and his boots of a fashion that amused me so that I had to look away or burst a vein.

“Amak, Hamun ham Farthytu?”

Remember, I told myself, remember you are a weakling and a bit of a fool, you onker!

“Why, yes, I have that honor. To whom do I have the honor of speaking without a Llahal between us?”

That made no impression on him at all. “The same Amak of Paline Valley who ran away from a challenge?”

“What’s that?” boomed Rees, immensely huge, towering, swinging back from talking to Strom Dolan, a fussy Bladesman with exaggerated ideas of his own importance. “A challenge? Running away?”

“But yes, Trylon,” smirked the fellow. “The story is true. It was all over town—”

Trylon Rees started to rumble, deep in his throat. I had to get in here, and quick!

“Why, as to that,” I said in my best foppish offhand manner, “I was taken ill just before a challenge with Strom Lart ham Thordan” — I chanced my arm — “a very peculiar fellow.” A few snickering laughs rose at that, so I had guessed right, and I pressed on: “I was out of town for some time and, really, I haven’t got around to seeing the tiresome fellow again. If he’s still around.”

The sneering one was clearly taken aback, particularly as Rees said in his best lion voice: “Well, if this Strom wants to make something of it, let him see me! I’ll fry his ears in a pan for him, if he’s a mind to!”

All our cronies laughed, and the sneering fellow took himself off, much discomfited. There were gangs, and clans, and clubs, and enclaves of friends in this sacred quarter of Ruathytu, and one would stand by one’s associates. I breathed again . . .

So, then, just as I was making my preparations for the night’s work, a loud rapping on the door heralded the entrance of Trylon Rees. He bore a bottle of wine.

“And tell me about this cramph of a Strom, Hamun, you cunning rascal! Taken sick just before a duel!

Hey!”

We cracked the bottle and I told him a story and he laughed and promised he would stand as my second if Strom Lart persisted in the challenge, and he added: “And then, Hamun my boy, get sick again. Then I’ll deal with the rast!”

“That is most kind of you, my dear Rees.”

“Kind? Kind nothing! I’ll stick him and joy in the doing of it, by Krun!”

We proved the bottle honest — that is, we emptied it and so checked its measure — and then Rees rolled off, roaring a song about a lion-gal and her proclivities, and I could get on with my mission. The interruption had made me late. I had to reach the factory called the Blind Wall over on the far side of the Black River, down in a heavily guarded quarter, where, I had been informed in idle conversation, “. . . the jolly old guls who can be trusted filled up the voller what’s-its, don’t you know, old son.”

The incredible idea had occurred to me that these rich idle layabouts had no more idea than I how a flier worked. If they needed service, they told their slaves to take the voller to the repair shops, where guls would do the work. Only guls who had proved completely trustworthy were employed on the work. The state kept voller production, as one of their infernal laws, very much under their thumb. The decision not to fly was an easy one to make. I had to keep to the shadows, slink from cover to cover, make sure I was not seen. With a thrill I believe you may try to imagine, I belted up soft hunting leathers about me, drew the gleaming gold buckle tight, brought the broad leather belt around my waist, and cinctured it home. I strapped on a fine rapier given me by Delia, and a main-gauche. Over my right hip I carried a trusty old sailor’s knife. Also, as a little swank, I suppose, I carried a sheaf of terchicks over my shoulder. The terchick, the throwing knife of my plainsmen, could well be even quicker and more deadly this night than a Lohvian longbow — although I wouldn’t let Seg hear me say that. I took no shield. The dark russet-brown of the hunting leathers brought back memories of hunting in Aphrasöe and I sighed. As always, I vowed that when the current excitement was over, I would go and seek out the Todalpheme of Hamal and find out directions to the Swinging City. As a final gesture to the fates, I glued a beard onto my smooth-shaven chin. This beard was made up —

so Delia had told me with much laughter — from hairs I had myself sprouted and she had cut off. She had saved them and worked them up into a neat daggerlike beard, and used cunning silk bases to hold them in position. When I looked at myself in a tall pier mirror, I looked much as I had appeared out on the trail.

