Chapter Ten

“In Aphrasöe You Will Find Only Death!”

Everything so far had gone with such amazing ease I should have been warned. Khokkak the Meddler should have been heeded. Trip the Thwarter should have been propitiated. We had spirited the emperor away from his would-be murderers. We had arrested the insidious work of the poison so that he still lived. We had tracked down the clues and found our way here to where the secret would be told. And now we were thwarted by this cunning, greedy, deceitful onker of a man. He was after the gold, surely, and information, and he did not intend to let me leave alive, I fancied. What could I say to move him in a spirit of conciliation?

If it was a mere matter of gold. . .

“If you require gold, then you must know it is yours for the asking. Vallia will pour out her treasures for the life of her emperor.”

“Yet you bring one miserable bag.”

The answer to that was easy.

“It is but an earnest.”

“Ah!” The avariciousness in him was plain now, plain and ugly and degrading. “How soon can you bring more? Much more?”

“As soon as the emperor is well—”

“Not good enough.”

“There is no time to be lost. You have my word.”

“Words are cheap among the canaille.” He used another word; but that is what he meant. I kept my seat. For the moment I had postponed the decision that would destroy me.

“What more do you want of me — treasure—?”

“You could start by showing proper respect and by calling me master, or san, or Akhram.”

I nodded. I’d have to force the words out as a constipated man forces himself; but for the sake of Vallia I’d eat humble pie. And, not really for Vallia. For my Delia. . .

“Listen to me, Akhram. Tell me plain. I can have as much gold as you can imagine brought to you. But it must be clear to you that it is not with me now. Yet the emperor must be treated at once.” Then I put a little snap into my words. “If you do not tell me and the emperor dies, you will get nothing.”

He put a hand to his mouth at this, pondering the truth.

I gave him no chance to bluster on. I blustered a trifle myself. “Take the gold we have. Save the emperor. Then you will have the reward of a good deed well done, besides the treasure.” I leaned a little closer and my hand dropped to the rapier hilt. “You say you are not as other Todalpheme, and I see that to be true. You have threatened to kill me. But I am not as other men of Kregen. A Todalpheme has little respect from me if he does not act as a Todalpheme is expected to act. If the emperor dies, I think you may die, also.”

He started up, pushing away from the table, his heavy face red, from shock or indignation or fear, I did not know and didn’t damned well care. I had made no conscious decision; I still sought to sway him with words, even if the words were brutal and barbed and vicious.

“I am sacrosanct!”

I ignored him and he sat down, shaking his hands falling from my sight beneath the table edge. “You know of Vallia. I am aware of that. You know that Vallia has beaten the Empire of Hamal. I do not think you would relish a great armada from Vallia wreaking just vengeance on you.”

He had regained his composure. “You would not find the swods or the officers who would lay a hand on a Todalpheme!” He sneered the words, getting his courage back, vicious. So I saw the answer.

I stood up and glared down on him and all the old intemperate evil power must have flooded into my face, for he started back in his chair, unable to rise, all his new-found bravado fled.

“Listen to me, Akhram! If you do not instantly tell me where we may find the Savanti and so save our emperor, then a great armada will come from Vallia. They will not attack the Akhram. They will leave the Todalpheme alone. But they will utterly destroy your island of Bet-Aqsa. All your people will be slain or enslaved — save a few. Save a few who will know why this calamity has fallen on them. They will bear hatred in their hearts for those who caused their destruction. Who do you think will receive that enmity?

Whom will they blame for the calamity that will have fallen on them? Who by refusing to help a sick and dying man wrought such terrible retribution upon the heads of an innocent people?”

I glowered down, hard, horrible, hateful. “Think on, Akhram. Your people will refuse to work for you, to support you. They may not kill you; but they will not lift a finger to help you. What will your life be like then? Think on, old man, and be quick about it.”

He pointed a trembling finger at me. “You — you devil!”

“Aye! Believe it. And tell me.”

“There will be a reckoning. . . But I will instruct my people. Your emperor must be blindfolded and we will take him—”

About to bellow a vicious: “No! We will take him!” I paused. I had pushed. There would be another way, now, than that of violence, which I abhor.

“The doctor cannot leave his side.”

“Our doctors can attend him.”

“Then ready your flier and hurry.”

The commotion that broke outside the door made my lips rick back. The cunning leem probably had a bell-push hidden beneath his chair. Various combinations of rings gave his instructions. Even an onker could guess what he had rung his minions and his guards for.

“You have boasted and threatened, cramph.” His heavy flushed face ran sweat. He descended to insults, also, which is not the way of your true Todalpheme of Kregen. He had waited his time, and now: “Now it is my turn! My people will deal with you utterly. You are alone and although you wear swords I do not think you will stand against my Oblifanters and their swods. Whatever the truth of your story, no one in the whole world will ever see you or hear of you again.”

“You make a mistake.”

“My mistake was in listening to you. Yetch!” He was suddenly shaking in a paroxysm of fresh rage, bloated, purple, rising to confront me. “You dare to threaten me! Calling yourself a devil! Should the Empire of Vallia lay waste to the whole of Bet-Aqsa and the stupid canaille refuse to bring their offerings to the Akhram and to work for us, why do you think that would concern me? Do you think there are no other places I might go? An Akhram? Sacrosanct?”

“The Ice Floes of Sicce for one.”

“Now my people are here — listen to them and the clink of their steel. You are doomed, rast, and I shall spit; but not on your grave, for no mortal man will know where that is.”

The door opened. It did not burst in. It opened, all the same, with a pretty smash. The Oblifanters and the guards would tramp in, now, and we’d have a right merry set-to. All my plans had gone wrong—

“Where d’you want these, my king!” bellowed an enormous voice.

Kytun bounced through. In his lower left and right arms he carried two squirming soldiers, almost crushed against his massive ribs. His upper left arm was lifted and his broad hand gripped a writhing Hikdar, his fancy uniform flying, kicking and yelling aloft in the air. In Kytun’s right hand a djangir gleamed. The very short very broad sword of Djanduin shone brilliantly, clean steel, without a trace of blood.

Over Kytun’s head an Oblifanter sailed up, to land with an almighty crash on the floor between us, so I knew Turko was busy out there. Seg and Inch pushed through, their faces grim.

“Todalpheme!” said Seg. He looked disgusted. “We kept out of sight and sailed in on time. By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom, this place stinks!”

“If these are Todalpheme, judging by what I saw,” put in Inch, “stink is too mild a description.”

“Aye,” I said. “This man here, this Akhram, will show us where away lies Aphrasöe. He has been told what will happen if he does not.”

At the ruination of his plans Akhram shrank. He shook.

“You would not lay a hand on me!” He shrieked, in mortal fear, for the first time in his life, no doubt.

“Defilers!”

“Not on you,” I said. “Remember. Ponder what I have said.”

I was not proud in a loose sense of what I had done. I remembered other Akhrams I had known, and their worth did not excuse my treatment of this worthless example. But he, like the scorpion, only followed his own nature. But, being a man and not a scorpion, and being bound by vows, and being in a high position of trust and privilege, he should have made better attempts to curb his own villainy, and acted his part as an Akhram.

So I leaned, as I used to lean, a little, to my shame.

“And do not think there is a single place in the whole wide world of Kregen where you could scuttle that the arm of Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia, could not reach out and find you — and, finding, punish!”

Well, it was petty, I’ll allow. But the fellow had mizzled me. Delia’s father lay dying, and this kleesh had done what he had done, despite my earnest endeavors at conciliation. Ends and means, means and ends, they are all the same according to the wise divines of Opaz, for one creed alone, and so I stand branded as an evil-doer. But, would I not take upon myself all the evil of two worlds for the sake of Delia?

So, after naked, brutal force had been used, and not against the Todalpheme, to overwhelm them in the person of this Akhram, by the threat of violence only, he gave us the directions we coveted. I did not think he lied. Lying would bring upon his head his total destruction. He knew this. If the emperor died because of his treachery in giving us the wrong directions, he knew we would return and great would be our fury.

All the same, as we soared up, the malicious cramph had the last word. He tilted that heavy face back, and the redness staining his forehead and cheeks glistened in the waning lights of Antares. He shouted up, gloating, crowing, cocksure we were doomed.

“The Savanti will not welcome you! You will never return! If you go you are dead men!”

Then, with a triumphant cackling screech, he shrilled:

“In Aphrasöe you will find only death!”

Chapter Eleven

Of Weapons and Colors — and the Scorpion

“In Aphrasöe you will find only death!”

Threats of that kind had little effect on our company — By Krun! they had no effect whatsoever. We were a roughneck, reckless, harebrained bunch, and with the end of our long journey in sight, any tension that might have been expected did not show itself as these tough warriors — old and young — skylarked and joked, treating the whole expedition as a giant escapade put on for their especial benefit. Concern over the life of the emperor had sensibly diminished now we were so close to the Pool of Baptism where he would be cured.

No doubts or thoughts of failure entered anyone’s head.

The laggard burs flew past. The large island on which Aphrasöe was situated rose out of the sea before us as the Suns of Scorpio rose, blinding in their opaz radiance, streaming their mingled lights of jade and ruby across the sea and the black mass ahead. What perils awaited us there, in that mysterious island?

No sense in anticipating problems; they would find us quickly enough. So, thoughtfully, competently, like the old professional fighting hands we were, we prepared for what the future might bring. Over the coast we soared. The sea and the land looked like any sea and land ought to look — and yet, and yet this was the island of the Savanti!

Somewhere on this island I had for the very first time been dumped down on Kregen. Floating along the Sacred River Aph in a leaf boat, with only an enormous scorpion for crew. That was long and long ago, by Zair — before I even knew of Zair, or the Krozairs — or Delia.

The powers of the superhuman Savanti were immense, unknown, frightening. I made up my mind for the umpteenth time that we must fly straight for the Pool, following the course of the River Zelph rather than the Aph, cure the emperor, and then high tail it out of Aphrasöe, if we could. There would be no hanging about, no stopping for Lahals with the Savanti. I would not go swinging in the Swinging City. There was too much at stake — and, anyway, I had found my paradise elsewhere. Well, men grow corn for Zair to reap, as they say. Again and again I went over the plan. Delia knew what it was necessary to do at the Pool itself. All my magnificent fighting men — aye! and their ladies also — knew what must be done. So we flew through the brightening morning air and the red and the green mingled and fused into that glorious opaline radiance, streaming golden and clean from Antares through the sweet air of Kregen. The coastline itself trended away and showed no sign that we could see of life or habitation, and we saw not one sail. But, as we flew inland, the ground swarmed with life. I own I felt amazement. Down there, as we flew over, huge herds of animals in myriad forms of animal life grazed and ran and heaved in a long rolling sea of heaving rumps and wicked upflung horns. We hung over the rails and watched the hunters, leem and graint, chavonth and strigicaw, a whole mad medley of the savage animals of Kregen, all roaming the plains and valleys and jungly defiles below. Just about every kind of animal I had encountered on Kregen passed below, and many more that I saw there for the first time. Kregen is so marvelous a world and so populated with wonders that it is sometimes difficult to remember that this incredible Earth of ours has probably almost as vast a range of different forms. But on Kregen the varieties have been wildly intermingled, and the artful hand of artificial genetic breeding has been at work, and the combinations of animals — and humans — appear much more startling. Wild animals would from time to time cross the high passes of the craggy mountain ring that surrounds and protects the Swinging City. I had hunted graint with the Savanti, carefully packing them up and sending them back over the mountains unharmed. Now I saw the reality of the enormous profusion of life. It seemed that examples of every kind of animal sported below.

Oby licked his lips. “What a sight!” he stared down, hungrily.

“We shall not starve, that is sure,” said Turko. “Seg with his great bow could feed us single handed.”

Vegetarianism is known and practiced on Kregen; but if a man is starving and a fat deer passes by —

well, a man must live unless he wishes to surrender to the fate high ideals may bring. It is an argument that continues.

“Look!” yelled Oby. And then, as I had taught him, amplifying any sighting report: “Rapas! A whole village of ’em!”

We soared over the Rapa village, and the vulture-headed diffs barely bothered to glance up at our vollers. We passed over other communities of diffs: Chuliks, and Ochs, Brokelsh, Khibils, Fristles, of Blegs and Numims, of Pachaks and Undurkers. As we sailed on over the vastly extensive expanses below we passed many and many a village and town inhabited by one or another of the races of Kregen. Now this, as you will surmise, puzzled me mightily. I also noticed, and thought I was not mistaken, that the people down there would not look up at us, were frightened to look up, as though the sight of a flying craft in the sky would damn and doom them.

But nothing must stand in our way. Nothing. We flew on.

Mountains rose in a white dazzlement ahead.

I shook my head as Delia glanced at me.

“I think not. They do not wear the same appearance as the mountains ringing the Swinging City.”

Vangar spread out the maps. He sucked in his cheeks.

“I would suggest, my prince, that in those mountains yonder rises this fabulous River Zelph.”

I felt very conscious that we were a band exploring unknown territory. But I agreed with Vangar. “And we follow that river down. We do not deviate.”

Then it was time for those closest, who would be in command, as it were, to come across from their own fliers and to sit with us to a sumptuous meal in Delia’s voller. We looked after ourselves, for we had brought the minimum number of servants; of slaves, of course, there was no sign. When the palines in their silver dishes were being passed around Nath the Needle came in. He looked grave. We quieted our quick talk at once.

“My prince!” he began. “My princess!” My heart sank. “The emperor is sinking. All my art—” He spread his hands in self-disgust at his own lack of skill.

At once, bravely, Delia said: “You have done all you can, Nath. How soon — is it — can you tell?”

Before Nath could answer, I, foolish and loving, burst in with: “Sink me! We’ll reach the Pool before your father is any worse. He will be well again and then we’ll fly back to Vondium. I’m waiting to see the faces of those rasts who tried to poison him.”

“Aye!” said Seg, forcefully. “That Ashti Melekhi will get one almighty shock, as Erthyr the Bow is my witness.”

I took comfort from Seg’s words. He does not often swear on the name of the Supreme Being of Erthyrdrin.

The others broke in, also, roundly declaring we’d reach the Pool well in time. I warmed to them. Comrades, all! If any power of mortal man or woman could get the Emperor of Vallia to the Pool of Baptism, then, surely, that power flew here with me!

Nath nodded, saying: “I think there will be time. . .”

I stood up, crushing down a last paline and I looked around the table on my comrades. I felt the silly, choked up feeling that betrays me for a weakling. But I spoke up harshly enough, grating the words out. Believe me, I did not overlook the fact that the emperor could easily die before we could save him. Then I would have to return to Vallia and take charge. I fancied I would have to do that, although detesting the work. Some men I knew would be amazed that I did not throw the emperor overboard at once and sail back to claim the throne. And, there was no guarantee in this bitter life that any rescue could succeed. Had I not raced to save my daughter Velia? Had I not failed?

So I spoke pungently to the assembled company, knowing they would pass my words onto everyone in the expedition.

“Remember. Nothing must stop us from winning through to the Pool. Once the emperor is cured, we may return. No casualty must deter us. Let no man, beast, god or wizard stand in our way. Nothing!”

They roared at this, determined, dedicated, and Nath the Needle, looking at me, nodded as if to say that, well, perhaps his hopes were strong enough, the Emperor would live. And, as for me — brave bluff words from an inspired leader? Onkerish words from an onker of onkers, a get onker? Reaction to my own dark thoughts? But, all in the fullness of time, I suppose, every man gets his comeuppance. I am not too sure about women, though. . .

Of only one thing I remained sure. These my comrades would get through to the Pool of Baptism if it was humanly possible. No matter what happened, they’d go on. After the emperor was cured the Savanti might rail — the deed would be done.

With a few final words that reinforced my orders — for, make no mistake, what I told this roaring reckless rout of ruffians to do was an order, hard and incisive — we parted to kit up for the final run in to the Pool.

We must go well-armed and accoutred, for I did not forget the ravening monsters Delia and I had met on the struggle to reach the sacred grove and the rocky overhang and the Pool. In our stateroom Delia pulled out the long length of brilliant scarlet cloth. Well, now. . . I made myself smile, and smiling always comes easily for me with my Delia, and I said, lightly: “The scarlet of Strombor and the yellow cross of my Clansmen — yes, my heart, I think it appropriate, for they are the colors of Vallia, also.”

“And the orange and grey of your fearsome Djangs.”

“Our fearsome Djangs. Of course. And the red and white of Valka. And, for the place grows dearer to me, the yellow and blue of Zamra. I think,” I said, twisting up the scarlet around my waist and drawing it through my legs and tucking the end securely in, and then picking up the broad lesten-hide belt with the dull silver buckle. “I rather think we look like popinjays, these latter times.”

She laughed; but she, too, understood the importance of colors and badges and signs. In the midst of the dust and hurly burly of a battle, a man needs a flag to rally to. Colors and badges tell you whom to kill and whom not to kill. That is a matter of importance for anyone, and particularly to anyone who wishes to live for very long on Kregen. So my Delia laughed at my words; but her thoughts were with the sick man, her father. I chided her.

“Once he is well again we will fly back to Vallia. There all those who sought to profit by his death will receive the nasty shock Seg and the others promise. There are loyal people in Vallia, still—”

“Oh, yes. But few, I think, very few.”

“Once the emperor is seen to be fit and well the waverers will suddenly realize what side they are on. Anyway,” I went on with a rush of confidence, “this new Chief Pallan your father has brought forward to such power, this Kov Layco; he will keep things running while we are away. He has shown a misjudgment of character in appointing Ashti Melekhi — but that will be forgiven him, I daresay, if he is as skilled and clever as is said.”

“He is clever, no doubt of that. I try to like him.”

“Oh?”

“You are so often away, Dray. It is difficult. Once it is all settled you will tell me this dread secret that you feel will — will — I tremble to say it — will come to—”

“Do not say it, my heart. Nothing can destroy our love.” I believed it, passionately. “But I do fear to tell you. I feel — I feel the burden I shall impose on you is—” My thoughts were muddled. I had kept putting off and putting off telling Delia of my origins. To her, I was a savage clansman, with a strange underspirit that did not come from the plains of Segesthes. But — Earth! How could I tell her I came from a star in the sky she could barely make out? How could she possibly believe in a world which possessed only one sun? What sense was there in a world with only one moon! And, how could any sensible person of Kregen believe in a world that contained only apims as men and women, where diffs were unknown? My story would be taken as the ravings of a madman. I ploughed on somehow: “You will find it hard to believe me. But I shall tell the truth. I swear it. I swear it by Zair.”

“I shall believe—”

Turning for the arms rack I groped around and took up the scabbarded Krozair longsword with the plain strappings that would secure it to my back, the hilt comfortably jutting over my shoulder by the blue-fletched arrow shafts.

I remember, through the maze of impending agony through which I would have to go in trying to convince Delia and my family that I was not a raving lunatic, I sought a little tawdry comfort in thinking of ordinary things. I thought I would have to see about a proper supply of the rose-red feathers of the Zim korf for my Archers of Valka, and I also remember thinking I was growing far too accustomed to wearing the longsword sticking up over my back instead of jutting almost parallel with the ground at my left side. I was thinking I would like to see my new aerial cavalry of Valka mounted on flutduins performing against those rascally flutsmen. A torrent of vague thoughts poured through my mind. So I turned again to pick up the superb shortsword Hap Loder had brought me, a present from the Clansmen of Viktrik, the new clan who had given me obi, a blade built in Zenicce to the very highest standards, a blade to shame any Genodder of the Eye of the World, and I took the chunkrah-hide and gold scabbard up into my hand and a red and brown scorpion, glinting, ran from under the arms rack. I felt sick.

A scorpion!

Symbol of the forces of the Savanti or the Star Lords, symbol of those powers that could hurl me about Kregen or banish me back to Earth, contemptuously tossing me about like a puppet, that scorpion stood on its eight hairy legs, waving its vicious stinging tail at me in admonishing authority. Not now! Please Zair! Not now!

But the blue haze dropped upon me, and I felt the coldness, striking through like the clammy hand of Death himself, and the scorpion grew and bloated, radiant with the blue fire, and everything spun away in two worlds, and engulfed in agony I fell into nothingness.

Chapter Twelve

Strife Among the Star Lords

This nothingness differed from those other nauseating nothingnesses in which I had suffered so often before.

Always, so it seemed to me, I had been snatched away by the blue-limned radiance of the scorpion, caught up, whirled through nothingness, spun through an achingly cold void, smashed down with a hint of the red fire of Antares, slapped head over heels, all naked like a newborn infant, sent toppling helplessly into a new world.

But, this time. . .

A difference.

I was stark naked, and that I expected.

I was no longer in the voller and that, too, I expected.

