CHAPTER TEN

From Delphond to the Blue Mountains

Delphond is a delightful, charming, cozy land of small fields and secluded hamlets, of winding brooks and gentle undulations of ground clad in the brilliant green of Kregan grass speckled with the prodigious abundance of Kregan flowers. It is a warm land, a soft and safe country, a place for lazy retirement and idle amusements, happy and carefree and going the old ways of its people. Tucked away in a southern bend of the coastline of the main island of Vallia, it receives all the benefit of the Zim Stream, that warm current sweeping up through the Cyphren Sea from the unknown southwestern oceans. From Delphond comes the finest vintage claret in all Kregen, or so I believe. Also there are apples, pears, gregarians, and squishes, and the people there rear a kind of ponsho whose fleece, besides being as soft and silky as any in two worlds, provides chops and shoulders and legs of a succulence not to be believed until eaten, fresh, crisp, and savory, with liberal helpings of mint sauce and with the small round yellow momolams, a tuber that Zair put on Kregen in holy wedlock with roast ponsho.

Also in Delphond are fat cattle, very like our Earthly bulls and cows, and the cream they make there . . . it is of a triple consistency, rich and thick and fit for Opaz himself. Such a meal I ate in a pleasant raftered alehouse, with the twin suns slanting in at the open window and the bees busy about the mauve and white loomin flowers in a pottery jar of Pandahem ware on the windowsill. The good-natured innkeeper’s wife bustled, bringing me her best, and I ate well, for the journey had been swift and eating of secondary importance. My booted feet stuck out across the polished sturm-wood floor and in other circumstances I would have been content. I munched a handful of palines after the meal was finished, considering.

In my lesten-hide bag there now reposed but three copper obs . . . I had squandered all my slender resources on this last meal. The people of Delphond are jolly, given to laughter, happy, tucked away in their corner of Vallia, secure in the knowledge that they own fealty to Delia of Delphond as their suzerain, than whom there is no more fair or perfect a girl in all their world — and, as I know, in two worlds. But I was not pleased.

The Emperor had indeed visited Delphond and been received with the pomp and ceremony fitting to his exalted majesty. He had come by water, as was fitting, in a long train of narrow boats, traveling with a full thousand of his personal bodyguard, the Bowmen of Loh, and with many retainers, servitors, and slaves. Delia, like myself, recognizes that in certain circumstances slaves can be economical, but that in many areas of the economy they are not; effective or otherwise, slaves are not for Delia of Delphond. There had been trouble when she had emancipated the whole of Delphond, as soon as the gift of the estate had been received from her grandmother, as there had been trouble of a different kind when she had emancipated the slaves of the Blue Mountains. Now the country was in apple-pie order. The colors worn banded on the shirt sleeves of Delia’s retainers were lavender and laypom — the laypom is a fruit rather like a peach but of a pale subtle yellow color, delicate and exquisite — and her servitors moved with the springy step and open shoulders and frank faces of free men and women. But this could not charm me now, for the Emperor had not found Delia in Delphond. She had gone, and so he had followed her, I was told, to the Blue Mountains.

The Emperor could simply wave a hand and the haulers would take up their ropes and away would glide his whole caravan. I must fend for myself. Well, I had done that often enough before, and was like to do it often enough again. So with a good meal of the products of Delphond inside me I stirred up my faithful zorca and set off westward for the Blue Mountains.

There was in the character of the folk of Delphond a gentleness and a happy laughter, too, that I knew would serve Delia well in times of peace. I had grave doubts that I could raise an army here that would fight. In that, as you will hear, I did the Delphondi an injustice. But then, in my black, dispirited mood, I canceled them from my evil calculations. Even so, I could understand that I had no right to bring war and bloodshed to this pleasant estate, that I would truly be the evil man I know myself to be if I forced these gentle folk to take up the sword, and carried fire and slaughter through their comfortable country. Delia had told me that Delphond, willed to her by her grandmother, was a tiny estate. It took me two full days to reach the western border from the port city of Delphond. Truly, the ideas of size of the Kregan people, with the much greater landmass of the planet, are of a different scale from those of Earth. Even their methods of travel have no significant influence on their conceptions of distance, for whereas the canal boats travel so leisurely, the fliers cover vast distances very rapidly. Astride my zorca I bid Remberee to Delphond, which her people call Delphond the Blessed, and rode on into Thadelm, the neighboring country, owing allegiance to Vad Selnix. That land shared much of Delphond’s rural beauty on its southeastern borders, but gradually changed in character as I wended northwestward, until the land sprawled gray and featureless beneath the glare of the suns, a wild expanse of moorland and rolling downland. A Vad is one of the intermediate ranks between a Kov and a Strom. I rode on and passed a pleasant “Llahal” with the few people I saw. I was able to catch a few rabbits —

very much like Terrestrial rabbits, a meat of which I am not over-fond — and the ever-present palines worked their usual magic.

If necessary, I would beg.

By this time you must realize that I didn’t care what I did just so long as I reached my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.

By this means and that, and, I am relieved to be able to say, without doing anything of which I was truly ashamed, I traversed the country in a northwesterly direction, passing through Stromnates and Kovnates and Vadvars, and through a number of wide estates, as big as states in themselves, owned by the Emperor. When the mountains began to loft on the horizon I knew I was approaching my goal. I had sold one of the daggers, but I kept the rapier and remaining main-gauche, for I felt I might have need of them above the usual need a man has for weapons on Kregen. I fell in with a caravan of calsanys, with preysany-litters, and with a guard of zorcamen. The servants wore shirts with sleeves banded in bold and black.

A zorcaman wearing a close-fitting helmet of iron, with a nasal and a high flaunting plume of gold and black feathers, hauled across my path. He had no lance. His quiver of javelins was unstrapped and he balanced one of the long casting shafts in his right hand as he eyed me. I said, as civilly as I could: “Llahal.”

“Llahal,” he replied. Then: “Who are you and whence do you travel?”

I knew what to say.

“I am Drak ti Valkanium, and I go to High Zorcady in the Blue Mountains.”

“Your business?”

He was a big fellow, and beyond him the rest of his company jogged along escorting the caravan. There were fifty of them, a sizable little squadron, and judging from the bulging sacks and panniers of the calsanys, they were extremely careful with what they carried. They were not a mere merchant’s caravan, like that of Naghan the Paunch on far Turismond — or even of Xoltemb, in Segesthes, as far in the opposite direction.

“Who are you?”

The lifted javelin quivered. “I am asking the questions, dom.”

“By what right?”

His laugh was intended to be scornful, but I detected a note of uncertainty.

“You travel alone, Kr. Drak. I am Hikdar Stovang, and I travel on the business of the Kov of Aduimbrev. We are about to enter the Blue Mountains, and I want no secret enemy at my back.”

“You are one of Vektor of Aduimbrev’s men!” I relished this. “That is good. If you will, I would like to travel with you. I, too, have no wish for unseen enemies at my back through the Blue Mountains.”

He spat. He had shown his authority, had sized me up as a simple Koter, a gentleman, and was prepared now to let me join his caravan. “The Blue Mountains,” he said. “When the Kov marries the Princess Majestrix I hope to Opaz I am not stuck out here on duty. The place is a death trap.”

I was fascinatedly interested, but my questions must be of such a kind, and in such an order, as not to arouse his suspicions. We turned our zorcas together and rode knee to knee. He sheathed the javelin. He was a soldier, doing a job, and not much caring for it.

The retainers of Vektor were heartily sick of the whole business. The quicker their master married the Princess Majestrix and had a brood of children to carry on the imperial line, the better. Then perhaps they could all return to their old ways and all this chasing about, first here, then there, seeking to make Delia of the Blue Mountains make up her mind, could finish. “I’ve saddle sores on my saddle sores, Kr. Drak!” declared Hikdar Stovang. “By Vox, I’m black and blue where I sit down.”

I smothered my chuckle. I can always react like a normal man where my Delia is concerned. She had been leading them a dance. Impudently refusing to marry the man of her father’s choice, then arrogantly refusing to marry at all, she had held them all off, going from one of her estates to another, staying with friends — I felt my senses quicken at that — she had kept them all at bay ever since her mysterious arrival back in Vallia.

“But all the nonsense is going to stop, now, Kr. Drak. We carry the wedding gifts. The Emperor is in High Zorcady. The Princess Majestrix is there, also. So is Kov Vektor.” Hikdar Stovang sounded like a man well-pleased that a difficult and unpleasant job is finished. “Where the Emperor is, then that is where the wedding will take place. And right glad, to the glory of the Invisible Twins, am I that it will soon be over.”

Aduimbrev lay to the north midlands, and Stovang couldn’t wait to return home. The Vomansoir Cut had not gone through Vektor’s Kovnate, and I guessed we had flown over it in the ice airboat. Now I set my face forward. Oh, yes, I relished the irony of thus riding in with the very wedding gifts of my rival, but that rival held all the aces.

A few canals have been cut through the Blue Mountains, and one, the Quanscott Cut, is carried through the longest tunnel in Vallia, driven through the heart of the Blue Mountains to the coastal strip on the west where stands Quanscott, the major port on that stretch of coast. But the Emperor would be riding up to High Zorcady astride a zorca, unless he chose to ride like old women, monks, or children, and saddle a preysany.

I knew that here, all around me in the rolling wild country leading up to the Blue Mountains, roamed thousands, possibly millions, of zorcas. This was zorca country. The frowning citadel and the town that had grown up on the granite crags around it in sight and sound of rushing waterfalls was aptly named High Zorcady. On most days clouds drift around the highest towers. From the ramparts on a clear day you can look out and see so vast an expanse of country that the very coil of the world seems to lie beneath your feet.

We had some way to go yet before we reached that high and inaccessible place, full of crags and water-thunder, drifting with clouds and the wide-winged crested-korf. That night we camped in a hollow by a stream and I was able to appease my hunger with hot vosk and taylyne soup. I noticed that double guards were set. Stovang was jumpy. He had been carrying this treasure of wedding gifts all around Vallia, it seemed, in futile chase of Delia, on the run from her father’s marriage plans, but I knew that he was not apprehensive on account of the gifts.

The Blue Mountains, it seemed, were notorious.

According to Hikdar Stovang, bandits and robbers and assassins lived in every cave and crevice of the rocks.

I could see I was welcome as an extra sword. Fifty zorca riders had not been considered too many guards. Among the zorca riders in the service of Vektor and wearing his colors and insignia — a butterfly on gold and black — were halfling mercenaries, Rapas, Fristles, a couple of Chuliks. They appeared a reasonably disciplined and efficient bunch, but I slept with a hand on my rapier hilt, and with a lifetime’s experience I slept ready to leap up in an instant. This knack of sleeping soundly and yet with the ability to react to the noise that threatens usually serves me well, for it has been learned in the harsh life of seafaring, or adventuring on Kregen; it is not a gift of cloistered universities. Among the zorca riders were two Womoxes. Although outwardly as composed and drilled as their companions, they exhibited to me clear signs of a much greater degree of agitation. I had fought Viridia’s Womoxes, and found them formidable opponents, their stumpy horns mounted on their foreheads able to jab at an enemy’s eyes with terrifying power. Now they made no pretense at sleep. They stayed on guard all night, alert, their weapons drawn, waiting.

