ISBN 1843195410

Secret Scorpio

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

A Note On The Vallian Cycle

Secret Scorpio is the first book of Dray Prescot’s adventures in the Vallian Cycle on that marvelous and exotic world of Kregen he has made his home.

Dray Prescot himself is an enigmatic figure. Reared in the inhumanly harsh conditions of Nelson’s Navy, he has been transported to Kregen, many times through the agency of the Star Lords and of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, those mortal but superhuman men and women of the Swinging City. There is a discernible pattern underlying all his breathtaking adventures — he is sure of that — but the pattern and its meanings remain veiled and unguessable.

His appearance as described by one who has seen him is of a man of above middle height, with brown hair and level brown eyes, with enormously broad shoulders and powerful physique. There is about him an abrasive honesty and an indomitable courage and he moves like a great hunting cat, quiet and deadly. On the savage and beautiful world of Kregen he has at various times and for various reasons risen to become a Vovedeer and Zorcander of his Clansmen of Segesthes, the Lord of Strombor, Strom of Valka, Prince Majister of Vallia, King of Djanduin and a Krozair of Zy, a plethora of titles to which he confesses with a wryness and an irony I am sure masks much deeper feelings at which we can only guess.

Now a new page of action turns in his life. The volumes chronicling his life are arranged to be read as individual books. Now he is plunged headlong into fresh adventures beneath the hurtling moons of Kregen, in the streaming mingled lights of Antares, under the Suns of Scorpio. Alan Burt Akers

One

Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan

A foot scraped in the shadows. Instantly we seven came to a dead halt in the blackness of the alley. Ahead the darkness lowered down as mufflingly as in the alleyway, for massy clouds covered the night sky of Kregen, concealing the glitter of the stars and the radiance of the moons. My left hand gripped Roybin’s shoulder and I could feel the fine tremble as he waited, poised like a wild leem, savage, suspicious, ready to leap out in perfect and deadly silence if that scraping foot heralded a murderous enemy.

In single file we seven stood, half-crouched, stock-still, invisible. The foot scuffed the slimy cobbles again and then the disappearing patter of feet told us that the wayfarer of the night was about his business. Seg’s left hand on my shoulder pressed, but in the same instant Roybin moved ahead again. We followed, silently. Behind Seg, Turko the Shield fretted, I knew, that he did not stand at my back, a place he considered his by right. Inch, stooped to bring his great height beneath the evil-smelling brick overhang, prowled after Turko, and our rear was brought up by Young Oby, young and a boy no more, who perforce clasped Inch’s belt, and by Balass the Hawk whose dark skin blended perfectly with the shadows.

In single file we stole out from the mouth of the alley, aware of the vanishment of the pressing walls and the feeling of greater space about us. The tiny square lay shrouded about us. Yes, I suppose on reflection, we were a pretty ferocious bunch. I know I would not like to stumble upon such a crew as that on a pitchy night when all manner of deviltries are afoot.

Roybin led. We were experienced enough to know when to follow a man who had knowledge of the terrain. This alley led around the back of the fish market in the town of Autonne, on the island of Veliadrin that had lately been Can-Thirda, and our objective lay across the fish-scaled cobbles of the square.

No one spoke. Here, in the pressing darkness before the first of Kregen’s seven moons made an appearance, there was no need for words to know what we were about. Soundlessly we emerged from the mouth of the alleyway, feeling that cloying pressure of pent-up air give way to the freer sense of the square, small though it might be. Water ran between the cobbles and there would be fish scales and heads and tails aplenty strewn about. A scattered rain could not decide whether to cease altogether or to drench down in the long shafting downpour of a Kregan storm. We inched ahead and cleared a brick buttress, our right hands trailing along the crumbling mortar. A spark of light jumped into life ahead.

We froze instantly.

The light shone from a small lantern set outside an arched gateway closed by a moldering lenken door. That wooden door blended with the decay and dissolution of this tumbledown section of the fish market. In the crazily leaning brick walls stained with the patina of time, in the powdery and splintered timbering, in the gap-tiled roofs queasily lurching at incongruous angles, the archway and door betrayed nothing unusual.

Yet Roybin had certain information so we were here, prowling like wild leem, and the night ahead of us might soon explode with fury and action.

A long running roll of thunder boomed distantly away to the east in the interior of the island. On the tail of the rumbling echoes Roybin whispered, “Lookouts.”

We had expected a sentry. Peering across the darkened square into the isolated pool of radiance shed by the lantern, we made out the forms of three men. An edged weapon caught the light and glittered. They were quiet over there, probably talking desultorily together, resentful at their watch. But they would keep a lookout. All Roybin had told us convinced me that whoever these people were that we intended to spy on this night, they were ruthless and efficient.

For we knew why we were here, creeping like villains along vile, fish-stinking alleyways in Autonne, a city of the western coast of the island of Veliadrin. Veliadrin, of which I was still High Kov, that large island between Vallia and my own wonderful island of Valka, had once been called Can-Thirda. The name had been changed for certain reasons. The island had at one time, in the long ago, been a kingdom, before the Empire of Vallia had obtained the supreme power over all the islands fringing the coasts of the main island of Vallia. Veliadrin was still split into distinct regions. Over on the west coast the people were mostly fisherfolk, given to wild boasting of the old days, not overly rich or well-endowed, but sturdy and resourceful and also, as we had discovered, too prone to superstition. Oh, yes, we knew why we were here, stalking the shadows like leems. Rumors and suspicions, malicious gossip and ugly conjectures had at last come together to make a picture that displeased me greatly. That picture spelled evil days ahead if we did not act at once. There are many and varied religions on Kregen, and some are fine and worthy of the utmost effort in a man or woman. And some there are dark and secretive and baleful in their influence. From the main island of Vallia a new creed was attempting to make a lodgment in Veliadrin. The west coast, a port, a poor and credulous people — the new creed found fertile ground. Mind you, I knew who must take the full blame.

We had known for some time there were deep stirrings from Vallia, long ground swells of troubles to come, and the emperor was once more a worried man. Many forces, many ambitious men and women, many fanatics, sought to topple him. I had been told that there were far more potential insurrectionists these days than there had been when I had last spoken to the emperor in any privacy and confidence, before my absence on Earth and my adventurings in the inner sea, the Eye of the World. Now this new creed threatened close to home.

As I had said to Seg Segutorio back in Valka before we left: “My Freedom Fighters did not clear Valka of the slavers and the aragorn and make of it an island where they might bring up their children in pride and justice and freedom, for some Opaz-forsaken devils to worm their way in and overturn all we have accomplished.” And I had slammed a dagger into the sturmwood table beneath a mullioned window overlooking a stupendous view of Valkanium and the bay.

Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, a Bowman of Loh, and the truest comrade a man could hope to find in two worlds, had replied, “Valka is indeed a paradise, Dray. Falinur, well, I try, and hard it is, by the Veiled Froyvil! The people there do not forget the old times, when their kov went up against the emperor and they followed, exultant, and they cast a deal of blame on me, the new kov, for the old kov’s failure.”

Delia had told me some of Seg’s problems with the recalcitrants in his province, and he seemed to be having a worse time of convincing them that he was their new leader than was Inch in his Black Mountains, a province which had also been involved in that old revolution against the emperor. Seg had gone on, staring moodily across the sun-lit expanse of the bay: “But as Inch and I are here in Valka, we think prevention in Veliadrin may aid us in our own kovnates.”

Thus spake Seg and I warmed to him.

There was no need for fulsome words between us. I understood him — and, by Vox, he understood some of me — for, because he was Seg Segutorio, a black-haired, blue-eyed fey maniac from the wild hills of Erthyrdrin, he had added: “Mind you, my old dom, I can tell you a kovnate goes to rack and ruin if you aren’t there to keep an eye on things.”

He was right.

At least, he was right if an absentee noble could not find a loyal and trustworthy person to run an estate in the absence of the owner. I, to my shame, own I am probably the greatest absentee landlord of two worlds. But then blame the Star Lords, blame the Savanti — blame also, if you will, my own accursed facility in picking up titles and the possessions that go with them on Kregen. I already had a plan to deal with these problems, plans you shall hear of in due course, and already I had consciously begun the hazy opening moves to unite all of Paz.

“Veliadrin is not Valka,” I had said. “Here in Valka, Tharu and Tom and the Elders run things, with Drak. In my kingdom of Djanduin, Kytun and Ortyg handle affairs perfectly. In Strombor Gloag rules the roost. And as for my clansmen, well, Hap has them so well organized we took over another clan without bloodshed, all through obi.”

In his dry way, Seg had said, “You’re really a Vovedeer as well as a Zorcander, now.”

“Aye.” He knows when and how to puncture complacency, does Seg Segutorio. “I’ve been more than lucky in having found good friends to run affairs whilst I’m away. But Veliadrin is split up, occupied by diffs and apims who don’t really get on, for the damned Qua’voils still resent their defeat.”

“But the Pachaks you have settled in Veliadrin.”

“Ah!” I had said, feeling pleased. “I have great hopes for my Pachaks of Veliadrin.” This was true. “And the Pachaks of Zamra have finally freed all the slaves. That is progress.”

“But this damned new creed.” Seg had run his eye along the true shaft of an arrow, brushed his fingertips lightly over the brilliant blue fletchings. “Chyyanists, is it?”

“Aye. Roybin is a first-class spy and he has received a certain report. A preacher or a priest or some devil of that kind is loose in Autonne. He holds meetings. I think a little firsthand information will prove of value.”

“There’s nothing like seeing for yourself,” said Seg.

So that was why we were here, creeping like a gang of piratical cutthroats through the rain-swept darkness, toward the speck of light over the gateway leading on to what unknown horrors we could only conjecture.

Inch had refused to stay behind, swinging his enormous two-handed ax absently as he told me that if Seg and I were going off for some fun he wasn’t going to be left out. Turko the Shield considered the matter closed. Oby was raging for adventure and Balass the Hawk deserved some fun. So they all came.

“As to fun,” I had said just before we ventured out into the rain from our secluded inn, a place where the attention we attracted had been mitigated by pretenses and stratagems, “this Chyyanist nonsense is likely to lead to a few smashed skulls. At least, that is what I feel in my bones.”

“All reports speak of the creed as evil,” said Roybin sagely, nodding his head. “But they are all outside observations. No one really knows.”

As I padded forward through a few opening flurries of rain toward the gateway and the moldering lenken door, I wondered just how much we could hope to discover in there. The center of the new religion lay in Vallia, or so we believed. It had been brought here by a priest or preacher who sought to rouse the simple fisherfolk hereabouts. As an absentee landlord I had no right to criticize my tenants if they rose up against me, in a just cause.

However intolerant and objectionable I may be, I do not think I had given any cause to these people to rise up in justice. Maybe that is just another facet of my supposed megalomania. But the fisherfolk of Autonne made a living and did not starve and were housed. I had ordered the freeing of their slaves. This Opaz-forsaken priest of Chyyan sought to stir up trouble out of willful spite, a sullen resentment, a sense of ill-treatment, and if I could not understand and sympathize with feelings like these then no one else in two worlds could do so. And, too, there were far weightier reasons for Chyyanism, as you shall hear. . . Not one of my six comrades appeared to think it strange that Roybin no longer led on, that I had pushed on in the front to take the three guards. I mention this to indicate that my thoughts had allowed me to act without thinking about the action I was taking. A bad habit. A nasty habit. A habit that had brought me into dire trouble in the past and was to pitch me headlong into further horrors, a habit that was just one against which I continually strove.

My guard went to leaning sleep with a tap of a dagger-hilt along his skull. Turko’s lolled unconscious from cunning finger pressures.

Roybin’s collapsed with a dagger through his throat.

I looked at my spy. Well, Roybin had dealt with these people before, so he should most likely know. The guards were cloaked heavily, but they wore armor and carried weapons and were not of Autonne. I put my mouth to Roybin’s ear.

“The roof?”

He nodded.

That cleared up the protocol over the local man leading.

Roybin, who was called Roybin Ararsnet ti Autonne, had served me before, in various dubious capacities. I do not mince matters where brave men are concerned. Roybin was a spy. I gave him credit for that, for credit was due.

Around the side of the building the rain spattered more strongly against the corroded brick, lashed on by a rising wind. The darkness was not as absolute now, for the clouds were piling away invisibly above and every now and again a sliver of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, who shines forth most bravely in the night sky of Kregen, glimmered through the rack. Inch wore a tightly fitting leather helmet and not a scrap of his yellow hair was visible.

I looked back at him as I set my hands to the climb. In the fragmentary light his incredibly tall frame looked angular and sinister with the immense long-handled Saxon ax swinging handily from his wrist-thong. Yes, it was a great comfort to have Inch of Ng’groga at my side. Seg’s Lohvian longbow was unstrung and the string safely in the dry of his belt pouch along with the spares. We all wore decent Vallian buff tunics and breeches, with rapiers and daggers strapped about us and, therefore, looked like perfectly ordinary Vallian koters, although, of necessity, being marked as apim, for we were all Homo sapiens.

The crumbling brickwork afforded good handholds and in no time we were all on the roof. I had no intention of leaving any one of these bonny fighters alone, below, as a lookout. It behooved others to look out when we wandered along.

Megalomania, maniacal, vicious, I know, I know. But I harbored frightful suspicions concerning this new creed of Chyyan. Nothing must hinder us tonight.

Over the roof where the rain blustered and then fell away, only to return with just that little extra edge in its sting, we crept cautiously. Roybin led us to the skylight. The iron was new, replacing worn-down bronze.

Young Oby pushed forward, taking a slender tool from his pocket. Opaz knew what deviltry he had been practicing in my absences, but the lock snicked open and with a single heave Turko hauled the iron bars up and out. He placed their weight down as though replacing one of Delia’s priceless cups of Linkiang porcelain on its saucer.

I looked down. Only darkness, until my eyes picked up a faint glimmer, the merest wraith of an orange glow, and I made out three-quarters of the outline of a door. A well-made and tight fitting door sealing off the lower portions.

One after the other we dropped down onto a loft floor where stinking fishnets tangled beneath our feet, and where no doubt the scales clumsily brushed into the corners might once have graced a coelacanth. The door yielded to the forensic ministrations of Oby. I did not shove it open, as a soldier might, the sword mighty in his fist.

Gently, I eased the door inward. The orange glow brightened. I put an eye to the crack. For a moment the world consisted of orange whorls of fire, and then I saw that the door opened onto a narrow gallery surrounding the central area. Here was where the fishermen hung their nets. A low drone of voices lifted. Lights threw orange reflections upon the far wall and struck in slivers of radiance up through the warped planks of the gallery.

Chances were that we could open the door and sneak out onto the gallery before the people gathered on the floor below might look up and see us. It was the kind of chance that always attracts. I might have listened to Roybin when he made his first report and simply ordered out a detachment of guards. We would have surrounded this odiferous place and swept up all who worshiped here. But then we would catch men and women who had come here out of mere curiosity. We would have taken the priest of Chyyan. But it was my guess that he would say nothing.

So we went about our work nefariously, like criminals.

Like wraiths we seven slid out onto the gallery. Not a board creaked, not a single item of harness chingled. We were old hands, feral as leems, deadly as Manhounds.

We each found a crack in the planking and set an eye to observe what went on below. My first fears vanished the instant I clapped eye on that scene. Gathered in a mass at the end of the room a crowd of people were in the act of rising from a deep genuflection — we had chosen our time well, the chance swiftly and surely taken — and the priest himself, clad all in black vestments, lifted his arms high, leading the congregation in the opening bars of a chant. The chant proved to be a moaning, miserable, oafish thing, and most of the people did not know it. But the priest raised his voice to lead them. At all this I glanced with the swift calculating eye of the fighting man, seeking to weigh possible odds. The words of the chant came so garbled they were practically impossible to make out. Over it all I glanced up and to the wall behind the priest. And I let out a soundless puff, and felt vastly relieved. For, set against that back wall draped in its rich cloths and golden tassels, there stood no pagan silver idol of a leem.

A calmness came over me. Whatever vileness this new creed of Chyyan might bring, I did not think it could be as vile as that of the cult of Lem the Silver Leem.

Against the rich cloths of the back alcove lifted a bold image of a heavy-winged bird, an image as tall as a man, with feathered wings spread to encompass a full twenty feet. All a rusty black, this bird, save for its scarlet eyes and scarlet claws and scarlet beak. Four wings the chyyan possesses, like its distant cousin, the zhyan. The four wings were undersize in this image for the body size, but the whole effect was at once impressive and ominous.

At once surmises sprang into my brain. Native saddle-birds were unknown in Vallia and Loh, being, at the time, generally confined to the hostile territories of Turismond and to Havilfar and islands thereabouts. The mighty continent of Havilfar, south of the equator, was the home of zhyan and chyyan. I frowned. This bore a little more investigation. Havilfar boasted as its most powerful nation the Empire of Hamal, and the mad Empress Thyllis was sworn to destroy the Empire of Vallia. Was this creed of Chyyan a gambit in that game?

Incense rose, stinking and abominable. The chant ceased. The crowd stood to listen as the priest spoke. As I listened I watched their faces as well as I could, and some lapped up the ranting words, but others were more critical. A couple of trident-men near the door came as close as may be to openly jeering. I marked them.

This priest had journeyed to Veliadrin from Vallia, and no doubt Autonne was his marked target town. I tried to size him up, wondering from which city, country or continent, even, he hailed. A full-fleshed man, with the bright staring eyes of the fanatic — or the diseased — he presented an imposing figure. His robes were all of black, relieved by embroidered motifs in golden thread and imitation jewels, motifs mainly of chyyans doing unmentionable things to their victims.

Chyyans have not yet been generally tamed to the saddle. They remain unbroken, wild, flying freely over the wide spaces of Havilfar, a dread and a terror to lesser animals and to man. The white-plumaged zhyan is notorious for the uncertainty of its temper, for all that the bird is valued above ten fluttrells, and yet the zhyan in its power and mastery has been curbed to the rein and the bit and the flying harness. Not so the chyyan. Its rusty black plumage shares none of the brilliant sheening highlights of the impiter of the hostile territories of Turismond. The chyyan is a bird to steer well clear of when you ride the level wastes of the air, astride a saddle-bird, or piloting a small model voller. So this priest, who may have come from Hamal to wreak the Empress Thyllis’s vengeance upon Vallia, lifted up his voice and harangued the simple fisherfolk of Autonne, which is a town under my care.

“It is not for the distant future when you are dead and gone to the Ice Floes of Sicce! No, my children, I tell you in the sacred name of the Great Chyyan, upon whose black breast is taken every arrow that seeks your heart, I tell you that the Great Chyyan brings hope and comfort, delight and joy, prosperity and wealth to you in this life. Do not wait until you are dead to enjoy yourselves! Listen to my words, for they are words from our leader, he who has been chosen in the divine twinning by the Great Chyyan to lead us into the new darkness of the Black Feathers, in which is there light beyond our meager understanding.”