Over all I swirled a great dark gray cloak and then I padded out. If mere costume could get me past the guards, I was in and among the silver boxes already.

My soft leather hunting boots made no sound. I walked steadily across the Bridge of One Thousand Vosks over the Black River. Here lay rows of dark houses, suburbs where the guls lived. This kind of dark desperate errand struck me as very different from previous occasions when I had been about nefarious business on Kregen. Far sooner would I be back in Valka with Delia and the twins. But what I did now I did from the duty I conceived I owed my people of Valka, and to Vallia, also. In addition it was terribly clear that the Hamalians were conquest-bent, desirous of creating a huge empire, perhaps one to rival the old and half-remembered Empire of Loh. That meant the Miglas would suffer. That meant Djanduin would be overrun. That meant I had to do my utmost to put together some kind of alliance against Hamal, and equip the fighting forces with vollers that would not constantly break down. The darkness between moons was not that of Notor Zan, for one of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtled across the night sky.

Keeping to the shadows and creeping stealthily along the dark streets I avoided detection, a sly furtive creature indeed. Few people were about, for the guls were working long hours and they needed their sleep. The gates of the Blind Wall were patrolled by watchful Rapa guards, mercenaries who would not hesitate to kill to fulfill the terms of their hiring contracts. The strict laws of Hamal ensured the Rapas would carry out their guard duties with the same faithfulness to orders as a soldier of Hamal. Slinking along in the shadows, which lay so thick the small fleeting dot of light of the lesser moon merely served to heighten the intervening darkness, I made my way around the circuit of the walls. The Black River washed the northern face of the building and here I found the only place I thought might afford me ingress. Water plants grew along the wall, their hair-fine roots clinging to narrow cracks in the masonry. Up these vines I went, testing each handhold, my legs kicking free. I can move silently when necessary, an art learned even before I spent those educational seasons with my clansmen, and the parapet felt hard under my hands as I looked down from the summit of the wall. Darkness, silence, mystery, lay below. It did not take me long to find steps down from the parapet and a path across to the likeliest-looking building. The wooden door was padlocked; but with a muffling fold of my cloak and a savage wrench with the knife, the padlock snapped. I eased inside.

Well, I will not weary you with a recital of my disappointment. And yet — what else was there, truly, to find? Here lay the piles of boxes, some filled, some waiting to be filled. Piles of minerals, earth, and sand lay neatly ranked, the scoops and shovels — and every one with a stamped number! — regimented in their racks. I sifted the earth through my fingers, barely able to see. I had brought a globe of fireglass containing fire, with a wood-and-metal carrying box with shutters. I chanced opening one of the shutters and the firelight within flashed upon the piles of earth, on the ranked rows of silver boxes. I felt anger, and crushed it down.

With two silver boxes in a voller, you could fly.

By bringing the boxes closer together or moving them farther apart, and by changing their attitude, you could control a flier, make it rise or fall, move faster or slower.

I knew what the silver boxes contained.

Earth and air.

Air and earth.

I looked around. Dirt and air! How could they be the secret I sought?

This shed contained silver boxes for the mineral half of the controls. The next shed contained silver boxes that were empty of all but air. The faint smell of tainted malsidges, a fruit of which I am fond, made me wrinkle up my nostrils. Well, I did not think they crushed up malsidges and somehow conveyed the smell into the boxes. But they might. Then I forced myself to realize this was in reality a reconnaissance mission. I was establishing parameters of action here in Ruathytu. Soon, by listening to my rich acquaintances during the day, and following up the clues by night, I would work nearer to a solution of the mystery.

Besides being a world of great beauty, Kregen is also a world of great and sudden violence, and there was no anticlimax to this night’s work. Or, rather, the true anticlimax of my failed mission was masked by a flurry of action as four Rapa guards, carrying flaring torches, burst into the shed as I bent over an opened silver box.