The next day as we jogged northwestward Hikdar Stovang, who had taken to me as a new companion able to enliven the journey with new stories, enlightened me, although without realizing he did so. The island of the Womoxes lay directly westward of Vallia, with the inevitable cluttering of smaller islands and islets between, and the port serving the Blue Mountains, Quanscott, lay on the same parallel of latitude as the chief easternmost port of Womox. Before Vallia had achieved hegemony and then consolidation of all the different peoples that now formed part of the empire, clearly there had been long and bitter racial enmity between the Womoxes and the people of the Blue Mountains. They were all of one nation now, under one emperor, but the old antipathies persisted here, at least. We rode on. Vektor’s men lived well, and they did not grudge me my share of food. We were made welcome at a couple of towns, where there was an influx of people foreign to these parts; then, as we penetrated higher and higher into the Blue Mountains and by following narrow tracks winding beside gorges where streams splashed and roared a thousand feet below, we knew we had left not only the plains and foothills behind but the attitudes of mind to be found there. We stayed a night at a small mountain village where the atmosphere of hostility could be cut with a terchick. We pushed on. Here local politics, local grudges, and local vendettas were carried to extremes.

“We’re all one people under the Emperor, aren’t we? complained Stovang. “If this is the family my master the Kov is marrying into, Opaz help him, by Vox!”

I was puzzled. The antagonism of the inhabitants of the Blue Mountains was a tangible onslaught on a man’s feelings; we were interlopers, unwanted, detested. Clannish feelings ran high here. Were the Blue Mountain people, as Stovang insisted, just a rabble gang of thieves and cutthroats?

What a contrast to Delphond!

Very often now, during the day, as we progressed laboriously along a narrow ledge, or negotiated a track perched between heaven and hell, we heard a long ululating call, echoing and rebounding from crag to crag. The high notes pealed in the clean chill air. The mountains rang with the gong-notes.

“We’re under observation, Opaz rot ’em,” grunted Stovang. We edged our zorcas along with care, and the animals put their dainty hooves down with a precision that showed they fully understood the situation. Highly intelligent, are zorcas.

This difficult path wended higher and higher, traversing a rampart wall of mountains. The peaks soared to either hand, their lower slopes falling away into gorge and crevasse, and so down and along and out to the foothills. Trees of all the mountain varieties grew here, and flowers of fragile beauty, and we saw mountain ponshos leaping like impiters from crag to crag. The peaks carried mantles of ice and snow. The snow-line lay high above us still, and the weather held none of that frigid bite of the Mountains of the North where I had met and rescued Furtway and his nephew Jenbar. I was grateful for that. Once we had penetrated the rampart barrier, which curved in a gigantic oval, we could descend the other side and so ride out onto the great central plateau within the Blue Mountains. But, as Stovang said with as much pleasure as he could derive from the situation, we were not traveling that far. High Zorcady had been built on its serried peaks where the pass reached its highest point. Cupped by mountains, shielded by clouds, walled by crags, High Zorcady frowned down from the mist. It was at that point, as we paused in a narrow defile to glare up at High Zorcady, eerie, pointed, and leering above us, that the Blue Mountain Boys jumped us.

All was instant confusion. The mercenaries drew their rapiers, some hurled javelins, their zorcas wheeling and colliding. I saw stones hurtling to smash against close-fitting helmets or thump against gold and black chests. I saw men in shaggy ponsho skins leaping from the rocks to lay their cudgels against skulls. I saw the frantic pandemonium of the fight, then I was down, and a man lifted a rock high over his head, straddled above me, laughing.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I meet the Blue Mountain Boys and the shorgortz

I reached up and took the rock away from his brown fingers and he had to let it go or his fingers would have snapped. I threw the rock away. I took his wrists in my left hand, his throat in my right, and I squeezed — a little, not much, just enough to let him know who was master here.

“I could kill you now, dom. But I will not. I am not one of Kov Vektor’s men. You should have seen that from my clothes.”

He glared at me, his eyes bulging out, a bright and brilliant blue. That was interesting; nearly all Vallians have bright brown eyes, and brown hair, and some of them have the luck to have that outrageous blend of chestnut that so glorifies the hair of Delia of the Blue Mountains. I released my grip a little and he choked and coughed.

A quick glance around confirmed that all the zorcamen were down. I saw one Womox with a broken horn and blood oozing from a smashed skull. The other I could not see, nor did I ever again see that particular Womox. A Chulik was backed against a rock, his rapier slashing desperately at the cudgels of the ring of Blue Mountain Boys. I looked for Stovang, but could not pick him out. The defile looked a mess, with calsanys and preysanys milling, zorcas standing with drooping reins, the bodies of unconscious men sprawled everywhere.

“Listen, dom. You have a leader. Tell me his name — quick!”

No thought of treachery occurred to him; he told me what, in other circumstances, could not have been dragged from him by torture.

“Korf Aighos!”

I nodded, satisfied. The man was named for the powerful iridescent blue bird of the mountains, a nickname, as one might say “Eagle Jack.” The man tried to work his throat, and gulped. And I was satisfied he was cowed — how little I knew of the Blue Mountain Boys, how proud of them I am!

“Get up, dom. Shout for Korf Aighos. I would like to have words with him.”

The man rose, dragging his ponsho skin about him. He wore decent leathers beneath and his body was of the whipcord toughness required of a mountaineer. His face, brown and lined, glanced back at me with a return of his natural arrogance.

“Shout, dom,” I said.

He shouted.

There was a stir in the Blue Mountain Boys, and a man strode toward me. At first glance I knew I could do business with this man. He walked with a swinging alert gait, half arrogant, half cautious, that marks a man ready for what the world may bring him. He carried a sword, short and heavy, more of a large knife than a shortsword, and its tip shone clean and unbloodied. He was not overlarge, but his chest was massive and his arms roped with muscle. His eyes, too, were blue.

“What is this—” he began.

I chopped his words off brutally.

“Aighos! If you look you will see I am not Vektor’s man!”

“By Vox! You speak out of turn, cramph! You must be a rast of Vektor’s, or else why are you here?”

A little rascally fellow with snaggly teeth and shaggy ponsho fleeces flapping about his narrow shanks trotted up. He carried a cudgel almost as long as himself. He had but one eye.

“Stick him, Korf Aighos!” he cackled, waving the bludgeon. “Stick him and take the treasure—”

“Still your tongue, Ob-eye!” Aighos glared. “I will say who is to be stuck and who not. As for the treasure, throw it into the river for all I care.”

One or two of the ruffians, forming a watchful circle about me, started at this. Ob-eye yelped as though hurt.

“But the treasure! Stick him, I say!”

“I will stick you, by Vox, you ob-eyed rast! You know the orders of my Lady of Strombor! No killing!”

I really felt those solid mountains lurch under me. My Lady of Strombor! I, Dray Prescot, was the Lord of Strombor! There were only two ladies of Strombor in all Kregen — and one, Great-Aunt Shusha, was still there, as far as I knew, still in Strombor in Zenicce. So — so Aighos could only be speaking of my Lady of Strombor, my Delia!

No real recollection remains of how I covered the intervening space, but I was gripping Korf Aighos by the scruff of the neck, and twisting him up to me, and glaring down into his face. He glared back — and that dark, betraying shadow passed over his eyes.

“What is this of my Lady of Strombor! Speak, and quickly, or I’ll snap your neck like a rotten pitcher!”

He struggled, and a hand was laid on my shoulder preparatory to my being whirled about and struck. I back-heeled and a man screeched. I lifted Aighos, beating away his fists, for he had dropped his long knife, and I swung him about and I shouted at these Blue Mountain Boys.

“Listen to me, you creeping mountain cramphs! I mean you no harm. I visit your country and am set upon! If this rast is your leader then let him speak, or by Zim-Zair, he’s a dead man!”

I saw Korf Aighos’ eyes flick toward me, and, suddenly, he went limp in my fist.

“I will speak. But first, tell me who you are — and, for the sake of Opaz himself, put me down!”

I set him on his feet.

“I am Drak ti Valkanium,” I said — and then wondered if that had been the best thing to say. But habit had become ingrained.

He glanced at me, sidelong. He shook his head. “Now, by the Invisible Twins, I wonder!”

“Tell me of my Lady of Strombor!”

At this, as though abruptly recollecting himself and where he was, his face took on an expression of alarm immediately succeeded by grim determination.

He glanced around. He said, in a whisper, “If I tell you that, Tyr Drak, the Opaz-forsaken guards of Vektor will hear. Then we shall have to kill them all. My Lady of Strombor has expressly forbidden killing, although—” Here he spread his hands and glanced around, not, I fancy, with any too-guilty a feeling. He finished: “Sometimes the knife or the rock are the only solution.”

A pragmatist, Korf Aighos. We withdrew into a cleft in the rocks, and he eyed me so narrowly that I tensed up ready to beat him in whatever scheme he was brewing. Instead, and again the rocks of the solid mountains lurched, he said: “You called yourself Drak ti Valkanium. I gave you the honorable title of Tyr because you are clearly so. But I think if I called you another name you would answer.”

I looked at him. I know that old devil’s look flashed evilly from my face, for he swallowed, and hurried on.

“Pur Dray, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Zorcander of the Clan of Felschraung — I know I am not wrong!”

“Yes,” I said, shattered.

“The Princess said you would come. Long and long has she waited. By stratagem after stratagem has she fended them off. Her father, the Emperor, may Opaz have him in his keeping, and that perfumed idiot Vektor — and there are others. Welcome and thrice welcome, my Lord of Strombor, to the Blue Mountains!”

“Well, sink me!” I exclaimed.

Korf Aighos rattled on, his face eager, his whole bearing animated and intense. “The Princess uses her name as the Lady of Strombor as a disguise. She trusts me.” He spoke that proudly, and I could not condemn him for that. “This idea was hers. If there are no wedding presents, there can be no wedding. She it was, the dear daring Princess, who discovered the real treasure was coming in this caravan the hard and little-used way, and the great parade of servants and slaves and guards along the Quanscott Cut was the fake treasure!”

“That sounds like Delia’s style.”

“Every man of the Blue Mountains would die for her! And of them all, the Blue Mountain Boys are her most devoted and loyal subjects.”

I had to rise to this occasion. Implicitly, in all Aighos said, there was the fact that if he agreed with Delia that she would not marry Vektor, then he must agree to her marrying me. I had to show some fire, some spirit, act a part as the great man.

“I would thank you, Korf Aighos, for your love and loyalty. I agree that we should not kill Vektor’s guards. But, my friend, I do not think you should hurl the loot into the river.”