At this guffaws broke from the two trident-men. Not for them the finicky parsing of metaphysics. They heard words that appeared to contradict, and they brayed their derision.

“By the silver flukes of Shalash the Shining!” bellowed one, clapping a bronzed hand onto his thigh.

“Your riddles make no sense to a coy, Himet the Mak!”

“Hush!” and “Quiet, impious onker!” broke from those standing near the two trident-men, who I guessed were brothers.

The priest, this Himet the Mak, lifted a hand. I saw his black robes stretch over the hilt of a sword belted to his waist.

“The blasphemers speak their own destruction! The word of the leader twinned with the Great Chyyan is to be obeyed. The leader is the spirit of the One made Two, spirit and flesh, spirit made manifest to men. Our leader and the Great Chyyan are in duo, twins, radiant with the Black Feathers, leading us to light. And the word of our leader tells us we must wait for a sign. He will come among us. He will tell us when to lift the banners of the Black Feathers. Then, my children, then all that you do not have will be yours. When Makfaril our leader gives the divine word you will gain all, not when you are dead and rotting in the ground, but here and now, in this life, soon!”

People were dancing up and down and the two trident-men had fallen silent. It was mumbo jumbo, but the promise, the passion, the pride of purpose, these drove home keenly into everyone present.

“Listen to me, my children, to Himet the Mak, who comes to tell you of the Great Chyyan and of our leader, Makfaril. You must do all the things necessary and pray for guidance, that in the Black Day you will be spared and live to enjoy the fruits of luxury handed to us by him of the four wings, Chyyan of the Black Feathers. In that glorious day will you find resurrection in the here and now. All will be yours. Only believe! Believe and pray to our leader that he may intercede for you with his divine twin, in spirit and in flesh, pray for your salvation in the day from the Great Chyyan.”

One or two shrill yells broke from the embryonic congregation. Again and again the priest harped on the desirability of achieving one’s heart’s desires in the here and now. He gave only a sketchy metaphysical plan for life after death, for salvation, for the delights of paradise, of being reborn higher in the circle of vaol-paol, or for the joys of Valhalla; he hammered home his message that the Great Chyyan and Makfaril the leader sought to reward their devotees now.

When he reverted to supernatural arguments they were all cant phrases, rolling rodomontade mixed with elements culled from many minor creeds of Kregen. I have made a little study of the beliefs of Kregen —

vastly edifying! — and could recognize this curious mixture as an artificial construct, alien, almost thrown together. The priest had skill. I wondered who had trained him.

And yet, despite his skill, despite the lure of grabbing it all now, the two trident-men grew restive, so that Himet the Mak was forced to take notice of them.

From the resplendent cloths draped over the alcove at the back of the statue of the rusty black chyyan stepped forth armed men. They appeared, suddenly, between the tall drapes. I eyed them. First I looked at their faces and the way they stood and held themselves, next at their weapons and then at their uniforms.

They were all apims, like me, and their faces were all of that low-browed, brutal cast that does not in any way invariably mean brutality in the possessor. I rather fancied these men would be hard and merciless and take more than a trifle of joy in sinking their weapons into the guts of any who opposed them. They stood alertly, poised, and I knew that at a signal from Himet they would kill and go on killing until he called a halt.

Their weapons remained scabbarded. They wore rapiers and daggers, but as I looked at the way they were belted up I frowned. It seemed to me the thraxters and the parrying-sticks belted to their waists were their prime weapons.

Their uniforms were black, beneath boiled leather armor, well oiled, and they wore profuse ornamentations of black feathers. Their iron helmets carried tufts of rusty black feathers from chyyans. All in all, they looked a formidable bunch. I judged them to be masichieri mercenaries who had never aspired to the quality of paktuns — for paktuns are in general finicky about questions of honor — and who combined a little thievery and assassination and slaving into their mercenary way of life as the opportunity offered, without reaching the power of the aragorn. There were twenty of them, led by a hikdar. My instinctive reaction was that I wished I had taken up my Krozair longsword when we’d first ventured on this escapade.

The two trident-men eyed the guards uneasily, and their taunts fell away. They were tough and wiry, but they carried only their fishing tridents and degutting knives in their belts. They wore old buff breeches with frayed and unlaced ends, singlets of a coarse weave, and they were barefoot. Balass the Hawk at his crack in the boards began to stir himself around, reaching for his sword. I turned my head toward him and he stilled. Of us all, perhaps, Balass was less accustomed to stealth in his fighting, being a hyr-kaidur and master of the ritual combats of the arena. Silently Oby drew his vicious knife. Seg had already strung his bow, all done simply and silently and with enormous professional skill. Inch’s ax glittered in a shaft of the orange light. If there were to be handstrokes, we were ready.

Turko, who could rip a fully armed man to pieces with his bare hands, had grumbled and cursed when I’d told him to leave the great shield. Now Turko the Shield flexed his muscles. Oh, yes, if it came to a fight those twenty hard men down there would be in for a surprise.

But I wanted no fighting.

I wanted to observe, to fathom out just what lay behind this new and evil creed of Chyyanism, and then to withdraw and debate, calmly, what best to do.

With a tiny gesture of my left hand I indicated to Roybin that he should retire, and we would follow, one by one.

No one questioned my right to leave last.

Himet the Mak was shouting again, lifting his voice, and I detected a strained hoarseness there, very surprising to me considering the circumstances and the clear power he had been exercising over these credulous people.

“I speak to you and tell you the great words, the great words given to us from Makfaril, the leader, directly from the Great Chyyan. Yet you seek to mock me, to deny the great words. Do you not desire salvation and wealth and luxury in the here and now?”

His voice sharpened, took on an undisguised note of contempt and anger — and a tinge of fear? My comrades withdrew from the little rickety gallery, but I stayed, listening.

“You two, trident-men, brothers, you have been tainted with the falsehoods put about in the island. You know your island is called Can-thirda. Whatever it was called in the ancient days of the kingdom, ever since your island has been part of Vallia it has been called Can-thirda. Yet now you must call it Veliadrin. Why?”

A certain grumbling rumble from his listeners brought a wolfish smile to his lips.

“Aye! I well tell you why! Because the power-mad incubus, the Prince Majister of Vallia, decrees it!

That is why. Some unknown master from no man knows where tells you your fate. He holds your future in his hand. Has he visited you? Have you seen him? No, and you have not seen his bitch of a wife, the Princess Majestrix, either!”

My muscles jumped. I took a breath. But I remained lying still, watching and listening. Yes! Well may you who have followed my story marvel. But I remained still and did not leap down and choke this fellow’s throat a trifle to induce him to show proper respect for the most perfect woman in two worlds. And, I confess, I not only marveled at my own iron self-control, I actually relished it, as showing how I had matured and grown wise.

“Some forgotten child they had, spawned from their evil union, this Princess Velia, dead and abandoned in some foreign country debarred from honest men’s knowledge. Who knows where she died? Who cares? Why should your island be called after the slut?”

My fists gripped and my muscles trembled as a leem’s flanks tremble in the instant before he charges. But, despite all, I remained still.

Through the confusion roaring away in my head I understood that my own private problems, my own petty pride, must not interfere or injure the interests of my people, their lands or the intangible debt I owe all those who look to me. If this is pride, so be it; if it is duty, so be it. To me, a simple sailor and fighting man, it was and remains a mere matter of common decency.

So I battened down the hatches on my anger and made myself listen to what this fellow was saying. After all, there was more than a grain of truth in his rantings. . . If, because this priest of Chyyan insulted my Delia and our dead daughter Velia, I acted as I was wont and hurled myself down to choke him a little and bash the skulls of his ugly-faced guards, then I would forfeit the advantage of listening and learning in secret. Whoever had sent him would know that much of their designs were privy no more. I must force myself to swallow all that intolerant choler which makes of me a laughing stock, a fighting man and, sometimes, makes me do the right thing.

“Look around you in your island of Can-thirda! Where are the slaves that once did your bidding, that worked for you and made the days light? Gone, all gone. And why? Because your new High Kov, this high and mighty Prince Majister of Vallia, this Strom of Valka, this Kov of Zamra, decrees that you honest working people shall no longer run slaves. Is this fair? Is this justice? Why should a man do his own hard labor, why should a woman slave in the kitchen when she might buy and thrash a slave to do the work for her? Tell me, brethren in the Great Chyyan, if this is a sample of the usage to which this so-puissant Dray Prescot puts you, then will you lie down beneath it? Will you give the tyrant the full incline? Will you be slave?”

They yelled it back at him.

“No!” And, “No! We will not bow down to Dray Prescot!”

I fumed up there on the gallery. I didn’t want the famblys to bow to me. I’d already cut out all this fawning and inclining nonsense in Valka. But, equally, I did not want them buying and selling and flogging slaves either. This is the old conundrum, with an answer, and I brushed it aside as I peered through the crack between the sagging boards.

The mood of the embryo congregation had turned ugly. They were sucked in. They saw a hope before them that not only might they return to the slave-holding of the past but might aspire to a seizure of the goodness of life, now.

Useless for me to condemn them. Had I spent more time in Can-thirda, had I even consulted some of the people about the change of name, had these folk seen me more clearly, instead of hearing about their High Kov only by hearsay, then, perhaps, I might have prevented all this, have nipped in the bud the horrors to come. For I knew well and made no mistake that far more lay behind this artificial religion of Chyyan than ever Himet the Mak would tell these poor famblys.

“If he were here now! If this infamous Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia, were standing before you, what would you do?”

The answering yells bounced in ugly echoes in that tall net-room below the gallery.

“Chop the cramph!” “Cut the rast down!” “Feather the tape!” And, “Make him slave and run him for the good of us all!”

Things had gone to rack and ruin indeed, in Veliadrin, since I had been away. Seg Segutorio spoke the true word. I swiveled an eye back. Seg’s face showed in the crack of the doorway. He looked vexed. Clearly, since we had obtained information, he was wondering why I did not join the rest of the party. I made a face at him, and he smiled, amazingly, in return, as I looked back at the scene below. The people were waving their fists and many brandished degutting knives and tridents. The leather-clad guards in their black feathers stared watchfully on. Himet the Mak gesticulated for silence. “Not so! It is the express command of the leader, of Makfaril himself, that only in the last resort shall Prescot be slain. Make him slave at your peril also. Deliver him up to me so that I may take him to Makfaril. Yes, my children, leave the fate of the wild leem to me and my guards here, my bonny masichieri, to take him to the leader.”

One of the trident-men shouted, his voice shrill and cutting through Himet’s words to the listening people. “Dray Prescot has a fearsome reputation as a fight—” No doubt he was going to say as a fighting man: Himet chopped him off with, “A fearsome reputation! Yes. Truly, by the Great Chyyan, a horrendous reputation!” That is true, by Vox.

Howls spurted up, execrations against the name of Dray Prescot and dire promises of what would befall him should he be foolish enough to fall into their hands. Himet bellowed.

“You would do well to heed my words and deliver him up for the judgment of Makfaril! Hearken! The torments Prescot would then suffer are beyond mortal men’s comprehension.”

They had not missed the neat turning of what reputation I had in Vallia from that of a warrior prince to that of a villain. Oh, yes, I am a villain. But only in certain matters. There was little more to be gained here. We would have to think on what best to do about this new creed of Chyyanism. We were now acutely aware of the problem and its methods. I cast a regretful glance at the two brothers, the trident-men who stood near the far door. Although uneasy, they showed no more signs of being cowed by words. But their glances at the guards, the masichieri, spoke eloquently enough. One brother shouted above the hubbub.

“And if the Prince Majister were here, among us now, who would know him?”

“Aye!” bawled his brother, red of face. “Who would know?”

Himet quieted conflicting answering yells. He smiled, a slow evil smirk that informed his listeners of his own importance.

“I have seen his representation. I would know. I would know the evil-hearted cramph among a thousand!”

The way the priest phrased this interested me. But it was time to go. The two brothers were scarcely likely to come to serious harm. The thought occurred to me that perhaps Himet had planted them, shills to give him arguments from which to strike sparks. If so, they were consummate actors.

‘To the Great Chyyan with Dray Prescot!”

The chant from below grew in volume. I took no notice. What they wanted to do with me sounded highly unpleasant. What I intended to do with them might be highly unpleasant, at first; afterward they would see clearer. At the very least, this new creed had brought to my attention disquiet in Veliadrin, a disquiet I would see was dealt with fairly and rectified, so that the people of Veliadrin might be as happy as the people of Valka, as was their right.

So, still more confused than I probably realized, still holding down my anger, still blanking out what had been said about Delia and our dead daughter, I took my eye away from the crack in the floorboards and prepared to wriggle soundlessly back to the doorway. Seg had gone and the gap showed only a dark slit. The boards beneath me creaked. They groaned. A spurt of ancient dust puffed past my face. I froze. The gallery moved.

They were bellowing on about what they would like to do to Dray Prescot, making a hell of a noise, shrieking the most bloodcurdling threats. The groan of the ancient timber might be lost in all the uproar. The rotten timbers under me sagged. Even to this day I do not know if the pure welling of savage satisfaction justified or condemned me.

The whole wooden structure shrieked as rusted nails gave way, as wooden pins snapped, as corroded bronze linchpins bent and parted. Rotten wood powdered to dust. A miasmic stench of long-dead fish gusted over me. I was falling.

The yells of hatred for the Prince Majister of Vallia belching up from below, the shrieks of venom for Dray Prescot, changed to a shocked chorus of surprised screams as the wooden gallery collapsed in a weltering smother of dust and chips and flailing timbers upon the mob. Head over heels, I, that same Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, pitched down onto the heads of the blood-crazed rabble beneath.

Two

“It is Dray Prescot, the devil himself!”

For an instant I lay flat on my back amid the splintered wreckage of the gallery. A damned infernal chunk of wood jabbed sharply into my back. The people broke away in a circle, yelling, struggling to tear themselves free from the descending debris. The noise and confusion, the spouting dust from the ancient building, the struggles of men and women, I suppose all the furor was rather splendid. But I had an eye out for the black feathers and leather armor of Himet’s masichieri. They’d recover more rapidly from the shock of surprise than the fisherfolk.

I sprang up. I did not draw my weapons.

People were turning to stare back at me. Broken planks slipped beneath our feet and the dust made us cough. Dust and muck festooned my hair and shoulders, and my face, I suppose, knowing my own weaknesses, revealed the struggle between laughter and downright cussing fury possessing me. To be thus chucked down like a loon among a mob yelling for my blood — well, it was funny rather than not. Himet stood with arms uplifted, his mouth open, glaring as though a demon from Cottmer’s caverns had miraculously appeared before him.

Oh, yes, the cramph recognized me.

Whoever his leader was, this Makfaril, that rast would not be pleased with his priest. For, forgetting what he had been enjoining the folk around, Himet pointed a rigid forefinger at me. His wide-eyed stare blanked into stupefaction.

“It is Dray Prescot, the devil himself!”

After the thunder of the gallery smashing into the floor a silent moment expanded. Himet’s voice shocked out. The fisherfolk understood the enormity of what the priest of the Great Chyyan had said.

“Dray Prescot!”

They repeated the name. A quick babblement flowed through the crowd. They stared at me. Like a monstrous tidal wave growing and surging landward from the wastes of the sea, like a tsunami running from continent to continent, their hatred burst up and broke. In the next instant they roared upon me in a shrieking mob.

A skip and a jump cleared the wreckage. Somehow, the rapier and dagger leaped into my hands. I beat away a reaching trident. A knife whistled past my ear and thunked into a shattered upright. These people were out for blood. These fisherfolk, wrought upon, forgetting what Himet had warned, were out to lay me flat on the floor, to slay me, to kill me stone cold dead.

“Do not kill him!” screeched Himet the Mak. He might as well have shouted into a Cape Horner. With a shout of rage Himet turned and violently gesticulated, a savage, unmistakable gesture of command. At once his guards, his bonny masichieri, leaped down into the press, their weapons glittering. Then began as weird a military dance as you could desire. For I had no wish to be forced to kill these simple duped fisherfolk, yet they sought to slay me. I did not mind if a few of the masichieri were cut down, but the guards were under orders not to slay me. And the fisherfolk would not willingly kill the guards of the priest but, as I quickly saw, the guards would slay the townspeople if necessary. This was a ludicrous three-sided encounter with each of the three sides willing to slay one of the other sides but not the third, and therefore, it must follow, to be slain and not reply. I saw a guard run his thraxter through a burly fisherman who poised to hurl his trident at me. So the preservation of my life for the future evil intentions of Makfaril had already cost the life of one fisherman of Veliadrin, and was like to cost more if I did not act now to stop this blasphemy.

I let out a yell. I bellowed over the hubbub as I had been wont to hail the foretop in a gale.

“Yes! I am Dray Prescot! I am your lawful High Kov. I wish you no harm. I have listened to your grievances and they will be redressed in justice. On this you have my word as a Prince of Vallia!”

I might as well have saved my breath.

The business about listening to them provoked only the shrieked response: “He has been spying on us!

Slay the rast! Kill Dray Prescot!”

“No! No!” bawled Himet. “He must be taken before our leader. Makfaril demanded him for his own justice!”

Enough of the congregation in the hall had not been fully persuaded by Himet’s exhortations and promises to obey blindly the dictates of the priest of the new creed. They had been roused to a sense of injustice. They had been cruelly treated by their new High Kov, and here he was, alone, ready to be chopped down in the violent way of Kregen and thus prove the justice of their own ends. There followed a bout of confused struggle, wherein I found myself backed up against the far wall, beating away the crude implements of the fisherfolk and ever and anon striking with more deadly intent at a black-feathered guard. To defend oneself and not to slay the attacker — yes, there is a skill in that. It was not too easy in the press. A bulky lad staggered back with red blood pouring from his cheek where my main gauche, in whipping back to parry a trident, had gashed his flesh. Weapons flashed before my eyes. The guards were having difficulty in breaking through the fishermen to get at me, and when they did they died. The masichieri tumbled the fishermen away and advanced with scowls to an unwelcome task. They handled their parrying-sticks with a fine free skill. As for their thraxters, the thraxter is a weapon of Havilfar, the straight cut and thrust sword, and these masichieri preferred it to the rapier in work of this nature.

The wall at my back was not altogether a good idea. No one was going to sneak up behind me and chop my knees off, but I could not skip and jump with the freedom I prefer in this kind of bash and batter fighting. I began to angle around and a trident passed perilously close under my left arm as I leaned away to flick a neat rapier slash that unhitched the belt from a portly fisherman’s waist. His breeches started to slide down. He let out a furious yell and tried to degut me with a knife so admirably adapted for the purpose, and the breeches tangled while he staggered, purple-faced, enraged, striking ineffectually at me. I did not laugh. Truth to tell, this whole fracas smacked of the ludicrous and I was in no mood for petty levity.

I leaped away and one masichier tried to be clever and earn his hire. He brought his thraxter around, flat, a blow aimed to stun. I slid the blow and bashed him with the hilt of the rapier. Instantly I had to duck a savage sweep from a parrying-stick from a fellow masichier. I almost ducked into a wickedly unstabbing trident.