The sight of them in the torchlight with their ferocious beaked faces, the war-feathers flaunting from their helmets, and the swords and shields, snapped some link in my brain. I flung myself upon them, ripping the rapier free, my left hand still cumbered by the small cube of the fireglass box. They shrieked in their high obscene Rapa way as our blades crossed glittering in the torchlight. My cloak flared out, swirling, as I spun away, slicing a Rapa beak down, avoiding the vicious thraxter slash, stuffing the box back into my breechclout.

“Apim rast! Die!” They were shrilling at me, incensed by the death of the first of them, absolutely confident they would overpower me. They were making an infernal racket, and as the blades crossed and rang and screeched, the noise grew and I knew guards would come running to reinforce these three. I dropped the next, my main-gauche slapped into my hand, and deflected the next one’s thrust. My blade gonged against a shield and I had to skip and duck away. A sword-and-shield-man against a rapier-and-main-gauche-man provide endless room for argument; but it always all boils down in the end to who is the better practitioner with the weapons he uses.

Luckily for me I was able to prove superior. The torchlight splintered from the blades as they chopped and crossed. The two remaining Rapas’ blades were shining and silver; my blade gleamed starkly dark with blood.

“Yetch!” one Rapa shrieked at me, foam flecking from that beaked face. “When we take you it will be the Heavenly Mines for you!”

“Aye!” panted the other, as he thrust up his shield and so managed to deflect my blade. “The Heavenly Mines, cramph, where you will slave until you die!”

These guards would know the Heavenly Mines by hearsay only, by their fearful reputation. There was no information to be gleaned from them. I had slaved in the Heavenly Mines already, and nothing would drag me back there, so I thought, as I twisted a slash and feinted left, then dropped and was able to thrust the rapier through the guts of number three.

Number four shrieked again, in fear this time, and turned to rush from the shed to the safety of his friends. I could hear them coming running, now, shouting the alarm.

He had seen my face. It was bearded, true, and many Rapas cannot tell one apim from another; although with experience I was growing more and more capable of differentiating between Rapa faces. He was a guard and would also be experienced. He would be questioned.

As the fool turned to cast back a frightened glance, the terchick stood out quiveringly from his eye. He collapsed against the door as those outside sought to thrust it open, and the slight delay gave me time to leap for the far end, bash a plank out, force more away from the beams, and so dart out into the darkness. Still the Twins were not up, but over the eastern horizon, She of the Veils rose, ominously lifting pale level streaks of gold and pink.

Time was running out.

The way back to the inn — an inn I had already made up my mind to leave for a more convenient billet

— lay across either one of two bridges across the Black River to the sacred quarter. I chose to return over the built-up and arcaded bridge the Ruathytuans called the Bridge of Sicce, for its massive pillars and piers supported a pressing multitude of houses and shops, with promenades running as many as three or four stories above the main street level. From this high perch many and many a poor devil cast himself or herself into the dark waters in suicide to be swept away to the Ice Floes of Sicce. These galleries and arcades and narrow roofs gave me a fine time as I fled back. My cloak flared in the wind of my passage. She of the Veils rose clear of the jumbled horizon and shone benignly down as I scampered across the rooftops and jumped down from the ledges, level to level, passing across the river and so plunging back into the sacred quarter. Here I could leap from balcony to balcony, hang from ledges, crawl along a razor-backed gable, cling to a chimney, and hurl myself across the gulf of an alley far below. I do not think any eyes spied me as I cavorted across the tiles of sleeping Ruathytu. What kind of devilish figure, half beast, half gargoyle, I created, hurdling the rooftops, I did not know. I slid down the roof of my inn, plunged to the balcony of my room, and crept stealthily in by the window. I employed a couple of harmless Hamalian servants, and they were not disturbed in the next room. As I turned for a last look at this alien sky I saw She of the Veils floating clear. And against that luminous golden-pink orb floated a long bank of jagged black cloud like a reflection of the city below.