“No?” He sounded doubtful, at which I took heart.

“Carefully spread out and spent, it would bring in much for the people of the Blue Mountains.”

“Loot!”

Had I gone too far? Was he an honest man in the sense that he wouldn’t accept loot when it came his way? Was this stealing in the accepted sense of the word? I was sailing near the wind, even by Kregan standards which are notoriously laxer than Earth’s. Perhaps—

I said quickly, “But as we are all honest men, then the treasure must be gathered together and returned to Vektor when the Princess Majestrix and I are married.”

“Amen to that, my lord.” Then he screwed up his blue eyes, and said, with a chuckle: “And I will take counsel on the question of the treasure. We are great bandits in the Blue Mountains!”

They are great ruffians, the Blue Mountain Boys.

The missing Womox had leaped voluntarily to his death, rushing back down the track out of the defile and so over a precipice. The other, the one with the broken tusk, sat crouched in mortal terror of the Blue Mountain men. I had seen the Womoxes in action, aboard Viridia the Render’s swordship; now I saw how a member of that savage and sullen race was terrified in his turn. And yet — my Delia was the princess of this cutthroat bunch!

Aighos bustled about superintending the tying of the guards’ wrists. They would be set stumbling up the track the remainder of the distance to High Zorcady in the mist. The calsanys loaded with the treasure were prodded away down the track. I looked up and saw a line of airboats appear over a nearby crag. They followed in line astern formation as neat as a rulered line on a score, sailing through the upper levels. They did not see us, down among the rocks, and so serenely flew on. I could guess why the treasure had not been brought in by flier; no one was going to trust an airboat with all this treasure among these hostile crags. The thought drew from me a gesture of respect for the men of the Vallian Air Service. Hikdar Stovang stumbled up, blood on his face, his helmet gone, his bright gold and black butterfly insignia ripped and stained.

“Traitor!” he yelled at me as I stood with Aighos. “I trusted you, you Opaz-forsaken cramph! Drak ti Valkanium! I shall remember that!”

Ob-eye swung his cudgel and slanted his one eye at Aighos, but the korf of the mountains laughed and said: “Let the braggart go!”

His men respected Aighos, that was very plain, and even Ob-eye, inclined to rumbustiousness, stayed in line, and with them all accepted me as Drak, a friend of Aighos. The korf considered it best for the time being to conceal my identity from everyone, with the exception of himself. I saw, with an amusement tinged with a wry affection for this korf of the mountains, this bandit, that he relished this knowledge, this secret he shared with a princess and a lord.

From the zorcas Aighos selected the finest specimen, that ridden by Hikdar Stovang. I remounted my own animal. The other Blue Mountain Boys selected zorcas and preysanys, and in a straggly procession we wended down away from High Zorcady.

I looked back. High Zorcady! There was a ring about that, a fineness, a sense of high yearning. The grim rearing pile spearing up into the clouds, its towers ringed with mist, the crested-korfs wheeling past its battlemented walls, all made a reality out of a fantasy of imagination. I knew I was sorry not to have visited High Zorcady.

The plan was to get me in, or to get Delia out, and once we had met, to make further plans. I did not care which, just so long as I could hold my Delia in my arms again.

“Pur Dray,” said Aighos, and then coughed and fiddled with his reins and berated the poor zorca between his knees. “Kr. Drak! We shall find hospitality at my cousin’s village. You rode past it and never saw it, so well are the houses hidden.”

He spoke the truth. The walls and buildings constructed of the rock against which they stood remained extraordinarily difficult to detect. We drank strong Kregan tea and ate a specialty of the mountains, ponsho rolled in hibisum flour and baked slowly — baked for three whole days — and then drenched in a taylyne sauce and simmered for another day. By the time the meat reaches your lips it melts like the sweetest honey. Superb! We also, being good Vallians, drank a great deal of wine of various vintages. The messenger had been sent, a lithe young girl of the mountains, striding with her skirts tucked up, springing boldly over frightening chasms, carrying laundry. The laundry would get her past the guards, and once inside she was known to friends, who would conduct her directly to Delia. Perforce, I waited. We had been quartered in the largest house, a two-story structure whose roof of sharply-angled slates would have towered over the other buildings but for the cunning use of overhanging rock-shelves. Each slate had to be fixed in place with severity; where torrents could wash over the rocks and sweep everything away the roofs had to be steep. There could be none of the shallow roofs of the valleys where the slates could lie and slumber without fear of slipping off.

I sat in a carved black-wood chair that must have been all of two hundred years old, and talked with the men. I had a strange peace, a tranquility, a sense of time standing still. So near I was to Delia that all my recent frantic scurryings appeared ludicrous. I had merely to sit here, eat and drink and talk, and she would appear in the doorway, radiant, glorious, alive!

In the corner stood a two-handed sword, fully seven feet long, of that peculiar kind used on Earth around the sixteenth century. Contrary to popular belief, these enormously long swords of war were used in combat, and not merely for color guards of honor or as symbols, but the man to wield them must be a man indeed. This one had a leather-wrapped grip, wide quillons, and also a wrapping of velvet around the blade before the quillons. The cotton would have come from Donengil and the silk, probably, from Loh. To protect the hand when grasping this shortening-section a pair of semi-quillons had been neatly set into the metal. The thing looked clean, without rust, but a casual test with my thumb showed it to be blunt.

“The great sword of war of the Blue Mountains,” said Korf Aighos. He half laughed, half sighed. “They are out of fashion now. There was a time when men raced through the ravines wielding the swords of war and none could stand against them.”

These men had never seen a Krozair longsword. Beside this enormous brute a Krozair two-hander was a subtle instrument. I had the sudden craving to feel a real Krozair longsword in my fists again. The feeling made me realize why Aighos had recognized me. He had heard me use a Krozair oath —

“By Zim-Zair!” — and no doubt Delia herself had let the resounding words fall from her lips, also, from time to time. She was fully entitled to do so.

A fracas started in the narrow walk and we went out, laughing and joking, carrying blackjacks of wine, expecting to see sport. A man raced past, screaming, his hair streaming, his face sweating, the eyes like livid coals.

“The shorgortz! The shorgortz!”

A woman screamed and snatched up her child and ran inside, slamming her lenken door. Aighos dropped his blackjack and the rich dark wine spread across the stones.

“The shorgortz,” I said. ‘Tell me, Korf, what is that?”

‘Truly you are not yet of the Blue Mountains, Kr. Drak!”

“Bring fire!” a man yelled.

“Shelter within doors and pray!”

“Fire!”

“If you light torches,” I said, at once adjusting to the peril, “you will tell the guards where we are.”

“Better the Emperor’s aragorn, or the mercenaries, than the shorgortz!”

So it was that serious, then. . .

I couldn’t have them running about with torches alarming the neighborhood and alerting the men brought back by Hikdar Stovang. And, far more importantly, if there was some monster out there in the mountains, my Delia was coming . . . I did not hesitate. I went back into the house, snatched up the great sword of war, brushed past its protesting owner, and strode out into the street. Men were milling. I shouted loudly, stilling them by my anger.

“Tell me, you Blue Mountain Boys! Where is this Zair-forsaken shorgortz?”

They babbled. A hundred paces along the track from the village. Along the track my Delia must walk. I ran.

I thought of the Ullgishoa and Umgar Stro. Then I had fought only with my chains and had not until later grasped the great Krozair longsword Pur Zenkiren had given me in Pattelonia. Now I held what was little more than a bar of steel. Mind you, I had bested four Womoxes with a length of lumber aboard Viridia’s swordship . . . It had seemed to me that a great bashing, cutting instrument of some length would be the best weapon here, better, at any rate, than an ordinary rapier.

I saw the shorgortz.

The thing was immense, nauseating, powerful, and altogether repulsive. I did not hesitate in my headlong dash but went on, at top speed, hurling myself forward, the huge sword of war held high and cocked over my right shoulder.

The shorgortz was a reptile. It was not a risslaca, those dinosaurs of Kregen; it had twelve legs, bent and crooked, so that it walked with the body slung between. Its body was squamous, the scales rimmed with a crimson iridescence, their centers green-black. Its four eyes kept up a rapid blinking. Its tendrils groped forward, writhing, seeking, snatching at anything that ran, to snatch and grip and force the prey into the convulsively chewing parallel jaws that stretched back to the rear of its hideous head. It was of the size of, for example, a double-decker bus, and it stank. It reeked with its own effluvia and the rotting stenches of its victims.

The sword of war slashed down.

The blade struck the thing cleanly over the head — and bounced!

The damn thing was as blunt as a lead razor.

I struck again and again and then had to skip back as a tendril writhed out toward me. My blows had no apparent effect on the shorgortz. No doubt it was merely fulfilling its destiny. No doubt it was acting as its nature impelled it. But I knew that my Delia would come walking lightly down this track and if this obscene thing was alive to meet her . . . I would not think of that. This time I did what I should have done at first. I ran in, thrusting, to plunge the sword of war into the top right-hand eye. Thick ichor pulsed forth, gagging with the smell of vomit. The thing lashed its tail with tremendous force from side to side, splitting and pulverizing the rocks< I leaped, thrust again, and now the lower right-hand eye burst.

I dodged back. A tendril lapped my body and I had to let go the sword of war with my left hand, draw my dagger and cut through. The keen steel bit. Maybe the sword of war had been a mistake? I needed a weapon that would bite!

The shrieks and hissings of the reptile screeched higher. I kept the dagger in my left hand, the curved steel guard shielding, and began a systematic slashing away of the groping tendrils. Twice the massive tail arched over at me and smashed brutishly along the ground where I stood the instant before I leaped aside. I stuck the dagger into it, but it did no good. Thrusting the dagger between my teeth, dribbling and drooling the foul-tasting blood smearing it, I took the sword of war into my fists again. This time I slashed and hacked and thrust, blotted out the lower left eye. But the thing kept jerking back, protecting its last remaining orb, and I kept thrusting and missing. And now it began to clutch out at me with its forelegs. Wickedly sharp talons raked past me. I felt my leather tunic rip and a white-hot pain scored my side. I kept on. I had to. My body was smothered with the ichor. Steam rose in the light of the mingled rays of the twin suns. I leaped and struck — I slipped and a foreleg darted for me. Only the reflex of muscles long trained and hardened barred the sword up, a barrier of steel, to chop off the blow. I felt the vibrations hammer through my hands.

On my feet, I leaped, aiming for the remaining eye. The head twisted, reared, the fanged mouth opened

— I hauled back.

In blind anger I hurled the two-handed sword down. I hauled out the rapier. I launched myself at the beast.

Two, three, four thrusts at the eye, and all parried or blocked. I brought the rapier down in a swooshing cut and the sharp steel scythed into scale. Again and again I cut, but I could see, clearly and with growing desperation, that the rapier lacked the bulk, for all that the rapier is a cutting weapon, to slice through the armored scale. The bulk inched ponderously forward on the ten legs to the rear. The shorgortz was hesitant to push on. It must recognize that it faced some being not prepared to submit to being snatched up and stuffed down the fanged mouth.