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I bellowed at them all. “Must I break all your heads to make you see sense?”

They snarled and roared at this, pressing in as I foined them off.

“You are not wanted in Can-thirda!” “Go home, Dray Prescot!” “Go back to your palace and your bitch wife!”

The fellow who said this, leathern-faced, scarred of jaw, abruptly somersaulted backward. My fist in the rapier guard tingled with the force of the blow.

“Kill him! Kill him!”

It was all a flurry of blade and tine and parrying-stick, and I smashed them back, beginning to feel my frustrated fury working on me. Soon the guards would tire of their fruitless attempts to take me alive. Then the fighting would begin.

“Slay the tapo!” screeched a lean and emaciated fisherman, hurling his trident. My rapier angled up and flicked the thing away. But the weapon was a trident, three-tined, and the sharp tines caught in my blade. Like the jaws of a shark the trident wrapped around the slender blade. I did not let go of the hilt, but my rapier was angled up and deflected, uselessly pointing to the cobwebby ceiling and the smoking lamps. A fat and sweating man wearing more ornate clothes than the others, with a narrow gold chain about his neck and embroidered sleeves, even though silver fish scales caught in folds of the cloth glittered as marks of his trade, cursed with joy and thrust his trident hard for my guts. I wriggled away at the last moment, striking a guard with the main gauche, wrenching it free in a gout of blood. I swung back to meet the next attack of the fat and wealthy trident-man. His sweating face showed a grimace of fierce joy, of that awful crazed desire to kill. I do not think he would have had me. But he would have come close.

He was not given the chance.

One of the two brothers who had mocked Himet the Mak stepped in and wrapped a burly forearm around the fellow’s neck. With a chopped off squeal the crazed man was hauled bodily backward. There was no time to gasp out thanks, for with a swish my rapier came down into line and extended into a bar of gleaming red-stained steel and the guard who had decided it was time finally to deal with me shrieked and spun away, clasping his neck where the long blade had kissed him above the edge of his leather armor.

“Take him, you fools!” Himet the Mak danced about frenziedly, well back of his guards, yelling orders and curses. His fanatical obsession with the instructions given him by Makfaril did not induce him to step forward and take an active part in the fray. Steel scraped and men yelled and bodies fell. The pressure at least gave me some chance, for the fishermen maintained their yelling and their desperate attempts to get at me, and the masichieri continued to belt them away and so preserve my miserable hide. The rapier smeared with blood and the main gauche a similar reeking blade darting and flashing before me, I hacked and cut and kept them off. The rapier glistened before the eyes of a guard, distracting him, cut back viciously. He fell. As he fell so the dagger in my left fist sliced at a precise angle under the chin of his fellow. He staggered away as the rapier went in, slickly, withdrew, and a third guard spun away, shrieking, coughing out his life blood.

Now the masichieri were finished with this tomfoolery. Now these hired guards were out for blood. A masichier stepped up, bulky in creaking leather armor, bold and confident, his thraxter held in a practiced grip, the parrying-stick slanting and catching runnels of jagged orange light. He thrust. He began his thrust as I whirled away from thunking a fisherman over the head and kicking another off. The masichier halted his thrust in mid-action.

His shaggy hair beneath the iron helmet fluttered as his head lolled. Blood and spittle began to dribble foolishly from the corner of his mouth. He slid slowly sideways, upsetting a fisherman and his trident. As the guard toppled slowly to the fish-stinking floor I saw the long Lohvian arrow sprouting from his back, driven clean through his boiled leather armor, driven with exquisite force so that it did its business and no more, for it had not burst on through the man’s chest.

I did not look up.

Another arrow punched through the neck of the nearest guard.

Oh, yes, you who have read accounts of my life on Kregen, that marvelous and horrible, beautiful and savage world four hundred light-years from the world of my birth, will understand. For Seg Segutorio, the master Bowman of Loh, had shot over me more than once in the past, had preserved my skin with superb displays of archery.

The guards’ yelling changed in tone. The viciousness I had known could not be battened down for much longer broke and brought them surging forward with all the old hateful, expected, demoniac desire to slay.

A fisherman sailed up into the air from the back of the ruck. He went spinning up like a Catherine wheel and he landed plump on the heads of a group of others trying to get in at me and they all collapsed like ninepins. I saw Turko grasp another unfortunate wight and hurl him like a bag of beans. Turko, the famed Khamster, a high Kham, a man who had reached very high levels of achievement within the syples of the Khamorros, disdained edged and pointed weapons. Now he bore through the throng like a snowplow through six-foot high drifts.

Inch’s long Saxon-pattern ax removed the head of a masichier. No one who wishes to retain their anatomy entire is advised to stand within the sweep of Inch’s great danheim ax. His leather cap was slightly askew, and a long braid of brilliant yellow hair swung wildly as he fought. That meant trouble.

Balass the Hawk, matched as a swordsman without his usual shield against a thraxter and parrying-stick man, made nothing of the disadvantage. The guard’s parrying stick was a klattar model, of balass and steel, and suddenly it slanted where he had no intention of allowing it to go. His thraxter swirled as Balass’s own superb Valkan sword slid in. Himet was short another guard. As for young Oby, his wicked long-knife did nasty things to a guard who thought that he, at least, stood a chance.

The fisherfolk fell back, gasping, dazed.

Himet the Mak . . . I whirled, for the moment freed from immediate opposition. The priest was nowhere to be seen. He had fled. Well, that was sensible. It was all of a piece with the man, with the artificial religion he sought to introduce to Veliadrin, and with the warped morals of the situation.

“Himet the Mak!” I bellowed up to Seg, who stood braced in the doorway above the vanished gallery. His bow was spanned, ready, and a stray gleam of light from the lamps struck a glittering spark from the steel arrow-point, most comforting to me, but most disconcerting to the poor wights huddled below, I daresay.

Seg spoke clearly, barely lifting his voice. “He vanished beyond the curtains behind the idol after the first shots.”

There was no need for me to ask why Seg had not feathered him. Seg had loosed to clear away the guards pressing in on me. He had taken what he regarded as the prime objective. There is no use arguing with Seg Segutorio on these matters. As well argue with me, for I would have done the same had Seg been down there in that riot instead of me.

As Inch said, “Let us go and chase him, for he has made me break a taboo, and I shall have to perform unsightly things hereafter,” Oby ran off with a whoop.

Again, there is no profit in laughing at Inch’s taboos, which embroil him in ludicrous situations, at least, not too much laughter, for we could always make Inch stand on his head with the mere scent of squish pie. I hauled a guard toward me by his harness. I used my left hand, for my right held the main gauche as well as the rapier in a somewhat awkward grip. Now had I been a Djang, or a Pachak, I could have done that little trick without trouble.

I glared on the guard who rolled his eyes and flinched away.

“Tell me of Himet the Mak, my friend,” I said, quite pleasantly, staring on the fellow. He blanched at this and his wild eyes went wilder still. He considered himself a dead man, that was certain, yet he had only been wounded, a long cut down his cheek. He made no attempt to lick at the blood. “Where has the arch-devil gone? Tell me that and you may live, dom.”

Whether he believed me or not I do not know. He opened his mouth, slobbering, and I saw the stump of tongue there and felt the disgust in me. Had Himet done this? Did he employ dumb guards? But some had shouted as they fought.

“Can you write?” demanded Roybin.

A rolling, lolling shake of the head.

That was to be expected. Illiterates, even if through no fault of their own, tended to end up in the lower levels of whatever trade they entered. I had no desire to play dwazn questions with him. Vallia, Havilfar, the islands, there were far too many bolt holes to go through even if this dumb devil knew. And, if Hamal was the homeland of the masichieri, I might ask all night and not get the right answer. Balass, cleaning his sword, said, “They use the thraxter and parrying-stick. That is not of Vallia.”

“They wear rapiers and daggers,” said Roybin, fingering his chin. “Yet they left them in their scabbards and chose thraxters. It adds up. Hamal it must be.”

Seg had jumped down to join us and we talked, taking no notice of the fisherfolk. I wanted these people of Veliadrin to see the picture and use their common sense. “Not Hamal, Roybin, surely?” Seg’s bow gleamed in the orange light. “Shields there. More likely the Dawn Lands of Havilfar, or over to the west. .

.

“Wherever they come from,” I said, “and this Himet the Mak, their target is Veliadrin. Right. Tell me, how far have they infiltrated Vallia to venture out here?”

The question was the obvious one, of course. Why bother over an island off the east coast of Vallia, an island moreover split into different provinces, when the main island remained?

Roybin looked worried. “You mean, my Prince, they have already completed their foul work in Vallia?”

Now that he phrased it like that I realized I didn’t mean it . . . quite. Perhaps I was growing paranoid. The word is of this later time and my thoughts then were more earthy. I had thought that Himet the Mak was after me personally. All this business about capturing me and taking me to the leader and torturing me was pedestrian stuff. I had thought, perhaps, the Star Lords might be taking up again their interest in me or, perhaps, the Savanti. But this kind of rowdy fracas was not their style, never had been so far. If they wanted me they could reach down and by means of a gigantic and ghostly representation of a Scorpion they could snatch me up from wherever I happened to be on Kregen and dump me down anywhere else they desired. Aye, and they could send me packing back to Earth four hundred light-years off through space.

The Star Lords and the Savanti between them had caused me great grief in my life, as you know, but I was no longer the same blind, ignorant, gasping puppet I had once been. Yet I was still painfully aware that at the whim of forces I did not understand and the dictates of superhuman men and women I might be flung willy-nilly into fights and adventures, into danger and unwelcome distractions, at any moment of any day.

I would not again struggle against the Star Lords in the same stupid way I had done the time they had summoned me and, because Delia and my friends were in peril, I had refused them. Then they had flung me back to Earth for twenty-one miserable years. No. This was not the handiwork of the Star Lords, who sought to work out a destiny for Kregen I could not comprehend. The fisherfolk were growing restless. We were, as I have indicated, a right tearaway bunch of fearsome fighting men. But once we had seen off the black-feathered masichieri, why, there we stood, all talking and arguing away together as though the fisher people of Autonne did not exist. What were those good folk to make of that?

They had heard of Dray Prescot, their new High Kov, and they did not like him or his high-handed ways in renaming their island or of freeing their slaves. Fingering their tridents, shuffling their feet, they began to edge toward us.

Their faces hardened with determination ousting shock. They formed a half circle about us with their women safely in the rear. Their feet shuffled with more purpose as they advanced. The way the orange lights caught on the sharp tines of their tridents and flashed sparks about the lofty room reminded us that perhaps we had not finished here yet.

Seg was saying, “More news would have come out of Vallia about them if the Chyyanists had grown really strong. In Falinur there have been rumors only, with nothing positive. This is the furthest I’ve gone yet in discovering—”

“They’re a secretive bunch,” observed Inch, who had come back in after chasing after Oby. Now the tall man was carefully winding his braid of yellow hair and stuffing it up under the leather cap. He looked more than a trifle put out, adding, “Secretive. And they preach revolution.”

Casually, unhurriedly, Seg Segutorio turned around. His superb muscles put out their awful power and the bow string drew back. The arrow cast cleanly. The sharp steel point struck fiercely into the floorboards before that advancing semicircle of men determined to slay us out of ignorance and folly and hatred. The blazing blue feathers with which the arrow was fletched quivered as the shaft thrummed in the floor.

Seg turned back and answered Inch. “We’d have known something, you long streak.”

It was magnificently done.

Instantly the forward shuffle of those desperate men stopped as though each man had been stricken with paralysis.

I said, “There is no profit, really, in running after Himet. Oby is on a fruitless errand. He will seek us out, all in due course. He will come to us, of that I feel sure.”

As though on cue Oby walked back in looking disgruntled. He shook a few raindrops from him and the wind gusted in through the rotting doorway, half sagging from broken hinges.

“He took a flier and went — whoosh — and I can tell you, my Prince, the voller was a good one. Made in Hamal for a damned Hamalese.”

If anybody would know about airboats, Oby would.

As Oby spoke I was fretting away about my response to Roybin and my insistence that Himet would seek me out. Were these the responses of a megalomaniac? Did I see conspiracy everywhere, plots to drag me down to destruction in every unusual occurrence?

I just was not sure.

“I believe this Himet the Mak will seek us out again. This is not just a fresh religious creed, which is open and exultant about its origins. If Hamal is involved, and that certainly seems to be so, we all know that Hamal has not been crushed but only halted in her aggressions. So it makes sense to strike at us in this new way. When this Himet returns we will deal with him. And, Roybin, I did not exactly mean what you suggested about Vallia. . .

Seg and Inch and Turko!

Oh, yes, I caught their delighted mocking smiles. Each one of my true comrades favored me, each in his own way, with that secret, mocking, almost indulgent smile each one reserves for me. I sometimes think they humor me as they would a little child. Clearly they must have been thinking something along the lines that this so-puissant Dray Prescot, who was Prince of this and Kov of that and Strom of somewhere else, needed a little of the old headlong action to bring his addled senses back. Since when, it seemed to me their sly and good-humored smiles were saying, since when has the high and mighty and great Dray Prescot not been sure of anything? Ah! If they only knew! If they only knew of the torments of indecision I suffered then — and still do suffer, by Zair! — then they would revise their opinions drastically.

I supposed they thought of me as a rough and ready soldier of fortune who had won through to great wealth and power — as indeed, with their help I had — and so therefore a man fit to be gently mocked. So I thought them. This amiable irony, this cheerful mockery of my comrades is returned by me, and it is never hurtful or cruel between us. Rather, it adds a zest to our comradeship, a spice, for each one of us knows that if he does a foolish thing — as who does not, by Vox! — the others will remind him of it, from time to time, gently.

So, being a cunning old leem-hunter after my own fashion, I pointed at the two brothers in the pressing crowd halted by Seg’s single arrow standing in the floor as though held back by a solid wall of granite.

“You two. Step forth.”

They stepped out, apprehensively, and other men near them hurriedly drew away to give a clear path as though afraid of contamination or the plague. What the two trident-men thought, or what the people thought lay in store, Opaz alone knew.

“You two. Brothers. Twins. Names?”

They swallowed, alike as twins, alike as twins ought to be and so often are not.

“Please, your honor, I am Tarbil the Brown.”

“And, if it pleases your worship, I am Tarbil the Gray.”

“It pleases me, Tarbils both,” I said. “I saw. And I heard. Why did you attend this meeting tonight?”

Both spoke at once, then Tarbil the Gray yielded to Tarbil the Brown. “Our lives are poor, your honor. We thought there might be a little. . . fun.”

“I would like to know why you did not shout for Chyyan with the rest.”

“These people, your honor, would bring back slavery.”

“Ah!” I said, understanding. I looked at the mob. “And that sweaty one whom you dragged back. He was your master?”

“Aye, your honor. We were slaves from childhood until the High Kov said all slaves must go free.”

He looked at me under his eyebrows, his head ducked, this stalwart, muscled, hardy fisherman. He would go out in his little dory all night with a light, spearing fish. He was whipcord tough. Now he swallowed and shuffled his feet and wet his lips. “And, your honor, you are really him? You really are, your honor, you really are the new High Kov, Dray Prescot?”

“Yes.”

I did not add, as I might unthinkingly have done once upon a time: “For my sins.”

That was true enough, Zair knew. But they would have misunderstood, believing the words rather than the oblique thought behind them, an altogether too common failing, and a false word could have spread. I was hated enough in Veliadrin as it was.

Both brothers began the full incline until I stopped them, somewhat roughly, with a word, and then bade them stand up like men.

“There is no slavery in any place where the people look to me,” I told them, trying not to give the impression of smugness or of righteousness. That never wears with simple folk. “You who once were slave are now free. It is your right. And I would thank you for your help.”

I did not, there and then, in view of some of the murderous looks bestowed on the Tarbil brothers, give them a gold piece each, or a ring or any other trifle. That would come later, when I confided the details to Panshi, my Great Chamberlain. He had remained at his post in the palace fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking the bay and my capital city of Valkanium in Valka. And it would be no trifle. The Tarbil brothers would be useful.

Yes, I own it. Already I was thinking how they would fit into my schemes to free all the slaves of Vallia. The Tarbils bobbed again and then drew back. They were given plenty of room. I looked questioningly at Roybin.

“They will be safe, my Prince. I believe you have put such a fright into these folk they will be quiet for a space, to the glory of Opaz and the Invisible Twins.”

Oby and Balass were busy picking up the scattered weapons dropped by the black-feathered masichieri. They knew my ways. I did not give the Tarbils a rapier or a thraxter. Giving a man a weapon he does not know how to use is no act of friendship, and is a good way of getting him killed. But Roybin, who would stay in his home town of Autonne for a space, would see to the Tarbils before they were brought to Valka for the greater work.

I lifted my voice so all could hear.

“And we have more work to do.” I spoke to the fisherfolk of Autonne. “Go to your homes. Ponder on what you have seen. Remember that the spirit of the Invisible Twins made manifest in the heavens above us is a beneficent spirit; but remember also that Opaz will strike down the wrongdoer. Put away from your thoughts this evil creed of Chyyanism. It is a fallacy to dream that each one of us may have exactly what he wants in this life, all at the same time, without effort. You must work, I must work. You will say I am your High Kov, and so I am and may be. The burdens laid on me are different from those laid on you, but they chafe no less harshly. But if any one of you wishes to take that task upon himself he knows the ways, both in law as elsewhere, and I warn you, he will grieve mightily.”

Yes, all right. I know that was double-edged. I damned well meant it to be double-edged. On Kregen land and wealth and titles are for the taking, but only by due process of law after the battle, despite a forest of dead bodies. I was legally the High Kov of Veliadrin. I could give the title to whosoever I wished, obtaining the emperor’s agreement. Anyone could fight me for it and, if he won, have the emperor ratify his success if he could. That battle might be harder than the preceding one. A man might marry into lands and wealth and, perhaps, into a title. The system is not the same as those obtaining on this Earth. On Kregen it is far more what a man is and what he does that makes a man, and not what a man is born into.

As for women — the whole gorgeous world of Kregen is their oyster. The famblys shuffled out, still dazed, and some, as I was very well aware, still resentful. We desperadoes were left in the deserted hall, with the shattered gallery and the stink of ancient fish and the four-winged black idol of the Chyyan.

Turko bent and picked up a parrying-stick. He turned it over in his hands, weighing it, studying it. “A klattar,” he said.

I recalled how in Mungul Sidrath Turko had bent and picked up a shield. Roybin coughed and began to say, “I will arrange for everything to be cleared up here,” when Oby let out a strangled screech that snapped us all about to glare at him.

“Dray! My Prince, look!”

We all stared where his rigid finger pointed.

The black idol against the rich cloths glowered down somberly upon us, the four wings black and seeming to span the heavens. And the idol’s eyes glowed! Twin pits of emerald fire, they shone down with an eerie, baleful flame of malefic evil.