I tried to open my eyes and realized they were open. I could see and yet, seeing, see nothing. The hint of echoes, as of the rushing of a distant torrent far below ground, pent between eon-old walls never opened to sunlight. . . The whisper of insane voices cackling over the edge of a world, pringling clammily against my skin. . . I felt the coldness touch me, and ebb, and return. I saw — I saw blue whorls of light gyrating, and, across them and irradiating them with wheels of crimson, red streaks of fire pulsating. The blue was a pale, luminescent blue, and the sharp blue and the crimson struggled for supremacy. And — green! An ominous tinge of green washed across the lower corner of the firmament, clashing with the struggling blue and crimson.

Where had I see blue and crimson before, recently? My head rang with soundless echoes. I struggled, and did not move.

The sky colors fought and writhed, waxed and waned.

Yellow! Where was the yellow of Zena Iztar?

I bellowed out: “Zena Iztar!” and only a dolorous croak passed my lips, my corded throat bursting with effort, a croak like a frog with hernia.

Blue of that brilliant beckoning luminosity was the color used by both the Savanti and the Star Lords when they sent the Scorpion after me. Yellow had been used triumphantly by Zena Iztar, as I believed, to save me. As for that mysterious woman, who on Earth called herself Madam Ivanovna, I knew nothing

— or practically nothing. She came and went at her own whim. Glorious she was, aye, that is true. She showed no fear of the Star Lords or the Savanti; but if she worked for them or against them, or for one or the other, I did not know.

I fell.

As I fell I remembered — remembered Zena Iztar and the Kroveres of Iztar, and the crimson flag and the blue device.

I fell. All naked and bruised, I fell into a thorn-ivy bush and I cursed by the foul anatomy of Makki-Grodno. What was happening I had no idea; all I wanted to do was get back to the voller and Delia and go cure her father.

By an effort of will I had succeeded in erecting a kind of structure of deceits so as partially to mollify the anger of the Star Lords. I had managed to convince them I should stay on Kregen and not be dispatched to Earth. I had also, after some success along the way, like an onker resisted them, willfully, and so been banished to Earth for twenty-one horrendous years.

Resistance might once again cause another banishment.

What Maspero, my tutor in the Swinging City, had told me did make a kind of sense. He had said:

“Only by the free exercise of your will can you contrive the journey.” That journey had taken me for the first time from Earth — I was literally up a tree at the time, being chased by savages — to sail my leaf boat down the sacred River Aph and after the welcome departure of the scorpion crew to discover a little of what life on Kregen was like and how I would measure up to it — and at last so reach Aphrasöe. Could the Savanti not draw me at will, then? Their monstrous creature in the sacred Pool of Baptism had flung me back to Earth, and it had been the Everoinye, the Star Lords, who had picked me to labor for them about their mysterious purposes on Kregen.

So I exerted my will.

I roared it out, and produced only a croaking sighing like a pair of bellows shot through by musketry. “I will stay on Kregen! I will rejoin my wife in the voller! You have no powers over me, Star Lords! Savanti

— I would have worked joyously for you; but you disdained me! Why torture me now? Why?”

And, all the time, I looked for the welcome yellow to gush up among the gyrating colors staining the firmament, and no yellow came.

From the susurrating wash of background noises, from the color-dripping sky, from the mingling scents and perfumes, past the thorn-ivy bush, from everywhere and from nowhere, a voice spoke to me. A voice spoke to me.

“Insolent onker! You are a mere mortal man — do not presume.”

I tried to bellow back, and merely wheezed.

I thought. I tried to hurl my thoughts; and the voice crashed down, masterful, dominating.

“I command you now, Dray Prescot. And I demand from you more than you have hitherto given —

more than you appear willing to give. But that more I will have.” The voice whined suddenly, and became incoherent. Then: “Hearken unto me!”

And, another voice, harsher, deeper: “The man is ours!”

“You do not use him to the full!”

“We use him as we see fit. He is, after all, but a mere mortal man.”

“And fit therefore to be driven—”

“He is often stubborn. He is not an easy man—”

“I would drive him! I would—” Again that acrid voice became incoherent. I listened, my mouth dry, my eyes fairly starting from my head, and my backside jabbed thick with the thorn-ivy needles. This could not be the Savanti, arguing with the Star Lords!

Could it?

The thorn-ivy needles jabbed me cruelly and I rolled away, cursing, feeling harsh rock and stones beneath me, broken twigs, the detritus of a wild animal’s lair.

Brittle bones crunched under my hands as I struggled to rise.

“We wish him—” continued the second voice.

The acid voice, the voice that had spoken first and so allowed me a listening post, illuminating with sound the black silent recesses, that voice that kept wavering as though the speaker strove to pierce through the tumult of a tempest, lashed back. “I shall run him now!”

“Not so! He works well — when he does work—”

“Does he know—?”

“Of course not! How could he? He is apim. Apim.”

“Then perhaps I shall let him know a little—” The bitter voice trailed. Suddenly I found myself urging the voice to return. He’d tell me what, the rast?

These were not Savanti. I held that conviction with sudden deep resolution. Star Lords. They were the Everoinye.

“He is still too soft. The knowledge might destroy him—”

“I am prepared to take that chance.”

I stood up at last and shook my fist at the gory viridian dance of colors against the sky. “You’d take the chance, you kleesh! With my hide! With my sanity!”

Well, that was a mistake.

Like a blind lashing up on a runaway roller, I opened my eyes anew, and stood up, and, lo! I stood on a wide and dusty plain, the thorn-ivy bush at my side, and before me men and women fought among themselves.

I took a breath of sweet Kregan air.

This was more like old times!

A quick glance aloft showed me blue sky — and a whorling diminishing struggle between the blue and the red. And — and! A long beautiful streak of yellow coiled and drifted away into laypom and lemon and so vanished into the clear blue vault of the sky. I let rip a great sob of thankfulness. The yellow, so fragile, creeping in, told me Zena Iztar was at last aware.

I knew I had been brought here — wherever here was — to rescue some wight among that struggling throng, to preserve him or her for the pleasure of the Everoinye. I had served the Star Lords in this fashion before.

Or, so I believed.

I took one step forward.

And blue radiance dropped about me, and I tumbled head over heels, gasping, falling upwards, and so stood with a thump upon a high rampart atop a lofty tower, with a great city spread beneath me. Boulevards and kyros, avenues and temples, spread out beneath the glitter of the suns. And the city burned. Dull wafts of brown smoke rose from the bright buildings. Hordes of crazed people fled in every direction, wildly, not caring where they fled. The smell of blood and fire cloaked the doomed city. From the air echelons of warriors, all steel and bronze and leather, flying their winged saddle-beasts of war, swooped mercilessly down, casting death before them. The beat of the wings sounded the death knell of the city. Fire, destruction, desolation — from that high tower I looked on the casting down of a city. Where, in all this violence, was I to find the wight I was to rescue? Or, failing to rescue, to find myself packed headlong back to Earth?

Again, I took one foolish step forward, and the light changed.

The crimson beat in, drowning the blue. In crimson flakes of fire I was borne up, whirled headlong about, sent crashing down. I felt the heaving deck of a swordship beneath me and saw the banks of sweating rowers pulling, saw the tangled heat of striped sails about the mainmast, the severed rigging, the varter bolts embedded in the wood of deck and bulwarks, the smashed and splintered scantlings where varter-flung rocks had wreaked their destruction. Up in the bows both below and above the fore-platform where the varter lay scattered in useless shattered timbers and sinews, the frenzied struggle battered on between men who cut and hacked and slipped in blood and shrieked and died, their weapons fouled and glistening in the opaz radiance of Antares. A varter bolt flew past my ear. Fierce bearded men with golden rings in their ears and tall golden-feathered helmets, their eyes alight with the joy of killing, their scale armor glittering, bore down howling on me. Whom to rescue on the command of the Star Lords? I bent to snatch up a fallen sword — and the crimson light trembled, and faded, and gushed deeply, and was gone and the yellow light limned me, drenching me in golden glory, and I tumbled full length into that damned thorn-ivy bush. Bellowing aloud that Makki-Grodno’s diseased intestines would provide a capital sleeping bag for Star Lord, for Savanti, for whomever sought to drag me away from the voller and Delia, I pulled out of the thorn-ivy bush, stung to blazes.

The struggling mass of people had vanished from the dusty plain. The doomed city no longer existed. The swordship had gone.

I stood alone upon that dusty arid plain, stark naked, prickled by sharp thorn-ivy spines, and I looked about on nothing save dust.

“By Zair!” I roared, shaking my fist at the sky. And then I could not think of anything relevant to say. There was too much pent up within me. I had no real idea of what had been going on. I turned three hundred and sixty degrees and saw nothing save that dusty plain and the thorn-ivy bush. So I stood, fuming, filled with an enormous baffled rage — and, also fully aware of my ridiculous position.

A voice ghosted in from nowhere, from everywhere, riding the radiance, ringing sweetly from the distant sky, fading.

“Go north, Dray Prescot! North. This is all I could contrive, all I can do. . . The voice of Zena Iztar! Yes, I knew that voice. That mysterious woman who could charm men and animals to a magic sleep, that woman of whom I hoped for much, that woman who seemed to offer sanity in a universe of madness; well, she was trying to help. I felt sure of that. But. . .

“By Vox, Krun, Djan and Kaidun!” I bellowed. I stamped my foot. “What an infernal waste of time!”

“Fight, Dray Prescot. Go North. Jikai, Ver Dray! There is nothing else. . .”

The sweet voice faded and was gone and I stood alone under the opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio.

Useless to pretend I had not been profoundly shaken by that unearthly experience. Unearthly —

Unkregan! I had been a witness to a titanic struggle among superhumans, seeing a tiny corner of the veil of mystery lifted. All was not sweetness and light among the Star Lords, then. . . Maybe an old paktun rogue like Dray Prescot could use that information. Yes, I thought, where werstings squabble the gyp gets the bone.

I stuck my old beak of a nose into the north, pulled a last spine from my rump, and set off on my bare feet.

The more I thought about these recent occurrences the more I fancied the Savanti were not involved. They were mere mortal men, superhuman, admitted; but men. They were the tiny remnant of the Sunset People who had once dominated Kregen. Their buildings lay in ruination in many lands. They it was who had constructed the Dam of Days and built the Grand Canal. Now they lived in the Swinging City and sought to train Savapims to work for the betterment of Kregen. No, I did not think the Savanti had been involved in that cosmic struggle.

I plodded on.

The air remained warm, the suns shone, a few birds wheeled about above and you may be sure I favored them with a close scrutiny although their presence comforted me. They would not fly about here if there were no game to hunt. Mind you, I might be the Sunday dinner they had in mind; but I was used to that, and by certain signs near the thorn-ivy bushes I knew small animals lived in this waste that appeared a wilderness but was not to those who knew how to survive. So I trundled on northward, trying to be philosophical.

By Vox! But it was hard. What were my people doing now? How was Delia reacting to my disappearance from the voller? She would shake her head and sigh, and say, no doubt, more or less: “So he’s off again.” I thought of the gaudy array of weaponry I had been in the act of belting on. By Krun! I could do with some of those edged and pointed weapons now. Particularly, I needed a bow. The bow I had intended to take had been a good greenwood bow of Erthyrdrin, its manufacture superintended by Seg. Although a kov he would indulge his passion for creating better and better bowstaves, working with his hands. The stave, like any bowstave, looked lumpy and sullen, following the grain of the wood, cunningly built to avoid any weakness. But it looked marvelous in the eyes of a bowman. Bows that look flashy and wonderful do not always work as well as those that follow the grain; they never do. With that bow, six feet six inches, a yard in the pull, I could cast an arrow and fetch up my supper with no trouble.

So, perforce, I stomped along in a foul humor and picked up a sharp stone and carried the thing in my fist and looked about with a fine predatory eye.

The ravening monsters of the air and land that ringed and protected the central mass of mountains would scarcely allow a naked unarmed man to pass. Thought had to be taken.

A black dot on the horizon almost directly on the back track attracted my immediate suspicious attention. I stopped moving at once and crouched beside a thorn-ivy bush. I watched. The black lump came on, growing in size, pirouetting with the heat devils, lumping and parting, coalescing, gradually drawing nearer.

Soon I made out a riding animal carrying two persons.

The beast looked to be some kind of member of the trix family in that it had a blunt wicked head, six legs and a coat of coarse grayish hair. The riders — I whistled. The man was a numim lad, a lion-man, well built, glorious in the numim way with his great golden mane, hardy. The girl was a Fristle fifi, delicate, beautifully formed, charming, her slanted eyes and frolicsome tail eloquent of all that is best about the cat-people. They sat close together on the uncomfortable back of the six-legged animal and they were totally engrossed in each other.

Now numims and Fristles may sometimes get on well together, seeing that they are both of feline stock; and sometimes they spit and snarl and rick back their lips and tear great chunks out of each other. I had an inkling of what was going on here and although I did not smile — I did not forget the indignity and the sheer awful frustration of my predicament — I felt a little lift of my flinty old heart. It has been my experience on Kregen that a man must make what he can of the situation in which he finds himself. Until I could rejoin Delia and my comrades I must work and fight to stay alive, and take an interest in all that occurred, trying to use events to my own advantage. So, feeling an intruder, I stood up from the thorn-ivy bush and shouted: “Llahal, dom, domni. Llahal.”

The stux whipped up in the lad’s hand.

“Llahal, dom. You are apim. I bear you no grudge.”

“Nor I, you.”

“Shall we make pappattu?”

“Assuredly.”

“I am Naghan—” Then, his manners catching up with him, he stuttered and started over. “You have the honor to be in the presence of Fimi Shemillifey. I am Naghan Mennelo ti Sakersmot.”

“I am Dray Prescot.”

“Now that we have made pappattu—” and here he put up his stux, so that he could finish the pappattu, which means, as you know, more than a mere formal introduction. “I would ask you why you wander alone and naked in these perilous parts.”

The answer was glib. “My caravan was set upon by drikingers. And you?”

“We elope—” And then he stopped himself, and Fimi, his little Fristle fifi, giggled, and so I attempted to scrape up a smile. So wrapped up were they in their brave and foolhardy solution to their problem they barely heeded my own thin story.

“If you wish, we may continue our journey together.” My eyes regarded his water bottle. He shook his head. “As to the companionship, right gladly I welcome it, even though you have no weapons, for you look a fighting man and the Khirrs prowl hereabouts. But, as to the water. . . “ He shook the bottle. The confounded thing was nearly as dry as my throat.

“As Oxkalin the Blind Spirit chances,” I said, resigned.

“Oh, for a long cool drink of parclear!” sighed Fimi.

Naghan chided her. “When we reach Great Aunt Melimni she will welcome us and you may drink all the parclear in Ba-Domek.”

Incautiously, always a garrulous onker, I said: “Ba-Domek?”

“Why,” says this Naghan ti Sakersmot. “Do not tell me you do not know where you are?”

If the twin suns had fallen from the sky upon my foolish head I do not think I could have been more shattered. Of course I had assumed without thinking that I was still on the island of Aphrasöe. And, instead, I was somewhere else on the surface of Kregen! I felt my face going red and my eyes must have betrayed all the killing passion in me. This Naghan ti Sakersmot reined up, smartly, flinching, staring down at me, starting back.

“This is not,” I got out in a strangled voice. “This is not the island of Aphrasöe?”

At this both young people shrieked and clapped their hands over their ears. Their young faces expressed extreme horror.

“Do not say that!” screeched Naghan. “Never! We have not heard! As I love Fimi — I shall cut you down!”

“Brace up, lad!” I bellowed. “If you do not tell me where I am or what is going on — for I admit I am lost — how can I know? Tell me of Ba-Domek.”

Relief at their reaction to my use of the name Aphrasöe made me weak. I had thought — what a horror that would have been!

“Why,” Naghan said, cautiously taking his hands from his ears and the imp had heard me clearly, right enough. “Why, this is Ba-Domek. The city of which you speak is a place forbidden.”

Of course. Trust the Savanti to spread a little ghoulish rumor about the Swinging City. I would not press this young couple; but I felt sure they could retail grisly stories about the goings-on in Aphrasöe. So I was still on the island. Zena Iztar had managed to keep me here, at the least. I swallowed down, dry as a bone, for I could not spit.

“So you ride together. In that direction.” My arm sliced down toward the north.

“Only for a ways. Then we turn off down the Valley of the Twin Spires. I feel confident of the way,” he said, eagerly. “Even though I have ridden it but once before. Always, the way was through the River Feron’s lowlands. This is a dangerous route.”

“This city of which we do not speak. Where away lies that?”

“Down the other River,” he said. That made sense.

Now I had to find where the river began — or where I could join it. I didn’t care if it was the Aph or the Zelph.

In answer to my query he looked around the featureless horizon, undecided. He squinted up at the suns. He frowned.

Then: “I think, dom, I think — that away.”

He pointed due north.

Chapter Thirteen

How Fimi Obtained Her Wedding Portion

For a space then, our ways would lie together.

The six-legged saddle animal, a gnutrix, walked along with that awkward swaying gait of the six-legged, and I tramped on alongside. The two young people made nothing of my nakedness and, partly, I suppose, that was because I was apim and they diff.

Their story was soon told. Miscegenation is not the true word for this kind of marriage across diff-boundaries, where the people in question are closely related. All the same, their own people were not happy; a chance meeting at a fair, the growing realization that a genuine love existed between them, the hostility of their families and, finally, elopement, all added up to this flight across the barren land to the sanctuary of Great Aunt Melimni’s house — a fine villa with fountains and arbors, Naghan confided with pride — situated in the best district of Lowerinsmot. This town, he said with just the hint of doubt, was situated perhaps a little too close to — and here he paused, and ran a hand around his collar. I asked more questions in a general way, and gathered that Naghan knew a fair amount of the geography of this part of Ba-Domek, being a traveling salesman of a sort. I gathered as much from what he did not say as the information he parted with that Aphrasöe did indeed lie at the center of the island surrounded by the ring of sheltering mountains. He confirmed that the island swarmed with animals and birds and diffs. There were few apims. No city of Homo sapiens like me was known. And, of course, of those within the Swinging City itself, nothing would induce Naghan to venture there. He knew what apims were, of course, and regarded me with a lively interest as the representative of a strange and exotic breed. Always before when I had been summoned by the scorpion and been flung head over heels pell-mell to Kregen I had awakened stark naked, faced with the immediate problem of rescuing someone or other from pressing peril. So, this time, I kept an eye on these two elopers. I did not think I had been dragged from the voller for nothing; equally, I was aware that the circumstances this time were greatly different from anything that had gone before.

“As soon as you reach Lowerinsmot all our troubles will be over.” Fimi clung to Naghan, speaking with perfect confidence.

They wore simple tunics of a flaxen color, and Fimi’s was trimmed and hemmed with bright embroidery. They had a satchel with dried meats and fruits. Their only weapon, apart from a bronze knife, was the stux, and he handled the spear smartly enough but not, I judged, as a warrior. Traveling salesmen, he said his family were, going from village and town around the countryside. Sometimes there were fights; but few people like to pick a quarrel with a numim.

But for the two suns in the sky — and a fellow gets used to those pretty quickly — and the cat-girl and lion-man riding a shambling six-legged mount at my side, this dusty plain with its willy-willies and its scraps of thorny bushes might have existed on Earth. I might be trudging along on the planet of my birth. But that was dangerous nonsense. I was on Kregen. At any moment deadly danger could spring at us, seeking to rend us into bloody shreds. The wild animals of Kregen would make an Earthly tiger, or elephant, or crocodile turn tail and flee. Those savage beasts of Kregen would look on us all as tasty morsels for dinner. Three appetizers and a couple of mouthfuls, with blood running and white bones splintering. So, as we walked, we kept a sharp lookout.

“I do not fear the strigicaws,” said Naghan stoutly. “And we can outrun the graints. As for leems—” He pursed up his lion-mouth, and gripped his stux.

Fimi shivered. “Leems are terrible,” she whispered. “But if we meet the Khirrs—”

Looking back as I surveyed our rear and observed the track of our march, I said: “Whatever these Khirrs may be — there are riders following—”

Both Naghan and Fimi let out cries of consternation. The riders behind spurred on fiercely. I could make out the ungainly forms of gnutrixes like the one ambling beside me. The wink of weapons told plainly what was in store.

“Your family, Fimi!” shouted Naghan. “They have tracked us — they will not let you go.”

“Ride on.” I spoke calmly. So this was the reason I had been dumped down here. Useless to rage. Useless to question the value of these two young people against the value of the emperor of Vallia, The Star Lords kept to their own purposes and to them an emperor might weigh no more than a Fristle fifi. But, was not that a part of my philosophy, also?