Those fangs opened and closed, chewing angrily.

The thing was no more angry than me.

I leaped again, tried for the eye, missed, slashed down furiously, and the rapier pinged and broke across.

I threw the hilt at the eye.

It caromed off the snout.

Beneath the thing’s foreclaws lay the sword of war.

I took the dagger out of my mouth and plunged it deeply between two claws. The leg wrenched back, taking the dagger with it. I seized the great sword.

A mere lump of steel. Blunt as a boxer’s chin. I took a breath. I could feel the foul gunk all over me. I poised.

Then I leaped.

The point of the sword of war penetrated the left upper eye. It burst in a showering of liquid. I slipped, fell, rolled, saw a flailing claw descending on me, and rolled on.

The talons hit the rock at my side, gouting up dust.

I leaped up and with a last and desperate thrust got the sword through the broken lower left eye. This time I did not pull it out. I leaned on it and thrust as hard as my muscles could push. I sweated and panted and thrust, my feet swinging off the ground as the beast reared. It was shrieking and I was yelling. It roared in its last agony, and I roared in my agony that it would not die before my Delia passed by. I felt the foreleg brush past me, felt the talons rip my tunic back. I felt, again, that white-hot line of acid scorch down my back.

My fingers slipped from the greasy hilt.

I toppled back.

The rocks came up, hard; but they did not knock me out, and I was able to claw up, ready to fight the thing with my bare hands if necessary.

I recall little after that.

I did hear a man shout, dimly and far off, “Hai! Jikai!”

But that held no meaning.

The thing was down, was gushing blood everywhere. I staggered back, bruised, cut, exhausted, empty-handed. Men surrounded me. I heard the clang of weapons. I heard a yelling, wrapped in the fog of nonunderstanding.

Then, sharp and clear, like a lance-thrust, words shocked out at me.

“That’s Drak ti Valkanium! Take the rast! The traitor will die, slowly. Take him and bind him with iron chains!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Chained before the Emperor of Vallia

They took me and bound me with iron chains, and our sorry coffle wended painfully down the mountain trails to the plains and so to the canal.

I knew what was in store. I suppose, given that all things come to all men in the fullness of time, I had always known I would become a slave hauler and haul an Emperor’s barge. This was fitting. This was the circle of vaol-paol complete.

The difference was that I and my comrades captured by mercenaries in the employ of the Emperor were noted brigands, outlaws, who had robbed the caravan of the Kov Vektor. The wedding gifts were lost and could not be found. I had no idea where they were, and — with a heartfelt relief that had nothing to do with the fact that I would not suffer — I learned that we would not be put to the question. Torture is commonplace in some areas of Kregen; it had been outlawed centuries ago in Vallia. The Emperor’s authority was autocratic, although some men did not obey him, but he could not flout the rules of civilized behavior in this. We were being taken to Vondium to answer for our crimes before a properly constituted court. I say being taken — we were in the chained gangs of haulers who walked all the way there on bleeding feet.

With the vanishment of the wedding gifts, the Princess Majestrix could only refuse the wedding itself. No one could fault her in that. Presents must be exchanged on both sides. It was a civilized custom. There was no dowry and nothing from the other side; there was no buying of a wife and nothing on the other side. There was an exchange.

We were treated abominably enough on that journey. We hauled the barges at a fast rate, fairly running under the lash and the knout. We slept on a barge reserved for the purpose, and it stank of stale sweat, urine, and fear. All day and all night we kept up that steady progress, passing narrow boat after narrow boat on the way. The stentor with his curled-spiral trumpet sounded the warning of our coming long and loud before us, and the tows went splash, splash, splash, into the cut, and the narrow boat skippers poled out to the center to leave a clear right of way.

We were not just ordinary slave haulers; we were going to a just trial and then an execution, or a lifetime as haulers. I felt that most of my hauling comrades would welcome the first. I will not dwell on that time of hauling. My hair and beard, which had grown unattended during my travels across Vallia in search of Delia, grew luxuriantly, like bushes, untidy, knotted, filthy, covering my face. The lacerations from the shorgortz’s talons suppurated, and I knew that if I had not taken that bath of baptism in the sacred pool of the River Zelph, I would have been a dead man. The whips of the slave-masters and guards wealed me so that I was truly jikaidered. Sores covered my feet. The disgusting rag that had once been a gray slave breechclout around my loins stank and crawled with vermin. I tried to wash it and was flogged for my pains. Fresh water was provided for those people who could not drink the canalwater, and dry biscuits, with a minced stew of vosk and ponsho leavings. Each day we had a handful of palines, and I believe these alone kept people alive and going, and, in many cases, controlled the degree of their insanity.

The branding with the Emperor’s mark on our right shoulders we all underwent did not unduly worry me, for I knew that a brand would, on me, slowly thin and vanish as subcutaneous and cutaneous cells rebuilt themselves. The painful part came in that I had to be rebranded. The scar tissue on a normal human skin usually remained permanently; but I knew there were many skills on Kregen. I had seen how a brand might be removed in Zenicce. But I annoyed the slave-masters, and they kept an eye on me, and lashed their whips and their knouts with special viciousness in my direction. I was, all in all, during that passage, down in spirit.

The talons of the shorgortz must have exuded a poison, or a toxic fluid in the effluvia in which I had been drenched had penetrated my skin like an acid, for the wounds refused to heal. The guards took a perverse delight in laying their whips accurately across the old cuts. I was jikaidered well and truly. Jikaida is played on a checkered board; my hide was crisscrossed with the checkers of the lash. As I hauled and tugged at the harsh tow rope I did not think even the archangel Gabriel would recognize me. I was in far worse condition than ever I had been as an oar-slave in the swifters of Magdag. Zorg, my old oar-comrade, now dead, or Nath and Zolta, my two rascals, could never have seen in this hairy, stinking, lashed specimen the man Dray Prescot they had known.

Of the country through which we passed I was aware only of the towpath. We slaves, in a ragged bunch roughly three abreast, clawed onto our leashes, knotted and spliced to the main tow rope, and pulled, heads down. I saw the muddy track beneath my feet. Also, occasionally, and with a relief that broke the monotony, I saw lock gates and the smooth wooden beams that had to be opened and closed. I was never allowed what would have been the pleasant diversion of turning the paddle handles. That was reserved for the favored of the slaves, girls usually, whom the guards pampered. Somewhere, in this despairing mass of humanity like a clogging mass of insects at the end of a jam-sticky knife, trudged Korf Aighos. I did not even know how many of us had been captured, although the how of it was easy enough. The laundry girl had been captured, and the noise of my battle with that confounded shorgortz had drawn the guards like a magnet.

I couldn’t feel enmity for Hikdar Stovang. But although I had borne him no malice, he had believed the worst of me, and here I was, hauling for the Emperor.

We were riding the various canals on our way back southeastward to Vondium. I hardly cared. We must have ridden the Vindelka Cut, for Vindelka lies immediately to the northwest of Vondium. Often as I trod after my fellow haulers I walked a sea of muddy blood.

Some damned alchemy of that reptilian monster’s foul acid-dripping ichor refused to let my body heal up. My mind was cloudy for much of that passage. Sores covered me. The daily lashings merely kept my body bloody. I still had strength, and could march; those of the ordinary haulers who fell were left to die, if they were dying, or had their throats cut if they feigned death after repeated floggings. Those of the haulers facing court hearings were flogged every now and then and given a ride, and flogged again, so that they preferred to haul rather than face the incessant extra floggings. If you think I came to hate these slave-guards — you are right.

The red and black bands on their sleeves burned into my brain.

But I said I would not dwell on this unhappy period of my life. I would prefer to forget it, although I do not believe I ever will.

At last we came to the flight of locks leading to the inner network of waterways of Vondium. We locked through and finally came to a long low stone warehouse where more guards waited for us. The regular haulers were taken away to their barracks. We criminals were rounded up, loaded with chains — whereat many a man screamed as the harsh iron bit into his open wounds — and dragged off. All I could see was the stone beneath my feet. The guards were mere blurs of dark crimson in the corner of my eyes. I heard them whistling as they strode along — a tune I knew, surely — The Bowmen of Loh. That did not belong to any part of my life now; that came from a distant and dimly-remembered time when I was fit and well, with clean clothes on my back, a full belly, laughter and wine, kind faces about me . . . I trudged and stumbled on over the stones, done for.

Down dank stairways we went, into dark dungeons where the leepitix darted and scrabbled, where the rats gnawed dead men’s bones, where the vermin clustered in the corners waiting for fresh meat. We were chained to the wall.

I slumped down. I did not think I could raise a little finger to bash a guard, as I would customarily have struck with my fists until either the guards were dead or I was out like a light. I tried to rest and sleep, but phantasms thronged my brain, and I moaned. Chains rattled and clanked dismally. We were not fed. Guards came for us, men wearing the red and black, and we were hauled out. We were starving, for we had not eaten for two days. There were ten of us, I saw, ten starved lean scarecrows, all hairy, filthy, and covered in sores. We were moaning as we were dragged along, our chains rattling on the stones. Up we were dragged, half throttled in the chains. Up and up. We were in the Emperor’s palace in Vondium. We were pulled out onto a wide and shining floor. Sunshine lanced down, emerald and crimson. There was a great throng of people, courtiers, guards, Air Servicemen, women gorgeous in fine clothes. All was a dazzlement to me. I could barely stand. I was weak, I tottered and fell, and a boot kicked me up. Korf Aighos fell and was dragged. I fell and was dragged. We left a bloody trail across that shining floor.

I looked up. All distorted, on its side, a throne soared, it seemed to the ceiling, that shattered the light into a myriad shards like diamonds. A figure sat on the throne, a blaze of gold and crimson. A second throne stood at the side, gorgeous, splendid, not of the world I inhabited. I was aware of the hum of conversation, and stray words spouted up, like black ice breaking free of the pack. We were the assassins, the murderers, the bandits, who stole and raped and killed. The guards moved back. A wedge of dark crimson gave a backdrop to the thrones. I saw the white blurs of many faces. Jewels winked into my brain like fire and ice. I was down, done for, finished. A voice boomed close.

“Here, my lord Emperor, are the malefactors for your justice!”

No trial, then—

I tried to stand up. I, Dray Prescot, wouldn’t show these scum anything other than defiance, contempt; I tried to stand up, my chains dragging me down. I staggered. I fell. The hard polished floor came up cruelly. I lay, drugged with fatigue. Hunger was no longer noticeable, except that I couldn’t stand up and call these people and this Emperor a pack of kleeshes.

Of what use any further struggle? I had failed. I had failed to do what I had so vaingloriously boasted. I had said I would stride before the Emperor and demand from him the hand of his daughter Delia in marriage.