Three

Burning eyes of a pagan idol

Glowing with baleful fires, the eyes of the idol poured out a malevolent radiance. Twin pits of flame beside the arrogantly beaked nose, the eyes smoked greenly with a sense of contained horror most unnerving.

Impossible to say which one of us moved first.

As one we rushed toward the idol in its alcove.

What we shouted, what we said, I do not know. I think each one of us wanted to get a grip on the bird-idol and rip away the masked face to discover just what trickery was at work. The emerald fire blossomed into a fierce blaze of green fire. Then it vanished. As we reached the statue only cold lusterless glass eyeballs gazed dispassionately down on us.

“Sink me!” I burst out. “Here’s a task for Khe-Hi and old Evold!”

We prowled around the idol, glaring at it, hitting it experimentally with our sword hilts. It sounded hard almost everywhere save for the center of the back, where it gonged with a hollow note. Those tearaways of mine would have pried the back open there and then, but I halted them.

“Let the wizards deal with this. There is bound to be trickery here, protection against opening.”

They grumbled, but they saw the sense of what I said. We all knew a little of the powers of the Wizards of Loh, although no man not a wizard could comprehend them fully, I judged, and it seemed likely it might need a wizard to open the idol without disaster. Inch, hefting his ax, was maundering on about an idol of deepest Murn-Chem that had opened to let loose a flood of poisonous insects. Oby, eager to display learning, could cap that with the story of Rosala and the Eye of Imladrion. Seg and Inch stood back and Inch lowered his ax. I fancied a blow in the right place would open the idol of the chyyan easily enough, but we might not welcome what emerged.

Only later, thinking back, do I realize that the horrific appearance of those eyes suddenly glowing with sentient light, gleaming emerald pits of fire glowering down upon us, had not scared us witless as, doubtless, had been intended.

We’d simply yelled and charged straight for the idol.

I fancied that was behavior the manipulator of the idol was unaccustomed to. Truth to tell, this whole affair of the Great Chyyan was a most serious business, but levity kept intruding. I’d fallen head over heels into a secret meeting. A horrific light had flashed from the glass eyeballs of an idol, and we’d simply gone for the thing baldheaded instead of shrieking and running off. When one gets into low company, one’s habits tend to lower also. Like Oby having to be told to take his damned great long-knife out of the idol’s eyesockets.

“If there are demons and poisonous insects or what not in there, Young Oby, you’ll let the things out if you pry its eyeballs out, will you not?”

He jumped down agilely, saying with some resentment, “I’ve always wanted to prod out the fabulous gems from the eyesockets of a pagan idol.”

So, sharpish, I said, “Then you can help the wizards when they dismember this thing, you imp of Sicce.”

Whereat he scowled and fingered his knife and then, when Balass whispered to him, perked up. Balass had hinted that the fabulous gems might accrue to a light-fingered young scamp, when the wizards were otherwise occupied. . .

As you will readily perceive, after a little exercise and for all their forebodings, my comrades did not take the new creed of the Great Chyyan with overmuch seriousness. I hardly think it necessary to remark that in that they made a grave mistake.

There would be much to do, I considered, to stamp out Chyyanism. I would stamp it out, for it posed a threat to Vallia, my adopted country. Had the creed been genuine I would not have interfered. Religions originate and take root and flourish when there is a need for them. Changes of religion occur when the times cry out for new vessels for old wine. But this Chyyanism was artificial, a hodgepodge, a deliberate throwing together of ideas culled from the deepest recesses of the wish-fulfillment sections of the human mind. Chyyanism had been created as a weapon, for a far deeper purpose than merely to stir up credulous men and women resentful that their slaves had been taken from them. In all this I tried to remember that my own origins were those of the rebel. I detested authority imposed by brute force without concern for evil results. Despite my friends in whom I joy, I am a loner. I have resisted authority all my life, often enough to my sorrow. Now that I had certain responsibilities I could see the other side, but, even so, I knew that Chyyanism merely used resentment against authority as a weapon, that the glib promises of luxury and paradise now were hollow, false and could only lead to ruination for all.

“Very good, Roybin, then you will see to this. Before I leave for Valka you must have a settlement. We owe you much.”

“My thanks, my Prince.”

So we left Roybin to summon his own people to clear up the mess and we took ourselves off to our secluded inn. The innkeeper was Roybin’s cousin, and he asked no questions of these strangers recommended to him. But we all knew the word that the High Kov of Veliadrin was in Autonne would be all over the town by morning. It was high time to pack our traps and leave. We had discovered certain things about Chyyanism and our agents would continue to burrow and pry and we would discover more. We had the great black idol. And I still felt convinced that this Makfaril, the leader of the Chyyanists, was aware of my interest and would take steps to counter the threat. All this would make life interesting, as though life on Kregen can ever be anything other than fascinating!

We had flown here in small, inconspicuous fliers. Even so, airboats are rare enough in the backcountry of any nation of this continental grouping of Paz, with the natural exceptions of those countries where vollers are manufactured. So folk would still look up from their work on their nets or in the long tended rows of their fields when the shadow of an airboat skipped over them. Seg would be leaving for his province of Falinur and Inch would be leaving for his province of the Black Mountains, both in Vallia. They would be flying west and north; I would be flying east. We made our partings brief, with a compact to meet up again shortly. The twin suns were just lifting above the eastern horizon as our fliers took off, the last shouted Remberees ringing in the limpid dawn air. Well, Seg and Inch are the finest company a man can wish for, and at every parting I sorrowed, but all the same, acknowledging that I am a loner, I could look ahead with some fascination to the future.

The journey to Valka proved uneventful, although we spotted a flier which contrarily kept pace with us for a time and then vanished behind clouds. Oby, who was piloting, looked at me enquiringly. But I shook my head.

“The fellow may be something to do with the Chyyanists, and he may not. Our task is to get home and have the wizards inspect the idol.”

Oby’s face expressed a certain disappointment.

“Don’t fret! By Vox! Makfaril and Himet and their crowd will cause us enough strife to keep you well occupied, you bloodthirsty leem.”

Only a little mollified, Oby drove us on through the morning as the mingled lights of Antares fell about us, streaming in jade and crimson across the voller and the fleeting countryside below. By Zair! But it was good to be alive and on Kregen!

Turko kept twitching his new parrying stick about and Balass sat out of the slipstream methodically polishing up his sword blade with an oily rag.

A few seasons ago I would have gone blindly off charging after that elusive flier and thereby dropping myself headlong into fresh adventure or, most likely, failing to find him in the scattered clouds, so my present conduct gave some small indication of maturing. I wanted to chase the fellow. But the mystery of the idol fascinated me more.

So we bore on steadily through the levels, homeward-bound for Valkanium, the capital city of Valka, and the high fortress therein of Esser Rarioch.

Since my return from Earth and the adventures in the Eye of the World I had a deal to do in catching up with events on Kregen. Things had changed. The sparkling vista of the Bay and the city opened up as we flew down in a beeline for the high landing platform of the castle. I did not sigh. The sound of a sigh in that bright scene would have been out of place. Just as I felt out of place. My son Drak, Prince of Vallia, appeared to be running Valka very nicely, thank you.

He was called the young strom, and I had heard men refer to me, unaffectedly, as the old strom. This was an eventuality I had not entertained, for despite what might happen on Kregen I had always thought of Valka as my home.

Oh, yes, I had other homes on Kregen, there was Strombor and Djanduin and the wide plains of Segesthes where my clansmen roamed. There was even Paline Valley in hostile Hamal. But Valka. . . Well, as Oby brought the airboat around in a sweeping line for the landing platform and touched down with that perfect sweetness of touch of the master flyer, I choked back that ridiculous sigh and hopped over the voller’s coaming with a riotous bellow for the guards and attendants. For a space it was all yelling and Lahals and rejoicings, and then Delia appeared and everyone fell respectfully back, and we touched hands. I looked into her eyes and, as always, saw there the amused wonder at these carryings on, the deep love between us and also that damned mocking smile which told me, clearly enough, that she had a word or two to say to me when we were alone. Balass, I noticed as we turned to go into the palace, was engaged in a very close conversation with a superb black girl, a maiden of Xuntal, and so I rejoiced for him.

As for Oby. . .

“Yes, Dray, he has to run very fast to keep ahead of all the girls who have matters to discuss with him!”

Delia smiled as she spoke, so I knew the matter was not serious.

For Oby had ducked down beneath the voller, crept around the other side, and the last I saw of him that day was a fleeting glimpse of his breechclout as he vanished down a back stairs. Hot on his heels ran half a dozen rosy-limbed girls, all yelling after him, waving their arms like a bunch of love-crazed nymphs. Well, they were, in a way. I found my craggy lips twisting into a smile.

“It seems Oby has made himself at home in Esser Rarioch.”

“Very much. Which,” added my Delia tartly, “is more than can be said for Esser Rarioch’s strom.”

But she smiled as she spoke. One day I would have to tell her about Earth and all the rest of that story, which she, dear girl, would find almost impossible to believe. How could any intelligent person believe in a world that had only one sun, only one moon, possessed only Homo sapiens as intelligent people to live on this fantastic world, did not have flying saddle-birds or any other of the everyday marvels of Kregen?

It would take a lot of belief to believe a story like that.

The only consolation I had was simply that there is no woman more perfect than Delia on two worlds. She, at least, would listen in her grave, lightly ironic way, half laughing and yet deadly serious, and would give me the benefit of her love. She, at least, would not condemn me out of hand as a madman, makib, fit only for the ice-chains of Hegenor.

So, together, we went into the palace where everyone seemed pleased to see me back, and where we were soon served up a capital meal in a small private room. Melow the Supple, the ferocious Manhound who had dedicated her life to the care of Delia, as her two children cared for my first twins, prowled in, splitting her frightful muzzle in a grin of welcome.

We drank tea and ate miscils and other light pastries, and munched on fruits of all kinds, with the ever-present dish of palines to hand.

“And this new creed is then a serious menace?”

“Most serious, I judge. To tell simple folk that they can have all they want, here and now, for the asking, is ruinous folly. By Zair! Had I all I wanted, here and now—” And then I paused. I had so much. Was I then so greedy?

Delia had told me the news of our children. Each was about his or her business in the greater world of Kregen. I had seen my three sons in action, and in them I could feel content mingled with apprehension. Drak, as the eldest, handled my affairs for me. Zeg was now a famous Krozair in the inner sea, the King of Zandikar. Jaidur had remained in the inner sea to finalize his acceptance into the Krozairs of Zy. I value my membership of that order among the highest of the good things that have happened to me on Kregen. I had ideas to put the mystic disciplines and teachings of the Krozairs to a wider use. So the lads were accounted for. Our daughter Velia was dead, but we had another new daughter, Velia, and she I looked upon with a dread joy, for the stories about lightning are not true. As for the other two girls, Delia simply told me that Lela, Drak’s twin, was busy with the Sisters of the Rose. And Dayra, Jaidur’s twin, should — and then Delia corrected herself, and said was — also concerned with the Sisters of the Rose.

“But they are making arrangements to visit Valkanium to see their father. They have to call at Vondium first.”

I nodded, thinking. So with Delia and the children I had all I wanted. Why should I then cry out that I did not have all I wanted? Perhaps the thought of the perils and problems besetting Kregen prompted the remark. All I knew then was that I felt a gnawing sense of anticlimax, and a restless desire to be up and doing once again.

“As soon as the idol is here the Sans can probe and pry.” I munched palines, tasting the flavor, forcing myself to feel a content foreign to me. “To promise anyone instant success in the here and now rings false.”

“But there is more to it than that?”

“Yes, my heart.” Trust Delia to see through my mumblings. “The idea of this creed could be a new attack from Hamal.” I outlined some of my suspicions. “I shall have to go back there at some point. The devils still sell us inferior fliers, so I believe.”

“Oh, they do not fail so much as they used to do. But the silver boxes go black and fail much earlier. And they charge us greatly inflated costs. And—”

“If nothing else turns up, then I’ll go back to Hamal and this time rip the secrets from the very throats of the Nine Faceless Ones themselves.”

Delia did not say in an arch way: “You mean that too!” For she knew I meant it. But I caught her expression, and at once felt deflated, an idiot, a veritable onker. To talk about going away again so soon after so long an absence was thoughtless cruelty. I reached over and touched her arm.

“Let us open up the idol and see what we find. Then we can talk with more sense.”

She took the words as an apology. And then she said, “This time, I think I shall come with you.”

So I laughed and we drank more tea, and Panshi, the Great Chamberlain, came in to tell us that the black pagan idol bird had arrived. So up we went through the colonnades and passageways and along the long hall of the images to Evold Scavander’s laboratory. The black idol squatted against the wall opposite the windows, and dominated the room with an aura of evil. The thing looked just as impressive and malignant there as it had in the makeshift temple of the fisherman’s net-room. Old Evold sniffed and hitched up his robes and fussed around his princess, bellowing for Ornol to find chairs and refreshments. Delia sat calmly, smoothing her trailing skirts, accepting the services with that delicacy that marks her as a true princess born.

Turko walked in with his loose limber prowl and settled down quietly and watchfully by the door. I noticed the parrying-stick thrust through his belt, the jags turned out, and I fancied he’d have Balass foining away at him with a rudis in short order.

Evold Scavander, given the honorary title San — which means sage or master or dominie — was the wisest of the wise men of Valka. His wizardry extended into different spheres from those of the famed Wizards of Loh, who are, I must confess, real sorcerers. If they are not genuine, then they are the most consummate confidence tricksters of two worlds. Much remained to be learned of the Wizards of Loh. I was engaged in a long-drawn-out struggle with the master-wizard, Phu-si-Yantong, a man who was more evil than could be understood by mortal men, and yet who was not a cardboard villain without features that made him both darker and, contrariwise, human. Yantong had not bothered me in the inner sea. I surmised he knew I was back in Valka and therefore I must expect a visitation from him, a ghostly apparition that would spy on me.

The Wizard of Loh, Khe-Hi-Bjanching, whom I had brought out of danger to a position of importance in Esser Rarioch, had been erecting defenses against Yantong. I knew these defenses must be put to the test. I did not look forward to that time.

Evold, spluttering and blowing, prowled around the idol, peering up at it, tapping, feeling, prodding. Once he would have started in to prize the back off without a second thought. But for all their arguments and quarrels, Evold and Bjanching had come to a kind of understanding. I felt only a little surprise when Evold burst out: “Now where by Vox is Khe-Hi? He’s never here when he’s wanted, and always underfoot when he’s not.” So that salved some of Evold’s amour propre. By my orders there were few people in the laboratory. The tables were loaded with the paraphernalia of Evold’s studies. Here we had broken some of the secrets of the silver boxes that powered airboats. Here we had sought to uncover the secrets of past ages, and to make experiments for the future well-being of Valka. But my concern now was for what might happen when the idol was opened. When Khe-Hi-Bjanching came in I saw that look that flashed like two flung stuxes between the two wizards. Like two flying spears their looks clashed and crossed. But much had changed in Valka since I had been away, and I knew I would find much had changed as I took up once again the threads of life on Kregen, so I watched with a small sly inward approval as the two wizards prepared to cooperate. Young Khe-Hi and Old Evold, wasn’t that becoming the story of my homecoming?

“You have touched nothing, San?”

“Nothing, San.”

Their exquisite politeness one to the other tickled me. I remembered them yelling at each other and hurling scathing remarks about aptitudes and abilities. Now the two wizards walked together all around the black chyyan and cocked their heads back to stare up at the malignant eyes and drew long thoughtful expressions. In short, they behaved as professional men consulted on a case of intricacy behave. Finally, Khe-Hi said, “The idol is certainly sealed by sorcery. I know that.”

We all understood. A wizard of Loh who deals all his life in sorcery knows when sorcery is being used, or, at least, knows most of the time.

“You say the eyeballs flamed emerald, my prince?”

“Aye.”

“Yet they are plain glass with a yellowish tinge.” Khe-Hi gestured and Ornol, Evold’s assistant, brought across a ladder which was propped against the statue. Khe-Hi, hitching up his pure white robe cinctured by the crimson cord, mounted and peered closely at the eyes. I wondered what would happen if they blazed their incredible malignant green into his face.

Many men of the continent of Loh have red hair. Not all. Loh is a land of mystery and terror and remained locked away from exploration after the collapse of its famous empire. Khe-Hi’s red hair shone darkly against the black of the statue. He peered this way and that. Then he descended and stood looking thoughtfully upon the back of the idol where a single light tap gonged a hollow note.

“There are preparations I must make,” he said at last, coming to a decision. “San, I would value your help.” Evold nodded without speaking.

“Will this take time?” I spoke calmly.

“Three burs only, my Prince.”

A bur is forty Earthly minutes. There would be time for more tea and a slap-up meal in two hours. I nodded. “Then I leave the idol in your care.” Then, because of reasons that remained too obscure to be articulated, I added: “And Oby has settled a lien on the eyeballs with his long-knife.”

There was a laugh at this. Delia rose. We went out together and Turko followed. Like my return home, this first investigation of the idol had been an anticlimax.

Four

Eggs of evil

There was so much for me still to learn about what had chanced on Kregen during my absence that every spare moment was occupied in Delia’s dredging her memory to retail the choicest bits of information. We had recourse to the records of Valka, of course, kept by the stylors in Esser Rarioch. How all this fresh torrent of facts and conjectures would influence my life had to be weighed and judged. I think it best if I simply fill in what it is needful to know about any given situation as it arises in this narrative.

For instance, I was fascinated by the scraps of knowledge gleaned from distant Hyrklana, where Queen Fahia, poor soul, was having trouble finding fresh fodder for the Jikhorkdun. Likewise, I was mightily impressed by the progress made in raising and equipping three full regiments of Pachaks mounted on flutduins from the Pachaks of Zamra. But these and many and many another affair of state had nothing, as I saw it, to do with my present concern with the Chyyanists. I mention these two to give examples. Also, I handled some pressing affairs of business that my son Drak would have taken care of had he not been in Zamra dealing with the construction of a new seawall, jetty and pharos for the new town of Veliasmot put in hand to provide another secure harbor for the great galleons on which rested our trade. So, as I ate vosk pie and momolams, I listened to Jiktar Larghos Glendile recently returned from Vondium, the capital of the Empire of Vallia, telling me of the latest decrees of the Presidio. The Presidio ran the country although the emperor as well as holding titular power controlled enough real power to maintain the balances so necessary for government. It was all a matter of balancing one power group against another, of taking advice and of making laws that would maintain.

“But the racters, my Prince! They have shrunk in numbers but have increased their powers through carefully placed men in the right positions.”

The racters, the most powerful party in Vallia, who wore the black and white, held their wealth and positions through high commerce, through land, through slaving, through mining. There were other parties, notably the panvals, who stood against the racters. But all, as I well knew, had their own candidates to take the emperor’s place.

“They maneuver the emperor so that he will stand alone. Then they can reduce him.”

“Do you know who it is whispered will take his place?”

“No, my Prince. That information is held close.”