Already I had seen the result of similar handiwork. Had not my rescue of two young people at the commands of the Star Lords produced a great genius king, a mad king, who sought to rule all the world he knew?

I gave the gnutrix a slap on its hairy hide and it bounded away. What future lay in store for the child of these two, this Naghan ti Sakersmot and his Fimi, what veiled destiny?

Scattered about on the brown plain at my feet lay stones. Rough, sharp-edged stones. There were four riders. Stooping, I took up four stones of suitable size and shape.

Always a show-off, I suppose, the old onker Dray Prescot.

The riders slackened speed a trifle as they came within range. That fancy showing off was like to cost me dear, for the fourth stone missed its mark. The last rider, seeing his three companions slipping senseless from their saddles, let out a great roar and lowered his head — whereat my rock missed him

— and charged, his sword whirling.

Now, the racial weapon of the Fristles is the scimitar. I hopped and skipped and ducked the sweep of the blade. His booted foot slipped at first through my clutching fingers and I had to roll under his beast, taking an infernal banging from the middle pair of hooves, before I could rise wrathfully up on the far side and so grab his leg and hurl him from the saddle.

“You great onker!” I bellowed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He came up on a knee. Quick and vicious, Fristles, particularly in anything touching the honor and well-being of their women folk. Their family would be shamed by Fimi’s elopement. He retained his scimitar. The long curved blade glistered finely in the streaming radiance.

“Nulsh!” he screamed. He jumped in, recovered from his fall, scything his blade wildly. I was not deceived.

At the last second that savage swashing would abruptly turn into a smooth thrusting drive as the scimitar revolved around the center of its artful curve — and the blade would carve me neatly through. Turko the Khamorro would have relished the situation.

Armed with the Disciplines of unarmed combat instilled by the Krozairs of Zy I was able to feint one way, go the other, and then — very nastily — rake back and so tweak the scimitar from his grip and, instead of running him through or bashing him over the head with his own blade, present the point smartly at his throat.

He lay on his back, hands gripped into the dust, glaring up in murderous fury. The little exercise was not worth a “Hai Hikai,” the unarmed man’s equivalent to the swordsman’s “Hai Jikai.” I had given Duhrra, who had then been called Duhrra the Mighty Mangier, the Hai Hikai after our first encounter, for I recognized in the gigantic wrestler a true man. I had given Duhrra the “Hai Hikai!”

not the swordsman’s “Hai Jikai.”

This is important upon Kregen.

If this Fristle flat on his back wished to make of this little spat a Jikai, he was welcome to try. I told him so. I finished: “But although I do not wish to slay you, and will not do so unless provoked beyond reason, I must warn you that Naghan and Fimi will depart in peace.”

Three heavily armed Fristles slumbered in the dust and a fourth glowered up at me, flat on his back. I own it must have made a pretty sight. But I was in a hurry.

“Choose, dom. Let them go — or your life answers for it!”

He believed me. I suppose, looking back, I must have appeared to him a dark malignant demon, broad-shouldered, naked, sweat and dust molding those muscles of mine, ridged, iron-hard, turning me into the semblance of a man of iron. I felt only the need for speed.

In the end, believing me, he took himself off with his three companions. The four rode off on two gnutrixes, and one of them had fewer clothes than when he’d started and all had damned fewer weapons. So, mounted up, rejoined with the two elopers, accoutred with scimitars and stuxes, we rode on. Also, we had a filled water bottle and that, you may be sure, I kept under my hand.

“I shall return all these things, the gnutrixes, the weapons, the clothes, to you, Fimi, when we part. After all, they can be regarded as a wedding portion from your family.”

Naghan laughed at this. “You are a strange man, Dray Prescot.”

“Aye.”

When the wind got up and blew devilish stinging sand into our faces we were glad to pull up the sand-scarves, although when I referred to my sand-scarf, calling it a hlamek as we do in South Zairia, my companions tittered and said it was a flamil. The Fristle from whom I had taken this flamil had been violently upset when I removed it from him. But I did not argue. From all I had heard and seen I was beginning to believe I might have stumbled upon another example of the work of the Savanti. All these jumbled animals and people, all living cheek-by-jowl around the outer portions of this large island —

surely they must all have been brought here by the Savanti? Brought here to serve the purposes of the superhumans of the Swinging City?

Another explanation did not occur to me. Had it done so I would have seen it only as a further example of the cynicism of the Star Lords.

This island was in a mirrorlike way a representation of the rest of Kregen — or at least of the continental and island grouping of Paz. Diffs lived and worked and raised families here, Katakis prowled on their evil slaving raids, Chuliks maintained their strict Spartan training as mercenaries, along with all the other races who carried out the tasks for which they were best suited. Kings there were, too, so I heard, and wars and harryings and all the old evil ugly patchwork of human ambition and greed, along with the finer things of humanity, like art and love and religion and good works and music.

“Songs?” I said as we jogged along, the sand-storm blown away, the suns shining refulgently from a copper sky and the green of watered land showing on the horizon. “Aye, let us sing.”

We took a good swig of the water bottle, for the greenery ahead promised, and started in. We sang The Pachak with the Four Arms, which is highly scurrilous, abusing a fine people I greatly admire. Fimi possessed a sweet singing voice, and Naghan roared out lustily and I joined my own bullfrog bellowings. A pang rose up to torture me — aye! The hostile territories . . . I remembered. . . So I launched into The Bowmen of Loh, leaving out certain of the stanzas, and found they were not too familiar with that famous and notorious old song. Then we had King Naghan His Fall and Rise in honor of the Naghan who rode with us. We were just about halfway through Golden Fur, a famous and beautiful song of both Fristles and numims, when the chavonth leaped. This chavonth was a fine large specimen of his family, a six-legged hunting cat of formidable destructive powers. His hide was all patterned in hexagons of blue, black and grey, and his whiskers bristled and his fangs glinted as he leaped.

Treacherous are chavonths. He had my poor gnutrix. The animal went down squealing, his hide ripped by razor claws.

I rolled and the scimitar came out and I took a wild swipe at the cat as it sprang. At the last minute I managed to get out of the way and the chavonth hit the grass beyond my head. Faster than the cat, so fast I almost overran it, I leaped in and brought the scimitar down in an angled slashing blow. The blade grated into the bones of the chavonth’s neck as the bright blood welled. It let out a tremendous screech and wrenched around and the blade snapped clean across.

For a moment we hung together, the six paws with those slashing claws clashing beyond my back as I strained to keep its head away. Fimi had screamed and Naghan’s gnutrix had bolted. But all the world was concentrated into that struggle as, locked together, muscle against muscle, the chavonth and I sought to wrest the mastery. The fangs dripped. The red tongue lolled. I thrust back, feeling my muscles strain, feeling the blood thump in my head, feeling all the savagery that had been contained and repressed within me over the past days surging up, bright red, bestial, deadly.

Clamped together, we thrashed across the trampled grass beneath the small bluff where the chavonth had lurked. With every sinew straining, holding him back, my fists gripped around his throat, I pushed his head back and with my leg hooked about his body, hauled him in to me so that his claws could not disembowel. As it was he took a long raking chunk of skin and flesh away, and my blood dripped. Then, with a last final, bestial effort, a great surging thrusting of bursting muscles, I smashed his head back and the chavonth’s neck snapped across where the stupid broken scimitar blade jagged out. Flinging the corpse from me I stood back. I drew in huge draughts of Kregen’s sweet air. I dashed the sweat from my ugly old face. I know I was wearing that frightful devil’s mask plastered in blood and sweat across my features.

“By Vox!” I said. “That was close.”

“Give thanks to Farilafristle,” said Fimi, shaking, her eyes large and horrified. She had stopped screaming and yet, for all her brave words, she turned with a sob of thankfulness from me and the chavonth corpse as Naghan came racing back, flogging his mount unmercifully.

“I give you the Jikai, Dray Prescot.” He spoke gravely, dismounting and helping Fimi down.

“As to that,” I said. “I must walk again, by Krun.”

Gods and goddesses and spirits come in all shapes and sizes on Kregen. Few people bother over much which deity is sworn by or appealed to, so long as their own beliefs are not crudely touched. So, collecting the gear I thought necessary and leaving the two corpses, the gnutrix and the chavonth, we set off again through this new tangled wooded country. The rips in my hide would heal; but they smarted sharply.

“Sooner a chavonth than a Khirr,” said Naghan. He held his stux at the ready. His flamil rested under his chin. He looked down at me. “Also, apim, it is best to have your flamil handy. Be ready to draw it up over your face instantly if you see a Khirr.”

“What? Do they freeze with a look?”

“No — they are no Gengulas of legend. They are real. They spit.”

The way became easy after that and we spent five or six nights in comfort, with ample fresh meats and fruit. We were beset on a number of occasions; but fought through. In the process I acquired a knife, a miserable thing; but better than nothing. Gradually Naghan became more nervy. Fimi rubbed the fingers of her left hand over the atra she wore in the form of a bracelet on her right wrist. We were camping in a cave, and she looked about, wondering about a fire. “It is all — so dark and mysterious when the suns sleep and the moons are tardy.”

About to make some hard common-sense reply, I hesitated, for Naghan, too, was rubbing his atra. He wore his amulet slung around his neck. I have spoken little of the atras, the amulets and lucky charms, the mystic spell-holders, worn by many people of Kregen. Superstition is as rife there as on Earth, mingled with sorceries and religions, demonic possession and necromancy. The bazaars and souks of cities and towns contained stalls where the magic talismans might be bought, and more money spent brought more protection. Blessings from as many sources of psychic power as possible also helped, and people would go from temple to sorcerer, brazen, bare-faced, to pay for a protective spell and a blessing.

“We are well-protected.” Naghan pushed his atra back down inside his tunic. No doubt he believed that had saved him when the chavonth leaped on me, a man without an atra. And then, heartening me, he hefted his stux and added: “Let us rely on ourselves this night, my love. A fire. . .?”

Naghan, knowing fire would drive away wild animals, would not have asked the question if there were not more behind a mere fire than that.

“What enemy is there,” I said, “apart from men, who does not fear fire?”

And, as he opened his mouth, I knew. So, together, we said: “Khirrs!”

This explained Naghan’s increasing nervousness. We had a way to go yet before our directions parted.

“Humm,” I said, just like a frigate captain making time to think before giving his orders, a weak habit, it is true. “Fimi must have food and she will not eat raw meat—?”

Fimi shuddered eloquently, so that was that.

We set the fire as close to the overhang of the cave as we could, and letting the smoke take care of itself in the darkness of the groined stone arch, shielded the little flames by boulders. Soon the Twins would be up and there would be light.

The Twins sailed up as I sucked on the last bone. The space of woodland before us showed indistinctly at first, bathed in the fuzzy pink light, and the glade glimmered ghostly in the moons’ light. A dark round object appeared at the edge of the trees. Another and then three or four more moved among the pink-tinged leaves. I watched, motionless.

Near man-height, rotund, dark, hairy — I could make out little more. They looked to have two thin twinkling legs apiece. They stood for some time, and then they melted back into the forest. I let out my breath.

Naghan crouched at my side. He trembled.

“Khirrs,” he said. “Khirrs!” His voice quivered. “May Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor strike them all with their own spit!”

Chapter Fourteen

The Fight with the Leem

That night we took turn and turn about to keep watch; but we saw or heard no more sign of the monsters.

In the morning we ate the rest of our last night’s meal and drank cold water and prepared to set off. The land presented a fair prospect of rolling tree-clad hills and tumbling streams and open glades. No distant views were easily obtainable but far ahead I thought I could make out the distant glint of snow-capped peaks. We did not follow any of the tracks and occasional roads that crisscrossed the land, and we avoided the easier paths running beside rivers. In this I took Naghan’s advice. We would eventually reach the point at which he would turn off down the Valley of the Twin Spires. He had traversed this way only once before, and then in company with a strong band of well-mounted and well-armed numims, a good guarantee of safe passage most anywhere.

To sustain me during this time I had the comforting knowledge that my Delia was safe. She was surrounded by a group of the toughest warriors in Kregen. She was protected by a wall of steel and bronze, by a band of men and women devoted to her. They would get through to the pool despite my disappearance. No, thank Zair, I had no fears for the safety of Delia. Ever and anon I cast a glance upwards.

“You look for something, Dray, apart from aerial foes?”

“Aye. Aerial friends.”

They smiled a little uncomprehendingly at my words. The Savanti would keep command of the air in their own hands, and that adequately explained the general absence of vollers in Ba-Domek. Truth to tell, there were aerial foes aplenty. We hid from massive coal-black impiters out for a square meal. We bypassed likely looking places where chyyans might nest. Also, we avoided towns and villages, for Naghan advised that they would be unfriendly to us. I did not argue.

Life on Kregen has taught me to be wary of armed strangers, while always being ready to extend the hand of friendship with a cheerful Llahal. We pressed on by lonely ways. The Khirrs, too, infested the outskirts of towns. Scurvy, unkempt, hairy, the Khirrs scavenged around the outskirts of civilization. Emerging out of a stand of trees and skirting along the edge of the wood so as not to climb over the brow of a hill, we saw below us a road, which with dusk, we would cross. A quoffa, huge, shambling, patient, ambled along the road drawing a high four-wheeled cart loaded with local produce. The cart also contained four Rapas, taking it easy, their weapons cocked up lazily and their hats tilted over their eyes so that only the wicked vulturine beaks showed beneath the brims. Two other Rapas, big bold fellows, strode alongside the quoffa, arguing away over some topic dear to them. There are many kinds of Rapas on Kregen, as I have said, and it would be wearisome to detail all the different kinds, by name and color variation and shape of beak and crest, as by nation or belief. These fellows wore bright yellow markings about their black beaks, and their eyes were of a virulent purple. I noticed their pieces of renovated armor, mostly leather but with a piece of bronze and steel here and there. They carried stuxes and swords.

“Hold still,” whispered Naghan. Not many races get on with Rapas, so we held within the shadow of the trees to wait until the Rapas and their quoffa cart had passed.

The attack swept in with startling suddenness. The white dust of the road abruptly churned under spindly twinkling feet. The coarse black hair of the Khirrs concealed powerful muscles under that rotund frame. They sprang. They pounced. Instantly the Rapas flung their scarves about their faces, shrieking to their comrades in the cart. I saw — quite distinctly — the quoffa shut his huge luminous eyes. Naghan gulped and Fimi squealed, instantly silencing herself.

One Rapa was slow. He leaped from the cart, screaming, tearing at his face. The round bulbous bodies of the Khirrs darted in an uncanny grotesque fashion across the road. And now I saw they did have arms, and claws, scarlet talons that raked in razors of destruction. But the Rapas fought. Rapas stink in the nostrils of most peoples, diff and apim, but one becomes accustomed to their smell after a time. I had once had a good Rapa comrade, Rapechak, whom I could not believe dead and drowned in the River Magan in distant Migladrin, and my opinion of them was still slowly changing. Two Rapas were down. The ones from the cart were slashing and cutting blindly. Two had a kind of transparent eye-mask; but raking claws ripped them away. I half-rose. Naghan seized my arm.

“Suicide,” he said. He was a numim, and he shook with the fear consuming him. “It will not be long.”

I hesitated — fatally. It was all over.

I saw — quite clearly — the amber glint of liquid globules spurt from a tube in the center of a hairy face of a Khirr. A fleshy spout protruded, ridged, flexible, jutting forward like an obscene brown concertina and shooting its noxious liquid and then withdrawing. The spit struck a Rapa in the face. His scarf flapped. He was down, shrieking, tearing at his eyes.

“Spitballs,” said Naghan. He shuddered. “They eat out a man’s eyes — ghastly, ghastly.”

The streaming mingled lights of Antares shone down refulgently upon that scene of horror. The Khirrs spat their drops of poison with uncanny accuracy. Now they hunkered around the bodies of their victims. Claws opened cavities. Below their round staring eyes, half-concealed by lank hair, the tubes pierced warm flesh and the Khirrs settled down, sucking, to their ghastly meal. Fimi was sobbing. Naghan held her close. Quietly, we crept away from that diabolical scene.

“Spitballs, they are,” said Naghan. He looked fierce and yet cowed. “They spit their poison and no man is safe.”

Once again I had witnessed another of the myriad forms of life upon Kregen. Among all the menagerie I had stumbled across, these Khirrs, these Spitballs of Antares, I knew if the cramphs spat their foul poison at me I’d have to skip and duck and swat as, perhaps, never before on Kregen. Well away, we mounted up and, this time, Naghan and Fimi shared a gnutrix and I rode the other. We cantered off in that awkward swaying gait of the six-legged riding animal, and I pondered. Spitballs of Antares — well, a more perceptive critical mind attuned to euphony — and alliteration — would call them Spitballs of Scorpio. But they were real, vitally alive, scavenging on the outskirts of civilization, vermin in that sense; but, as ever, I saw they but acted out the commands of their natures. They were made to act as they did, and so they acted thus. To condemn them for being themselves was the height of foolishness. They did not appear to have the intelligence that brings thought of consideration and consequences and thus a juster condemnation of evil acts; for to themselves, clearly, they were not evil. It merely behooved any sensible man to give them a wide berth — unless they offended too greatly and insisted on continuing the attack.

So as I rode on with a lion-lad and a cat-girl over the savage surface of Kregen I gave thanks that I was still alive.

We found a grassy hollow later on suitable for a small camp and dismounted and decided to light a fire and cook a meal. Once more, with those shifts of fortune, I was back battling against the perils and heart-stopping dangers of Savage Scorpio.

The two gnutrixes cropped the grass. Naghan and Fimi tended the fire, carefully, and I was just turning back from the edge of the trees with my arms full of branches. I had found a superb paline bush and was feeling pleased. Beyond the two young people and to the side, the long, lean, feline shape of a leem advanced to the grassy lip of the hollow. My mouth went dry.

A leem! The leem is deadly, a feral beast found in one form or another over most of Kregen. Eight-legged, it is furred, feline, vicious, with a wedge-shaped head armed with fangs that can strike through oak. Its paws can smash a man’s head in like a pumpkin. Its claws can open rips in chunkrah hide. This was a well-grown specimen, sizeably larger than a leopard, low to the ground, weasel-like, filled with the animate energy of primordial savagery. I could see the beast’s dusty ochre hide pulsating along his flanks. His eyes regarded the two elopers with all the bright interest of a gourmet reading a menu.

Among the branches I carried, the palines glimmered yellow. I did not break off a handful of the superb berries and pop them into my mouth, as I longed to do.

The leem’s tail moved lazily. He was well aware of his power. That tail carried no tuft; and for that, at the least, I gave thanks to Zair, for I carried no great Krozair longsword, no Savanti sword, only a curved silly little knife called a kutcherer. The kutcherer can best be imagined by thinking of a butcher knife, with a hook jagged a third of the way back from the tip, a wicked tooth of metal jagging up from the thick back. The kutcherer can be deadly against the right opponent. But, with this, I would have to go up against a leem.

Slowly, noiselessly, I placed the branches on the ground. And then, because, I suppose, I am Dray Prescot, my brown hand twitched a fingering of palines free and I did pop them quietly into my mouth. The dryness vanished.

Carefully, quietly, I drew the kutcherer. Always a tricky operation that by reason of the curved metal tooth, it was done this time soundlessly and quickly. I took a step forward and, even as my foot came soundlessly down, a thought so horrible, so blasphemous, entered my mind that I stopped stick-still, frozen.

Idiot! Always before I had been hurled to some new part of Kregen stark-naked at the behest of the Star Lords to become instantly embroiled in headlong action saving some wight from destruction. The injunction on me was to ensure the safety of the chosen ones until they were safe and I might go about my own pursuits. But, this time? Onker! This time — and I remembered Zena Iztar’s words — this time there had been strife among the Star Lords. I had been kept here on the island of Aphrasöe only because Zena Iztar had contrived to thwart the others’ plans. But that could only mean the Star Lords had not dispatched me here. I recalled the burning city, the boarded swordship. Surely, then, if this was Zena Iztar’s doing I was not brought here to rescue anyone? She had kept me as close as she could contrive to my friends. These two young elopers, they had just happened by, as is the way of Kregen. I owed them nothing.

The leem flicked his tail and prepared to charge, choosing his time. The two young people busied themselves at the fire, all unknowing. They, themselves, would say of the situation that they were all unknowing of the ghastly fate that leered upon them. But Kregen is full of ghastly fates, and one must do what one can. Was this ghastly fate anydifferent from a thousand others? Yes — for a leem is a leem. But — why need I embroil myself?

I was Dray Prescot, a stubborn onker; yet I could clearly see the foolishness of rushing down there armed only with an overgrown knife with a hook and trying to slay a damned great leem. Why, a leem could chomp me in half, could knock me over the head and rip that stupid head clean off those broad shoulders. And then where would all my plans for Vallia and Valka, for Djanduin and Strombor be?