And here I was, before the Emperor, swathed in chains like a wild beast, bearing the scars of floggings, the red blood running from open sores, covered in vermin, filthy, with my hair stinking in my own nostrils, bathed in repulsiveness.

Oh, Dray Prescot, how are the mighty fallen!

I heard a cry and then a shout of horror.

I struggled to stand up and could not.

They would take me out now and cut off my head.

I heard a rustling, and then a great soughing sobbing from a thousand throats around the enormous throne room. I felt that rustling close. I felt a breath of wind and then I smelled a clean, sweet, fresh scent

— I felt warm soft arms go around me, all white and rosy, naked, taking me up as I was, as I was in my filth and degradation, clasping me to her beast.

“Oh, my Dray! My Dray! I have found you at last!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“The man who kills Dray Prescot I’ll have burned alive!”

My Delia!

Some resource then, some last vestige of — not pride — love, some last remnant of love for my Delia forced me up onto my knees. She held me close and she was sobbing in a way that gave me a deep hatred for anyone or anything who could make her thus break her heart — and knowing that person was me. I stood up. She would not let me go.

“Dray! Oh, Dray, I have been frantic! Dray!”

“Delia,” I managed to say. The throne room whirled about my head. I staggered dizzily, and she held me, her dear body firm against me. “I love you, my Delia. I shall never stop loving you.”

She kept sobbing my name, over and over, and hugging and clasping me to her. I could see very little. Hands drew us apart. Soft, anxious, gentle hands of court ladies, noblewomen, tugging my Delia away. And harsh, fierce, cruel hands of slave-masters and guards dragging me away, with a blow from a whip-handle across the face to speed my going.

Delia screamed.

I struggled.

I do not know where the strength came from.

I took the whip-handle between my teeth and I jerked. I brought my head back and snapped it forward and the lash whistled. I forced myself to see, forcing my eyes to open and to tell me what was going on. A blow smashed against the back of my head and I staggered forward. I spun clumsily. I reached up against all that dead weight of iron, took the whip from my mouth, and brought the handle down across the fellow’s face. He toppled back spouting blood, shrieking. I lashed the whip at the guards, and one was caught around the neck. I dragged him toward me, broke his neck, and threw him aside. I was ready to do this as often as was required.

I heard a shrill scream — and recognized Delia’s voice, the voice of the Majestrix. The first time I had ever heard her use her voice like that: “Do not kill him! The man who kills Dray Prescot I’ll have burned alive!”

“Daughter, daughter!” The testy voice — the Emperor!

I flung back my head.

“I am Dray Prescot! I claim your daughter Delia! She is mine! Before all the world, she is mine!”

The guards pounced then, and I smashed and slashed them back. I yelled again, shouting into that golden haze.

“She is mine — and I am hers! There is nothing you can do, Emperor, nothing!”

A guard coiled his lash across the blood-fouled shining floor and tripped me. I bent, dragged the lash in, and before he could let go I kneed him, and then brought my fists down on his neck. His head hung strangely before he pitched to the floor.

I knew Delia was struggling in the hands of the nobles, who would be outraged at her behavior. I caught another guard and dispatched him. I felt nothing. I was a shining figure molded from blood. The Emperor was cursing; I could tell his voice and would not forget it.

“Take him away! Guards! Take him away and execute him. Now! Now! ”

“You will gain nothing by my death, Emperor! I will win; my Delia will win; you can only lose! Fool!

Think of the daughter you love! Think of Delia!”

“Take him away!”

I do not know how many guards leaped on me. The whip was smashed from my grasp. It seemed a hundred hands gripped me. I was twisted over, picked up like a rolled carpet. My head lolled. But I could see the shining golden haze where stood the father of Delia, and I shouted, high and strong and with great venom: “You fool, Emperor! You have lost!”

The grim words followed me as I left that throne room.

“Take off his head — now!”

To relate what I have is to make me sweat and throb and relive once again all the passions, the desires, the despairs of my youth. How my love for Delia shone upon all — and how her love for me transcended everything! Had any two lovers in two worlds ever loved as we did? I do not know: all I know is the depth and passion and greatness of our love; and I tend to think not. Out of the throne room hurried the knot of guards. I was surrounded by a wall of dark crimson, a wall moving and flowing with powerful legs clad in dark scarlet. These were not the slave-guards, nor yet the aragorn, nor yet the warders with their red and black sleeves.

Some red roaring feelings were surging back now. I was aware of the infernal aches of my body. Well, my head would soon leap from that abused body and I could rest. My Delia — oh, how I would miss my Delia!

I could look up at groined ceilings. Around corners we went, along corridors. How many carrying me?

Six? I heard a curse, and then another. We had reached a small antechamber; in the ceiling an octagon of light cast down the colors of the Suns of Scorpio. A man beside me coughed. They dropped me. I fell to the floor and rolled. My head rang, but I got to my hands, and tried to get my feet under me. A man shrieked: “What are you doing — aaagh!”

I forced my eyes to take in what they saw, and transfer that information to my brain. I saw five dead men, all clad in the dark crimson. I saw a sixth with a bloody rapier in one hand and a bloody main-gauche in the other. He advanced on me and I thought this was the end. And—

“By the Veiled Froyvil, Dray! They were good men, all, and I slew them!”

My brain reeled.

I knew that voice.

I knew — I knew!

But — it could not be.

It was impossible.

I was dead already and treading the path toward the Ice Floes of Sicce. The impossible voice spoke again.

“By all the shattered targes in Mount Hlabro, Dray! Perk up, my old dom!”

I shook my head. My hands trembled. I could see them, there before me, on the floor, shaking and beating against the marble where a trickle of blood flowed from a corpse slain by a corpse. I lifted my head. I looked up. I whispered.

“Seg?”

“In the name of all the windy heights of Erthyrdrin, Dray! Get up, dom, and let us get out of here before the Froyvil-forsaken cramphs come arunning.”

“Seg.”

“Well, who else—” Then that old familiar voice, that well-loved voice, altered. Seg — for it was he, it was Seg Segutorio — came to me, knelt, and put a hand under my chin, and lifted. He looked into my face, and I smiled.

“Dray! You’re in a bad way!”

“No, Seg. No — for you are alive, and I have mourned you long and long. Oh — Seg!”

He picked me up then, hoisting me high to his chest, and he carried me out and away, through corridors that led from and to I knew not where in that great palace of the Emperor of Vallia. Presently he brought me to a small space where he lay me on a trundle bed; there he carried water, bathed me, and ministered to my wounds.

“Seg—” I reached a trembling hand up and grasped his forearm. “Thelda?”

He smiled and continued bathing my wounds. “She is a proud mother now, Dray. A fine boy.” Then a look of furtiveness crossed his face, and I could guess, and I said feebly: “He has my blessing. I will bring the Yerthyr shoot—”

“You’re the same Dray, my old dom! The same Dray Prescot!”

“But—” I said. I still could not believe. Out there in the Hostile Territories when the army of Queen Lilah of Hiclantung had been defeated by the Harfnars of Cherwangtung, Seg, Thelda, and I had raced with the remnants of Hwang’s proud regiment, and I had seen what I had seen. “You went down, Seg. Thelda and you. The nactrixes boiled over you like chanks in a bloody sea.”

“True. By the Veiled Froyvil, but they were a ferocious bunch! I slew them until I could slay no more, and their corpses heaped above us. They left us to chase you. I thought you dead, then, Dray.”

“But—”

He smiled and tilted a glass cup to my lips. It held water of an iciness I usually find disagreeable, but now it tasted like the best Zond wine.

“I heard what happened with you and Delia. You did not think, after you were missing from Lorenztone, that she would calmly fly off and leave, did you?”

I looked at him.

“Little you know Delia of Delphond, Dray Prescot, if you think that! Chuktar Farris of Vomansoir was ordered — and I can imagine your Delia telling him! — to return and search for you. They did not find you. They found Thelda and me.”

“Thank God for that,” I said. I said “thank God”; I did not say “thank Zair”, or Opaz, or the Invisible Twins, or Pandrite, or use any of the colorful expressions of Kregen.

“So we came back to Vallia and I do not like to think what Delia went through then. Thelda and I were married—”

“And you have a son called Dray.”

He started to look uncomfortable, then the old fey wildness broke through, and he glared at me. “Of course! What better name in all the world is there? Tell me that, you stubborn old onker!”

“And how did you come to be here?”

“Why, I am a bowman, or had you forgotten? I am a private Koter in the personal bodyguard of the Emperor, the crimson Bowmen of Loh—”

I tried to sing a certain stanza of that song, and although my voice cracked and wheezed like a leaky set of bagpipes, Seg got the message. The stanza is a particularly mocking one. It is often omitted. Seg threw back his head and laughed.

“Now, by Vox! I can live again, Dray Prescot!”

After that a confusion set in, and I was aware of shadows moving, and then of a woman sobbing and crying and laughing and holding me in her arms, whereat I grunted and pretended to be much more soggy than I was. Poor Thelda! She meant so well, with her pushy ways, and her constant exhibited concern for everyone’s welfare. But, as I was to discover, she had changed enormously from the plump sweaty earnest girl who had marched with us across the Hostile Territories and tried to suborn me away from Delia on the orders of the racters.

I did say, itching an old sore: “Where are the fallimy flowers for my poultice, Thelda?”

At this she burst into a torrent of tears, all wet and sticky. I heard Seg chuckle, and Thelda went away, crying. Seg bent over me. “You must rest now, Dray. A doctor is coming. Then we will get you out of the palace.”

I opened my mouth to say what I so desperately longed to ask. Then I shut my mouth. I was well enough aware of the situation and what had happened. I dare not ask for Delia. I knew people were risking their lives on my behalf. Seg was a private Koter in the Emperor’s bodyguard, a crimson Bowman of Loh, and thus had been able to dispose of the men carrying me out to execution. They had been his own comrades; he had slain them for me. I felt the shame of that, the fierce leap of pride, and the dark agony of remorse, but it was done, and, in truth, for my Delia’s sake I would wade through oceans of blood, as I have said. I am not a nice man.

“Don’t take chances, Seg. Clear up all traces. For your sake, and Thelda’s — and little Dray’s.”

“Do not fret, Dray. Erthyr the Bow is with me now.”

At this I felt more reassurance, for Seg seldom called on the name of that puissant and powerful spirit, the supreme being of Erthyrdrin; that he felt like that, and I knew it was a genuine emotion, proved he was satisfied.

Later I discovered more of the reasons for that satisfaction. But, even now, Delia will toss her head, grow very hoity-toity, and refuse to discuss just what was contrived. I know a body was found and substituted for me, and a convincing explanation put forward for the absence of five bowmen, four private Koters, and a Jiktar. At dead of night, with only two smaller moons hurtling low across the sky, I was conveyed out of the palace and secreted in a hidden room built into the attic of a lopsided house leaning crazily at the end of a maze of alleyways well away from the canals. The Presidio, the high council answerable only to the Emperor, confirmed his haughty actions in condemning me to instant execution. Korf Aighos and the other eight Blue Mountain Boys were put on trial. I asked about them, and Seg nodded, his face alive with all the old fey qualities, the strengths, the joyousness, the sheer love of life of his character. His black hair and blue eyes looked dearly familiar to me.