This Jiktar Larghos Glendile presented an imposing picture as he reported. He was a Pachak. Now Pachaks, being blessed by nature or by gene manipulation with two left arms, are among the most renowned of Kregen’s fighting men. Also, they have a hand on their long whiplike tail. Loyal were Pachaks, and first-class mercenaries. I had built up centers of Pachak habitation in both Valka and Zamra that were based on a full life. That is, the towns occupied by the Pachaks were proper towns, with all the facilities of towns. They were not mere military barracks for mercenaries. Larghos Glendile was a Jiktar, a rank I suppose most nearly equated with that of colonel. His uniform of the brave old scarlet glowed. He wore two bobs, the medals given by my Elders of Valka. His tough face, with the harsh yet human features of a man who has had wide experience, betrayed his desire to do well not just as a hired fighting man, which he no longer was, but as a full-fledged citizen of Zamra. Zamra, the larger island to the north of Valka, of which I am kov, was to prove of surprising worth in the seasons to come.

The necessity of thus building up a powerful fighting force was one I loathed. Yet the necessity remained. There are many foes in Kregen who will cheerfully sail up over the ocean rim, or drop down out of the skies, and seek to take whatever portable property is lying around not chained down. My duty as a prince was to protect my people. And, equally, when I called on them for help, their duty was to help me protect them. But of course it is not as simple as that.

Jiktar Glendile of Zamra went on to tell me more of what was transpiring in Vondium, and I listened and ate my fruit and quaffed tea and finished with a handful of palines. The clepsydra indicated half a bur to go.

Delia came in looking radiant. I rose. Glendile straightened to ramrod attention. Delia looked at me accusingly.

“And have you kept the Jiktar standing all the time?”

I gaped.

Neither Glendile nor I had noticed. We were warriors.

So the moment passed and Jiktar Glendile finished up his report sitting down, drinking, his booted feet stuck out, his rapier cocked up and his tail curled decorously around the chair legs. That tailhand could whip a long blade up between his legs and have a foeman’s tripes out in a twinkling. When the Pachak had gone I said to Delia, in more of a groan than I intended, “There is so much to learn! By Zair! Things have moved on Kregen since I have been away!”[1]

She laughed and tinkled a fingernail against the clepsydra.

I stood up.

“Then let us go and see how the Sans have got on with that damned black idol.”

So as I stood up and spoke I saw Delia, half turned in the doorway, looking back at me, and the breath caught in my throat.

Often and often I have tried to find expression to convey some sense of the beauty of my Delia. How impossible a task! As she stood there, half laughing at me, the sheer ivory-white gown relieved only by a small brooch of brilliant scarlet scarrons, her brown hair with those shimmering tints of chestnut striking through and making a wonder and a halo around her head — yes, I felt my flinty old heart thump and the blood pulse through my veins. By Zair! Was there ever a girl like Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?

Sweetly she looked at me, mocking, knowing very well what thoughts were prancing through my mind. I scowled. What chance of that! The scowl died and I realized I was smiling, grinning away like a loon.

“There will be plenty of time, my love,” said Delia, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, “for you to catch up.”

If I do not give my reply to that I fancy each of you, in his or her own way, will furbish up the retort suitable. The effect of all this was that we were smiling foolishly away as we walked through the hall of the images toward the laboratory. These images, of ivory and bronze and precious stones, commemorate the Stroms of Valka. I still had not made up my mind if I relished their presence forever lowering down on me, the latest Strom, or if I resented them as reminding me of past glories and past shames. We had just passed the bust of Strom Natival, I recall, around whom legends clustered, when we heard the explosion. For a single shocked instant I thought gunpowder had been touched by a spark. But gunpowder was not used here. All my old training in a wooden ship of the line, with felt slippers and flash curtains and water buckets and hoses forever at the ready, reared up in me. With a curse I leaped forward and the billowing mass of black smoke choked around the far corner and boiled swiftly forward. The black smoke engulfed me. I swung about, reaching for Delia, waiting for the blast to take us. It was all a screaming nightmare with the concussion still ringing in my ears. The smoke roiled and eddied. I blundered into Strom Pagan’s bust — I knew it was his by the size of the vinous nose — and it went over with a smash. Delia clung to me, saying nothing. Our eyes and noses ran with the stink. This was not ordinary smoke. There was about it a charnel tang, a foul-tasting vileness on our tongues, rasping our throats.

No further blast came.

The smoke thinned. I gasped for air. We waved our hands about, wafting the smoke away. Delia’s ivory dress was spattered with black dots, like mold on cheese. My eyelids felt redly granular, itching. I spat.

“By the foul intestines of Makki-Grodno!” I bellowed. “The infernal idol!”

I pushed Delia away.

“Go back, Delia!”

I started to run for the laboratory.

My Delia ran at my side.

“Go back! Who knows what has happened?”

“I intend to find out. Why don’t you go back?”

I saved my breath.

As I ran on I was cursing away at myself for being such a fool as to bring the damned idol into the palace. What a blind idiot! Had I never heard of Troy, and the White Horse? What sorcerous mischief had I unloosed in Esser Rarioch?

A figure blundered into me and I grasped old Evold by the arms and shook him.

“Tell me, Evold!”

“My Prince—” He babbled on, shaking. “The eyes lit up again, just as you said!” He coughed and choked and spluttered and I let him go as he swiped at his streaming eyes. “San Khe-Hi, he was almost prepared as he had promised, and then it was as though the lightning struck. The idol shrieked! There was smoke and flame and a blue-green fire and—”

He had no need to say more.

From the wrecked door of the laboratory Khe-Hi-Bjanching stumbled, beating wildly at the darting black forms surrounding him. They dived from the air, swirling their ebony wings, and their shrill chittering filled the hall with the rustling whispers of the tomb.

Chyyans! Scores of tiny chyyans, with a wing spread of no more than two feet, swooped and darted and struck and clawed. I saw their baleful red eyes, the raking dart of their scarlet talons. Their beaks gaped wide. Khe-Hi stumbled and fell. I leaped forward, ripping the rapier and main gauche free. I stood over him, straddle-legged, and at once my blades swirled and swished to cut down the fluttering horrors. They appeared almost like bats, vampire bats, lunging in to sink their fangs into my neck and suck me dry.

But each black chyyan had four wings, four wings clad in rusty black feathers. They swooped and darted and struck, and I felt the sting on forehead and arms as they clustered thickly about me and sank their talons into my flesh.

“Wizard!” I bellowed, slashing about me wildly. “Cast a spell or something! Drive them off!”

“I have spelled them already,” came the gasping wheeze from the wizard. He tried to crawl out from between my knees and a tiny chyyan slashed at him, so that he cried out and scuttled back.

“Well, for the sweet sake of Mother Diocaster! Spell them again!”

I heard a furious yell from along the hall and between slashing and ducking turned. Turko was there, laying about him with his parrying-stick. And my Delia, slim and glorious in her slashed ivory gown, my Delia sliced and cut with the long slender jeweled dagger in whose use she is so superbly skilled.

“San!” I bellowed. “You must run for it!”

I shoved the dagger into my mouth, ricking my lips back in the old way so my teeth could grip the blade. I reached down with my left hand and hauled Khe-Hi out by the scruff of the neck. My right hand seemed of its own volition to be flickering the rapier about, chunking great swatches of black feathers away, slicing and cutting, never thrusting, for in a game like this that was the sure way to die. I gave Khe-Hi a good rousing kick up the backside and sent him scuttling and staggering down the long hall.

Then I reached my Delia and with three blades we wove that old deadly net of steel. She flashed me a single smile. We went to work, then, in real earnest.

Jiktar Larghos Glendile appeared, raging, roaring into the fight with a rapier and two daggers, and with a blade gripped in his tailhand. He was worth two men in that kind of fight. Others of my people showed up, and soon we could actually count the numbers of chyyans remaining. I bellowed.

“Save some! Do not slay them all!”

Then ensued a riotous chasing rout as the fluttering birds sought to escape from the palace, and my people, whooping as though on a rampage, chased them through the corridors and up and down the stairs, seeking to cast nets and sacks and whatever came to hand over them. In the end we caught three of them, penned in sacks, and the stout material bulged and strained. Turko hit a bulge with the parrying-stick and the bird in the sack quieted down.

Once again what had begun as a drama, as tragedy, ended in farce.

“Khe-Hi!” I said, and at my tone he stiffened up, looking woebegone in his ruined finery, but nonetheless still retaining his dignity as a Wizard of Loh. “Well?”

We went back to the laboratory and Khe-Hi pointed out what was left of the idol. Bits and pieces of black stone were scattered about the chamber. The windows were blown out. The tables were overturned. The place was a shambles.

“Khe-Hi!” squeaked San Evold. “You’ve ruined my chamber!”

“Not me, old man. Rather this Makfaril of whom the prince speaks.”

“I’ll do more than speak about him,” I said, very nastily. “You said you had spelled them.”

“So I did, my Prince.” Here Khe-Hi pulled himself together and became again a famous Wizard of Loh.

“Had I not done so we would have been beset by full-size chyyans.”

Turko whistled. Jiktar Larghos Glendile nicked his tail-hand about. I said, “So you did well, wizard. Did you seek to open the idol before I arrived?”

“No. No, my Prince! The eyes lit up again as you described when my preparations were almost complete. I understand what happened. A wizard was controlling the idol and saw what I intended. He released the hidden sealing spells and there was a sound as of thunder and a blue-green light as of leprous lightning.”

That was as good a way as any to describe an explosion to those who did not know of gunpowder. The spell I had set reduced whatever was in the idol in stature and power. So the eggs—”

“Eggs?”

“The idol was packed with chyyan eggs that would hatch into full-sized chyyans instantly, bypassing normal growth. It is a trick some wizards employ. My counter-art reduced the size of the chyyans.”

“Lucky for us,” said Glendile. He had four weapons to clean, and was hard at work even as we stood talking.

“And the light was blue-green?”

“Yes.”

That did not square with a gunpowder explosion.

“Damned sorcery,” I said. “I don’t hold with it. Another wizard?”

“A most potent practitioner of the arts.”

I looked at Khe-Hi-Bjanching. We all knew of whom we thought.

It was left to Delia to say, in a calm, even voice, “Do you think, San, it was this infamous Phu-si-Yantong?”

Khe-Hi scowled. “I do not know. By Hlo-Hli, my Princess, I do not know!”

This was a poser. I was prepared to credit Yantong with any evil you care to imagine. Once a fellow has run into evil of that nature he tends to see his opponent as more black than a night of Notor Zan, until, with wisdom, comes the understanding that character shades into gray and purple and bilious green. All the same, Phu-si-Yantong!

“I have told you of the Wizard of Loh, Que-si-Rening, kept by the Empress Thyllis in Hamal. Do you think it could have been him? After all,” I added, trying to appear casual and making a dismal mess of it,

“after all, everything about the Chyyanists points to another ploy from Hamal.”

“I swear by the Seven Arcades, my Prince! I cannot tell. The sorcery was sealed by great power. It is possible among high adepts to conceal ego-traces, to hide the personality patterns. I can do this to an extent. There are few wizards, I venture to think, who would discover what I did if I did not wish them to, but of course there could be a few who would have the power.”

This was mighty humble pie for Khe-Hi, I saw.

I nodded, not satisfied, but unable to do anything about that dissatisfaction for the moment. A clatter of dislodged stones and debris from one of Evold’s smashed tables turned our attention to Balass, who straightened up lifting a dusty round object from the jumble. He blew on it and dust flew.

“Now what is this?” he said, turning, walking across with the round plate balanced on his upturned palms.

I was aware of Khe-Hi at my side, of the way a tremor shook through him. I shot a swift searching glance at him. The wizard’s face looked strained, a deep furrow dinting down between his eyebrows. He sucked in his breath.

“Whatever it is, Balass,” I sang out cheerily, “our potent wizard knows!”

“Aye, my Prince! By Hlo-Hli. I know!”

“Well, then, tell us.”

He took the plate from Balass, by which I judged the thing exerted no immediately dangerous evil influence. He turned it over. We all craned to look. The plate was fashioned from bronze, as thick as two fingers, as wide around as an Och’s shield. Inset around the edge were cabalistic signs; these Khe-Hi ignored and I judged them decoration. Nine sigils surrounded a blank center. That center either had once had or had space left for five further signs. Each of the nine signs was different and I recognized none.

“Well?”

“This was secreted in the compartment in the back of the idol.”

“Well,” exclaimed Balass. “Anyone knows that!”

“Go on, Khe-Hi,” I said. Balass shut his jaws with a snap.

“The wizard controlling the idol is able to observe at a distance without the necessity of forcing a representation of himself to the needful point and looking through his own immaterial eyes. This saves psychic energy.”

Delia was looking carefully at the disk and its nine emblazoned signs, and Turko lifted it from Khe-Hi’s hands so the princess might view it more easily.

I said, “You mean when the eyes light up with that baleful green fire this damned wizard is spying out of them?”

“Yes, my Prince. I also think this is a sign for the priest, in this case Himet the Mak, to open the back in safety.”

“But the confounded thing blew up when the eyes lit up!”

“Yes. Because the wizard observed what was happening and knew that in the next few murs I would have reduced his sorceries and rendered the chyyan eggs harmless.”

“Hmm,” I said. “And these signs? Nine of them?”

Nine is perhaps the most magical number on Kregen. There was a fanciful touch about this round plate and the nine symbols that reminded me, vaguely, of the Krozairs of Zy and their sign, the hubless spoked wheel within the circle.

“Each sign, I think, is a location. Probably where a temple of the Great Chyyan is situated. When the sign lights up, it must be a signal to meet there.”

Every symbol lay flat and dull and lifeless.

“The first thing,” I said with enough acerbity in my voice to make them understand the seriousness of all this and my inflexible determination to rise above the farcical element that had been dogging us lately, “the very first thing is to read the symbols. We must find out where these damned temples are.”

Evold peered at the plate. “They mean nothing to me at the moment. But mayhap I have books. San Drozhimo the Lame may have somewhat to say on these signs. And there is the Hyr-Derengil-Notash. Also I have hopes of the hyr-lif of Monumentor ti Unismot.”

There were one or two small smiles in the group. We all knew old Evold and the lore he culled from his musty books. All the same, he did come up with answers to problems. No one could deny that. Khe-Hi sniffed. “This is wizard’s work, San. The Hyr-Derengil-Notash was compiled by a great wizard two thousand five hundred seasons ago. I know it well. If whoever is controlling the idol used it, you may find what we seek. I doubt it.”

San Evold did not look disgruntled. He was used to this kind of deprecation from Khe-Hi. The Hyr-Derengil-Notash — the title means, very roughly, the high palace of pleasure and wisdom — is used by philosophers and in its pages they can find whatever they seek. It is read as the heart commands. If, and I did not savor the thought, if Phu-si-Yantong was the wizard controlling the idol, I did not think he would have recourse to that hyr-lif. Only very important books on Kregen are called lifs, and only the most highly important of all receive the appellation of hyr-lif.

The signs meant nothing to me. One looked like a mess of worms. Another like a ship of no recognizable type, with a fork of lightning joined to the mainmast. Another seemed merely a formal angular maze. Delia looked up at me, and at the look in her eyes I jumped.

“I think,” said Delia slowly, her face more flushed than usual, “I think I know where is the place one of these signs refers to.”

Five

The Stromni of Valka explains

The plate, with its outer ring of nine symbols and its inner ring of five empty places surrounding the blank center, was very heavy, being fashioned of bronze. The idea, undoubtedly, was to make it difficult to steal. Khe-Hi-Bjanching told us that this kind of plate with symbols, used by the wizards as a means of conveying information, was called a signomant, employing signomancy to give instructions that could not be misunderstood by those who had the key.

I refused to allow Delia to speak until we had all left the laboratory, Turko and Balass taking turns to carry the signomant, and until we had all settled down in an airy upper chamber after we had washed the muck of the explosion from ourselves. A light white wine was served, for the suns were almost gone, and the birds flitted about the grim stone face of the castle. Wearing a delicious cool laypom-yellow gown, Delia sat in her comfortable chair, gazing upon us in some delight, her cheeks still rosy and her eyes bright with the secret revelations she was about to tell us.

No one was fool enough to mumble some sycophantic nonsense about not being at all surprised that the Princess Majestrix should understand the signs. We all sensed that only some local knowledge had given the clue to Delia. This proved true as she spoke.

“I am called Delia of Delphond,” she began. “My estate of Delphond is very dear to me and I have studied all that I can find about it.”

Now I am aware that I have said very little about Vallia. One reason is that its puissant empire tended to stifle coherent thought in me. Also, much of my adventuring on Kregen has taken place in countries outside Vallia. But, all the same, as I go on I must tell you of important facts. In the long ago the main island of Vallia and the surrounding islands were all separate, petty kingdoms and kovnates — and some not so petty — and it was only after long-drawn-out and bloody wars that finally the empire drew together with its capital at Vondium.

Delphond is situated on the southern coast of Vallia, not too far to the west of Vondium, and it had been a kingdom in its own right, small and tight and sweet. When the empire-builders advanced from Vondium, the kingdom of Delphond retained an individual identity for much longer than anyone might have expected. There was much trouble with the far southwest, and Rahartdrin resisted stubbornly. Also the northeast maintained a hostility to Vondium that persisted for centuries. So it was that when at last Delphond was incorporated into the empire the final capitulation was swift, with little damage done to the ancient monuments of the past. The old history twined with passion and intrigue — just as these times of which I tell you now hummed with plot and counterplot — and Delphond, when at last she entered the empire, was given over to the empress and her descendants, alternating the generations with other estates of Vallia.

Now Delia pointed to one of the nine symbols ringing the bronze plate.

“The Temple of Delia,” she said, and looked up at me like a small girl embarrassed at picking the largest fruit in the bowl.

I laughed.

Now I understood the meaning of the flush in her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes. She may be a princess, a Princess Majestrix, but my Delia is a woman with a mature and yet girlish heart that derides pomp and circumstance, that makes mock of titles, that understands that if Opaz has seen fit to burden her then she must brace up and shoulder those burdens.

Old Evold nodded with quick understanding.

“You are right, my Princess!” That, of course, was a silly thing for anyone to say to some common princess, for whenever can a common princess be accused of being wrong? But Delia is no ordinary princess and we were all friends here, eager to seek out the devil’s work threatening our people.

“See,” said Delia, her slender fingers busy tracing the lines of the sign. “Here are the pillars, and this is unmistakable.” Two dots surrounded by twin circles and with a V-shape joining them had been linked with the architrave. “This has always been taken to be the sign of Delia in her manifestation as Mother Goddess. It is scarcely known outside Delphond. When Delphond lost her kings and became a province of Vallia the religion of the time sought to stamp out all-knowledge and memory of the Mother Goddess.”

“That was before we were blessed with the knowledge of Opaz,” said Evold. He pulled his nose, blinking. “That would have been in the time of Father Tolki the Almighty.”