What would my Delia say? How could I be a helpmeet to her if I was being digested in the guts of a leem?

Yet — at the behest of Delia I had clambered down into a pit, somehow, brought out people I would have left trapped. Delia had explained it to me then. If she could see me now, would she act any differently? I wondered — for my Delia is the most perfect woman in two worlds, and a perfect woman does not ask her man to imperil his life needlessly.

The thoughts rushed through my brain whirling arrow fast, arrow sharp. Onker! Idiot! Dray Prescot — stupid hulu!

This was no business of mine.

And there was this prickly question of honor. . .

A fighting man, a warrior, let alone a Krozair Brother — how could such a one leave two helpless youngsters to the claws and fangs of a leem? Was the situation one in which, with honor, I could turn tail?

Of course it was! My duty, my life, my honor lay with Delia and the children and all the bright promise of the future for our friends and our countries.

What of the evil plans of all those who would bring down the emperor and bathe Vallia in blood? What of the evil devil, that foresworn Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong? He had sworn he would dominate the world of Kregen. With all humility I fancied I might stand in his path and hinder him. Dare I jump down to almost certain death for the sake of an honor that demanded a sacrifice beyond the worth of the prize?

I sweated. I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, the Lord of Strombor, stood there like a petrified calsany, glaring hideously on the horror that stalked Naghan and Fimi.

No. No! I had fought leems before, and regretted it.

Had I a deadly Krozair brand — but I did not.

Had I a Lohvian longbow — but I did not.

Had I a Savanti sword — but I did not.

Had I any suitable weapon I think I would have gone charging down, roaring out “Hai!” in the old reckless way of Dray Prescot.

But I gripped only a little kutcherer and I did not want to leave this marvelous world of Kregen and all I loved — even for the sakes of a young numim lad and a pretty fristle fifi. My motives appeared as murky to me as the muddy depths of the crocodile pool of debased Forglinda the Forsaken.

Busy about the camp fire, Fimi began to hum and then sing a few snatches from The Bowmen of Loh, variations on that rollicking old song I had taught her. My lips ricked back. By Zair! I am a fool, an onker, a great hulking hairy idiot of a fellow! Even to this day I cannot adequately explain to myself why. I knew I did wrong. Had I not, painfully but with devastating speed, reasoned it all out? Come to the right conclusions? I knew the codes of honor and chivalry were phantasms against reality. Yet reality demanded these phantasm become real. I knew so much, and I knew damn all. . . I was wrong, I knew I was wrong, dreadfully wrong, making a hideous mistake as I whipped up the barbed knife and went roaring down into the glade. Bawling, bellowing, kicking up an infernal racket so the leem would turn his attentions to me and away from these two tender morsels by the fire, like a lunatic, I, Dray Prescot, get onker, went charging down. . .

Barely two heartbeats had elapsed since I had begun this fruitless reasoning.

“Hai!” I screeched. I leaped and cavorted and ran, ran fleetly, waving the knife. “Hai, leem! Hai!”

Oh, yes, a fool, an onker, an idiot — but, then, that is me, Dray Prescot, for you. If I came out of this little lot alive, I remember the single scorching thought, I would not, most certainly would never, tell all of it to Delia.

By Vox, no!

The leem switched his wicked wedge-shaped head around. He sized up what tasty dish made this noise. He halted his first incipient charge, his tail flicking. I had been in time. Just in the nick of time — but only just.

His tail lashed.

His head went down and his eyes gleamed like coals. Belly low to the ground he advanced on me, putting down those eight claw-armed engines of destruction one after the other, with precision, like a cat. He slunk along, stalking me. The enormous wedge-shaped jaws gaped abruptly and his fangs caught the lights and gleamed, brilliant swords of death.

I ran full at him.

No chance to do any of the clever weaving and shearing I had done with the Krozair longsword in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa. Now only speed, and vital energy, and more speed, could save me. Even then as I charged I was aware of the horror around the fire. Naghan and Fimi sprang apart, shrieking, and for a moment as I ran like a madman they came together again, and clung. Then the gnutrixes at last caught the scent of the leem, for the cunning hunter had crept on them from downwind, and they screamed, rearing at their tethers. For the last blazing instant I saw Naghan hoist Fimi onto a mount, leap up with her and slash the gnutrix across the flanks. In a clashing bounding of six legs and flying tassels, the gnutrix raced away.

Then it was only the leem and me.

I remember little.

By rights I should have been dead. I have had my memory fortified by the dips in the Sacred Pool; but the memories here jog scarlet and ragged, fading and mocking, tormenting and frightful. The first feral leap could be slid, although one dagger-claw gouged a bloody chunk from my left shoulder. I got on his back. Somehow I held on and the kutcherer went in as far as the tooth of metal would allow. And that was not far enough to reach the leem’s lesser heart, let alone his main heart. I tried to cut his throat and he whirled his interlocked shoulder blades and I spun catapulting off. I caught an ear in my left fist and held on, burning pain dripping down my arm, and was dragged, and felt claws rake all down my side. The ground smashed at me and the claws drank my blood. But I was clinging to him like a burr, trying to serve him as I had the chavonth. The strength of a leem overtops lesser wildcats; a leem is no chavonth or strigicaw — a leem is a leem!

Sliding and dangling I was aware I slid in blood dabbling his fur. My blood. My blood, hot and red, mingled with some of his.

Again I tried to slit his throat and felt the blade kiss across fur and windpipe. He bucked and I held on, held on, and the world crashed and whirled about me. With the kutcherer reversed and leaning over that fanged wedge-head I brought the tooth of metal down and dragged back, reeling, gasping, and so pierced into one of his eyes. His roars shattered into the hot air. He swerved. He arched his back bucking, contorting, trying to fling me off. All the time he hissed and screeched and foam flew. The stink of him broke with fetid strength into my nostrils. Fur and sweat and blood all mixed together. Somehow there was strength enough to hold on. Muscles bursting, lungs afire, pain scorching, body hammered and beaten, somehow, somehow I held on.

I sawed the blade across his throat. We rolled. His weight near crushed me. Half suffocated I wrenched violently aside. A claw came from nowhere and razored half an ear away. His claws scraped again; but I held myself in, clinging, limpet-like, shaking, gripping his fur, grabbing him anywhere, hauling our rolling bodies together, fast locked in a grip of death. Over and over we rolled. His hisses and spittings shocked frightfully into my ears, through my head, drumming and howling like condemned spirits. But I held on and sawed and slashed and stabbed —

stabbing was useless, useless with that tooth of metal halting the clean inward drive of the blade. His struggles grew ever more vigorous, gaining in power and viciousness despite the loss of an eye as I felt my own strength waning. My left hand, daubed with blood, slipped. I grasped desperately at his stinking fur. The blood oozed through my fingers and I felt the fur slide away as a man slides his fingers down the neck of a chicken. I gasped and heaved back. I was rolling over and over and the leem was high in the air before me, pouncing, leaping, soaring through the air in that long superb leap of the leem. He landed on his four front paws and that cruel wedge head split wide and the gaping maw opened and closed and the bright fangs crunched around my left arm.

I hardly noticed the pain for the fury that filled me.

If I was to die then I’d be dying a fool!

The kutcherer stabbed forward and up. The point shattered through his remaining eye. His screeches racketed in maniacal howlings. The stink of blood and sweat bathed me in a stench that mingled with his pungent leem smell. I could not feel my left arm. He opened his jaws to screech and I jerked free, and fell, and tried to stand up. The world was going up and down in hideous waves. He swiped at me — one swipe of those paws and my head would burst asunder like a rotten fruit — I ducked and the knife stabbed and hacked. I backed away. Crouched over, panting, drenched in blood, half-crazed, half-ruined, I backed away. He could not see. But he could smell. I could barely stand. I backed, seeking an opening. He followed, blindly. I slashed again, leaping in. I opened his throat. The dark blood pumped out, gushing, shining and viscous, welling in a red stream over his bedabbled ochre fur. I staggered and fell. I could not move. He lifted his paws, blindly, slashing out. He advanced. Somehow strength fountained from somewhere, with the blood leaching from me, and I slashed again with the hooked knife and his screech sounded as though it echoed up from Cottmer’s Caverns. The ground struck hard under my knees. I tried to stand and could not. My head hung down. I caught a single horrific glimpse of my own left arm — of what had been my left arm. The skin and flesh had been stripped off in his fangs. The pink and white of bone gleamed through, with the blood bubbling; it was a skeletal arm, and the hand hung askew and mangled, broken into an obscene lump. I could feel nothing. I fell forward from my knees onto my face. The dust stung into my face, smeared and slicked with sweat and blood. The kutcherer, a mere mass of shining blood, dropped into the stained grass. I tried to lift my head. If this was the end then I’d husk out a last Hai Jikai and so take my last voyage down to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

The will forced me up. There was no physical strength in this thing. The will, the driving force of spirit —

I was on my knees, my head dangling, feeling blindly about for the knife. The leem crouched before me. He was not yet dead. It is extraordinarily hard to slay a leem. His hearts pumped blood out through the ragged gaping rents in his hide, from the slashes in his throat. His punctured eyes streamed ichor. His ochre fur sheened with spilled blood. And his cruel mouth dribbled blood that belonged to me.

With that dark effort at which I have long ceased to marvel, I forced myself to stand. My legs shook. My knees quivered. Wavering, reeling, gasping with wide-open mouth for air, laboring, I stood up. I grasped the knife again. I did not recall finding it in the grass and picking it up. The handle was as fouled with blood as the blade. And the metal tooth was gone, snapped off, wrenched away. And so, more falling than leaping, more toppling helplessly forward than thrusting, I fell onto the leem and drove the knife home into his main heart.

He thrashed. He quivered in the last frenzy before death. His hind legs caught me and knocked me head over heels. I smashed into the dirt and rolled and a bony skeletal object, loosely articulated with a few threads of gristle, wrapped about by a few shreds of flesh and skin, flapped about me as I rolled and I realized that ghastly blood-spraying flailing skeletal thing was my left arm. The bones of my arm clashed with the bones of my ribs, exposed, showing through the cut and lacerated flesh of my body.

The darkness that was beyond the darkness of Notor Zan flowed over me. I felt — I felt nothing. I saw the leem. He lay awash in his own blood.

Stupidly, I collapsed onto the dirt.

So I lay there, and my head sank down to the dusty blood-caked grass, and I slept.

Chapter Fifteen Shadow

That I speak to you in these tapes is proof I did not die.

How close to death I drew I do not know. By my immersion in the Sacred Pool of Baptism my body had been endowed with remarkable powers of recuperation and recovery from injury. But my left arm had been stripped away, mangled, practically wrenched from the socket, destroyed. That would not be repaired. It might not kill me; it would never be a sound left arm again. Someone was shouting at me. The leem fight brought back ghosts.

“By Kaidun! D’you want the glass eye and brass sword of Beng Thrax to do it all for you! Go in, you coys, you hulus. Go in and fight for the Ruby Drang!”

For the Ruby Drang! Aye! I would fight for the Ruby Drang.

And, another voice, leading on the war hosts: “For Vallia! Valka! Valka!”

And, again, yet another voice, shrilling over the war trumpets and the heart-pulsing pounding of ten thousand voves: “Felschraung! Felschraung and Longuelm! Zorcander! Zorcander!”

And, too, the voices bellowing joyfully: “For Djan! For Notor Prescot and for Djanduin!”

The surf-roar of a hundred ghostly voices beat about me, roaring in my head. Visions passed before my eyes. Flames shot up, smoke billowed, the horrendous sounds of combat flowered in my head. Demands were being made upon me. Urgent decisions were called for. There was no time for rest. Rest was a sin.

“For the Kroveres of Iztar!”

I groaned. The weight was too much. I was a mere mortal man and could not support the load. The voices, the demands, the urgency, beat and battered at me, and I moaned and rolled over and so, stupidly, sat up.

The last phantasmal voice roared, proud, defiant, ready to challenge a world: “For Zair! Krozair!

Krozair!”

I opened my eyes and winced, shuddering, and so looked about wearily, and remembered. I had not bled to death.

My left arm pained. The amazement that that was all it did must be pushed aside. A mere string or two of sinew, broken splintered bones, a few scraps of red meat — that was all there was hanging from my shattered shoulder.

What the hell Delia would say I shuddered to think.

My thoughts were not even as clear as that. It is a surmise from later. The disgusting remnants of my arm must be bound up and the gaping cavity in my side staunched, and I ripped away at the tatters of the flaxen tunic to make a sling and pads.

I was, I think, still reasonably coherent at this time. Later the delirium would seize me. If a fever shook me I’d have to fight that, too. I can recall hauling at the gnutrix and clumsily mounting. I had a filled water bottle. What else there was besides a remnant of an arm in a sling and a mangled side I did not know, do not remember. I started off, kicking the animal along, jolting cruelly in that damned six-legged gait. The corpse of the leem lay there bathed in shining blood, black and green with flies. I left him without a word, without a parting Jikai, left him to rot.

Although the long-term calendar of Kregen is based to a large extent on the precedence of the red or the green sun through the sky, and the forty-year cycle, plus the orbital movement of the planet itself, these give only the broadest outline to calendar measurements. Most immediate date measurements are made by months of one moon or another. For the journey I must now undertake I fancied I’d need a whole sheaf of months, culled from all the seven moons.

What passed along the way remains hazy. Blurred snatches of memory jag through the mists. I think I met a group of little Ochs, who tut-tutted over my arm and gave me potions. Ochs are funny little puff-chopped folk, with six limbs, the center pair used either as hands or feet. I have been helped before by Ochs, as well as being savagely beaten by them when a slave.

They gave me a piece of clear crystal hung on chains from a circlet they cautioned me to wear on my head. Drunkenly I put the thing on and the crystal hung down before my eyes turning the world into a phantasmagoria as though I peered through the bottom of a bottle. I thanked them — I think I did —

giving them a proper Remberee, riding on, lolling in the saddle like a man sodden with dopa and too far gone to fight.

The way proved long and tiresome. Go north, Zena Iztar had said, and I had obeyed. Now I crawled along with an altogether more dreadful reason. Now, despite all, I must win through. Forests, tracks, trees, streams, boulders, defiles. I staggered along, reeling in the saddle. Yes, snatches of it come back to haunt me in nightmares, now. I was growing steadily weaker as the dreadful injuries that surely must have killed any normal man fought against the healing properties my body had acquired from the Savanti. Of all that painful journey only a few incidents stand out at all clearly. Of them, the most vivid, if not the most evil, wrenching in its violence, occurred as the gnutrix lolloped down a slope toward a stream bowered in trees where I could quench the torturing thirst and soothe my burning lips. My thirst tormented and drove me insatiably.

By this time I must have been pretty far gone. Only the memory of the incident remains, like a child’s picture torn from a book and mounted in a frame, isolate, individual, related to nothing else. Katakis moved about the stream, making a camp, busy in the familiar tasks of creating a base for the night. To one side the bound slaves, hallmark of the Katakis’ trade, moaned in their winnowed lines of suffering. I stared, sick, almost falling off the gnutrix, glaring madly upon these devils who debarred me from the water. My whole body wracked with cramps, I burned, yet coldness brushed me with ice crystals. Shuddering, reeling in the saddle, I had to face the terrible fact that there was no water for me at this stream, not with the Katakis and their slaving habits in the way. One look at me, the instant summation I was useless as merchandise, and they’d whip up a tail-blade and finish me. Even now, I believe no single thought occurred to me that this might be a blissful end to all suffering. Low-browed and with a gap-jawed mouth filled with snaggly teeth is a Kataki. His thick black hair is oiled and curled in a fashion far different from that of the Eye of the World. His eyes are wide-spaced, narrow and cold. Evil, vicious and rapacious, Katakis, slavemasters, man-managers, batteners on human misery. Perhaps the thing that gives a Kataki his greatest pride is his tail, a long sinuous powerful tail to which is strapped a sharp steel blade. So, sickly, I stared down on these vile diffs and I could not summon a single curse.

Jerking the gnutrix away was bewilderingly useless. He scented the water, parched as was I, obstinately thrusting his blunt head toward the inviting stream in the darkling light. He started off and I sawed the reins and he resisted, disregarding the pain in his mouth for the lure of the water. We picked up speed jolting down toward the stream.

Had I had the use of two arms; had I been even a little stronger, I would have held him. But he ran away with me. So I did the only thing I could do, plunging down to certain death, trying to husk up the last of my voice, to make a good shouting show of it.

“Khirrs!” I shrilled, and my voice wheezed and cracked. “Khirrs all about you!”

Croaking though my voice was, the Katakis heard. Instantly, like the black-hearted reivers they were, they gave thought only to themselves.

The camp boiled with frenzied activity. Pounding down I went, catching a guyline in a gnutrix hoof and pulling the whole lot down, knocking a cooking fire blazing, scattering pots and pans, bounding along like a scarecrow. Katakis were forming and each swung a crystal oblong before his face, so they knew about Khirrs. On lumbered the gnutrix for the stream. Katakis were running to the edge of the camp, their weapons bright, shouting in confusion, ferocious and malignant. The animal reached the stream and plunged in and I sailed over his head into the water. The sweet coolness helped. I lay for a moment, winded, and then tried to crawl, all lopsided like a beetle. The water sloshed about me and I sucked in thirstily. The far bank appeared dwaburs off.

The stream deepened. The current knocked me over and I rolled along banging against the bottom. I am not sure what I felt as what remained of my left arm scraped the gravel; but I expect some more pieces of me fell off.

Somehow the gravel oriented itself under me and I was staggering up out of the stream. But I was still on the same side as the Katakis and their shouts told me that no Khirrs had arrived and the Katakis wanted to know what was going on and to get their hands on the lunatic who had caused the furor. A zorca stood by the bank. He stood impossibly tall on those four spindly powerful legs, close-coupled. His magnificent twisted spiral horn stuck up arrogantly from his forehead. To his saddle were belted sword, bow, saddlebags. I grasped his reins in my one hand and tried to vault onto his back and landed on my belly, dangling across, and he snorted and bucked, so I kneed him, anyhow, and we went galloping off, bashing through the low bushes into the trees.

The next thing I recall, not so luridly, is trotting out into another glade with a rockface and a trickle of water and of falling off and still grasping the reins, of crawling until I could lash the reins around a broken stump and then plunge my head under the water.

I must have slept, for the shrilling of the zorca awoke me and I sat up, sluggishly, that awful dead feeling in my left arm and side reminding me my time was running out. I peered foolishly out into early morning suns shine.

They flitted out from the trees, their spindly legs twinkling, their harsh hairy bodies rotund and hateful in the mingled radiance. I blinked. Spitballs of Antares. Vermin. They crept upon me as I slept, eager to plunge their snouts into my body and drink of my substance and suck me dry. I tried to stand up and fell over. I was as weak as a woflo.

I was ripe game for these Khirrs. They would enjoy spitting at me, weak, feeble, barely able to crawl. With an idiot’s fumble I dropped the crystal rectangle before my face, and the world described whorls of distorted circular dizziness. The nausea had to be fought back, pushed away. The bow was useless, for I had but one arm. The sword, a solid, single-edged cut and thruster, somewhat too long for the balance, would have to serve — somehow. My scrabbling fingers fastened on the stirrup. Heaving and grunting I hauled myself up alongside the zorca. He was a fine animal, a fleet runner, strong, well-built. He shivered now and I could smell the sweat of fear.

That broad back of mine would have to be wedged against a support. I could not use the zorca, for the acid spit would burn into his hide. They’d spit their poison at his eyes and if he was done for then so was I. His tether twanged and he twisted and turned; but he remained steady as I pulled myself up, speaking to him, croaking.

“Hold on, my lad, my bonny zorca. Hold on and we’ll deal with these cramphs.”

I spoke as my father was wont to speak to his horses as he so patiently and skillfully doctored their hurts. The zorca quieted at the sound of my voice. But I lied to him, I lied. . . Zorcas are animals of splendid intelligence. He was denied his usual method of dealing with foes. If he swung that magnificent head with the silky mane flying toward them and charged down with the spiral horn lancing to skewer and degut them, he would expose his eyes. And he knew that, he knew. . . Holding to his saddle I slid the sword out awkwardly. Peering back owlishly through the crystal at the hideous advancing shapes, seeing their black hairy bodies, the crafty black beady eyes, the goggle effect of the protective rings of horn, the protrusions of the ridged snouts, I lifted the sword. Unsteadily, I slapped the zorca with the hilt and slashed on to cut through the tether. He sprang away. I fell against the tree stump. The fierce effort of turning about and wedging my back against the stump taxed me. I was gasping. But I stood up, shivering, plastered against the stump, and I lifted the sword and faced the shuffling advance of the Spitballs of Antares.