“They have been found guilty — as they were, Froyvil knows — but Delia knows your feelings, she’s known you long enough to read you like an illuminated scroll of my childhood, and we have plans to rescue them.”

And, in due course of time, they were rescued and secreted in another safe house in Vondium. The doctor came. A dried-up little stick of a man with tallow-yellow hair and a wispy moustache, he was competent enough. His first action was to snap the locks and open his velvet-lined sturm-wood case of acupuncture needles. His name was Nath the Needle. Doctor Nath the Needle. Well, there are many Naths in Kregen.

“I don’t know how you survived, my lord,” he said, sniffing. He wore a somber dark-brown suit of clothes, a decrepit old cloak, and a hat in which the two slots over the eyes had worn into a gaping hole, like two gun-ports smashed into one by a thirty-two-pounder roundshot. “The infection from a shorgortz is generally reckoned to result in a terminal disease. But, there, medicine is improving every day in Vallia, and no doubt the Blue Mountain men have acquired an immunity unknown to us. I must look into it, indeed, I must.” He babbled on like this, but he gave me some foul-tasting gunk, and, indeed, I began to mend very quickly.

Delia, of course, was kept under strict surveillance.

I had an idea.

She would seek to find a way to throw off her servitors and guards and visit me, but danger lay there, for all she was the Princess Majestrix. Seg told me that as far as he could tell the Emperor cherished a very real affection for his daughter, but that his ideas on the majesty and aura of an emperor kept interfering with that ideal. He was determined she should marry. She was his only child, and his doctors had told him he could have no more. I had never heard Delia mention her mother, and I assumed she was dead. Now, after Delia’s displays of temper, as the court gossip went, she was to be held on a very tight rein until the Kov Vektor provided a fresh king’s ransom in wedding presents. I told Seg what I required. He looked at me, chuckled, then laughed, and finally he roared with good humor. Feeling fitter than I had in weeks, I was duly shaved, and new clean clothes were brought in for me to put on. I stared into a mirror of real glass that was the proud possession of Paline Panifer, the girl Seg had found to care for me and the room. Paline is a common name for a young girl on Kregen, like Cherry on Earth, and she was fresh-complexioned, dark-eyed, a little solemn and overawed in my presence, but she cooked a truly delightful squish pie and she could make Kregan tea properly. Also she did the laundry with an amazingly tiny amount of soap.

“A boat is due tomorrow, Dray,” Seg told me. I stood up. I felt good.

‘Tomorrow, then, Seg.”

He didn’t bother to wish me luck. I believe he thought I didn’t need it. Both of us thought the other returned from the Ice Floes of Sicce; and after that — who needed luck?

The next morning, early, I put on my new gear. The buff leather tunic fitted well, and the buff shirt was clean and starched. The hat was gray with a fine curly set of feathers in red and white, the colors that servitors of Valka wore on their sleeves. The tall black boots shone with Paline’s ministrations. I buckled on the belt with the rapier and main-gauche Seg had brought. As always, I sheathed a knife back of my right hip. Swathed in a voluminous gray cloak I went with Paline from that maze of alleys and out toward the canals and quays. The tang of fresh air braced me up. The twin Suns of Scorpio flamed overhead. All the bustle and uproar of a great metropolis flowed about me. The lesten-hide bag given me by Seg, who had had it from the hand of Delia, hung heavily inside my shirt. I looked up and there rose the forest of masts. I felt my pulses quicken. The Star Lords had forbidden me to venture on the sea for a space, but they could not prevent my quick interest in all I saw and in the sealore I absorbed, it seemed, through my pores.

I have spoken of the great galleons of Vallia. Now I could see them. The ship from Valka lay warped alongside the quay, and men were busily engaged in discharging her. Her captain gaped at me as though I had risen from the dead. I recognized him — as he did me.

“Captain Korer!” I said, shaking his hand. “I trust you are well?”

“My lord Strom!” he gasped.

He told me all the news of Valka and I drank it up, every word, for I love my island of Valka. The land prospered. We remained at peace. Trade thrived. Babies were being born at a rate that ensured the depredations of the slavers would soon be obliterated. All my old friends still lived and were happy; and yet all mourned my departure. I sensed the truth in this. Captain Korer was, in the cant phrase, a bluff old sea dog. He would not dissimulate to me, his Strom — or so I fancied.

“Your crew? They are trustworthy?”

“Every man and boy, Strom!”

“Good. Then I took passage with you and am just arrived.”

“I understand.”

After that it was easy to arrange. With a small guard of marines from the ship, and presents bought with Delia’s money — presents that would not betray their origin — carried by smartly-clad men wearing the red and white banded shirtsleeves, we went up to the palace. Gold bought us a way in. Once again I found myself in that immense throne room, under the blaze of gold and jewels. But this time I walked with cracking heels on that shining floor, with a sword at my side, and with my own men carrying gifts for the Emperor.

“Drak, Strom of Valka!”

The Emperor received me kindly, his chamberlain, with fresh gold to jingle, having smoothed the way. The Emperor — how to describe him? He had sired the most beautiful girl in two worlds. He was strong and passionate, fiery-eyed, dominating, accustomed to command — aye, and cruel and ruthless, too, when he had to be. I knew.

“I have a gift for the Princess Majestrix, Majister.”

He grunted. He thought I wanted favors from him over the rights of Valka. “You will get no favors from that young lady, Strom Drak.”

I rubbed my clean-shaven and shining chin. I felt that Paline had dosed me too liberally with scents and perfumes.

“As to that, Majister, I must, at the very least, pay my respects to the Princess Majestrix. Of favors I ask none.”

“That makes a refreshing change.” He stood up, at which there followed a great swirl of activity of protocol and bowing and sorting out of places. “I’ll come with you, for, by Vox, I’ve little enough to please me these days.”

In the guard of honor marched private Koter Segutorio.

We went through brilliant corridors hung with tapestries of such beauty and value that I could not refrain from looking at them. Past precious objects from all the known world we walked, and came to a marble stair, and then a door studded with gold bosses in the forms of zhantil-heads. Everywhere everything was of absolute luxury and refinement. And I wanted to drag my Delia away from all this! How I presumed!

Thick soft carpets from Walfarg beneath our feet, silks from Loh, the scent of spices from Askinard, all the wealth of a world spread out, as we went into the apartments of the Princess Majestrix. Here water tinkled coolly from fountains; brilliant birds fluttered and cooed; the very air breathed a soft and fragrant welcome. I was enchanted. Music wafted soothingly from a silver screen beyond which musicians played. I put my left hand on my rapier hilt and I gripped hard.

The Emperor strode on and we followed, his guards, my men with presents, courtiers, and attendants, and me, the Strom of Valka.

Delia had been sitting playing the harp. I didn’t know she could play the harp. Handmaidens bowed low before the Emperor. Everyone moved with smooth court ritual into their appointed places, forming a ring around the central figures of the Emperor and his daughter. She looked up from the pile of cushions, and handmaidens, all superbly dressed in sumptuous gowns, took the harp away. Here there was nothing of the naked pearl-strung slave girls of other palaces I had visited.

These magnificent chambers were merely the outer portion of her apartments, to which a visiting nobleman might fittingly be brought. Farther into the recesses of the palace would lie her private apartments. The thought of their beauty and evidences of sensibility dizzied me. She said: “I am glad you visit me, Father. We do not talk often enough.”

“You know the subject on which I wish to speak, daughter. But not now. We have a visitor who brings fine gifts, and also, as I judge a man, knowing something of his history, a man who is not seeking self-advancement.” He glanced at me. “I am aware of what you have done in Valka, Strom Drak. The racters must look elsewhere for slaves now.”

I could see he welcomed that.

“My daughter,” he said, and the icy mask of polite formality descended on him, “this is Drak, Strom of Valka.”

Delia looked up at me. I stood there, clean-shaven, dressed up in my fine new clothes, trying to make my lips form into something that might pass as a smile, looking down on her as if nothing in the world lay between us.

“The Princess Majestrix of Vallia.”

I performed a full incline. It was the perfectly proper thing to do, if somewhat florid, but I wanted to carry off the part. “Your most humble and devoted servant, my Princess,” I said.

“You are most welcome, Strom,” said Delia, Princess Majestrix.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Of presents and whispers

When I had been thrown down before her, with iron chains dragging on me, all bloody and foul and filthy, hairy and horrible, my Delia had recognized me instantly and flown to my side. Now I stood before her, clean and shining and fresh, and she greeted me merely with, “You are most welcome, Strom,” in the cold and distant words of formal politeness. Had she not recognized me? What a comment on the experiences through which we had gone together!

The ritual of greetings and introductions over — I had noticed how the universal formal “Llahal” was used here — we could lapse into more relaxed conversation. Light wine and miscils, which are those tiny fragile cakes that melt on the tongue, were brought, and the presents were looked at. In truth, they had looked fine enough when bought, and although mightily lessened by these gorgeous surroundings, they were still presentable. I had tried for quality and not quantity.

I stood politely talking to Delia and the Emperor, and we exchanged pleasantries. He was interested in Valka, and I was able to assure him that all went well there, and that he himself had personally the loyalty of every man of Valka.

This seemed to me a sensible attitude.

How true it was remained to be seen.

I thought to copper-bottom my bet.

“These are, of course, only small items I could bring myself. I have surprises from Valka that should please Your Majesty mightily.”

He made himself looked pleased. He had a lot of the strengths of Delia about him, her same clear brown eyes, but his hair, still abundant, contained none of those glorious chestnut tints. They must come from her mother. His face was furrowed with lines I could recognize, scars of experience put there by ruling a vast island empire. Then I realized why he was taking this interest in me, an obscure strom from a province many dwaburs away. He needed friends. He was desperately in need of allies against the racters, and the panvals, who were against the racters rather than for the Emperor, and a mysterious third party one heard whispers of.

He was a tragically lonely figure.

He had also ordered my head cut off.

It was worthwhile not forgetting that.

I said, “Has there been any news of Tharu of Vindelka?”

“How strange you ask that, Strom Drak! Vomanus of Vindelka has searched long and in vain — the world is strange and marvelous beyond the confines of Vallia — and he has been much in our thoughts lately.” And here the Emperor glanced at Delia.

She said, “Vomanus is the heir and he searches for Tharu with a devotion I find commendable.”

Point taken.

We talked on in general terms, and then Delia said, with a cool effrontery that amused me, “I had heard the Strom of Valka was a hairy man, very violent, who raped a tower of the maidens dedicated to the Maiden of the Many Smiles.” She shot a look directly at me. “You do not look like that, Strom.”