“Yes.” Delia knew all about this. “The fearsome warriors in their bronzen mail trampled down all Vallia, bringing with them their own belief in Father Tolki. They were hard days. The old records show that Delphond escaped lightly, for we are cut off there, a backwater, out of the stream of events.”

“But a mighty pleasant backwater!” I said, incensed. “I am particularly fond of Delphond, and I have read of how the mailed hosts of Father Tolki ravaged the land. But they did institute the first Empire of Vallia.”

“Which broke up, as empires do. There were many religions and many new peoples and kingdoms and empires before the Light of Opaz guided. . .” And then Delia hesitated, and stopped. How could she go on to say that her family had taken the ragbag of Vallia and shaken it into an empire, that her family had taken the power thrust upon them by Opaz — or by greed and cupidity and sheer downright cunning and skill and ruthlessness?

“It is a story not unknown in Havilfar,” said Turko. “The ancient mysteries of the Mother Goddess, and then the newer, harsher, military religions of men. We Khamorros have fought against oppression for all our history.”

“We rejoice in the Invisible Twins,” said Delia seriously. “For in them made manifest through Opaz we see the fusion of male and female, of mother goddess and warrior god, and all the other aspects of godhood.” She looked around and added not so much tartly as with finality, “As it should be.”

How this brought home to me the ancientness of Kregen! Civilizations had risen and fallen, cities built and vanished, kingdoms waxed and waned. And, far back into the past, the Sunset Peoples had lorded it over a young Kregen with the freshness of dawn. Now all that was left of them were the Savanti, locked away somewhere in their Swinging City of Aphrasöe. One day I would return to Aphrasöe, and with a purpose. But that day could not be now, for there were too many other pressing problems in Vallia to occupy me.

Old, is Kregen, and yet the world is populated now by new vigorous peoples thrusting out to conquer fresh territory, waves of migrations passing across the continents and casting up new kingdoms and republics, new confederations, hurling down the old into ruination. The famed Empire of Walfarg, generally called the Empire of Loh, had fallen into a pile of dusty refuse, and now Loh slumbered, her Bowmen mercenaries in the other continents, her wizards scattered and serving other monarchs. One day the dark continent of Loh would be opened up again and hosts would march. Perhaps a host of Vallia would penetrate that land of secret walled gardens and veiled women, hear the silver trumpets screaming, bring the Light of Opaz to the deepest darknesses.

But first we had our own stables to clean.

“But which,” I asked Delia, “which temple is it?”

“Oh,” she said with quick confidence. “It must be the chief temple. Much of it still stands, garlanded with vines and ivy, overgrown, moldy. But the sacrificial pools are still there, with water still in them. The last time I was there — you were gone off, Dray — the golden roofs still stood. Although, of course, the gold was gone long since and only the tiles remained.”

“Just the place for a secret rendezvous for a congregation of the Great Chyyan.”

“Oh, Dray! I hope not! My poor people!”

“Yes.” I was grim about it. “There is no guessing when meetings have been held, or even if any have been held so far. But one thing is sure. This devil Makfaril intends to use Delphond as a base for his Chyyanists. For all we know they are already strongly entrenched there.”

“I am not so sure.” Delia looked troubled. “My Delphondi are a lazy lot, as you know, slow to anger. They prefer the easy life, sitting in the sun, yarning, eating, singing. It would take a very clever and cunning man to rouse them against their wills.”

“Makfaril is clever and cunning. Make no mistake about that”

“Then we must go there at once.”

“Agreed. But we go carefully.”

Delia’s troubled look persisted. She shook her head.

“What a business this is! I love Delphond. I am the princess — it is an imperial province — and I am sure the people love me. Yet I must go creeping back like a spy!”

“Exactly!”

Then I paused, trying to think. “On the other hand, if you went as the princess, in all pomp, acting as you usually act — and I know the people love you — that would show them your care for their welfare persists. I feel convinced only a few may have gone over to this damned creed. You will have to work from the outside, bedazzle them, show them that Opaz is still the religion of their fathers and mothers. Yes,” I said, brisking up, seeing a cheerful glow on my mental horizons. “Yes, that’s it. You are the Princess of Delphond. The people will welcome you as they always do. But, as for me. . .”

“Yes?”

“I am not as well known there. Oh, a few of the nobles would know me. But I shall go in my own way, and creep about and ask questions, and prod and pry. I’m looking forward to it. Between us, my love, we’ll have these damned Chyyanists in the open where we can get a shot at them!”

She stuck her bottom lip out at me.

“I can put on a disguise!”

I shook my head. “As soon seek to disguise a shonage in a bowl of squishes.”

“Inch!” we both said then, and laughed, for all the thing might be serious. But life was for living and Inch was, well, Inch of Ng’groga was Inch, Kov of the Black Mountains.

“We’ll have messages sent to Inch and to Seg, apprising them of what is afoot. I know Seg was more perturbed than he said. I think Falinur smolders. Her people are still resentful over the lost coup of that dratted kov of theirs. Seg has a handful with Falinur.”

Khe-Hi indicated the other eight signs. “Where are these places? The answers must be sought, my Prince, but I will hazard a guess. We may not know what the five blank spaces are for, but is it not possible that the single central blank space is reserved for the sign for Vondium?”

Old Evold cackled. “A puffed-up Wizard of Loh you may be, San Khe-Hi. But in this you speak sense.”

It did make sense. If Makfaril intended to destroy Vallia he would have to strike at the capital. The central space meant Vondium, I was convinced. Also, I fancied that the existence of a sign indicated that a center of Chyyanism had been set up there. A blank indicated the Black Feathers had not yet opened up shop at whatever place they next intended. So we have a breathing space.

“We leave first thing in the morning,” I said. “Panshi can organize everything tonight.”

There would be a lot to do before we could leave. Didi would have to be left in good care. A message would have to go to Drak warning him. The Elders of Valka, with Tharu still in control and with Tom as his right-hand man, would carry on as they always did when their strom vanished. But this time their Stromni, the Princess Majestrix, would be absent also. . . More and more I could see that Drak was taking over here, and much though I resented it, the circumstances of my life made it inevitable and cruelly precluded me from taking any steps to halt the process of takeover. Drak was my eldest son, and he was fully entitled to look out for his inheritance.

With preparations made for an early start on the morrow we turned in. Just before she went to sleep, Delia turned over, smiling at me, her hair a torrent of bronze-gold upon the pillows. “When we get to Delphond they’ll expect me to behave like a princess. But, my grizzly graint of a husband, be very sure I shall make a journey to the Temple of Delia to find out just what deviltry you’ve been up to.”

Six

At the Temple of Delia in Delphond

I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, hitched up the ragged brown cloak over my left shoulder and took a firmer grip on the tatty cloth bundle that held my worldly possessions. Leaning over the bulwark of the flier, Delia handed me the bamboo stick.

“You look a mighty savage ruffian, my love. Try not to scowl so, and cast your eyes down. To act a poor wayfarer is not going to be easy for you.”

“Maybe not, my heart. But I’ve done it before and, by Vox, I’ll do it again.”

Parting with Delia is always so cruel an experience that I wondered, every time I parted from her voluntarily, why I was such a fool. To hell with Vallia! What did it matter if an evil creed overturned everything? What mattered beside life and love that meant everything with my Delia? But then I would return always to the harsh understanding that I was driven, a man doomed — perhaps by the Star Lords, perhaps by the Savanti, perhaps by Zena Iztar. For all of them I could feel anger, and yet, for Zena Iztar, who had materially helped me in ways beyond belief, I had to feel an affection that transcended my feelings for either Savanti or Star Lords. I might resist them; in fact I had worked cautiously on ways of circumventing their commands, and had succeeded and failed, yet would continue to struggle against them as I could.

But Kregen itself, the world of people, the beauty and grandeur and horror, this drove me. This made me both less and more of a man. So I could stand in the dust of a Delphondian lane with the green of orchards about and say goodbye to Delia and put a brave enough face on it.

“And do not be late for our rendezvous,” she said. So we called up the last Remberees and the flier lifted off. I waved as the voller rose and swung and swooped away into the bright morning air beneath the streaming mingled light of the Suns of Scorpio.

I was alone.

Well, that was what I wanted.

This was a decision I had made.

I tucked the bamboo stick into my belt over the old scarlet breechclout, draped a fold of the tattered brown cloak about it and with a final look around started the trudge to the Temple of Delia, about a dwabur off along the coast.

Very soon I found I could take an interest in all I saw, for the world of Kregen is always marvelous. My hand touched the bamboo stick. It was not real bamboo, of course, but it held the same deep orange glow and was ridged at intervals. Just such sticks are carried by the poor folk when they venture out from their own villages at least, just such a stick to outward appearances. My hair was uncombed and tousled up, and my face bore the marks of grime, although this was fresh dirt newly rubbed on. I was barefoot. Well, I am still more accustomed to going barefoot than to wearing shoes or boots. So I strode on out of the orchards and over the brow of a hill and across springy turf with seabirds wheeling and calling overhead, on along the edge of the cliffs with the wind in my face. Far out to sea a galleon of Vallia bore on, the spume breaking from her bows, her canvas all stiff and curved, a stately and gorgeous sight in the light of the suns.

And, as always, the smell of the sea wafted in to brace me up and bring the memories flooding in. By Zair! But all this wonderful display of nature — a naive but a feeling thought — deserved to be savored. Soon I passed a small group of cottages, set in the lee of a low hill. Gray smoke wafted. I did not stop and skirted around past the fences where the bosks nosed up, squealing. The people here would be like all Delphondi, easygoing and lazy, or so I then considered, but I felt disinclined for any company since I had voluntarily debarred myself from the only company for which I care. The Temple of Delia was set in a wide dell, a kind of lush ravine, through the center of which a narrow and rapid river helter-skeltered to the sea. No one lived hereabouts any longer. The grass and moss-covered outlines of ancient buildings, reduced to mere low mounds, told of the busy activity here when the Goddess Delia was worshiped in the land.

Now I proceeded cautiously. If this Makfaril called his freshly garnered congregations to worship here they must travel a fair way. There were towns within riding distance. Many of the richer sort might own an old airboat or two. The poor people would walk, or ride their draft animals. I kept into the side of a grassy bank and moved steadily forward until the first of the standing columns came into view. The green and emerald suns struck conflicting shadows from the flutings and ornamentation. Beyond the row of pillars a gray slate roof lifted, much worn and, as I judged, repaired within the memory of man. The quietness seemed very peaceful, with the droning of insects to deepen the hush, but I fancied that quietness to be deceptive. Slowly I inched forward, trying to peer into the blue shadows that lay in cool swathes beyond the pillars.

Nothing moved. The suns beat down and the mellow heat lifted from the warm earth and the insects droned and the air and sky breathed a sweet stillness.

I scouted the ancient temple thoroughly. Nothing human lived within those moldering walls. The place had been surprisingly large, the shattered walls and columns and fallen roofs lushly overgrown, giving clear indication of a rich and thriving community centered around the temple. When this place had hummed with life and worship and the continual processions, on Earth the men of Sumer were considering how best to fashion bricks into the form of ziggurats to reproduce the mountains they had deserted. Well, the ziggurats of Kregen are notorious, as you shall hear, and I was doing no good mooching about here. It occurred to me that the nine sigils of the signomant might not mean nine temples for the worship of the Great Chyyan.

The thought did not depress me. That had been a guess. There would be many wrong guesses before this business was over. Far more likely was our first assumption that the signs indicated places of rendezvous. This temple stood near the coast so it could be the place where ships landed, gliding into the pebbly cove where the small river tumbled headlong into the sea, disgorging money, weapons, priests, to further the cause of the Black Feathers in Vallia. That made sense. There had been no sign among the nine that we could make tally with the town of Autonne in Veliadrin. Ignoring the cluster of cottages I had passed, the nearest village lay two dwaburs off. I fancied I would walk there and quaffing good Delphondian ale and eating cheese and bread and pickles, I would ask cunning questions. The villagers would most likely know if torches had been seen in the ruins, if the weird sounds of chanting had been borne on the night air.

No thought that Delia had been wrong in her identification could be entertained. Of course, she could have been deceived by some fancied resemblance of the sign to the ancient symbol for the Mother Goddess aspect of Delia, but I did not think this. What I had been half-consciously looking for I found in the same instant that I heard voices drawing near, voices engaged in the age-old complaint of the soldier performing guard duties when he would rather be off in an ale-house. Even as I bent and from the broken angle of moldering masonry retrieved the scrap of black feather, I heard the voices.

I held the feather in my fingers, a tip of the rusty black plumage of a chyyan, the feather proved everything. If the mission on which I was engaged resembled some eerie detective story, then this was a clue of the first water.

The voices complained on and I shrank back into the shadows and listened. I put the feather down onto the moist green ferns struggling from the cracked masonry and blew it gently so that it drifted down out of sight. I marked the spot in my mind.

“That Shorten is a right bastard.” The voice rolled, rich and fruity, lubricated through the years by many a flagon of medium red. “As a hikdar he’d be a great zorcadrome attendant.”

The second voice, sharper, more intense, carried on the bitter complaints.

“We’ve been nobbled for picket duty three times in a row. By the Black feathers! I’ve a mind to appeal to Himet the Mak himself.”

“Do that, old son, and he’ll just refer you back to Shorten. That’s how they run things.”

I waited silently until the group came into sight. Four lumbering quoffa carts, bundled high and with canvas lashings protecting and concealing all, followed eight masichieri marching two abreast. Right in front and about to enter the ruins, the complaining two marched well ahead. They were unmistakable. Fruity-voice, glowing of nose, broken-veined of cheeks, with bright protuberant eyes, marched with a rolling swagger that churned his swag belly inside his leather armor. They wore plain black tunics, with the well-oiled leather and the parrying-sticks and the thraxters. The second masichier, smaller, weasel-like, kept in step with his bulkier comrade; and both of them grumped and groused to amuse Vikatu, the Old Sweat, Vikatu the Dodger, that archetypal old soldier, that paragon of all the military vices, that legendary figure of myth and romance loved and sworn by with great vehemence by all the swods in the ranks.

“Get down behind that busted wall, Naghan,” squeaked the smaller. “As soon as we’re outta sight of Deldar Righat I’m gonna take a good long swig.”

“Me too, and it won’t be from my water bottle, either.”

The moment the two scouts were out of sight of the main body and the deldar in charge they ducked behind a broken wall, driving up a green lizard who sprang away, a flash of green light under the suns. They hauled out squat bottles. Dopa. Well, dopa is a drink wise men steer clear of. But a man generates a thirst marching in armor and girt with weapons.

“By Vikatu the Thirsty!” said Naghan, wiping his mouth. “That feels better, Little Orlon.”

“Aye!”

I studied them from my concealment.

They were masichieri, among the lowest form of mercenary, yet they spoke like soldiers, like swods in the ranks. Perhaps the Great Chyyan could enroll people into his new religion and change them, turn an honest soldier into a thieving masichier?

I could believe that, which meant the new creed, through the leader Makfaril, could change other men and women, turn honest men into rogues. How far into the society of Vallia had the disease spread?

No arrogance in these thoughts of mine touched me then — or now. There were many religions on Kregen and some of the smaller were remarkable, seeking to do good, perhaps remaining small purely because their high ideals were too difficult for mortal sinful souls. But the simple basics of Chyyanism were plain. They were revealed as Naghan, sweating, stowing away his dopa bottle, spoke:

“When the Great Chyyan gives the word and it’s the Black Day — ah! — then I’m gonna take what is my due from those high and mighty lord muckamucks in Vondium!”

“Too right!” Little Orlon spat vindictively. “I’ve my eye on a shop run by a fat Relt. I’ll wring his scrawny neck and twist his beak until he stares over his shoulder blades! I’ll have his shop, and the Great Chyyan will bless me.”

If there was a more basic approach than that — excluding a purely sexual lure — then much of history would be falsified.

The quoffa carts lumbered on and the creak of their wooden axles and the grinding groan of their wheels drove the lizards away. The deldar — deldar Righat — bellowed his orders and the column broke up and helped guide the carts into the shade of a half-standing wall. There were the two scouts, the eight men of the main body, and the four drivers.

I fancied I’d test them.

So, hitching up the ragged blanket, I stepped out into the suns-shine and walked, a little slowly, a little unsurely, across to the group.

Hunching my shoulders I put on that old imbecilic look and prepared to act out my part as a wandering laborer.

“And what have we here?” said the deldar in that knowing, gloating kind of voice that immediately spells trouble.

“If it please your honor,” I said, getting a splendid wheeze into my voice, “I’m Nath the Gnat and I’m just passing through.”

“And why should you be passing through here?” The deldar drew his sword to show me how important he was. He gestured. “Grab him! Hold him fast and let me look at the rast.”

I allowed them to seize my arms. They held me and the deldar eyed me up and down, slapping his sword flat-handed, the steel smacking against his palm.

“A foul-looking specimen! Speak up! What are you doing here?”

“I’m just going through,” I squeaked, shaking my shoulders. If these men were ordinary soldiers they’d laugh and offer to share a cup of wine and a handful of palines with me. But I thought I recognized these masichieri. They were of the cruel persuasion. If they could not have a little fun with a broken-down old fellow, well, by Krun! what was the world coming to?

“Through? Through where to?”

“To Dinel,” I said, naming the next village where I’d thought to eat bread and cheese and quaff ale and ask questions. “There may be work for me there.”

“There’s work for you here, my lad!” said the deldar, and the soldiers laughed dutifully. I called them soldiers, for they aped military ways, but I had to remember they were mercenaries of the lowest sort, masichieri.

They did not beat me up there and then. But I was kept very busy unloading the carts along with the four drivers, who were slaves. They were all apims. We carried bales and bundles into the main roofed section of the still-standing temple. I managed to get a glimpse of the contents of one box when it was dropped awkwardly from a cart and the lid sprang open. A mass of rusty black feathers within told me what I wanted to know.

We worked for a few burs until everything had been carried in and arranged to the deldar’s satisfaction. More than once I staggered under the weight of a bale that I could have thrown one-handed. These men were convinced I was a simpleton, and they were pleased that they had found a pair of extra hands to help. They offered me no dopa as they drank; to have refused would have looked odd, so I was spared the expected fight breaking out before I was ready.

“All out!” shouted the deldar.