The ridged snouts quivered. They spat. The crystal smeared and blurred and a foul reek stank into the clearing. I felt the deep acid burn of the amber drops on my neck.

Alone, shaking, almost spent, I struggled to stand and face the loathsome menace advancing toward me, these Khirrs, all black and hairy and spitting, Spitballs of Antares, fit food for dogs. Around their small brilliant eyes each one had a horny ring, a protective circle of bone filmed with a membrane, for all the world like those heavy horn-rimmed spectacles that were once so fashionable on Earth.

The sword wavered. I tried to swash it menacingly and nearly dropped it. I, a Krozair Brother, to drop a sword! The spit hit the crystal square and splashed against the rags tattered about me and bit excruciatingly into the remnants of my arm and side. The reek bit into my throat like acid. That muck must be washed off the naked skin soon, or it would eat and fume away the flesh itself. I shouted. I bellowed. I croaked. “Stupid rasts! Foul kleeshes! Come on! Come on to your deaths!”

I almost slipped, then, and wedged back against the moldering stump, harsh against my back. The sword glittered as I hefted it. If the Khirrs were puzzled their spit did not blind me, if they were aware of the power of the sword — these things are imponderables. I did not expect to win free; but gradually as they shuffled and spat and did not approach any nearer, I began to think these Khirrs were cowardly at heart. They hesitated. I swung the sword so that it caught the opaline glitter of the suns and shot sharding reflections across the glade.

In all the world of Kregen I could expect no help. I was done for, truly done for, then, as I believed, as the Spitballs of Antares, scavengers, vermin, crept forward again, more cautiously, sending their spurting globs of spitting poison before them. I had to stand on my own two feet. Had to. Had to show them I was not defenseless. I stood. I swung the sword.

Their scarlet claws raked the air before them; vision was almost totally obscured by the streaming mass of amber poison smearing the crystal square. They could see I was weak and trembling and they advanced — cautiously, hesitantly — but with very deadly intent for the last time. One and one only of the Khirrs ventured within reach of the sword.

Him, I clove down the middle.

A sewer stench burst upward. His insides, all black and vile, glistening, spewed forth. He burst and shrank. The others drew back. Again I shouted, wheezing, taunting them with boastful words and lurid promises of their fate if they tried to molest me further. They drew back. They drew back and skittled away on their spindly legs, and their black hair draggled on their plump frames. The respite was only momentary. I could barely see for the spit streaming on the crystal square. I had a chance, a bare chance, a last chance to escape from being done for finally. If I fell over now I was done for. I peered about, dazedly choking, the ruin of a man. The zorca, his silky black coat very splendid in the lights, trotted back to me. He flung his head up, the spiral horn glinting. I took hold of the saddle. I was seated in the saddle. Do not ask me how. The sword, all smeared and foul, dangled beside the scabbard from the sword knot. The stirrups dangled until I thrust my bare toes into them.

I dangled, limp and broken, dangled as a strung collection of bones dangles, jangling. The zorca was superb. He broke into a canter. Then a lunging gallop that took us away from the sullen, cowardly contemptuous ring of Khirrs.

Nowadays I give thanks for that deliverance. Then I merely hunched on the zorca’s back and slumped, my head dangling on my breast, and went away without a coherent thought in my skull. Agony gripped my body. My arm was a mere scarlet branch of fire. And in my skull those famous old bells of Beng Kishi rang and resonated, clanging in time to the thudding to the zorca’s hooves.

Chapter Sixteen

A Draught to Mother Zinzu the Blessed

That cheerfully rubicund spirit of luck and good fortune, Five-handed Eos-Bakchi of Vallia, must have smiled on me, a mortal sinner. It was all my own fault, my own doing, and there was no one else to blame but myself. No blame could attach to the Krozairs of Zy, for their Disciplines might demand a Krozair Brother hurtle down to the defense of the weak and helpless; but they were chivalrous enough to weigh need against need. They understood when the odds were too great, the cost too high, the game not worth the candle. To throw one’s life away selflessly in the name of honor is all very well; but when a higher honor demands a different course the mad act of devoted courage is seen for what it is —

vainglorious selfishness.

My Delia, the fate of Vallia, set against an eloping lion-lad, a pretty Fristle fifi — no, never!

Of course, remembering so little of that horrific journey, I can only surmise what happened. No doubt I greatly exaggerated my own importance.

After all, why should the fate of all Vallia hang on me? So what if I had been nearly killed and had my arm just about ripped off? That would affect me and my family — but Vallia? I detest affectation. So I guessed with a somber foreboding that no matter how much I sought to evade the future I did not want and responsibilities that would be thrust upon me, the weight of Vallia would be mine. Only a foolish notion would uphold me. For Valka and Strombor and Djanduin and Azby and my Clansmen — and also to a lesser degree Paline Valley — I not only admit my responsibility and indebtedness, I struggle to prove myself at least half worthy of the trust of my own people.

Some of these thoughts must have collided in my aching head along with the infernal never-ending clanging of the Bells of Beng Kishi as I found a pool and washed myself as thoroughly as I could. The zorca washed, also. Frequently, bouts of emptiness closed in when the enveloping cloak of Notor Zan dropped over me with the silent rush of black wings.

But, in the fullness of time, with the dawning of whatever day it was — for all track of time had flown along with much else in that dreadful journey across the hostile face of Savage Kregen — I found myself riding alongside the river. I seemed to have awoken from a bad dream. I must have found rabbits and edible shoots and roots, and the blessed palines were always there to comfort the ailing. I must have crossed a high pass of the mountains — a vague memory stirred of cold and snow and of hard riding, the frosty breath glittering. But, on this day — which could have been any of the named days out of any moon, any sennight, all with their own different names and attributes — I saw the river and the gorge and heard the titanic uproar of masses of water falling bodily through thin air to crash into the stone basin beneath. Blearily, I peered around.

If I was where I thought I was, where I ought to be, then I’d struck into the River Zelph. I’d avoided many dangers. The last time I’d been here I’d been clad in russet hunting leathers, bearing a Savanti sword, in full health and strength, helping along the beautiful crippled girl who was to become everything that mattered in two worlds.

But all that had been a long time ago.

Delirious, off my head, with a mangled side and a skeletal thing that might have been a bit of arm dangling all green and black, I knew that if I was not where I wanted to be I wouldn’t be anywhere else anymore, save the Ice Floes of Sicce.

The sight of spider-beasts dangling from the rocks, the clicking of beetle-beasts as they crowded close, reassured me. Aye! By Zair! These monsters seeking to shred me, to scatter me in pieces, to devour me, these ravening furies reassured me and gave me a fresh confidence.

I was here! The waterfall dropped into the stony basin and bubbled all plum-colored from the sandy amphitheater. As the beasts descended on me I looked for the overhang of crystal rock and the dark entrance to the cave which led to the pool. I staggered and held onto the zorca. He responded nobly, a proud stallion, full of fire and spirit.

The first spider-beast was dispatched with a straight cutting slash. A beetle-beast was hacked so that he stumbled back, his legs clashing, and fell into the river. Forging on, I led the zorca without holding his reins and he followed because he trusted me and stayed with me. The narrow stony path curved around the last bend and with the thunder of the falls beating up, the mouth of the cave formed a welcoming darkness ahead. The fuzzy pink radiance all about blurred as I remembered. Yes, the remembrances of that journey are vague and phantasmal, patchy, illuminated by the cutting shafts of recollected horror, misted by things I am thankful to forget. This path must have led into the amphitheater among the rocks along the narrow way avoiding the majority of the guardian monsters. The route for the candidates and their Savanti tutors lay up from the river. I suppose I must have cut and hacked my way through and swung the sword one-handed, for I arrived; but it is all misty and dim and dream like.

The zorca followed me into the cave and without ado walked daintily over to the far side and beyond a ledge out of sight began to crop gently at fronds that grew there. The wet, fragrant herbs would not hurt him if he ate a few; but I would not allow him too many for the safety of his insides. Odd thoughts kept spurting through my brain. My arm hung twisted and shredded and horrible, my side bit numbly, the rips and claw-gouges were certain death for anyone without the protection afforded by the balm of the place. The Bells of Beng Kishi clamoring in my head continued and I guessed I had been injured there, also, in the battle with the leem. If I did not drop into the pool and bathe in the milky liquid very very soon I, too, would be dead.

And then — noises, the clatter of disturbed rock, voices, cheerful and excited now the danger of the trail was passed, relieved and yet tensely expectant voices — the noises and the voices echoed from the cave entrance.

So close to victory I was not prepared to be beaten.

There was no time to dive into the water. I sank down painfully behind a screen of rocks and, truthfully, that small respite felt wonderful.

Men and women entered the cave. They did not see either the zorca or myself. They were absorbed in the reasons why they had ventured here through perils that were to them novel and ghastly and out of all the previous experience of their worlds.

Events jerked ahead, I heard and saw in snatches; what I record is far too continuous a narrative. The single searing lump of agony that was me suffered there in hiding among the rocks. There were eight people — as customary. Four tutors and four aspirants, four fine young people who would one day be Savapims and work for the great plan of improvement for Kregen. There were two women and two men. They wore the Savanti hunting leathers and carried Savanti swords and they were upstanding, stalwart, brilliant people, picked, chosen, of the elite to be. One of the tutors was Maspero. Maspero, he who had been my own tutor; from the concealment of the rocks I watched and I longed to reach out the hand of friendship, to hear him greet me, to hear again

“Happy Swinging!” But I remained dumb and silent, hidden in my rocks, for I was not the Dray Prescot that Maspero had known. Too much had passed and I had learned more, even, I think, than Maspero could teach.

The four aspirants stripped off their clothes and waded down the stone steps. They remained submerged for the time they could hold their breaths, and when they emerged they were transformed, irradiated, made glorious in the name of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe.

I swallowed down hard. The scene kept flickering and blurring, the stone walls swooping sickeningly. I heard what they said, their awed exclamations, the expression of the realization that they were each possessed of a thousand years of life. They talked animatedly, donning their clothes for the journey back down the River Zelph to the Swinging City.

Listening I picked out the scraps of conversation that held meaning for me and I wished them away. My life was ebbing. The leem had worked cruelly upon me. I have fought leems; this time I had been unlucky as well as stupid. So I listened, hearing some things clearly, and one said: “And they were all dispatched, Harding?”

“Yes,” agreed the tutor called Harding, a lean, competent man who looked as hard as his name. “They all profaned the Sacred Pool. Vanti, as is his duty, banished them all back to the places from whence they came.”

“Why did they risk so much?” The fair-haired girl had been merely pretty before her immersion. “They say a Wizard of Loh was among their number. Yet the Wizards, you teach us, fear the Savanti—”

“They have cause.” Maspero smiled, gesturing. He looked exactly the same as I remembered him, the same dark curly hair, the same air of vivacity, the sense of completeness as a person. “As to why they came, it is always the same story. They hear of a miracle cure. But, this time, they did not even seek our permission.” He looked about at the ribboned reflections of the cave, the milky-white liquid shooting shards of colored light against the groined arches. He took a sharp breath. “There is an old story you will be told concerning a man you must know of. A man who — I had an affection for him — a man who failed the tests.”

“He would have been a Savapim?” The aspirant questioned, hanging on Maspero’s words.

. “Yes. But in his nature were darker depths — yet my affection for him remained. He was ejected.”

“Vanti. . . ?” said the dark full-faced man with the features of a Roman emperor.

“Yes.” Maspero gestured for them to descend from the lip of the Pool and make their way to the exit. The only sound I could hear for a space was my own hoarse breathing and the spurting clicking of their sandals on the rocks. All that I saw jumped and leaped, like a reflection in a racing stream, and the bands of fire about my head, constricting about my body, searing that shattered arm, crushed in, agonizing, choking, deadly. “Yes. Vanti ejected him as was his duty. But he was not with these people who so recently profaned this shrine, as I had expected, knowing him, to be. They were banished. They left their air-boats and all their belongings. We have them now. Safely. Soon, I believe, we shall find out more about them, for this is a serious business, unique. As to where they came from—” He stopped there, and laughed in that old wry manner.

Harding drew his sword in preparation for the return. “Yes. Wherever it was, they are back there now.”

And he, too, laughed with the others.

“And this man,” asked an aspirant “This man of whom you speak and who failed.”

“I often wonder,” said Maspero, “far more often than I should, just what has become of him on Kregen.”

The remark sounded strange.

“If we fail,” said the aspirant with the close-cropped hair and the fighter’s face. “If we are ejected . . .”

They walked toward the cave entrance. I understood that of the aspirants one was Italian, one French, one German, and one, the hard-looking girl with straight dark hair bound with a fillet and a lean muscular body, might not be from Earth or Kregen at all.

The last I heard was Maspero saying, not lightly but with a grave resonance of meaning in his voice: “I do not think you will be called on to face the temptation that destroyed the man — the man for whom I cherish still an affection — the man of whom I speak.”

When they had gone I tried to rouse myself to crawl out and drop into the water. I imagined myself crawling. I did not move. I could not move. My muscles locked. Sweat started out on my forehead and along my limbs — all three of them. I strained. If I did not reach the pool . . . Every last ounce of will power left must be summoned. Sheer muscular power was long since passed. Only by a last enormous effort of will could I drag myself over the harsh stones to the water’s edge. I moved.

Creaking like unoiled leather, my body answered the savage commands I imposed. I moved. Like a half-crushed beetle I crawled out of the rocks. A smear of blood followed in a trail where wounds opened. The whole world of Kregen revolved, inside and outside my skull. If I were to go staggering down to the Black Spider Caves of Gratz I would go down, as ever, clawing and fighting and struggling like a maniac every last inch of the way.

Slowly, laboriously, agonizingly, the water came nearer.

The liquid moved gently with spiraling wisps of vapor rising from the surface, like heating milk. The refulgent blueness of the place pressed down more strongly. I gasped. I do not know what my face looked like; and I am glad I do not know.

The rocky edge scraped under my chest. I leaned over the Sacred Pool of Baptism and I drew a deep shuddery breath and gave thanks I had at last reached its miraculous healing powers. My friends had reached here and the emperor had been cured. Maspero had said so. The tutors had laughed — why had they laughed? If I have given some semblance of a continuous narrative to my experiences here then that is purely illusory. Everything reached me in chopped-up segments, distracting, dazzling, obscure. My head expanded and contracted with pain. My arm — no, I prefer to forget that, for all the numbing effects of the journey wore off as I trembled on the edge of the pool, trying to find the energy for one last agonized dragging of my body over the stone lip to topple over and into a blessed surcease from agony.

Why did I hesitate? Why did I not make that final effort and plunge to resurrection?

And then — and then! For, of course, I realized almost too late why I hesitated, why those tutors had laughed. My friends had all bathed here with the emperor and they had all been banished, every last one, back to whence they came.

They had been ejected and returned to their homes on Kregen.

If I dropped into the Sacred Pool as I so ardently wished, then I, Dray Prescot, of Kregen and of Earth

— I would — as I had been once before, so I would inevitably be again — I would be ejected and sent hurtling across the dark spaces between the stars back to Earth where I had been born. If I achieved the healing and surcease I craved I would be flung headlong back to Earth. But, if I did not recuperate, if I were not healed, I would die.

To go back to Earth, flung there by the agent of the Savanti, this Vanti whose monstrous bulk moved in the pool, must mean a banishment that might last a thousand years. For in that case the Star Lords would not have banished me and therefore in their distant way might have no further interest in me. So cruelly beset by pain and indecision and torment was I that the thought seemed natural; later I questioned that assumption.

There were two evils, and I must make a decision. The decision was made for me, of course. I dare not allow myself to die. Delia — I would be of no use to Delia if I were dead and wandering like a wraith through the echoing vastnesses of Cottmer’s Caverns.

So I must live to fight another day and take my chances of ever returning to Kregen. Perhaps, I thought, maundering, raging with fever, delirious, out of my head — I remember it all in flashes and spurts and jolting savage impressions of pain and horror and urgency — perhaps it would be better for me just to die, after all, just to let slip rather than live out a thousand years of meaningless life on Earth.

But, as it was in the nature of the scorpion to sting the frog, so it is in my nature to struggle and never give in, however foolish that makes me. There had to be a way around this. I tried to grasp onto my whirling thoughts — confusion, a roaring in my head, a drugged empty feeling as though the evil concoctions of the black lotus-flowers of Hodan-Set wafted through my brain — desperately, near despair, I tried to think and reason this out, trying to act in the puffed-up character of the cunning old leem-hunter so many people credit me with being. I am just an ordinary man — oh, yes, I am blessed or cursed with a thousand years of life and I have seen and done much; but I am no superman. If I — I remember turning and rolling, slowly, agonizingly, over onto my stomach alongside the stone lip of the pool. First things first. If I — cautiously I plucked at the ghastly bundle that wrapped all that was left of my arm. If I — I did not want to disturb that mess. I may have a strong stomach; I do not think I could have withstood the impact of the horror of my own body that must have been revealed. Slowly, cautiously, I inched out over the water, and let the thing dangle down. The milky fluid closed around my arm. I felt — well, I wondered if I did feel anything through the bite of agony. Then the warm comforting sensation as of a soft mouth kissing me, a million tiny needles pricking my skin, rather, pricking the shreds of skin and fragments of bone. The rags would all be melted away. I waited, feeling the warm glowing sensation increase and expand. I managed to shift around so my shoulder dipped.

If I ventured any more I would fall in. Then it would be Earth for me. . . Weird, to think I thus hung over a drop of four hundred light years. . . Presently, in due time, I withdrew my arm.

The arm was whole.

I flexed the muscles. I gripped that iron hand of mine into a fist.

Well!

So I pushed out over the water, gripping the stone lip of the rim with two strong hands, and dipped my head. I dunked my head in and held my breath and all the pains of Kregen flowed and dissolved and washed away as the snows of the Heart Heights of Valka vanish when the full glory of the Suns of Scorpio pours upon them.

When I withdrew, a vast shape moving slowly in the milky waters drew back at the far end of the pool. Vanti. . .

It was not bravado, not pride, not foolishness, that made me stand up and walk away without dipping my side. I knew enough of the powers of the milky liquid in the pool. My side, which was ripped and torn and poking crushed ribs through in a bloody crust, would heal of itself. Over at the far side the Guardian grew restless. A vast smooth bulk humped beneath the water. Waves of the liquid flowed outwards in smooth rolling rings to luminous reflections. I walked away, a whole man once again, and I will not attempt to speak of my feelings, for they poured in a hot jumbled tide, irrational, thanksgiving, angry, shamed, glorious. I had sinned grievously and I had been reprieved. Now, there was work to be done.

A voice whispered through the still air.

“Oh, unfortunate is the city—”

“You have no powers over me, Vanti!” I bellowed back. “Return to your hole, hide away from me —

for I warned you I would return.” Then, I added: “I return in friendship.”

The powers of the Guardian of the Pool could hurl me four hundred light years through space back to Earth. Had done so.

I must be an old vosk-skull, for I turned and cupped my hands and splashed the liquid over me, letting it run down over my body and legs.

Yes, an old onker — for as Zair is my witness, I knelt down and took a long swigging drink. Foolhardy? Of course! But then, that is me, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy. . . I stood up, tall and straight once more, a fighting man, ready to face what must come on the wild and beautiful, savage and horrendous world of Kregen.

I licked the last moisture from my lips.

“By Mother Zinzu the Blessed,” I said, wiping my mouth. “I needed that!”

Chapter Seventeen

Gifts from a Savanti nal Aphrasöe

The magnificent black zorca trotted along the path above the waterfall. Proud, high-tempered, a stallion, this zorca was a mount fit for a king. I had formed the impression that he had not been well treated by his Kataki owner. This is no novel thing. Some races on Kregen, as on Earth, care nothing for the suffering of animals, as other races care nothing for the suffering of women and children. For me, the stallion responded nobly, and I think he understood very quickly the difference in attitude between his old master and his new rider.

Mind you, Katakis have no feelings for the suffering of animals, women, children or men. They enslave them all.

Once again back to full health and strength, for my side healed with wonderful alacrity after I had taken the swigging, impudent drink, I jogged along on Shadow. I had decided to call this muscular and elegant steed Shadow because he moved like a ghosting shadow across the land. What lay ahead of me I did not know; but the broad outlines of what I had to do remained clear. What was I going to do. The light-headed exultant feeling persisted.

But, of course, Kregen would always come up with frustrations, and plans gang aft agley under Savage Scorpio.

The way opened out and I stared across a plain of brownish grasses studded by a few wilting trees here and there. My eye was caught by a scrap of white high in the firmament. I stared up, eyes narrowed against the glare, and cursed.