“That is not my idea of recreation.” I had heard the calumny, put about by the racters. “The truth is that a certain Foke the Ob-handed did that foul deed. It happened on a tiny islet on the eastern coast of Valka. I was in the Heart Heights at the time. Foke has not been caught. When he is I shall string him as high as the topmost stone of that tower of the maidens.”

The Emperor nodded, clucking his tongue.

“And very proper, too.” He looked about, his eyes gleaming white, a sudden and revealing gesture from an Emperor. “He belongs to the racters, does he not?”

“He does, Majister.”

“The racters.” He did not say any more. Poor devil — here was I, Dray Prescot, feeling sorry for this dread Emperor!

Delia said, “We had no warning of your coming to Vondium, Strom Drak.”

“I had business here, Princess.”

“Did you know Drak was the name of my grandfather when he ascended the throne?”

I inclined my head. “I have always taken great pride in that, Princess. I feel that our destinies are linked.”

If she could play this game, then so could I!

“Really!” She tinkled her laughter, so gay, so forced, so artificial. “I heard once — a story, a silly trifle

— of a man called the Kov of Delphond. His name, so men said, was Drak.” She laughed again, gesturing negligently with her arm. How I longed to take that rounded glowing arm and haul her to me and plant an enormous kiss on those luscious lips! “Delphond is a sweet place, very dear to me. If that man had been caught, assuming him to have existed, I would have asked you, Drak, Strom of Valka, to hoist him up to the topmost stone of the tower along with Foke the Ob-handed.”

The Emperor threw his daughter a puzzled glance. He reached out his hand to the empty air and immediately a handmaid placed a goblet in his fingers. He had no fear of poison, I judged, and recollected that poison is used so rarely on Vallia that when it is, it is marked and noted and remembered.

He moved away, talking to the Chuktar of his guard. The courtiers moved with him, always at their respectful distance, and only Delia’s handmaids were left with us. I had no idea how proper was my conduct in not moving with the Emperor.

“I ought to go, Princess, with the Emperor your father.”

“That is all right, Strom, in private. Our protocol is not overpowering. Come, sit with me.”

I looked at the Emperor in the instant that he turned to look back at me, his head half bent. He nodded. I bowed deeply. Then I turned around and sat down next to the Princess Majestrix. She waved her hand and the handmaidens seemed to become insubstantial wraiths.

She laughed aloud delightfully — and quite artificially to me, who had heard her laughing as we strode along through the Hostile Territories on our bare feet — and said: “Indeed, Strom, Valka sounds a most outlandish place. Tell me of it.”

Then, leaning forward a little, she said in a voice that snickered in like a rapier between the ribs: “You great onker-headed idiot, Dray Prescot! What happens if the real Strom of Valka walks in?”

I couldn’t stop myself.

I lay back on the silken cushions with their gold and silver embroidery and I laughed. I laughed fit to bust a gut.

The Emperor swung around. All conversation ceased. I was the focus of all eyes, staring at me, uncertain — scared!

I stood up and controlled myself.

I inclined to the Emperor.

“The Princess Majestrix is a worthy daughter to a great father,” I said. I meant at least half of that. “She has the gift of arousing the best in any man, Your Majesty. I did not mean to offend anyone here.”

He nodded, looking a little — puzzled, I thought. He turned away and went on with his conversation with the Chuktar, and I flopped back next to Delia.

“You glorious girl,” I said, changing what I had been about to say to a cliché no one could take amiss. “I am the true strom.”

“You mean — no, Dray, my darling! You can’t be!”

And then I remembered what the Gdoinye, speaking to me for the very first time on Kregen, had said. There was a time loop here. I knew that Delia would have heard gossip and news of this ferocious Strom of Valka, and of how he had cleared out the slavers and aragorn from his island, and received his patent of nobility — and all this would have been happening before she parted with me in the Hostile Territories. I had been on Kregen in two different places at the same time!

No wonder the Star Lords sometimes barred me off from travel!

My explanation was fragmentary and in a low voice. To have to sit here on silken cushions next to my Delia, so close to my own sweet Delia of the Blue Mountains, and be unable so much as to touch her! I knew that a single contact with her would result in my being run outside and at the best having my head parted from my body — and more likely having my body torn apart by red-hot irons. The Princess Majestrix was sacrosanct.

As she should be, of course.

The situation was idiotic, ludicrous, and fraught with terrible danger. Both of us wanted to gasp out our love for each other, to clasp each other in our arms, to tell all our news, and gaze deeply into the other’s eyes in absolute joy and wonder; yet we must sit here, so prim and precise, under the watchful eyes of the guards and the courtiers. I knew there were many eyes of spies there, people working for the racters, for the panvals, men and women working for all the different parties and lords each of whom wanted his own advantage from the Emperor. Drak, Strom of Valka, was a marked man henceforth.

That wouldn’t worry me.

I started to tell her that she must run away with me, at once, back to Valka and then, probably, to Strombor.

“Yes! Oh, yes, Dray, my darling!”

No hesitation, no regrets for leaving the sumptuousness all about her, no thoughts of her life here in Vallia as the Princess Majestrix. If the Strom of Valka kidnapped her, then his head would be forfeit and never more would she be able to return to her home. Strombor, then . . . But — no slightest hesitation. She agreed willingly, joyfully, eagerly. Oh, yes, there is no woman in two worlds like Delia of the Blue Mountains!

Everything within the palace of Vondium was — and still is — conducted with order and dignity. I felt the sense of impressiveness, even then, when my every thought was of abducting the Princess out of that palace.

We spent what really amounted to only a few murs together before that audience was over and I had to take my leave of the Princess Majestrix and return with the Emperor to the throne room. He had taken a shine to me. Later we took a meal together in a private apartment with a number of the high men of the realm. These men were strangers to me then, but how well I know them now! Some as good and loyal friends, others as bitter and deadly enemies. As they stride onto the stage of my story I will introduce them to you. But, as always, following my plan, I will speak only of people and places and things as they impacted on me at the time, when I met them, even though I knew of them before that. The first of these to whom you should be introduced called on me the very next day at my new lodgings. He was Nath Larghos, the Trylon of the Black Mountains. A Trylon is a rank intermediate between a Vad and a Strom. The Black Mountains extend northward of the Blue Mountains and, although neither so lofty nor extensive, are composed of a black basaltic rock rich in minerals. Eastward the Trylonate runs into farming and agricultural products.

Trylon Larghos came unannounced into the sunny upper chamber of The Rose of Valka where I sat at breakfast. The comfortable inn and posting house was run by Young Bargom, the son of Old Bargom, who had fled from Valka in the bad days. Naturally, he had changed the name of the inn to remind them of happier times back in Valka, their homeland.

“Strom Drak?” said Trylon Larghos, coming forward into the patch of mingled sunlight by the windows. I did not rise. I was in the act of placing rich yellow butter upon a chunk torn from a crisp Kregan loaf, and that is an important operation. I did look up. I saw Larghos then, and I can see him in my mind’s eye now. A big man running to fat, but with the muscles still supple and bulging on his arms and across his shoulders. He wore a Vallian tunic of leather, but instead of the decent buff, the leather had been dyed in a pattern of black and white. His sword hilt glittered with gems. His face, bearded and bewhiskered, contained a pair of close-set shrewd eyes, and his mouth was a rat-trap if ever I saw one. A man of whom to be wary. I summed him up instantly; dangerous, like a leem. Before I could answer he went on: “You astonish me, my dear Strom, that you are not occupying your villa here in Vondium.”

“The place has been deserted for many seasons.”

“So? I am sorry to hear it. I was pleased to make your acquaintance yesterday, with the Emperor. He seemed to find you genial company.”

The Emperor had been laughing a lot more, I recalled, when I took my leave. I did not offer Larghos a seat, but he sat down anyway. Maybe he thought that being a Trylon gave him the edge over a Strom. There had certainly been no desire in my actions or stories to charm the Emperor — quite the reverse

— but from the Trylon’s expression he was clearly accusing me of toadying to the Emperor. I wanted to correct that impression.

“Many men have done so. And many others have not.”

“I trust, by Opaz, that we shall get along together, Strom.”

Whatever he was after, he would get from me only what I chose to give. However, there seemed no point in antagonizing him just yet, despite that I didn’t like the look of him.

“Have you breakfasted, Trylon? Would you care to join me?”

He waved the suggestion away with a very white and plump beringed hand. I fancied, though, he could use a rapier.

“Thank you. I have. We are up early in Vondium.”

“Do you then not often visit the Black Mountains?”

If that was a nasty remark he didn’t react. “When I have to. The black rocks offend me. My life is here, in the capital, where politics are!”

We talked for a space until I had breakfasted and then he joined me in a cup of Kregan tea. He worked his way around to the purpose of his visit. He was a racter. The white and black would have told me that. I was an unknown. Oh, yes, he had heard of the panvals and what had happened in Valka, but that was in the past. Now we must face the new realities. The Emperor must have an heir who is not a willful girl; the racter candidate must be the one.

“And who is that, Trylon Larghos?”

He studied me a moment. I had sidestepped his more direct questions, but I had appeared to satisfy him that if the racters could offer me more than the panvals, then I was their man.

“Kov Vektor of Aduimbrev is the Emperor’s choice,” he said. He spoke with care. He wore leathers dyed black and white. He was a racter and flaunted that. The racters were a party, composed of many people from all walks of life — except, I thought with bitterness, those who walked the canal towpaths. They were a power in the Presidio. They had the strength to banish panvals on trumped-up charges, but there were still many panvals who wore the green and white colors. A man might choose to flaunt his color allegiance, as Larghos did. Or, as Pallan Eling, the minister responsible for the canals, did, wear merely a small black and white ribbon tucked into a buttonhole. I guessed Larghos’ servitors would wear sleeves banded black and white, and the colors of the Black Mountain —

appropriately enough black and purple — would appear elsewhere on their jerkins. The older a lineage the less colors in the insignia, in general. Some men, like Tobi ti Chelmsturm, with five colors to their name very often preferred the dignity of using merely two colors for their men, and these would be colors of their party. Humans and halflings, we share the same failings. I said, “I do not support Vektor in this.”

“Good. He is a weakling, a sop. You can smell him coming a dwabur downwind, like a woman’s hairdresser.”

“You have a candidate for the Princess Majestrix? Who is that, Trylon?”

He made up his mind. When he spoke the name I felt the blood rise and sing in my head.

“Vomanus of Vindelka.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ill news of Vomanus of Vindelka

I felt outraged, betrayed, soiled.

I spoke before I thought.

“I understood that Vomanus was — ineligible to marry the Princess!”

He stared at me narrowly, and lowered his cup. “Now where would you have heard that?”

Collecting my thoughts, I said, stumbling and bluffing my way through: “I am not certain — it seems it was a drunken evening, somewhere, men talking and boasting. But, clearly, it cannot be true.”