We went out into the declining rays of the suns and I expected that, if there was to be a fight, it would begin fairly soon. I said, “I left my sack in there, your honor,” and turned to go back. The slaves were drinking water and fighting over a crust of bread and a scrap of cheese. The masichieri were lighting a fire and preparing to cook a meal. I went back inside and no one offered to stop me. The knife over my right hip slid into my hand like an eel. I slashed open the bales, pulling the contents out. Yes. Black robes and cloaks fashioned from feathers, with fierce beaked headdresses in which the priests could dress to look like chyyans. The chests contained food and drink of a refined kind, reserved, not for the use of the guards. There was a little money, gold pieces of Pandahem among the golden talens of Vallia, and these I left strictly alone. There were weapons also. I left them. Everything pointed to this collection being the paraphernalia for a gathering of Chyyanists. An iron-bound chest was heavily locked. I did not attempt to open it, guessing it to contain the altar vessels and the more valuable impedimenta to be used in the rites of the Great Chyyan. While a certain amount of spying is great fun and serves to thump the blood along the veins, I felt I had accomplished enough. I have no truck with those imbeciles who consider all spies as rogues — many are, of course — and during my wartime experiences on Earth I had seen some incredible disasters through the disdain in which spies were held. But enough was enough. A quick glance outside showed me the masichieri around their fire, the shadows lying long in their twinned bars from the columns, the quoffas munching quietly, the slaves tied to the tailgates and trying to rest. Now was the time for me to walk briskly over to Dinel, find a mount and try to reach the nearest sizable town, Arkadon, where I might find a garrison in time to make it worthwhile to return here. Arkadon is a pleasant place, one of Delia’s nicest towns, but the garrison troops would be like most Delphondi, as I then thought, a lazy and inefficient lot. But we ought to be back here before dawn and in time to sweep up this little lot and the worshipers and the priests. I wanted to get my hands on Himet the Mak and find out what he was really up to. He most probably would not talk, but I had grown suddenly weary of spying. Enough was enough. We would at least lop off this branch of the Chyyanists. A flicker of movement in the tail of my eye caused me to spring abruptly and silently to one side. I glared into the shadows. An indistinct figure stood impassively staring at me. I could not make out the features, merely a vague blur with deep pits for eyesockets. Clad all in a long robe, dark in the shadows, the figure remained motionless.

I knew.

Phu-si-Yantong!

Yes, this had happened before and I knew it would happen again. As I spied on the Chyyanists so the wizard of Loh spied on me.

Somewhere in the forbidding world of Kregen Phu-si-Yantong had placed himself in lupu, in a trancelike state, and his incorporeal body had visited me, spying on me. I felt the chill in the air, the shiver as of millions of tiny needles pricking into my skin. As I started forward the appearance vanished. There could be no mistake. The blurred figure did not move. It simply winked out of existence. This ghostly apparition filled me with a fury that was purely ridiculous, for there was nothing I could do about it.

Cursing the damned wizard and all his misdeeds, I took up my sack and my bamboo stick and prowled to the far opening, peered out, saw the coast was clear and so stalked out into the dying light of evening as the twin Suns of Scorpio sank toward the horizon.

There was no direct proof that Yantong was mixed up with the Chyyanists, although circumstantial evidence pointed to that eventuality. If he was, then I knew I was in for the fiercest struggle I had faced so far on Kregen.

In my ugly mood I positively relished the confrontation.

Poor fool, I, Dray Prescot, Prince of Onkers!

Seven

Koter Rafik Avandil, lion-man

The suns sank finally as I rode from the little hamlet of Dinel.

In the last of the light drenching the western horizon with shards of blood and washes of viridian I rode, cursing that the farmers of Dinel had no better mount to offer than this stubby four-legged hirvel, kicking him in the ribs to make him go faster. As I cantered on through the rich farmlands under the night sky, I reflected that even if the farmerfolk of Dinel had no fine zorcas or fancy sleeths to offer me, their work demanding the use of krahniks and calsanys and the occasional quoffa and unggar, at least this hirvel, whose name was Whitefoot, made some claim to be a quality saddle animal. He belonged to the chief man of the hamlet and was superior to a preysany. I could have done worse. So I kicked my heels in and away we went.

She of the Veils, Kregen’s fourth moon, rose to shed a fuzzy pink light, golden and glorious. I was in no mood to enjoy the wonder of the night sky of Kregen, even when two of the smaller moons went hurtling past close above. I had to reach the garrison at Arkadon, the marketplace for the surrounding area, rouse them out, select the best-mounted — for I doubted if they’d have any airboats — and then ride like the wind back to the Temple of Delia.

If everything went as ordered we’d catch the worshipers of the Black Feathers. I wondered what they did for a statue here. If Himet the Mak was the priest, as seemed probable, then one of his statues was unavailable.

An elongated black speck darted up against the golden disk of She of the Veils. The swirls of limpid color over the larger moons, evidences of some atmosphere there, confused sight for a moment. Then the golden gleam pulsed clear and I saw the hard black shape of an airboat lifting. It flicked past the limb of the moon and vanished among the stars.

I frowned.

I craned my head back to look along the way I had come. Roads in Vallia are usually atrocious, by reason of the superb canal system, but all country districts must have their roads for the quoffa and krahnik carts. Dust hung glittering in the light of the moon, raised by my hirvel’s hooves. I could see no pursuit. Airboats taking off, at night, close to me, always make me reach a hand down to the hilt of my sword.

I nudged Whitefoot along and we trended down past the edge of a cornfield with the somber mass of a wood on the far side. I’d have to get off and walk to rest Whitefoot in a moment or two, for the hirvel, although looking nothing like a horse, with his round head and cup-shaped ears and twitching snout, has a performance not unlike a good quality waler.

Dark figures showed at the edge of the wood.

Instantly I slowed the hirvel down. He had been pushed hard and now, at the time when I wished to walk him, he was faced with the imminent prospect of hard running.

The figures were mounted on zorcas. There was no mistaking those glorious close-coupled animals with their fire and spirit and energy. So even if Whitefoot had been fresh and in tip-top condition, the zorcas would have overtaken him as a cheetah overtakes a deer.

“By Zair!” I said to myself. “Phu-si-Yantong, a week’s wages against a sucked orange!”

I kept on. There are tricks and stratagems in encounters like this. We met as the dusty roadway curved up at the end of the cornfield to give way to a field of gregarians. I came over the slight ridge past a tumbledown fence and the zorcamen spurred out to stop me, very fierce, the moonlight glistening on their blades.

They wore the black and leather, and there were black feathers in their helmets. They were Rapas. The vulturine-headed diffs leered on me, completely confident. Mercenaries, like those apim mercenaries at the Temple of Delia, these Rapas with their predatory beaked faces were masichieri, without a doubt. I was absolutely convinced that they had been sent against me by Phu-si-Yantong after his apparition had spied on me. Now this puzzled me, before I reasoned that the Rapas would almost certainly have orders to take me alive.

I knew from an overheard conversation that the wizard with his maniacal and ludicrous ambitions wished to rule all Vallia through me acting as his puppet. Well, he might try. The effect of this was that I knew he had given orders that I was not to be assassinated, not to be slain. I spurred forward, yelling, whirling the bamboo stick about my head. A good rousing charge might carry me through, and I might knock one or two over and leave perhaps three to deal with.

They opened out, very prettily. The light grew as the Maiden with the Many Smiles rose over the horizon. Now there was no escape in the shadows.

The first blows struck down, the thraxters held so the flat of the blades smashed in at me. The bamboo stick could parry that kind of blow without being cut through, or not, given the nature of that stick. I stuck the end of the bamboo into a beak, heard the Rapa shrill his agony. I swirled around, chunked the stick into the guts of a second, ducked as the swish of a blade passed close over my bare head. The hirvel nudged up into the forequarters of a zorca and the rider swung back, for a moment off balance. Before he could recover my left hand gripped his arm and pulled and he came out of the saddle in a gyrating heap of black feathers and black cloak. He fell under the hooves. From nowhere a parrying-stick slashed at my shoulder. The jolt numbed my left arm. I kicked Whitefoot and he blundered ahead. Swords and parrying-sticks laced about me and I knew I’d have to unlimber the stick when a magnificent bellow roared out over our heads.

“Hold, you cramphs! Take on a man with a sword, you moldy villains!”

A glimpse I caught, a fragmentary glimpse of a man riding a zorca charging into the midst of the Rapas. He wore metal armor and a metal helmet, all burnished bright as gold in the radiance of the moons. He swung a thick straight sword, a clanxer of Vallia, and he cut the first Rapa down in a smother of blood. The Rapa nearest me let go of Whitefoot’s bridle and swung his mount away. He babbled something about: “You are not supposed—” And the clanxer curved down and went chunk into the leather armor over his shoulder. The man — he was a numim with golden fur under the armor and a bright golden mane

— bellowed, “I’m not supposed to beat off footpads, is that it, you tapo! I’ll have your tripes, every last one!”

I slashed the bamboo, and a Rapa collapsed over his zorca.

The numim, his lion-face snarling and his whiskers bristling, smashed his sword down onto the leather helmet of another Rapa. The vulturine-headed diffs had had enough. They reined away and set spurs to their mounts and galloped off. Two rode as though drunk, just managing to cling to their seats and rolling in their saddles.

The numim glared after them, golden, glorious, swearing that, by Vox! they were a poxy lot of scum.

“I must thank you,” I began, in the proper form.

He flicked blood drops from his sword.

“Think nothing of it, my man! A wayfarer is entitled to the protection of a koter of Vallia.”

He used the word koter in its meaning of gentleman, rather than of mister. He reached out and grasped the reins of a zorca from which a dead Rapa hung tangled in the stirrups.

“Llahal and Lahal,” I said in one of the prescribed forms for making pappattu, the first Llahal with that strong Welsh double-L sound, used in greeting strangers, the second with the softer single L, used for greeting friends. “I am Nath the Gnat.” I said this promptly, almost without thought. My cover as a poor old wandering laborer seemed valuable enough to maintain for the moment.

“Llahal and Lahal. I am Koter Rafik Avandil.” He appended no further information, but I did not mistake his deliberate use of the title. For a poor laborer koter was a gentlemanly rank that should impress. Moving slowly yet with sureness I dismounted from Whitefoot. The hirvel had served as well as he was able, not unlike a nightmare version of a llama, with that tall round neck and shaggy body. I took up the reins of the only other zorca left by the Rapas. Koter Rafik looked on. If he wished to claim both animals as his own he would have a fight on his hands. But he offered no comment. Numims are loud and boisterous, with their golden fur and golden manes and fierce bristly mustaches. Lion-folk are numims, and the lion-maidens are glorious under the rays of the suns. They are also extraordinarily seductive under the moons, or so I am told.

I mounted up with a sack and my bamboo stick. I took up the reins. “I am for Arkadon, Koter Avandil. I am in a hurry. I give you my thanks again for your assistance.” He was not to know that I’d been in no real danger. If the Rapa masichieri had turned nasty and attempted to use the edges of their swords I’d have been forced to unlimber the bamboo stick and settle their business. But he had come charging in like a knight errant and so deserved his due of praise and thanks. “I ride fast, Koter, so will bid you Remberee. May Opaz the All-Glorious have you in his keeping.”

“Eh?” he said, a little put out. Then, with a real numim bellow, “Oh, yes! By Vox! I don’t hold with religion! A man’s right arm and his sword, they are the gods of Vallia.”

He wore a rapier and a dagger, I noticed, but the clanxer, the cutlass-like weapon of Vallia that is so often derided, had proved a good choice against the thraxters of the Rapas. I set spurs to the zorca and took off. He followed, keeping pace, but made no attempt to engage in conversation which was, in any event, not too easy as we galloped along the dusty road. There was an odd, eerie sensation about that wild nighttime ride across Vallia under the moons of Kregen. Only the sounds of the zorcas’ hooves and the wind in our ears and the thumping feel of our onward passage kept us in touch with reality. With some thankfulness I saw the sharp-cut outlines of the fortress of Arkadon rising up against the star glitter, and soon made out the circuit of the walls and a few scattered lights from tower and window within.

We made enough hullabaloo at the arched gate to arouse the sleepy sentry. My Delia’s Delphond is a quiet, lazy place, but any town near the coast must needs stand a watch. This is one of the ways of Kregen that can never be forgotten, if you wish to keep your head on your shoulders or your wrists and ankles free of chains. The slavers and the aragorn prowl many lands and seek to snatch away slaves where they can. Even here, in civilized Vallia, in sweet Delphond, the slavers sought to carry on their foul trade.

The response was quick enough to surprise me.

A yell and a curse from the ramparts, and then: “What’s all the noise! Quiet down, you great villains, you’ll wake the town!”

We managed to convince the sentry and the ob-deldar guard-commander he called that we were not slavers or bandits, those drikingers of the wild places unknown in Delphond. The ob-deldar was surprisingly suspicious. My few experiences of Delphond had led me to believe the easygoing people would have welcomed a pack of rascally kataki slavers with a proffered flask of ale. Rafik Avandil bellowed out in his numim way, quite out of patience.

“Open the gates, you onker! Jump to it! Bratch! Or I’ll have your deldar rank torn off and burned!”

Bratch is not as ugly a word as the terrible Grak! shouted at slaves to make them work until they drop, but it is still a powerful word of command, implying move, jump or you know what will happen! The ob-deldar jumped.

The gates swung open, well-oiled and uncreaking, admitting us to the cobbled street.

“I need a bath and a meal and a bed,” bellowed Rafik. “I’ll stand the same for you, old man, and you will.”

This was munificence.

“I thank you, Koter Avandil. But I think it best for me to finish what I must do. Perhaps—”

“Aye! That will serve admirably.” He waved a violent hand at the guards sulkily trailing their spears back to the guardroom under the archway. “These southerners are a puny lot! By Vox! I’d smarten ’em up!”

These sentiments appeared to put him in a better humor, for he finished in a roar: “We’ll meet on the morrow at an inn that has some pretence to fashion. I’ll see you at Larghos’s Running Sleeth.”

“Until tomorrow, Koter Avandil, at the Running Sleeth.”

He cantered off and he began to sing, one of those rollicking numim songs that always bring back memories of Rees and Chido and wild days rioting as a Bladesman in Ruathytu. I took myself off to rout out men and mounts and weapons for the rest of my night’s work.

I had to reveal my identity to the town governor before I got any sense out of him, sleepy-eyed in his night attire, tousled of hair, roused from bed. He held the title of Rango and was your usual plump, easygoing, smiling, lazy Delphondian. But I impressed on him, this Rango Insur na Arkadon, the importance and the urgency of the night’s business, and soon thereafter I rode out on a fresh zorca at the head of all the zorcamen he could spare, a miserable thirty of them, all sleepy-eyed and cursing away and rolling about in their saddles trying to ride off the fumes of the evening’s wine. She of the Veils vanished beyond the horizon and the Maiden with the Many Smiles would follow and then the suns would rise and a new day would dawn over Kregen. By that time we reached the Temple of Delia. Harshly I ordered the party to dismount and giving them no time to rest their aching backsides gave instructions in a cutting voice to their hikdar and the deldars to spread out and surround the central roofed area, which gleamed in the first chinks of morning light, ominously silent. Birds were chirping merrily away in the trees, and the dew sparkled everywhere, fresh and sweet. The air tasted like the best Jholaix. But, I, Dray Prescot, took no comfort from all that beauty. We crept in, and I held a rapier borrowed from Rango Insur, and we stole between the pillars ready to leap upon the congregation engaged in their blasphemous rites to the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan.

I knew, I supposed, when I heard the birds singing.

We burst in, and the place was empty. We scoured all the tumbled ruins, peering and prying, prodding with our swords. Nothing. Not a single thing gave any evidence of a soul having been there for a thousand years.

“It seems, Prince, we have had a wasted ride.”

The hikdar spoke a little sourly. His head was still ringing, I judged, from the party of the previous evening.

“The birds have flown, hikdar. I’ll grant you that. But as to a wasted ride, I think you’ll eat a better breakfast this morning than you would otherwise have done.”

He made a face, but bellowed out, “Too right, Prince!”

It was so, of course.

There, was nothing here. I had failed in this night’s business. Then I walked quietly around to that crumbled corner of masonry and bent among the dew-bright ferns. The hikdar stared at me curiously, hands on the hilts of his weapons, his booted feet thrust wide. I straightened up. In my hand I held the scrap of rusty black feather.

“Not altogether wasted for me, hikdar, either.”

Then we mounted up and I shook the reins and turned my zorca’s head for Arkadon and the Running Sleeth and this Rafik.

Eight

A disrobing at the Running Sleeth

Sleep would have to take its turn. I’d been up all night haring about Delphond. If I bothered to ask myself why I should care tuppence about this Koter Rafik Avandil, I suppose, then, I would have answered that the fellow had conceived he was saving my life. And a lone koter against a rascally gang of Rapa masichieri demanded a high brand of courage. So I banished the idea of sleep and rode up to the inn run by Larghos, the inn with the revolting name of the Running Sleeth. One positive thought I had. I would question Rafik about the airboat that had taken off just before the Rapas attacked. It seemed perfectly clear to me that Phu-si-Yantong had observed me in his trancelike state of lupu and had then whistled up his gang of bully boys to take me. The airboat had dropped them to lie in wait. Rafik might have seen something useful.

All the same, although I kept my usual careful lookout as I rode, I remained firmly convinced that the wizard’s orders that I was not to be killed remained in force. His ludicrous desire to rule, physically and in person, vast expanses of Kregen and to set up puppets to carry out his orders told most eloquently that he must be mad. Mad in that special sense, of course, a kind of madness which afflicts people in certain ways. He was clever, brilliantly clever, and fiendishly ruthless, as I knew. He was an opponent to reckon with. Apart from anything else, his sorcerous skills gave him an advantage almost impossible to conceive of on this Earth. I must look to my own defenses within the mystic realms, that was for sure, and get Khe-Hi-Bjanching to earn his keep, although that was hardly fair. Khe-Hi had done wonders. His own powers had grown over the years. He would, if he lived, prove a most potent ally to me and adversary to Phu-si-Yantong.

Thus thinking, I dismounted from the zorca and tied him to the hitching rail. Pulling my tattered brown cloak around my shoulders and with a touch of the fingertips to the bamboo stick, I went into the Running Sleeth.

The brightly painted wooden sign over the lintel had been carved in the round and showed a sleeth running, the reptile’s powerful back legs fully extended, its silly front claws curled, its dinosaur-head thrust out, the forked tongue — a strip formed of brass wires — twitching out most realistically. The craze among the young bloods of Hyrklana and Hamal for owning and racing sleeths had not yet extended to Vallia, I had thought. In this I was clearly wrong. The reptilian sleeth can run reasonably fast, not as fast as a zorca, but it is a damned uncomfortable ride, waddling along on those two massive hind legs, with its tail stuck out aft to balance itself.

So the name told me the kind of inn this would be.

The place had been tarted up. Smoky old beams had been painted over. Garish pictures filled every corner. Instead of quaffing ale from jacks or flagons, the customers were drinking parclear or sazz from thin glass goblets. The smells of cooking told me that the over-refined food served here would be all fashionable rubbish, not fit to last half a bur in a man’s stomach. Still, it takes all kinds to make a world. Small round tables on spindly legs, elegant chairs with needlepoint covers, flowers in pots of chunky ceramic — well, flowers are a boon to tired eyes — all gave the impression that this Larghos who owned the place must be a man of taste, well able to satisfy his provincial clientele that they were being entertained in the best fashion of the capital.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with sazz or parclear or elegant chairs and furnishings. It is when these appurtenances to gracious living are pushed blatantly forward as an end in themselves, catering for empty-headed gadflies, that the ordinary man must recoil. I say must. Some do not see things in this light, and as I went in and sat down in a chair with my back to a wall facing the door — an instinctive action, this, done without thought — I was prepared to let any man enjoy whatsoever he wished within reason. So I scanned the people there and then prepared to ignore them. Farmers, stockholders, breeders, they were unlikely to be found here. Here in the Running Sleeth would be found those men’s sons, eating up the family wealth. One or two soldiers of the garrison who fancied themselves men of culture, an artist and poet or two, if they had little talent but large incomes, light ladies and fashionable damsels, the would-be cultured layer of provincial life would come here to ape the ways they imagined to go on in Vondium.