Certainly, surely, the white dove of the Savanti flew down and circled, eyeing my zorca with quick intelligence manifested in every movement, an intelligence far past that of any mortal bird. So, feeling truculent as well as foolish, I shook my fist at the white dove.

“What d’you want?” I bellowed up. “Sink me! I’m not going to the Swinging City, much as I’d like to. I have work to see to that will not wait.”

The Gdoinye, the gold and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords, had spoken to me before, as had the Scorpion — I wondered if the representative of the Savanti would deign to open his beak and speak in human terms using a human voice.

He did not. He swung about and then dipped away, going at right angles to my track. He flew on, with my watchful gaze on him, swung back with a beautiful lift of white wings, soared high again. Again he circled my head and flew off at right angles. Three times he did this before I understood he wanted me to follow him. I had never observed this conduct in the dove before. I pondered.

The plain remained bare. No purely human enemies threatened. If the Savanti wanted to take me they had powers to snatch me up no matter where I was — so I thought.

Gently easing Shadow around and jogging along after the bird we followed as he circled and rose and fell, pacing his eager flight to our more sedate progress. That after all these years on Kregen I had phlegmatically turned my back on Aphrasöe struck me not so much as odd as highly practical and a sensible course of action. Opaz knew what might happen in Aphrasöe. And Vallia called. I knew now where the island of Aphrasöe was situated. When my affairs in the Outer Oceans had been settled, why, then, it might be time to return to the Swinging City. I hoped I might return as a friend. So I followed the beckoning white dove. In for a zorca in for a vove, as my Clansmen say. Soon a little copse came into view half hidden in a field in the ground. The dove fluttered and settled on a branch. He cocked his eager head. I halted Shadow and stared.

Around the dove’s neck a thin brilliant scarlet ribbon glowed against the white feathers. I had never seen that before.

The dove fluffed around and then dived off the branch, almost striking the ground where dried leaves were heaped into a pile before zooming up. Three times he dived. So I dismounted, with a quiet affectionate pat to Shadow’s neck, and walked across and kicked the dead leaves away. Well. Looking down I stood for a few moments and did not move.

Neatly wrapped in a length of scarlet cloth lay my own Krozair longsword with the plain strong strappings, the short sword in the lesten hide and golden scabbard given me by the Clansmen of Viktrik, the greenwood longbow of Erthyrdrin made by Seg and a full quiver of clothyard shafts, each fletched with the glowing blue feathers of the crested korf of the Blue Mountains. In its worn old sheath snugged my sailor knife. The lesten hide belt with the dulled silver buckle was drawn up around the bundle. Well, indeed. . .

These things had been left by me in the stateroom of Delia’s voller. There could be one and only one explanation of how they had come to be here pointed out by a dove wearing a scarlet ribbon. So Maspero had known I was in the cave! I remembered his words — he would not wonder what had happened to me on Kregen. He had a dove to send to spy on me. I surmised that perhaps each Savanti tutor operated his own individual dove.

Also there was a filled water bottle and a satchel containing bread and meats, fruit and nuts. Eating, I realized I was hungry; but that formed a tithe of the burden of my thoughts. I had not touched the water bottle I had filled with the milky liquid from the pool. Did Maspero know I had that?

Laid among the weapons and glinting up was a neatly fitting transparent face piece, which I handled with some awe. It was not glass. Now I know it was made of plastic. It strapped about the head and covered the whole face without obstructing vision.

Evidently Maspero had experience of the Spitballs. . .

After I had eaten I picked up the length of scarlet cloth, and not without a twinge or two, as you may well imagine. It was far finer than humespack, and Delia had been at pains to secure it at some cost. Although silk and sensil are regarded as superior they do have this infuriating tendency to slip. So I wrapped the brave old scarlet around and drew it up between my legs and tucked the end in and cinched it all tight with the broad lesten hide belt. My old knife snugged at my right hip. The quiver went over my shoulder. I hesitated and then, philosophically, slung the Krozair brand there, also. The short sword buckled up scabbarded at my right side. The longbow, unstrung, could slip into the harness at my left side, leaving my hands free, and the case of strings and the satchel could fasten at my belt. There were no sandals, or shoes or boots.

The spaces for a rapier and a left-hand dagger were left bare.

Just about then a pack of lurfings showed up, lean-flanked, low-bellied, grey-furred scavengers of the plains. Their probing snout-like faces reminded me unpleasantly of the Khirrs. It was time to mount up and ride.

The Savanti dove had vanished. I took a good look around for the Gdoinye. Evidently, the Star Lords had no interest in me at the moment.

There was no real reason for it; but I said, aloud, looking up and scowling: “By the disgusting diseased tripes of Makki-Grodno, Star Lords! There is a settlement overdue between us!”

That the settlement would come I had no doubt. If I welcomed or dreaded it I did not know. But, in Zair’s good time, it would come. . .

And, now, there was Zena Iztar to add to the reckoning.

Cantering off and feeling extraordinarily wonderful, clad once more in the brave old scarlet, weapons about me, a superb zorca between my knees, I felt the whole of Savage Kregen might take up arms against me and I would win through. Ah, my Delia. Soon, now, I would find my way back to Vallia and Valka.

Maspero, as I was sure it must have been Maspero, had included in the bundle beautiful Savanti leather hunting gloves and arm-guards, and these I donned, with pleasure.

There was, of course, no shield.

Like the Dray Prescot of yore, I rode on, singing lustily through the streaming mingled suns shine of Zim and Genodras.

I sang The Bowmen of Loh, and I sang every verse, every last stanza of that rousing song, and I thought of Seg, and I roared. Then, with a different emotion, I yodeled out The Daisies of Delphond. I knew the Delphondian Daisy I coveted. Mind you, the Princess Majestrix might not favor being called a Daisy . . . I decided it was high time I found out.

The journey progressed in grand style. I suppose, looking back, I was drunk on physical fitness. The horror of my experience in crawling like a half-crushed beetle across this savage land had profoundly affected me. By Vox! I’d been as near death and the Black Spider Caves of Gratz as I care to come —

although I was to come closer, as you shall hear, and more than once — and so this ride in the brave old scarlet astride a magnificent zorca, well, it turned my head a little. Shadow carried me surely and safely across the land of Ba-Domek and we avoided habitations and took the back ways and we did not tangle with the Khirrs, save for a little fracas in which three or four of them burst in black slime, and my face mask was smeared, and I washed us all and my longsword most carefully afterwards. For a space the longsword was carried swinging cleanly in the bright air, for I was reluctant to return it to the scabbard Delia had made for me until it was purified, for all I had scrubbed the glittering blade clean with sand and spittle.

Vomanus of Vindelka, with his slapdash ways with weapons, would have to smarten himself up if he tangled with the Spitballs of Antares, that was for sure. Assuming he won free of the hairy black horrors, of course. All along the way expectations of what I would say to all my comrades enlivened my thoughts. So, on a day with some cloud rolling up to haze over the glory of the suns, I rode out of the last of the foothills beyond the mountains and down through pleasant shallow valleys and along winding river courses and so found myself faced, at last, with the final long haul to the coast. Although I had used Seg’s bow I still carried a full quiver; an old paktun always retrieves his shafts when he can. If I dwell with what must seem a fey fondness on that journey, I think you will understand. I felt reborn. I could taste the glory of Kregen’s air and smell the sweetness of the grasses and revel in the warmth of the suns.

On and on we trotted and the plains widened and the sky lifted high above and the clouds rolled and dissipated and I lifted up my head and sang. Silly songs, bawdy songs, stirring war ballads and battle chants, songs of the swods. Vast herds of animals grazed everywhere and the lean forms of the carnivores passed between them, mutually indifferent until the time of hunting. At that time I saw to my weapons and kept a sharp lookout. A massive herd of chunkrah grazed and I gazed at them with the sharp knowing eye of a Clansman, built from wild skirling days on the Great Plains of Segesthes. The chunkrah is perhaps the most superb cattle animal of Paz, deep-chested, horned, fierce, impressive, and his russet coat gleams splendidly. I would not slay one of those magnificent beasts for my supper for that would be wanton waste. Each night I camped and made a fire and slept well away, so that I might espy whoever or whatever sought me by the fireglow.

A sennight later, along with herds of ordel and other cattle, another prairie-darkening herd of chunkrah came in sight, clear proof of the fecundity of the land. Rain fell in due season and the grasses thrived. I skirted the herd, admiring the craggy strength of the chunkrah, giving them no cause to take alarm. With my old sailorman’s knack I had been steering by the suns and the stars and I’d kept on a course that I hoped would be the reciprocal of any vollers out scouting for me toward Aphrasöe. I just accepted with thankfulness the fact — for it is an undeniable fact — that when I am lost and wandering on the face of Savage Kregen my Delia will find ways and means of searching for me. No beautiful idol in a niche, lit by a golden lamp, Delia of Vallia. By Vox, no! She is vibrant and energetic and confoundedly cunning and femininely shrewd. Delia is no stay-at-home dowdy, nor is she a hard and bitter would-be-male chauvinist. She is a woman, and glorious in her womanhood. Also, she casts a too-perceptive eye on me, from time to time, seeing straight through my most artful wiles. So I knew there was a good chance I’d spot an airboat.

Thinking decidedly hot thoughts, I trotted gently over the brow of a hill, a long rolling swaying of the land, and automatically looked for a voller, and all around for potential foes. A wheeling cloud of Katakis — away in the distance around a scattering of broken rocks beside a broad river Katakis were spurring their zorcas with fiendish cruelty. I stopped at once and pulled Shadow around and rode smartly back over the brow of the hill.

Dismounting and with a pat to Shadow I dropped on all fours and crept up the hill low to the ground and stuck my head out alongside a small chansi bush, its tiny round bottle-green leaves rustling musically in the little breeze. I trusted at the distance that to any sharp eye among the Katakis my shaggy head would look merely like another chansi bush. The wild animals of the plains like thechansi, for it moistens their mouths and chews for a long time, like cham.

The grey rocks out there had fallen in long ago. They lay scattered and broken, weather-beaten. The muddy river humped along and many wildfowl scattered and squawked and commotioned there, a myriad wings against the brightness.

A glint among the rocks took my attention. A careful look, a scrutiny through narrowed eyes — and I let out a sigh of exasperation.

A voller — stuck down among the rocks. She had come down hard. Fastened to a twisted scrap of her prow, upflung, a flag flew bravely — a flag of orange and grey.

Well, it made sense.

Djanduin was the land nearest here to which any of the trespassers at the pool would have been flung. So it would naturally be Kytun and his fellow four-armed tearaways who would reach Ba-Domek first in search of me.

And their voller had crashed, as vollers did on Kregen.

No thought entered my head of rushing down and getting into the fight. Although I will not be pedantic or intractable on the subject, in my view there is no finer fighting man than a Djang, except a Clansman. But

— but, again, that must wait. As I stared down I had no concern for the safety of my Djangs man to man with the Katakis.

Katakis are fierce and vicious with their two powerful arms and steel-bladed whiptails. They are excellent if dirty fighters. But Djangs have four arms, and they are better — and dirtier — fighters, when it behooves them to be.

As now, I saw, peering carefully. For there were not above ten Djangs, and the Katakis numbered over a hundred, shrilling around on their zorcas, shooting arrows into the rocks, charging in only to haul around and pull back, taunting the ferocious Djangs to follow them out to be chopped. On the ring of plain between the Katakis and the rocks lay many bodies. Most were Kataki. There were Djang bodies there, whereat my face grew grim and I ceased from my careless pleasure in once more seeing my Djangs.

I do not forget I am the King of Djanduin.

The simple brainless course would be to mount up and send Shadow flying down there, to burst through the ring, and to join my people in mutual defiance. Then we could fight it out to the end. Oh, yes, there would be joy in that, perhaps some of the tinsel glory that appeals to the boneheads among military men of two worlds, as among berserker warriors. But I was Dray Prescot, not a stupid thick-headed nincompoop, not a simpleton in these things, even if I am an onker in others. The picture of the leem, stalking the two young elopers, stayed with me. But even the old Dray Prescot, he who had struggled so intemperately in his early days on Kregen, might have thought on before charging down there to the last great fight.

Although I could not tell how long the fight had been going on, by certain signs I judged my Djangs had been cooped up in that rat trap for longer than most men would have survived. The Katakis had set up a camp nearby, and that told much. The actions of the four-armed warriors bespoke tired arms. Unless I did something positive, and soon, my people down there, brave fighting men who looked to me as their king, would be either killed or enslaved.

Wriggling back from the crest I stood up and put a foot in the stirrup.

“Now we work, Shadow,” I said. He tossed that superb head, the horn gleaming and sharp. “By the Black Chunkrah! You and me, together. We must do those Katakis a most diabolical mischief.”

And I mounted up, foursquare in the saddle, and trotted out.

Chapter Eighteen

The King of Djanduin Flies to Vallia

The russet backs of the chunkrah herd heaved and shimmered and rippled in long sinuous lines like a cornfield in the sun. In the sun Zim, I trotted to the rear of the herd and sat looking at them, weighing their configurations and the lay of the land and selecting those specimens who might be trusted to do my work for me. What I purported was neither new or clever; but it would have to serve now. Maybe it was not new and not clever; but it would be damned tricky to carry through with just one man. My Clansmen can perform wonders with chunkrahs. They can wheel them about like flying spindrift, they can form them into raging torrents of pounding hooves and tossing horns and fiery eyes, they can split them into neat parcels, and catch and tame one to quietness. In my time as a Clansman I had learned many of these skills; but I was still far more of a simple warrior than a skilled Chunkrah Clanner, although I could get at least a part of this herd moving. Not for me the spiteful bark of a forty-four, and I had no wide-awake to wave, howling. But I shouted, and riding up boldly to the specimens I had selected I nudged them into action, yelling, striking them with the flat of my blade. There are tricks. Soon I had a wedge moving sullenly, the mass beginning to pick up speed. I rode around their rear and flanks, herding them with increasing confidence, and Shadow, although unused to chunkrah work, responded nobly. Then — if it was Zena Iztar I would try to remember to thank her at a suitable time — a leem prowled over. He was hungry. I had never liked leems. After my ordeal, I liked them even less. But the slinking ochre devil served me for the herd picked him up instantly. Any sensible chunkrah will run when a leem hunts. I have seen chunkrah fight leem, and highly horrible it is, to be sure. A leem will not always win, not by any means. But, with my worrying and the stink of the leem, these chunkrahs chose to be sensible. They ran.

“Hai!” I shouted. “Move along! Hai! Run!”

We roared over the brow of the hill and down the long slope like an avalanche of doom. I took the larboard side of the pack, for the river was over on the starboard and I knew I’d have to exert every effort to keep the herd running close to the bluffs over the water. Chunkrah are not idiots among animals. So we went smoking down the hill toward the rocks.

The Katakis saw us. They spurred their zorcas about. They do not do honest work, Katakis, and probably had no idea how to halt that wild stampede. A Clansman of Segesthes would have known what to do — after he’d gotten himself and his mount out of the way.

Waving and shouting I drove the larboard flank of the herd in so that the whole enormous mass continued straight on for the rocks. The Katakis hovered, uncertain . . . Some, with sense, set spurs to their steeds and bolted.

Others tried to hide among the rocks, and four-armed demons of destruction rose, raging. The chunkrah herd opened to pass each side of the rocks and I let the larboard side spill out, for my work with the russet-clad beauties was done.

“Hai!” I shouted, and stuffed the sword away and ripped out the longbow. Seg knows how to shoot from the back of a zorca. So do I.

The blue-fletched shafts soared sweetly. Katakis began to drop from their zorcas. One or two tried to shoot back; but their bows were puny things, mere flat staves, not rounded longbows, and the arrows dropped plummeting along the river of russet backs.

So the chunkrahs smashed alongside the rocks and a mess of Katakis was scraped up, trodden down, utterly squashed into the ground. Swerving away from the river the front of the herd broadened; the chunkrah pounded on, dust spurting, horns tossing. I saw a Kataki impaled and flung high, ripped and torn and trailing greasy green and red banners of blood. Another slaver was carried along, the long horn clear through him, wriggling like an insect on a pin. But most were simply trodden down. The booming stentorian bellowings of the herd clamored away, echoing from the rocks. The hammering thunder of the eight-hooved chunkrahs battered away like the long-running drumming of Balintolian droombooms. Thundering in power and might and sheer irresistible energy, the chunkrah herd hammered the Katakis flat and on and away across the plain.

Cantering up to the rocks I saw a few remaining slaving whiptails being dealt with summarily, and I turned in the saddle and looked back, and, by Krun! I hoped to see the leem. But the beast must have had the sense not to follow. So, gently, I dismounted and sauntered over to the rocks and the crashed flier.

A titanic figure, all blazing blood and energy, bounded up, four arms windmilling. I was seized by the upper right and lower left arms, bear-hugged. The upper left hand clapped me on the back, while the lower right fist gut-punched me in an abandonment of joyous welcome.

I gut-punched back with my fifty percent of his equipment, that, so recently, had been twenty-five percent.

“Kytun! You old devil! Having fun again!”

“King! Notor Prescot!” And thump, thump against my ribs he tattooed. “Dray! What a sight!”

Yes, you see. My Djangs are never surprised when their king turns up to rescue them from a tight spot. It is infuriating, I suppose, the way they just take it for granted that their king will be around in times of trouble; but I am used to it. And, anyway, it gives me a warm delicious feeling, I admit. The sad truth is I am so often away from Djanduin. But all the sorcery of the Wizards of Loh, all the magical powers of the Savanti, cannot place me in different spots on Kregen at the same time. When a time loop operates, of course, I have been . . .

The others crowded up, the remaining nine. They had lost six of their number in the crash and the fight.

“Katakis!” said Felder Kholin Mindner, dismissively.

“Aye,” said Kytun Kholin Dom. “It was a bonny fight. And only ten to one. The whiptails didn’t stand a chance.”

Mind you, he did not boast. I vouch for that.

Then followed the greetings and the handclasps and the joyous shouted insults, the horseplay. We made a camp and ate, for the voller was well-provisioned. If any Katakis remained alive they dared not show their ugly faces. Katakis, these bladed whiptails, fear very few races — Chuliks, Pachaks who share a racial hostility; perhaps most of all they fear Djangs, when they meet them, which is not often. As for my Clansmen — well, again, that is for another time.

Kytun broke open an amphora of best Jholaix he had been keeping against our meeting. The wine had been a present from me; we eleven drank it down, and right royally it served its purpose.

“And the emperor—?”

“Aye, Dray! The queen, may Mother Diocaster smile forever upon her, went first into the pool, walking at the side of her father down the stairs. And he moved and sat up on the litter — before, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux, before it dissolved away — and spoke rationally. He was cured, Dray. Perfectly cured. And then, why then—” And here Kytun scratched his head with his upper left hand and his other hands busied themselves in eating and drinking. “Why, there was blueness and coldness in the pool, and we were in Djanguraj and I was shouting for a new voller. It was not Drig’s business. We were there, and then we were home. But, as Djan is my witness, it was a mighty strange affair. Mighty strange, by Zodjuin of the Stormclouds.”

Afterwards the dead Djangs were prepared for burial, an extempore, battlefield ritual, with due feeling and solemnity. I watched, taking my part, for I was king.

As to my own story, the wonder of their experiences tended to help and, anyway, as I say, my Djangs perfectly accepted that I would turn up to help them out in any little spot of bother if I could manage it. When troubles hit a party of them that they couldn’t handle, and I did not turn up, they would swing those four arms of theirs and say, so I was told, that, by Zodjuin, the king could not be everywhere at once. Talking to Kytun, I could not stop my own overriding concerns from showing.

“You are our king, Dray. But it is Vallia that demands at the moment.” He worked his oiled rag over his djangir, setting up the polish. “Of course, they only see you as a prince. One day—”

“Djanduin,” I said harshly. “Djanduin means more to me than Vallia. Perhaps Valka—” I had no need to go on. “One day, Kytun, the whole of Paz will be one, united.”

He was a good comrade and so he could insult me with a jest; also, I was his king, so he refrained from any comment on so patently absurd a notion.

During the siege among the rocks there had been no time to work on the flier with any consistency; now we went at it to straighten out the linkages controlling the silver boxes that upheld and powered the voller in flight. After some hot and toiling work, mixed with profanities that encompassed the Pantheon of the Warrior Gods of Djanduin, we had the thing fixed, and the voller was once more operational. Kytun cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Djanguraj,” I told him. “We will take this wonderful zorca, Shadow, with us. There is room. In Djanguraj I shall take a small fast voller for Vondium—”

I got no farther.

“King!” bellowed Kytun. The djangir gleamed brilliantly. “We follow you to chop the cramphs who poisoned the queen’s father! By Djondalar of the Twisted Staff! This is our duty — aye, and our pleasure.”