He leaned back, sizing me up afresh, but he neither confirmed nor denied what I had suggested. Back there in hated Magdag where I had intrigued and fought for my slaves and workers I had last seen Vomanus. I had sent him with a message to Delia. He had always treated me as a comrade, and although he was a young man whom I delighted to call “my lad,” there had been a mystery about him. He had said, once: “Just take it from me, Drak, my friend, Kovs are Kovs and Kovs to me.” No, he could never voluntarily seek Delia’s hand in marriage, not when he knew the passion that flames between the Princess and me. Then — he must consider me dead! Yes, that could be the only explanation. And then, of course, I felt the guilt and the remorse — emotions I always try to quell out of perversity —

when I remembered how finely he had always supported me. And all the time he had loved Delia himself!

Trylon Larghos said, “Young Vomanus was willed the estates and lands of Vindelka. The Emperor approves. As to what happened to Tharu, out there in the wilds of the inner sea, who knows? Who cares?” He was too sophisticated a man to say, as many would, of the inner sea: “wherever that is.” He knew well enough where it was, although he’d never travel that great distance all his life. “Tharu was an Emperor’s man. He was a great power behind the throne. Now he is gone, Vomanus is one of us.”

I felt the sadness and the sorrow, but if young Vomanus really loved Delia, then he would use whatever levers came to his hand. He would move heaven and hell, in Kregan terms, to win her. I could not blame him. What would he say when he learned I was still alive!

I decided to test that. Speaking casually enough, my cup at a jaunty angle, I said: “What of this hairy madman I have heard of — this wild clansman—”

“Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor?” Larghos laughed, and his laugh was most evil. “Whether the Princess loved him or not does not matter. Prescot is dead. And the devil can go to the Ice Floes of Sicce with my boot in his rear. He has caused far too much trouble. But now the time is ripe for the racters, for Vomanus, for me — and for you, too, Strom Drak!”

Just then Young Bargom trundled in with fresh tea. He said in his blunt Valkan way: “There is a Koter below, asking for you, my lord Strom. He does not give a name.” Bargom glanced at Larghos. “He wears green and white, my lord Strom.”

“A rast of a panval!” exclaimed Larghos. He had half drawn his rapier before he recollected himself. “If I can force an argument on him as I leave I’ll do so, and spit his guts! Aye, by Vox! And laugh as I do it!”

He took his leave, promising to speak with me again, and he was well pleased with his morning’s work. When he had gone Young Bargom shook his head and leaned out of the window.

“Hai! A racter is on his way out! I don’t want trouble in my inn — hey, you there!”

He turned back to face me. “Your pardon, my lord Strom, but Trylon Larghos is a noted duelist. He says he’ll spit this onker’s guts, he’ll spit them, mark my words, my lord Strom.”

Suddenly it was borne in on me — what the blue blazing hell was I doing fiddling about with politics in Vondium? I had agreed to abduct my Delia, we would fly together to Valka, to Strombor — we would finish with Vallia and begin a new life, together.

Whoever the panval was, he took the threat seriously, for he did not show up. Bargom busied himself clearing away the breakfast things. He liked to talk.

“They say the headless zorcamen have been seen, my lord Strom. They were riding within sight of Vondium last night.” He shivered. “They mean ill, mark my words, my lord Strom.”

“You believe in them, Bargom?”

He straightened up, the tray balanced easily on one hand. “Of course, my lord Strom! They are evil, supernatural! They set fire to buildings, they abduct people — and a two-headed chunkrah was born only last week. Mark my words, my lord Strom, evil days are coming to Vondium!”

Ghosts and black towers and bats and apparitions, all these things, then, were believed in by Bargom. How many others in Vondium believed? If they were racters dressed up, why were they doing these things here, where the racters were all-powerful? Again I thought of this mysterious third party, but Bargom, who had heard whispers of them in his pot room, knew nothing solid about them. They were called the third party, not because there were only three parties, but somehow people realized that they must rank as a force at least equal with the failing panvals, and possibly with the racters. The other parties — generally owning allegiance to territory as well as belief — were too small to be counted.

Just to the northeast of Vondium rises the strange height known as Drak’s Seat. The two main peaks, when viewed from the center of Vondium, look uncannily like a great throne, lowering over the city. Drak’s Seat. Snow and ice are found there — as Jenbar had told me — which last longer in good condition than a man might believe, when packed in the Kregan way in sawdust of sturm-wood. I detest ice in drinks, for together with worry it is a prime source of ulcers. And no truly civilized man relishes having the taste of a fine vintage destroyed by great chunks of frozen water floating in his glass. Young Bargom chattered on telling me the gossip of Vondium. His life was here, now; with a wife from the city, and children, and his father’s bones buried in the Opaz-sacred cemetery a dwabur beyond the eastern gate, he had nothing to draw him back to Valka. His talk told me much, and I saw how useful he could be to me. TheRose of Valka was situated on the eastern bank of the Great Northern Cut, a respectable house to which Koters could bring their ladies in complete confidence of a pleasant evening. He loved to chatter, and this talk sparked up confidences from his guests, particularly when their bellies were filled with selections from Young Bargom’s cellars.

Of the third party he could tell me only that men whispered behind their hands that dual allegiances were involved. The great nobles were all playing for themselves. The Emperor sought for allies and friends. Evil days were coming to Vondium. The headless zorcamen were one symbol of that, a presentiment and a sign of terror.

Why should Nath Larghos, a Trylon with power that placed him extremely high in the councils of the racters, seek out a lowly Strom and attempt to win him over?

My own plans must come first. There was much to do. An airboat, it seemed to me, was the obvious choice; indeed, the only choice. Once I had abducted Delia we would have no peace until we reached Strombor in Zenicce.

Even then the Emperor might fit out a mighty expedition and dispatch his powerful fleet with thousands of mercenaries to bring his daughter back. I did not fancy myself in the part of Paris, and Delia could occasion the launch of many more than a thousand ships, aye, and fliers, too, for I knew without question she was far more beautiful and passionate and willful than Helen could ever have been. But I would not bring upon Strombor the fate of Troy; the Emperor and his Vallians would never be the Greeks in this tragedy. If necessary Delia and I would fly to Sanurkazz and go to Felteraz, where I knew how welcome we would be. Mayfwy would welcome us. That was certain. If the Emperor followed us there through all the long and perilous dangers, then where would we go?

I jumped up and overset the teapot.

“Goddamnit to hell!” I said. I would make a start, and go with my Delia to the ends of this strange world of Kregen, and let the fates play with their silken strands as they would. Young Bargom came in somewhat rapidly, to investigate the overset teapot I thought. But in his hand he held a heavy knife, not quite a shortsword, something like a cleaver — a weapon he could with perfect truth say he had picked up from his kitchen — and his face held a down-drawn, savage look that surprised me. He saw me standing there, composed, he saw the teapot, and he didn’t know where to put the knife.

“The teapot thought itself a flier, Bargom,” I said. Then, “What troubled you?”

He blurted it out: “I thought some Vox-spawned rast had crept in here, my lord Strom, to do you a mischief.”

The incident passed. But it added up. Bargom said there were many expatriate Valkans living in Vondium. They were anxiously desirous of paying their respects to their Strom. They had heard what had been done on Valka and many of their friends had left to return home. Many of those still remaining intended to return. Meanwhile, here in the city was their Strom, the man who had cleansed their home and made of it a place worthy to be lived in again, a place of which to be proud. With a callous cynicism and a calculating appraisal of the advantages I could wring, I saw these people. They came in, in ones or twos, sometimes a family, and they brought little gifts, tokens of their esteem. All went on about how Valka was no longer merely a slave-province, of which there were more than two or three, and the letters they had had telling them of the great things being done there. Some of the women even kissed my hand. I began to feel the greatest cheat and impostor in all of Kregen. I have said I love the island of Valka. This is true. I believe in that upper room of the inn The Rose of Valka, I came to feel completely the same about the people.

One young lad there was, tall, strong, upright, with the glowing features of hero-worship about him I found most distasteful, whose name was Vangar ti Valkanium, told me he was a Deldar in the Vallian Air Service. He had come in mufti, the buff tunic and the wide-brimmed hat with the red and white colors in feathers and in a great cockade over his left shoulder. I told Vangar ti Valkanium something of my admiration for the Air Service people, and we talked very pleasantly. When he left I knew that I would feel a pang at abandoning my island of Valka.

But I would abandon any and everything in two worlds for the sake of my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

Sitting at the black-wood table in the window I felt a softly caressing touch stroke feather-light across the nape of my neck. It was there and gone in an instant. I took no notice. In the window on its own special pedestal stood a flick-flick. The plant has many names on Kregen, and as an example of the closeness of the Vallish to the Kregish, the fly-catcher is fleck-fleck in the Vallish and flick-flick in the Kregish. Its six-foot-long tendrils uncoil like steel springs, their honey-dew stickiness certain death for flies. The flowers are cone-shaped trumpets of a pale and subtle peach color, and they gobble flies like a starving elephant stuffing down buns. Most homes like to have a flick-flick, usually near the kitchen. Flies, as I have said, get everywhere.

The break made me stand up and stretch and look out of the window. Across the patio, with its tables and chairs and Young Bargom’s clientele drinking happily, the canal ran along between meticulously upkept banks. And a great straggly gang of haulers passed, their gray slave breech-clouts filthy, the whip marks jikaidering their backs, bloody and filthy, hauling a huge gray barge with a cargo that brought the gunwales down to within a knuckle of the water.

I frowned.

Delia detested slavery as much as I did.

I had thought I had been brought to Kregen to help stamp out slavery. My own plans called for the fulfillment of my own selfish ends. To hell with the Star Lords and the Savanti! Delia was all I cared about.

Many times, as you have heard, I had been deflected from my intentions. Now, again, I was prevented from putting our plans into operation that day, as I had wished, by the distraught arrival of Kta. Angia.[2]

A plump, homey, beeswax kind of woman, she sobbed out her story. Her son was a proud and headstrong youth, but they were in debt, for he was a cabinet-maker and had had words with his employer and could not find fresh work. He would not ask friends of the Valkans here in Vondium for help. And now he had been dragged off to the bagnios. She was desperate. Could I help?

The story is quickly told. Quickly — in that I went with her to the bagnios and found her son, Anko the Chisel, and paid off his debt, and in the process being arrogant and insulting to the guards with their red and black sleeves. But not so quickly — in my discovery of the bagnios themselves. I have seen many slave barracks, and barracoons and bagnios, and those of Vallia were no worse than many. Here criminals, debtors, hostages, prisoners, those who had forfeited their liberty in any way, were kept for dispersal among the slave farms, or the haulers, or the mines, or in any of the many places that slaves were employed. We took Anko the Chisel out of that place and his mother, Kta. Angia, fell on her knees before me, whereat I felt all the nausea of myself rising, and I bid her get up and take her son home, and start again in the search for work.

The point I had had thrust upon me I did not want to face, would not face, refused even to countenance. Delia. That thought alone was all that mattered.