I was tempted.

Zair knew, with a rascally gang of ferocious Djangs at my back I could do the business speedily enough. But caution supervened. I explained it patiently.

“Suppose a great crowd of Vallian nobles came barging into Djanduin to punish Djangs? Would you—”

“I would rip their guts out! — Oh. . .”

“Pride, Kytun, is very foolish at times, as at others it is very necessary in a man. I must go alone. To do otherwise would alienate those who—” I paused, annoyed with myself. I had been about to say, those who did not think things through, and, by Djan! that applies to four-armed Dwadjangs, without a doubt. But I love them, for they are bonny fighters. So I said, firmly: ‘The pride of Vallians would be insulted. Anyway, the emperor has probably sorted things out by now.”

“I trust so, by Zodjuin of the Storm Clouds.”

Just whereabouts in their home parts of Kregen Vanti would have dispatched my friends I did not know. That depended on how good a shot he was. He’d dumped me down on the coast of Africa somewhere near where I’d been when the Scorpion first took me up to Kregen. But the emperor, Delia, Drak and Jaidur could all be scattered over the whole of Vallia. They could have been shot cleanly into the throne room of the palace in Vondium. I did not know. As to my other friends — well, they’d been scattered halfway around Kregen, as you shall hear.

Perhaps, looking back, I made a mistake in not there and then deciding to load as many fighting Djangs as possible into airboats and going vengefully back to Vallia to settle affairs finally. But, remember, I was still attempting to be the conciliatory Dray Prescot I fancied I must be to attain my goals on Kregen. So, instead, we flew to Djanguraj, I stayed for the shortest possible time decency would allow, and then, with Shadow, took off for Vallia in a small, fleet craft that should see me safely all the way there. The journey north along the South Lohvian Sea and across the western section of the Southern Ocean

— which lies north of Havilfar — and so skirting close to the Koroles, and away up with a great swing to the west of north around the tip of Pandahem, a place remarkably dear to many men, being called Jholaix, passed uneventfully. Uneventfully, save that twice the scarlet and golden raptor appeared high in the blue, circling, watching, and twice the white dove of the Savanti flew down to take a look at my craft. I say the white dove — maybe, I wondered, it might be better to say a white dove. The idea that each tutor operated his own individual dove did make sense.

So, at last, the southern coastline of Vallia hove in sight over the horizon. The breakers thundered against the shore, the broad bay of the Great River of Vallia, She of the Fecundity passed below, and away up the shining reaches of the river the enormous fantastical skyline of Vondium came in sight. I slanted down. There was to be no fooling about with attempts to pass guards this time. No secret passages. From the wardrobe kept up in the Palazzo of the Four Winds in Djanguraj I had selected a suit of decent Vallian bluff, so I was dressed as a Vallian as I brought the voller down to the emperor’s own landing platform and leaped out. The patrolling airboats of the Vallian Air Service had been late — I frowned at that —

and I started off across the broad paved space toward the porticoed entrance. Shadow looked at me a little reproachfully from the stall built for him in the aft body of the voller, and I flung him a few words of comfort.

Around me the pinnacles of the higher towers reached for the sky. The wind whispered across the open space where airboats were parked, with men working on them in the shadows of their hangars. Chulik guards ran out toward me, angry, intent, ready to do me a mischief. Up here there were usually the Crimson Bowmen on guard.

“Stand, cramph, for the emperor’s guards!” yelled their Deldar, a Chulik of mean aspect, with a golden tip to his portside tusk.

“Out of the way!”

I bundled into them, took the first three-grained staff that came handy, knocked three or four of the fellows over and went on, running, into the shadows under the portico. Only two arrows splintered against the marble. The Chuliks had compound reflex bows of some power; but any skill I may possess at arrow-dodging was not required.

I knew the way.

Past a few slaves I hurried, along the sumptuous corridors well-lit by tall windows where the brocaded drapes barely stirred in the breeze, ignoring a party of Fristle guards who went stepping past smartly across an intersection. Their uniforms might be considered to indicate they were in the emperor’s service; but there was altogether too much green and brown about them, and not enough of the red and yellow. Various doors were guarded by various guards. If they did not let me through I sent them to sleep without regret. After all, time was wasting.

My calculations told me there would be time for me to reach the penultimate corridor before the guards rallied sufficiently to come in a body to check this madman who had stormed into the palace. The front door, the front aerial door, had been easier than all the other ways. I went on, ignored a group of pretty girls in silks and bangles who shrank away, chattering, angled around the last ornate doorway. Only four Chuliks stood there. I gave them no chance to speak.

Only one had a chance to shriek out, and then he, too, slumbered. I kicked a silly ornate golden helmet away and bashed the balass and silver door open. Straight ahead of me down a long and brilliantly lit corridor, filled with people waiting, talking, arguing, drinking, lay the folded doors of the emperor’s throne room. He was there. I knew that. These people were waiting audience of him. I walked on. Someone yelled: “Hey, fambly! Wait your turn.” I walked on.

A man, he was a kov, a high colored, fleshy man — I knew him — took my arm with anger. I shook him off. I stalked on, and now I was recognized. The whisper ran around the tall room. “The Prince Majister!”

At the folded doors I came at last to the time when the guards would confront me in real earnest. From a narrow side door they boiled out, Chuliks, tusked, blankly fierce, not reasoning, ready instantly to kill to earn their hire. So far I had not drawn a weapon.

A voice lifted from the waiting brilliantly attired throng. “He is the Prince Majister! Treat him well—” The Jiktar at the head of the Chuliks said: “I do not know him. No man enters here without leave of Kov Layco Jhansi. Seize him up!”

I kicked the Jiktar betwixt wind and water, slid the rapid succession of blows, got a sword blade between my elbow and side and wrenched it away from its startled owner, belted a few more, toppling them over. They crashed into their fellows. I was at the doors. The fastenings were immense. I gripped the handles as big as spear blades, dragged the folding doors inward. The oiled panels picked up speed. I had to put my foot into one wight’s face to stop his head from being crashed. The massive doors thudded shut.

The bar fell almost of its own accord.

The dinning sound dimmed and faded from outside. The hush fell oddly, menacingly. Slowly, with the closed doors at my back, I turned around.

The floor of polished marble glimmered in the lights from many samphron oil lamps and from the sparkling rays striking through the wide latticed windows in the curved roof. The distance down to the multiple dais was not great, for this was the third throne room, used for more personal requests. The crimson carpet and the zhantil pelt seatings were familiar, the gold ornaments, the idols, the trophies of battle, the small sacrificial fire and the altar. Beautiful girls waited to bring refreshments when bidden. The room was almost empty.

I started on down the marble floor, my Vallian boots clacking loudly. The figure in the throne under the ritual canopy sat up. The people standing on the dais, lower down, but not on the floor, went rigid.

“So you return bearing words, son-in-law?”

“Not so, emperor!” I bellowed back. “See — I come empty-handed.”

And I held up my hands, palms outwards, as I marched.

A small quick gesture from the emperor halted the reflex action of the bodyguard lining out each side of the throne. These guards, too, were Chuliks. I did not like the look of this at all. I have employed Chuliks as mercenaries, for they are powerful fighters; but the numbers of them, the positions they occupied, argued some calamity had befallen the Crimson Bowmen, or some other deviltry was at work.

“You are banished from Vondium, son-in-law. Tell me why I should not order you cast down to the deepest dungeons?”

“Because you know that will not serve you.” I looked about, for the moment ignoring the few men and women in attendance on him, looking for certain faces I hungered to see.

“Where is Delia? Where are Drak and Jaidur?”

“Well may you ask, Dray Prescot. Since I am well again I have seen nothing of—”

I held onto my roaring senses. Didn’t the buffoon know what had happened? Probably not. He’d been on the point of death in his imperial bed, and then he’d been dumped down in his palace full of life. Probably he had no memory of what had intervened, or of that moment of lucidity in the Pool.

“You remember your request to your daughter?”

“I have made many requests of her. She usually refuses.”

“And damned sensible, too! So you don’t remember.”

“Enough of this—” he started to say, getting his temper up, which with him was deplorably easy.

“I want to see Delia and the children!” I stopped at the foot of the dais and my left hand rested on the hilt of the Krozair longsword, which I wore angled out almost parallel with the ground, jutting, arrogant, I confess, very boastfully. The rapier hanging from its baldric looked thin and puny in contrast.

“And I would like to see some of these people you tell me are my friends. I was near unto death — and what happened to you and your friends?”

“I was banished — or have you forgotten?”

His dark, heavy face flushed. He was back to full health, all right. Why, the old devil had never felt better in his life.

“This Seg Segutorio, this Inch of the Black Mountains, kovs, both of them, because I gave you the gifting. I have my loyal men about me now.” His powerful face showed an intensity of belief. “I have made a winnowing of my enemies. Now I have loyal friends and an impregnable bodyguard of Chuliks—”

I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed. The laugh was filled with scorn, contemptuous.

“Impregnable?”

He swallowed down bile for a space. But he was not beaten by mere words; he was emperor. “I let you live. One word from me and you die.”

“And your daughter?”

That nettled him sorely.

It did more than that. I fancied I knew what had happened. No matter where Delia had landed back in Vallia, she had swiftly organized fliers, men and weapons, supplies. Then she had gone haring off back to the forbidden island of Ba-Domek. She had gone to find me. And, no doubt, everyone else of our company she could find had gone with her.

That was an eventuality I had hoped to forestall. But I was too late. So, since the emperor was safe, I had no more business with him.

One more fact remained to be established.

“Of these people you stigmatize by calling them my friends.” I named the people I meant, the brave company who had flown with me to Aphrasöe carrying the dying body of this emperor with us. He knew them and of their loyalty to me. “Are there any in Vondium now?”

“No, son-in-law. Not one. Not a single person of those you champion so loudly. I tell you, I have friends, and I know where to look for succor.”

He started to shake with anger, working himself up. A further thought occurred to me. I was aware of a small side door opening and of the guards springing to assist the people who entered; but I wanted to ask the emperor one last question before I retired.

“You were nearly dying, emperor. Now you are well. Do you know how that was accomplished?”

“Of course. Need you ask?”

His reply astonished me. He was looking off to the side, to the group of people who had entered and who now came up to the foot of the dais, bowing with the air of those who had power and authority at the emperor’s hand.

“Here, Dray Prescot, are those who saved me. Loyal subjects all. To them, I owe my life and Vallia. They should be the lesson you so sorely need.”

He gestured, raising them up from their postures of reverence. I looked. Oh, I looked, like an idiot, like an onker, like the stupid simpleton I am. These were the people Delia’s father put his trust in, these the folk he had given power, and chief among them Doctor Charboi, and hard, bright, cutting, Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga.

Chapter Nineteen

“There Stands the Notorious Dray Prescot!”

“Why is this man allowed to wear swords in the presence of the emperor? Disarm him, instantly!”

The vicious words of Ashti Melekhi spattered into the bright radiance of the throne room. The guard Chulik — he was an ord-Jiktar and therefore very high in the guard, probably the third in command — stepped down from the dais heading for me, and he half-drew his rapier.

“Wait, wait, my dear Ashti!” called the emperor.

I felt nausea at his way of addressing her.

Down in Djanduin my warrior Djangs would feel naked and dishonored to appear in the presence of their king without a ceremonial djangir buckled up to their harness. But this was Vallia, and only on special occasions would the court wear anything other than fancy smallswords for decorative purposes. Vallia was a civilized country.

“This man, Ashti, is the Prince Majister.” He relished his power. “There stands the notorious Dray Prescot! He is my son-in-law, I am afraid. I do not care for him overmuch; but he has served me well on occasion. He is a man of swords, a man of blood, a man of violence.”

I felt the outrage, “I am not a man of blood!” I bellowed. “I am a man of peace!”

“That is as may be. But you may keep your swords.”

The Chulik Jiktar slapped his rapier back. He looked annoyed, as though denied a pleasure. But the emperor knew me better than this yellow-faced, tusked, malevolent Chulik. The emperor knew I was more malevolent on occasion than any Chulik born — and this, too, was for my sins.

Melekhi stared at me. Charboi had the grace to shuffle away, eyes cast down, and stand nervously some distance off. Ashti Melekhi! A long cool gown of green she wore, with golden motifs, and the strigicaw seizing the korf, her badge, emblazoned upon breast and arm and thigh. She stared challengingly at me and I sensed she had an inkling that I had taken the emperor away, following his gasped instructions, and was not yet prepared to take up that particular challenge. The emperor believed she and Charboi had cured him. To challenge me now, openly, would raise awkward questions, and she wanted to choose her time and place for the confrontation.

I said: “Twelve friends of yours paid me a call. I hope they spoke well of me.”

She started, and controlled herself, her thin cheeks pinching in. I noticed she wore a small sword that was, in reality, a strong and cunning dagger, emblazoned with gems.

“Oh,” she says, very sure of herself. “No doubt you will meet some more of my — friends — very soon.”

“I welcome it. Let them come swiftly. The canals are cooling in the hot weather.”

The emperor made a sign and a beautiful girl ran across to give him a drink of parclear. He drank, thirstily. “I don’t know what foolery this is; but anyone knows the canals of Vallia are deadly to those not of the canalfolk. Now, Dray Prescot, say what you have to say and go.”

“The banishment upon me is lifted?”

Melekhi gasped at this; but the emperor, after another insolent drink, and having his mouth wiped by a Fristle fifi, nodded. “Yes. But if you err again, son-in-law—”

“Only time will tell that. For there are things you must know. And you will not relish the telling of them.”

“And will the word onker come into it?”

“Only if an onker listens, instead of an emperor.”

His face swelled up again, and he thundered out: “You try my patience sorely! Have a care. You had best go while your head is still on your shoulders.”

Considering it redundant once more to point out what that order had come to in the past, I nodded stiffly to him. I faced Ashti Melekhi. I did not smile, as is my wont, and I kept my face as naturally molded into its ugly old lineaments as I could. All the same, something showed, for her eyes narrowed and the tip of a red tongue flicked her lips.

Nath the Iarvin started at this, and stilled. All the time his bulky form towered at Ashti Melekhi’s shoulder, silent, unspeaking, his small dark eyes watchful. He still wore the brown leather tunic and buff breeches, with the wide, black, silver-studded belt girt up around his gut. The lockets for his rapier swung empty; but he carried a twin to the dagger worn by Melekhi. The sheer ferocity of that lowering face impressed me once again. This man had been bought body and soul by Melekhi, he would fight and kill and die for her and joy in the doing of it.

I walked out with my shoulders held braced, my boots clacking on the polished marble floor. At the door where Womoxes hoisted up the bar and swung it away, folding the panels open, I turned back. The emperor sat forward on his throne, watching, and the others remained still in the postures I had left them.

“I give you Remberee, emperor. We shall meet again—”

“Not if Opaz wills it,” he shouted after me.

So I went out and took myself off. This time I was allowed through. But the looks I took from some of the Chuliks heartened me. They hadn’t seen the half of it, yet.

The voller lifted off smartly and I turned in the direction of the Great Northern Cut and Bargom’s Rose of Valka — and then my hands clicked the control levers over. No. No, I did not wish just yet to become embroiled with stikitches. The assassins Melekhi would send must wait. Business before pleasure. Information was vital, information I needed but that could not have been asked for from any of those in the throne room. Although I have an ugly old figurehead and a pair of shoulders that are somewhat on the wide side, it is possible for me on a world like Kregen to disguise myself adequately. A large hat, perhaps a false beard, a long cloak, the cunning application of makeup and a different walk, these things work wonders.

The voller was dropped at our Delphondian villa, a piece of work rapid in the extreme, for Melekhi would probably send her assassins to all my villas as well as The Rose of Valka. With Shadow safely stabled in a public livery, for I might need him in a hurry, I could stroll into The Savage Woflo, a riotous tavern where soldiers and guards gathered, and fling a few silver stivers across the table and roar for good Vallian ale.

The sight of my father-in-law’s face glinting upon the stivers, a variety of propaganda slogans and pictures on the reverses, did not altogether please me; but the money fetched ale, and company, and I could settle down before the singing began. Here in The Savage Woflo information could be come by. Because of the many lords in Vondium the tavern was crowded with their guards. Colors blazed in the mineral-oil lamps. Soon I was being filled in with all the latest gossip. A few Crimson Bowmen sat drinking, and most of them looked glum. There were few Pachaks. The Chuliks outnumbered all. This, I owned to myself, was passing strange. Vondium had recovered from the dread spell of impending doom that hung over the city like a pall when the emperor lay dying. Now he was back in his palace, hale and well, Vondium could go back to the usual round of commerce and industry, secure that all was well with Vallia. By careful talk, by intimating I knew more than I did, I got out the story.

Briefly: all the Crimson Bowmen and the Chuliks who had guarded the emperor’s door that night had been discharged. I was amazed they had not been slaughtered out of hand. But that would have entailed stringent inquiries. Melekhi stood in a position of great power, that was undeniable. She was being used by an even more shadowy figure of greater power; and for an instant I trembled, thinking it might be Phu-si-Yantong. There was nothing to link him with this plot against the emperor personally; this was a palace intrigue, and Yantong had worked through his Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan against the whole of Vallia.

Her mentor might be this Kov Layco. He was an astute man, holding the empire together for the emperor, guiding with ruthless and clever hands the destinies of all, trusted. Yes, he might cherish ambitions; it could be him. I tended to doubt it would be any Racter, for they attempted, for all their evil, to work through legal means. And for the Panvals the same held. There were many parties and factions ready to strike if the emperor died; now they were muzzled; but any one of them could own and instruct Ashti Melekhi in her evil designs.

The emperor insisted these days on guards hired from the Chulik mercenaries. The Crimson Bowmen, like the Archer Guard of Valka assigned to duty around the emperor, had been sent off on distant expeditions into the country.

Naghan Vanki, who, I knew, or thought I knew, was the emperor’s spymaster, had recently, after his good work with the Chyyanists, been rewarded by being made Vad of Nav-Sorfall. The province was lush, rich with ponsho pastures, situated just east of Vomansoir. Because of this addition to his estates Naghan Vanki, the new vad, was off in Nav-Sorfall busily at work consolidating his position. I could not turn to him for immediate information on the plots and intrigues surrounding the emperor. To think, the woman who had bribed a doctor to poison the emperor was now held in great esteem by her intended victim! She would strike again, and soon. I stirred myself. The singing would begin soon; but because there were so-many Chuliks, the singing promised to be half-hearted and short if the yellow-tuskers did not remove themselves, as they usually did when there were not many of them. The last piece of information amused me. Queen Lushfymi, the Queen of Lome, whom men still called Queen Lush, despite the emperor’s strict injunctions against the loss of dignity, was rumored to be hot on her way to the emperor’s side.

If the old devil married her, I’d heave a sigh of relief. That would take a deal of weight off Delia’s and my shoulders.

The Maiden with the Many Smiles shone down brilliantly as I wrapped my cloak about myself, pulling it up to my eyes, and set off for the palace. The first moon of Kregen showed those mysterious markings that had so often tantalized the astronomers of Kregen. Up there, on that world floating in space, were continents and islands and seas, and an atmosphere. The ever-changing radiance gave her her name. In that soft and fuzzy roseate moonlight I strode swiftly through the pink-tinged shadows. Vondium went about the usual pursuits of the great city after the suns had set and the moons ruled the skies. I avoided all entanglements. This time there was another Rapa guard at the Jasmine Tower beyond the Canal of Contentment. He went to sleep peacefully and I opened the plastered niche and, pulling the revolving stone free, passed swiftly down the slimed stairs.

The lantern showed nitered walls, dripping thick with green slime, and the darkly patterned stairs. That first Rapa guard had recovered, all right, and said nothing, greeting his relief with a hearty: “All’s well!”

So do mortal men’s sins find them out and aid hairy old villains like me. Reaching the secret panel that led onto the emperor’s chamber, I paused. He had plenty of bedrooms to choose from. Maybe he wouldn’t relish sleeping again in the room in which he had so nearly died. I’d find him, though, if I had to roam all through the palace.

What I really wanted to do was take voller and fly as swiftly as I could after Delia, on toward Ba-Domek and Aphrasöe. But I conceived I had a duty to the emperor; the old devil owed me, and I suppose, really, I owed him. He was Delia’s father. I could not let him be killed. I could not abandon him to his fate.

I pushed the panel in soundlessly.

Anyway, I did not want the forces controlling Ashti Melekhi to slay the emperor and gain their coveted powers — I did not want them to win.

Intrigue, dark plots, the shadows of night, the hushed footfall — these were games I would play, I decided, as I padded into the chamber. The room stood empty, a few faintly glimmering lamps reflecting from the old polished furniture. The wide bed lay with its covers turned back. A golden tray rested on a low table at the side. Miscils, palines, purple wine of Wenhartdrin in a golden vessel with two golden cups — the old devil was all set up for the night, then.

A noise at the door, the oiled creak of its opening, light splashing sharply across the rugs of Walfarg weave. I moved back into the shadows of the overhanging draperies. He walked in with a few handmaids and servants, scolding them, full of good humor. Eventually, when he was dressed in a long crimson brocaded gown he shooed them out. As the door closed he shouted out jovially past them to the corridor: “And mind you stand a good watch, my bonny Chuliks.”

They were bonny all right, working for anyone who paid them. If someone else had crossed their yellow palms with more gold than the emperor, they’d as lief slit his throat as stand a good guard. He started up when I stepped out into the lamplight. His face worked with shock. His hand darted to the golden bell.

I put my hand over his and the bell hung mute.

“Ha!” he cried. “Murder, is it?”

“No.” I held him gently. “I mean you no harm, as I have told you often enough. I wish to talk to you. For the sake of your daughter and your grandchildren, will you bear me out?”

The bell must be removed from his clutching fingers, for I would not trust him, as I trust no one save a very few on Kregen and Earth.

“Talk? You talk big, son-in-law. But you desert me when danger—”

“You banished me. Forget that. You remember nothing of your illness?”

He shook his head. For a space, so long as I offered him no violence, he would humor me and listen . . .

“No. I remember nothing. I was ill. Ashti cured me.”

I let him go but I did not step back. I stared at him. “Listen to me, emperor, and mark me well. You were poisoned.” He started up angrily at this, but I went on doggedly. “The name of the poison was solkien concentrate—”

“I know it! Cottmer’s work!”

“Aye. And you were fed it, lovingly, spoonful by spoonful.”

“I do not believe — how could I? I was cared for, nursed, no one — Ashti would not have allowed it

— you lie!”

“I do not lie. I pass over your intemperate words. I tell you the truth.”

For a moment he stood there, tall and bluff and robust, filling his crimson gown with the golden cords. His face showed a sudden crafty intelligence. “I know of solkien concentrate. Once it gets a hold on the system its evil results cannot be averted. I was ill, very ill. Ashti told me. If you speak sooth then I could not have been cured.”

“Not by normal men. I agree.”

He looked bewildered. “But—”

I bore down on him. “You called out in your delirium. You asked your daughter, you begged Delia to take you to those who could cure you, as they had cured her.”

His eyes widened.

“Yes — yes — I do not remember — but I would — I did! The Todalpheme of Hamal.”

“Your daughter Delia took you there. You were cured. If you do not remember, then that is probably better. Now you are back in your palace, fit and well. Delia did that.”

“Solkien concentrate.” He wet his lips and took up the golden vessel, poured wine. He did not pour for me. I let him drink. Then I said: “Suppose that wine is poisoned, also?”

He choked and spat and the purple wine sprayed all over the white linen of the bed. He swung to face me. He was trembling. “If I believed you, your story, if I did — you have not told me who did this thing.”

“Ah,” I said. I used the old formula out of spite, watching him squirm. “I wondered when you’d come to that.”

“Tell me! I can find out if you speak truth. I can seek and find the answers to my questions—”

“Oh, aye. You can have folk tortured to your heart’s content.”

“Tell me, you insolent cramph!”

“I wonder, sometimes,” I told him, “why I suffer myself to bother with you. Only for Delia’s sake. Otherwise, I really think I would let you go your own way to damnation.”

His face shook with his rage, cunning and powerful, used to absolute obedience. “Tell me!”

“Ashti Melekhi.”

He gaped at me.

Then he laughed and sneered, all in one, and sank back in the ornate brocaded chair at the bedside. The golden tassels shook with his sarcastic mirth. He brayed at me.

“You onker! Your sorry story is a pack of lies. The woman cut you down to size and you resent that. Ashti — why, Ashti nursed me devotedly. She found Doctor Charboi. Your story of solkien concentrate must be untrue, this leem’s nest of a story about going for the miracle cure — lies, all lies. I shall call the guard instantly—”

“There is no need for that. I have warned you. The woman is deadly. She will try again. What I would like to know is whom she is working for.”

“She works for me. She is devoted.”

“And Queen Lush?”

He glared, choking with rage, trying to rise from the chair and being held down by my hand. “She is Queen Lushfymi and she has nothing to do with this. Ashti knows she can never become empress. That is not to be thought of.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that, either. But it would give you a reason to understand. Myself, I believe there are other stronger forces at work here to destroy not only you but the whole of our family.”

“Our family?”

“I know how you regard me, a wild clansman; but your grandchildren are Delia’s children. You must believe me.”

“I cannot. I must think on what you have said and think best how to deal with you.”

You see? You see how the powerful of the land think?

I said to him, speaking pretty savagely: “Very well, emperor. You think on. I have warned you and I shall try to protect you. If I leave now I expect no trouble from your Opaz-forsaken Chulik guards. Or you’ll have a slew of death bonuses to pay out.”

He panted, heaving up as I stepped back into the shadows of the bed. “Sometimes, Dray Prescot, sometimes I think I would gladly pay all my treasury in death bonuses if one of them was yours.”

“Oh, aye. You’re not the only one.”

The door creaked on its oiled hinges and fresh light spurted through the opening gap. No one had knocked. The emperor stood up from the chair, half turned away from where I stood shrouded in the bed hangings. He looked relieved and glad.

“Here is Ashti now. Now we will test the lies you spew!”

So that explained the second cup. The purple wine would be safe, then. I licked my lips, thirstily. Ashti Melekhi entered the emperor’s bed chamber, walking like a neemu, all feline undulation and grace. Her thin mannish figure was clad in the green hunting leathers. At this the emperor’s face fell. He took a half-step forward.

“Ashti? You are welcome, welcome — but why this costume?”

She flashed that brilliant scything white smile at him.

“Because there is hunting to do tonight, majister.”

“Hunting?” The buffoon was bemused.

Following Melekhi the hulking form of Nath the Iarvin shouldered through the door. With him came six Chuliks. They were officers, Hikdars and Jiktars, and at their head strode the Chulik Chuktar of the guard. Their weapons glittered naked in their fists.

The emperor fell back.

“Ashti!” he screeched.

“Yes, emperor. We cannot wait. Your interfering son-in-law has returned, and he knows the truth. So you must die tonight, now!”

Chapter Twenty

Savage Kregen

“Slay him, you fools, and have done!”

Ashti Melekhi pointed scornfully at the emperor, who fell back over his chair, twisting, knocking the golden cups of wine to the priceless carpets.

I stepped out into the light. The long dark cloak covered my face in shadow.

“Whoever he is, slay him also!” cried Melekhi.

The Chuliks advanced with grim purpose.

“You see, emperor,” I said. “There’s no telling an old onker the truth even if it’s staring him in the face.”

The emperor choked. He tried to struggle up. “Guards!” he got out in a strangled voice. “Guards! To me! To me!”

“What!” said I. “D’you want more of ’em to do your business for you? This bitch has bought them all.”

Ashti Melekhi drew in a sharp breath. Her face glowed with pleasure, her grey-green eyes bright, her pursed red mouth moist.

“The Prince Majister! Two with but a single cast! Now the gods smile on me.”

“It depends on which gods,” I said as I threw off the swathing cloak. “Some of that fraternity are not too reliable.”

“Slay them both,” screeched Melekhi. She held her hands pressed to her thin breast. She craned to watch.

The rapier came out smoothly enough, and the left-hand dagger. These Chuliks were past masters at their art, trained from birth. I was in for a strenuous few murs — or however long the fight lasted. The problem would be to keep the emperor from being killed.

I never forgot he was an emperor. Now he struggled up and the look on his face would have quelled an ordinary rabble. He grabbed for the bedhead table. He kept a sword ready to hand there as do all sensible folk on Kregen.

“I am the emperor!” he shouted. “Foresworn traitoress!”

“Now, emperor,” I said. “Remember. Remember the fight with the third party outside your very own palace grounds?” As I said this I crossed swords with the first of the Chuliks, who came on with great panache. I twinkled his blade about; but he knew that one, and I had a quick little spot of nimble parry and duck with his left hand companion before the rapier went into his guts and I could withdraw, skip aside and so kick another Chulik betwixt wind and water. He staggered; but I gave him no time to fall, by reason of the dagger that skewered into his eye. Bits of fluid gristle and blood spurted.

“I remember that fight, Dray Prescot!”

“Aye. Well, I’ll pull your hair again if you get in the way.”

Two Chuliks were down. The four remaining came on, violently, rapidly, and I had a deal of ducking and parrying to do, using the full of the blade, feeling the solid power of their blows ring and chingle along the steel.

“Get past him, you fools!” screeched Melekhi. “Get at the emperor.”

“You stay behind me, emperor!” I yelled, and shoved him back with my shoulder, as cursing and swashing his blade, he struggled to get past the bed and the table.

Because of that wide, ornate, draped bed the Chuliks could not get around me on one side, or leap at my back. They had to come at me from the front and the right. This, I fancy, put them at a disadvantage. There were four of them. Nath the Iarvin stood, blocky, solid, immense, at the side of his mistress, watching it all with those cold piggy eyes.

And I saw, instantly, that the Chuliks would be cut down when they had done their work. This Nath was good with a blade. Everyone knew that.

A third Chulik staggered back, most surprised. He had thought I would thrust with the rapier, having feinted for that purpose, and he had dropped into line ready for the riposte. But my rapier held down the blades of two of his companions, beating them back. My main gauche whipped across, very fast, horizontal, very nastily.

The Chulik looked surprised because his throat was cut from ear to ear. He grinned at me with a blood-bubbling mouth where his throat should be.

The fourth Chulik, for the moment disengaged, shoved his dying comrade aside to get at me, and as he came on so I dropped and gut-thrust him before he even settled, and sent him toppling over on the last long journey to the Ice Foes of Sicce.

The other two stepped back, their blades snaking up, free of mine, and so for a space we looked at one another.

“What do you wait for!” Melekhi stamped her foot — a futile, stupid gesture. “Slay them both!”

And Nath the Iarvin spoke.

“He is a great swordsman, my lady.”

“And so are you — better, by all accounts.”

“Then let me—”

“Wait!”

The Chuliks were filled with the blood lust and the purport of this exchange passed them by. They leaped in, still deadly, still ferociously anxious to spill my tripes. Well aware that this brooding Nath was watching my play I tried to play the next one cleverly and foin a little and a Chulik blade sliced down my face. I cursed and jumped aside and my brand scorched across his face, not where I had intended and I felt the steel jar against a tusk. He screamed. This was turning from a pleasant little passage at arms into the bloody and squalid fight it truly was. There was no Jikai here, I surmised.

Blood ran down my chin.

The two were heartened at this and came on. The emperor was still thrashing and swashing about, and he near-nicked me a couple of times.

“Keep you back, you great onker!” I said. “By Zair! I don’t want your nose sliced off for my Delia to see!”

“Let me at ’em!” he was yelling, kicking the chair, the table, the bed, foaming. My blade licked in and out, and the Chuliks, who can handle weapons, played me, one against the other; but I had them in the end, although not as I had expected.

The right hand one stepped back. He stepped away from the struggle of his comrade. Swiftly he thrust his rapier under his left arm and whipped out a throwing knife. It was not a terchick, being altogether heavier and not so finely balanced; but it would do the emperor’s business for him. Fight fire with fire. There was no time. I lifted the left-hand dagger. I hurled it as my Clansmen hurl the terchicks, riding the backs of their voves. Left-handed, right-handed, it makes little difference to a Clansman.

At the same time I slid the point of the last Chulik and presented my point to his throat. The main gauche flew true. It smashed into the Chulik’s face, staggering him, bringing a great splashing spurt of dark blood. And the rapier point slid, cutting through the windpipe and the jugular of the Chulik before me. The distant yellow-tusk screeched, flailing about, spraying gobbets of blood, screaming. The one before me glared madly, trying to wrench the blade from his throat, and that damned fool the emperor came up — well, not between my legs, but close by them — surged up to take a juicy whack with his blade at the wriggling Chulik.

The mercenary flailed over backwards taking my rapier with him.

I stood there, glaring myself, furiously angry,

“Get back out of it, you fambly!” I roared.

And Ashti Melekhi, in a voice like steel, said: “Now, Nath. Now.”

Nath the Iarvin drew his rapier and main gauche with the single fluid motion that told of a master fencer. He advanced on me and the look on his dark powerful features meant only one thing in the whole wide world of Kregen.

I stood before him, my hands empty.

“Dray!” screeched the emperor, squirming about between bed and table. “A sword — here — take mine!”

“Too late for that, rast,” said this Nath, speaking up, very jovial, very purring-pleased now he had been unleashed.

“True,” I said, brightly. “True.”

Nath leaped in with that smooth skilful poised motion of the bladesman. So, with a sigh, I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, unlimbered the deadly Krozair brand, and with spread fists, met that headlong charge.

His first swift passage aimed at sliding past the long blade was met and repulsed. He dodged back, the main gauche fending. He blinked.

“You’d best put up that old bar of iron, dom. Make it easy on yourself. Just relax and, by the Blade of Kurin, I swear to make it quick and painless.”

And, as he spoke, cunning bladesman, he leaped again and so twinkled his blades before my eyes. Cunning, cunning! Oh, yes, he was very good as a bladesman, this Nath the Iarvin. But I have been a bladesman in my time — still am, I suppose. He had not met a Krozair brand before. All that old agony of indecision of mine about a Krozair brand facing a rapier — well, that has been settled. The beautiful blade, perfectly balanced, rotated smoothly, oiled, flaming with power, scorched in past his darting blades, sank in over his silver-studded black belt, sank in and in and burst on through. I withdrew.

He stood, gaping, bewildered. Even as he began to shake and topple and the weapons fall from his hands, the door opened.

A man stepped through, very alert, intense, filled with an eagerness of spirit I could recognize. My gaze switched back to Nath as the blood bubbled out over his brown tunic. His outspread arms with the brown and green banded sleeves quivered; his hands gripped and relaxed, gripped and relaxed, and they would never more grasp rapier or main gauche. The irony was not lost on me. By the rapier he had lived, and by the longsword he had died.

“What!” I cried. “Another ponsho for the slaughter.”

The man who had entered stopped stock still.

He wore Vallian evening clothes, a deep crimson robe, embroidered with silver risslacas, circled by a jeweled belt, very thin, from which swung on gemmed lockets a long dagger. Around his neck a chain formed of gold links and rubies and laybrites caught the samphron oil lamp’s gleam and winked and shone magnificently, the red and yellow gems blinding.

“Layco!” cried Ashti Melekhi, and she lifted her arms imploringly.

“Majister!” said this newcomer, this man I now knew to be Kov Layco Jhansi. “You are unharmed?”

“Never better,” growled the emperor. “And these rasts are dead, and that she-leem is the blackest traitor this side of Cottmer’s Caverns.”

“Layco!” shrieked Melekhi again. Her white scornful face caught up all the agony in her, and she screamed. She ripped the dagger from her belt and crouched, ready to spring. Layco Jhansi appeared to be in the prime of life, short, with closely cropped brown hair. His face was regular, unmarked by suffering, his eyes large and luminous. He carried within himself a shining spirit that marked him out as a man who would adorn any walk of life he chose to inhabit. Ashti Melekhi poised, the slim dagger held high. In a heartbeat she would hurl it straight at the emperor

— it was written clearly on that white and twisted face.

No one there could know the Krozair brand would flick the flying dagger away. The moment hung with menace. Then Jhansi stepped in close to Ashti Melekhi. He whipped his own needle-slim dagger out. She saw him from the corner of her eye.

She screamed and fell back as the dagger plunged into her bosom. The green leathers punctured and as Kov Layco withdrew the blade blood welled.

“No! No — Layco!” she screamed. “Please — please—” The dagger in the Chief Pallan’s hand lifted again. This time it would finish her. “Please, Layco! I could not help it!”

“You could not, Ashti,” said Jhansi. “But you are a traitoress. Foresworn. The life of the emperor is not to be taken lightly or without punishment.”

And his dagger flashed down and buried itself in her heart.

Thus died Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga.

“A just retribution for a foul traitoress, majister,” said Jhansi. He calmly left his blade where it jutted from the bosom of the corpse. He walked across to the emperor and bowed.

“You are unharmed, majister?”

“I’m perfectly all right. This great hairy graint of a Clansman stopped me from having any fun again —

it’s always the same.”

I held down my disgust. What did he know of the actual hurly-burly of battle? What fun was there in that? He did not even inhabit the same kind of world my Djangs or my Clansmen did when they spoke of fun.

“I shall have everything seen to, majister.” He eyed me with a lively glance. He hesitated, which I fancied was an odd thing for him to do. He glanced toward the door, and opened his mouth; then he closed that firm-lipped mouth and nodded. “By morning the culprits, if there are any left, will have been rooted out. And I shall start with the guards at your door. They must have heard the commotion, and yet they did nothing.”

“Bought,” I said. “Bought and paid for.”

“Aye, prince,” he said. Even without the pappattu and the Lahals, he knew who I was. “But who?”

“We’ll find out.”

“And the quicker the better,” said the emperor. “I must give you thanks, Layco, for saving my life. That she-leem would have skewered me with that dagger. But it means she cannot testify.”

“I shall do all I can, majister.”

“Yes, Layco. On you I rely. You never fail me.”

I remained silent.

“You honor me, as always, majister.”

“I shall never forget your loyalty for as long as I live.” The emperor looked around on the shambles, on the dead, the six Chuliks, the bladesman, the vadnicha. He shook his head. “Indeed, it is a terrible thing to be an emperor.”

And I felt the stupid giggle starting deep within me.

The emperor’s enemies had attempted to poison him and get him out of the way of their schemes, remove him at the first from the palace revolution. My wonderful Delia and our friends had foiled that plot and cured the emperor. The guilty had been punished. The traitors would be paid off, and the loyal guards return. Layco Jhansi would see to that.

But — but! We had given the emperor a thousand years of life.

Never before had he been seated so thoroughly upon the throne. It was a joke. His enemies would fade away and vanish like Drig’s Lanterns. The emperor of Vallia would remain the emperor of Vallia for a thousand years.

I felt the relief like wine bubbles rising and bursting.

It was marvelous!

And my Delia — how we would laugh, together, back with our family in Esser Rarioch. The emperor was staring at me. Layco Jhansi was staring at me. The stench of blood rose dizzyingly in the room. I glared back at them. I could feel the unleashing of emotions bursting in me, rising like the wine bubbles, forcing their way out.

A thousand years and not a care in the whole wild world of Savage Kregen beneath the Suns of Scorpio!

And I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Notes

[1]Kroveres. Prescot spells this out. He pronounces it in the same way as Krozair, but does not spell it Krovair. A.B.A.

[2]Bratch: “Move!” “Jump!” Get about your duty or you know what will happen, and the punishment will be sore indeed. Not quite so vicious a word of command as the terrible “Grak!” shouted with killing intent at slaves; but still a hard word. A.B.A.

[3]* Vad is the title of Kregan nobility immediately below Kov. Nich is the suffix denoting the second twin. Nicha is feminine. Vadnicha therefore is the twin sister of the Vad, with certain responsibilities within the same Vadvarate. The Vad’s wife is the Vadni. A.B.A.

About the author

Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.

Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction, both under his real name and numerous pseudonyms, including Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer’s works were published along with the works of other authors under "house names" (collective pseudonyms) such as Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.

Bulmer was also active in science fiction fandom, and in the 1970s he edited nine issues of the New Writings in Science Fiction anthology series in succession to John Carnell, who originated the series. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com, and at wikipedia.org.

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Contents

Dray Prescot

1 – The Brotherhood Rides Out.

2 – Kroveres of Iztar

3 – Of Processions and Mercenary Guards

4 – Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga

5 – Of a Ruffianly Meeting at The Rose of Valka

6 – We Pay a Duty Call on the Emperor of Vallia

7 – Hamun ham Farthytu Asks Questions

8 – A Brush with Flutsmen

9 – In the Akhram of Bet-Aqsa

10 – “In Aphrasöe You Will Find Only Death!”

11 – Of Weapons and Colors — and the Scorpion

12 – Strife Among the Star Lords

13 – How Fimi Obtained Her Wedding Portion

14 – The Fight with the Leem

15 – Shadow

16 – A Draught to Mother Zinzu the Blessed

17 – Gifts from a Savanti nal Aphrasöe

18 – The King of Djanduin Flies to Vallia

19 – “There Stands the Notorious Dray Prescot!”

20 – Savage Kregen

Notes

About the author

The Dray Prescot Series