And then, well, I admit it fully and freely, I could not find it in my heart to blame Larghos, the owner and landlord. After all, into this place of conscious refinement and culture stumbles an unshaven common fellow, a wandering laborer, with a raggedy old brown blanket cast over his shoulders and a mop of untamed hair, and puts his odiferous sack on the beautiful embroidered tablecloth and sticks his naked feet out over the charming rugs woven in imitation of Walfarg Weave. Well!

Larghos, slender, oily, charming, with wavy hair, trotted over and his face showed such outraged fury that I almost laughed. I couldn’t see what was setting him going.

“Out, fellow! What do you think you’re at! Schtump!”

“I only wanted—” I began, beginning to understand.

“You’ll have a broomstick over your head! Schtump!”

I made a solemn promise to myself. I would not allow myself to become angry. No. No, this Larghos was right. I had no business bringing my old blanket cloak and my sack into this temple to culture and gracious living.

I sighed. “Is Koter Rafik Avandil here? I am supposed to meet him.”

“He is gone out! Paid his bill and gone. Now you go!” Then he lifted his voice and shouted squeakily,

“Nath! Cochu! Come running and throw this fellow out, and his verminous sack with him!”

I stood up.

“Thank you for your hospitality, dom, I’m going.”

I hefted the sack and put out my hand for the bamboo stick which I’d placed on the table. Now there are some men who cannot let well alone. Larghos stepped back, his face red, breathing heavily, scandalized at my intrusion into his establishment that had such a good name, but prepared to let me go without further ado. Not so the idler at the adjoining table who had watched all with a bright, birdlike gaze.

He was young, full-fleshed, bright of eye and erect of carriage, and yet about him there were plain to see the old familiar hateful signs of corrupt authority.

“Let Nath and Cochu give him a beating before you let him go, Larghos. The rast deserves a lesson, forcing his filthy self in here among decent people.”

Before I could stop myself, I’d said, “I’m not filthy, dom.”

He levered himself up from the chair. He wore foppish clothes, not of decent Vallian buff, but of a mixture of bright colors among which the black and white predominated. His rapier was overlong and the hilt was ornately set with jewels. Whoever he was, he was not a citizen of Arkadon. Larghos began to wring his hands.

“Please, jen, my men will throw him out without fuss—”

“Silence, cramph!” This young lord — for Larghos called him jen, which is the Vallian form of addressing a lord — pushed himself up from the table. I saw by the glasses and bottles on the table that he had been drinking wine this early in the morning. So he had that problem as well. His full-fleshed face flushed with blood. A vein beat in his forehead. His two companions at the table with him rocked back in their elegant chairs, thrusting out their boots, and egged him on with comments that suggested a little workout would do him good and a thrashing would do me good. Larghos was wringing his hands. I could guess in his mind’s eye he saw spindly-legged chairs and tables smashing into costly ruin all over his inn.

There would be no profit in my telling this young bully that I was the Prince Majister of Vallia, for he was a racter and would joy in having the excuse to get his rapier between my ribs, claiming afterward that this filthy tramp could not possibly have been the Prince Majister. How was a loyal jen supposed to know that?

Nath and Cochu appeared, beefy apims in blue-striped aprons, bare-armed. Larghos started to say something and the young lord waved him down. “I shall deal with the cramph myself. I do not care for his manners. You, rast!” he shouted at me. “I shall teach you manners!”

With that, confident in his own limber strength against this bent-over fellow in his brown blanket cloak, he took a couple of dancing steps forward and struck out, with more power than skill. I slid the blow and stepped away from the table calmly. The bamboo stick was in my right hand, held by the end, the thick, ridged end.

The young coxcomb went mad with fury. He shook with rage. “Do you see that!” he yelled. “The calsany! He threatens me with his stick! A filthy tapo daring to lift a stick against me, against the Trylon of Tremi! I’ll prick a little blood from his mangy hide!” With that he ripped out his rapier and flung himself into a fighting crouch.

I sighed again, this time with real regret.

He lunged for me. I used the old bamboo stick to parry him off. I judged him to be reasonably skilled with the rapier, well able to take care of himself in an inn fracas, swishing and swashing; as to his caliber against real opposition, I was still unsure.

When he couldn’t quite get his rapier to cut me up, as he expected to do just as he expected the twin suns to rise each day, he grew even more angry. His face was blotched. His eyes glared. His lips twisted with rage and frustration.

His cronies at the table, laughing and hawking, did not help him with their crude advice and mocking injunctions to spit the old fellow and have done.

Here in my Delia’s Delphond, I knew, a murder would merit the strictest investigation. Delphond was civilized.

He blundered toward me and caught his foot in one of the elegant chairs and sprawled forward. His left hand raked up instinctively. He caught the bamboo stick. His face went mean.

“I’ve got you now, you cramph!”

He tried to wrench the stick aside and so slice me down the face, as a nice preliminary to what he intended to do to my carcass.

He twisted the bamboo, hauling back.

He was an onker, right enough. He twisted the bamboo. I felt the click and the sweet sliding of oiled metal. He staggered back clasping the hollow bamboo. All the people watching gasped, as this foolish young trylon fell back, pulling the bamboo free of the blade.

In my right fist I held the ridged wooden hilt. Two feet of oiled steel blade glimmered in the lights from the windows. That blade had been forged by Naghan the Gnat in the armory of Esser Rarioch. I had designed it with Naghan, and we had laughed as we’d mounted its slender length into the bamboo hilt, covering the murderous brand with the rest of the hollow bamboo. I keep calling this wood bamboo; it is not real bamboo. It is of a deep orange luster, ridged and grows in the marshes. Kregans call it pipewood, for it is often used for tubing work in plumbing and the like. The blade glistened. The Trylon of Tremi stared and his face assumed a caricature of enraged fury, black with passion.

“You murderous rast! Now I’ll spit you clean through your filthy guts!”

And he set to, swirling his blade, thrusting and slashing like one demented. His companions stumbled up from the table, their chairs going over with a smash. They ripped their own weapons free.

One came in from one side, the second from the other.

If I was in for a little exercise then I’d make it reasonably entertaining. As I fought, foining off the two from the sides and beginning an amusing disrobing of the trylon, I reflected that this Rafik Avandil possessed a rare sense of humor. He had arranged to meet me here in this pseudo-cultural Running Sleeth knowing damn well what would follow. So I felt a double amusement as I cut the laces of the trylon’s fancy tunic and so stripped his clothes from him, garment by garment. When his two cronies pressed too close one was sent staggering and yelling away with a slit ear and the other with a punctured right forearm. The good old over and under stop-thrust worked beautifully. This idiot trylon’s overlong rapier most often pointed at the ceiling or the floor, or angled toward one of the garish pictures along the walls, more often than it aimed at my guts. I played him long enough to cut away his clothes down to his breechclout — bright pink, would you believe? — and then I had had enough.

Disgust filled me.

This kind of petty mindless brawl leaves a foul taste in a man’s mouth. This kind of bestiality is for the morons of the world, for the morons of two worlds.

Once they had seen how they thought the fight would now go, the rest of the patrons began to laugh. In their stupid heartless way they laughed at the Trylon of Tremi. He, poor fool, gagged on his own spit. His face was now whey-colored, gray and green, his eyes staring, his mouth slobbering. His beautiful pink breechclout with the embroidered chavonths and zhantils looked pathetic. It had blue lace edging. I stripped a little away and then he jumped at the wrong moment and the blade nicked his flesh in a tender spot.

He screamed.

So, wishing to have done, I snaked his blade away and stepped in. I took him by the throat with my left hand. I choked him only a little.

“The next time you seek to bully and thrash a defenseless old man, think, rast. Think, you brainless cramph, and remember this day.”

Then I turned him around and gave him a hard toe up the backside and so kicked him staggering across the floor.

His cronies stood back, furious but cowed, unwilling to reopen the fray. Blood had been drawn from both of them, splattering their finery and the black and white favors, but they had come out of this less injured than their lord. His hurts did not show on his skin. His hurts would not mend as fast as the scratches they had suffered.

The contrast between the conduct of this spoiled lordly brat and that of Rafik toward an old man was to me at the time most edifying. I felt an amusement toward Rafik, engendered as much by his trick as by the circumstances of his supposed rescue.

Larghos was visibly recovering his composure, seeing that no real damage had been done to his establishment. He began to flutter about. So I wiped my blade tip on the corner of my old brown cloak, picked up my sack, cast a last look upon the assembled gaping patrons — remembering to bend over as I did so — and bid them all a pleasant Remberee.

Then I stepped out of the Running Sleeth into the clean air and luminous suns-shine of Kregen. Nine

Nath the Gnat misses the Princess Majestrix

Delphond is not as well served by the intricate canal system of Vallia as it might be, especially as it is an imperial province, descending in the imperial female line. This has served in the past as a distinct advantage and goes some way to explaining the surprising remoteness of much of the province, situated as it is relatively close to the capital. This fact, too, I suppose, does explain, as Delia maintains, why so many tides of conquest in the troubled history of Vallia have passed Delphond by with little destruction. The zorca ambled along the dusty road, kicking the thick white powder into a floating trail, and I jogged along, sunk in thought, yet still keeping that old sailor-man’s weather eye open. The oiled steel blade was snicked back into its bamboo scabbard and now looked like any wandering laborer’s stick. Making no attempt to discover the whereabouts of Rafik, I had simply ridden out of Arkadon. I could feel the muzziness clouding my head a trifle and a light-heaviness about my limbs; but, if necessary, I could go on swashing and fighting and drinking for another night or two without sleep yet. It is a knack. The rendezvous with Delia drew me on. The moment I reached Deliasmot where a canal trunk system terminated I would transfer to a narrow boat and be rapidly hauled all the way in first-class comfort. If Rafik was headed this way we would meet. I fancied I’d not seen the last of that golden numim with the sense of humor.

The white road wound between cornfields, with orchards all green and shining beyond, rising and falling over the gentle countryside. The road remained deserted until a cloud of dust heralded a considerable party of country folk taking their produce into Arkadon. I was surprised. The quoffa carts trundled along. Men thwacked on krahniks loaded with bales and baskets. The calsanys trotted along in their strings of patient bearing. Women and children perched on the carts or walked together in the intervals. The men marched, I could swear, almost in the form of a guard, with a scouting party ahead riding preysanys, superior forms of calsanys, and carrying not only their sticks but spears and long-knives. They gave me highly suspicious looks. But I was alone, and so we exchanged Llahals and parted, and I spat dust until free of their trail.

Logic told me that I did, indeed, look highly suspicious.

Here I was, a raggedy old laborer with a tattered brown blanket cloak, bareheaded and barefoot, riding a well-groomed and, if not first water, then reasonably high-quality zorca. Yes. Logic told me the country people might well have thought it their business to stop me and question me. There would be a reward for the return of the zorca to its owner. They were not to know the Rapa masichieri lay with his blood spilling out into the Kregan dirt.

But they had not stopped me. If anything, they had displayed so extreme a caution that it could be construed as fear.

And this, in Sweet Delphond, Delphond the Blessed, the Garden of Vallia!

The other interesting fact I had observed was simply that these country folk appeared to have shed their fat and lazy indifference. The men — abruptly, it seemed to me — presented an altogether new and different aspect. They had held their spears and long-knives with the firm determination of men intending to fight if they had to. This was remarkably unlike the usual attitudes I had encountered in Delphond. Ahead along the road the lath and plaster walls of a country inn came in sight, the red tile roofs shallowly peaked, the twisted chimneys lifting in welcome. No smoke rose from the chimneys. A window pane caught the red light of Zim and flashed. I perked up. Here was where I would repair the deficiencies missing breakfast was causing my stomach.

I rode up, feeling cheerful, and the damned place was empty, deserted, with windows smashed and doors hanging loose and weeds choking the neat fenced gardens. I cursed. Just my luck to encounter a wayside inn that was derelict.

“By Vox!” I said, aloud, thoroughly miffed. “By the disgusting bloated swag belly of Makki-Grodno!

My throat is like the Ocher Limits.”

A voice spoke from the corner of the inn and I was off the zorca and under the eaves before the last words were uttered.

‘Temper, temper!” said this light voice. “If you would accept a Llahal and a drink of wine from a stranger, they are here for the asking.”

Cautiously, the hilt of bamboo in my right hand and the rest of the stick in my left, ready for emergencies, I peered around the corner. A man sat there on a pile of old sacks holding out a leather wine bottle. The spout was formed of balass, black and shining, stoppered with silver-wound ivory.

“Wine, dom,” said this young fellow, smiling.

“It is too early for wine,” I said, somewhat surlily. “But Llahal, I thank you and I will take a sip.”

I took the bottle. It was deliciously cool. I moistened my mouth — a light white Yellow Unction; so this fellow had a few silver coins to rattle in his pouch — and then took two measured swallows. I looked hard at this purveyor of wine. Young, in that way the Kregans, with their better than two-hundred-year life span look young, he had a peaked, cheerful face, with merry eyes and a droll mouth. He was dressed in a simple open-necked buff tunic and decent breeches. His boots were not black, being of a tan color, well-splashed with the white dust of the road. He had a scrip and a staff, and at his belt hung a strong lesten-hide satchel.

I handed the wine bottle back. “My thanks, dom.”

“Oh, I am Covell. Men call me Covell of the Golden Tongue.”

“I have heard of you,” I said, pleased. “All Vondium rings with praises for your latest, Time Lost is Time Gained Hereafter,’ I believe. A fine poem.”

He laughed easily and drank wine himself, moderately.

This Covell was by way of being a poet. I saw that he favored the unconventional life, in order to gain the experiences he distilled into his verses. Some of the older and sterner critics of Vallia condemned his work as trifling, but they were a trifle ossified, or so his supporters said.

“What brings you here? Is Vondium too hot for you again?”

“You know me then? Yes, a tavern brawl and an onker with a knife in his guts, he did not die. But the guards thought to lay me by the heels and question me, and I do not fancy mewing up. So I took to my travels again.”

“Who does? I am Nath the Gnat and—”

“And,” he said easily, laughing, standing up, “and you are no laborer or farmworker, not even a cattleman. Whoever you are, Gnat is not the appellation for you, dom.”

I remembered to bend over at that, whereat he laughed again.

“I have my hirvel tethered in the shade. Should we ride together? I heard uncommon evil stories of Blessed Delphond in these latter days.”

I fired up at this. If my Delia did not know what was going on in her estates, then it behooved me to find out.

“Right willingly, Covell. But I am a laborer. That is true.”

I meant I labored for a living, not that I was a laborer who dug ditches or built walls. I fancied this Covell of the Golden Tongue understood.

“There are fields of labor that demand other skills than brawny shoulders.” He picked up his satchel. “I labor with words, and damned intractable beasts they can be, as well as singing with golden wonder. Why I do so is beyond my limited understanding.”

He mounted up on his hirvel. The animal was a fine beast, superior to Whitefoot, whom I had slapped on the rump and sent off, knowing he would find his own way back to his owner. Covell eyed the zorca.

“You are well mounted for a laboring man, Nath the Gnat.”

“The zorca came to me by way of a bequest from a dead man.”

He laughed again at this and shook his reins; together we rode gently along the dusty white road. He carried a long-knife like Oby’s and, as far as I could see, no other weapon on his person, although a short blade mounted on a shaft some six feet in length was stuck down into a boot on his stirrup. His scrip and staff were slung onto the hindquarters of the hirvel, and rode a trifle awkwardly. So we rode along talking. It is not my intention to regale you with all we spoke of, but you may be very sure I soaked up all the information he gave, and as it bears on this my narrative I will tell you, all in due time.

Covell mentioned the concern felt in Vondium over the continual unrest in the northeast of Vallia. Up there the folk were of altogether a more down-to-earth character, blunt, hardheaded, out for red gold and self-determination.

Using some little skill I introduced a query about black feathers into our talk. He replied as an educated man interested in literature would reply, quoting The Black Feathers of Ulbereth the Dark Reiver, giving a stanza or two of that old epic fashioned from the legends of olden time. But that is another story.

I judged that he did not dissemble and had not encountered the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. But I would not completely trust anyone in this thing.

So, later, I mentioned the craze for flying fluttrells in Vondium, and suggested that flying a chyyan might be interesting. Whereat he said: “I have flown a fluttrell owned by a comrade, Nath ti Havring — and an experience it was, too! — but I am told by those who know about these things that chyyans are unridable. Surely, Nath the Gnat, it is zhyans you mean?”

“Perhaps it is,” I said. “They are all foreign, out of Hamal. Give me a zorca.”

“Aye. But one day these great soldiers of ours will go up against Hamal, and we poets will be forced to sing their praises. I prefer to tune my songs to sweeter themes.”

“Amen to that.”

I pressed him to recite a line or two of his own, and nothing loath, for he loved an audience, he declaimed his “Ode to Dawning,” in which the red sun Zim and the green sun Genodras are apostrophized as mere balls of colored fire, without sentience, marvels of nature, bringing light to all men over the whole of Kregen. He added, when he had finished, that translating Zim to Far and Genodras to Havil ruined the feel of the piece. “I have a large contempt for religiosity in pious hypocrites. Opaz is well enough, I suppose, given as a sop. But a man’s heart is his true religion.”

I made no direct answer. Rafik trusted in a right arm and a sword, and Covell in a man’s heart. What, then, did I trust in? Anything at all apart from my Delia and the Krozairs of Zy?

When I had first returned to Kregen after that hideous expanse of twenty-one years on Earth I had fancied Kregen had not changed. The more I learned the more I discovered that this marvelous world had changed, was changing and was like to change even faster as the days wore on. When Covell spoke of the emperor he simply laughed and made witty jokes. He did say that the taverns reeked with plots, and then contemptuously dismissed them as wine-soaked dreams. “Trouble is coming to Vallia, Nath the Gnat, and all men can see that plain. There is the northeast. There are the racters. There are other parties and plots. I want none of them! By Vox! I am a poet and as a poet will I live and die a happy man. All else is illusion.”

“You do not share the fear of the locals to travel alone?”

“Do you?”

“Ah, well, I was not fully aware of the situation, being a simple wandering laborer. If there is no work here by reason of the troubles—”

“There are no troubles in Delphond, at least not yet. That is why I chose to travel here. But the lonely traveler is not as safe as he once was and isolated houses, like the inn where we met, are no longer little fortresses of peace. The damned aragorn prowl all the land — aye, and the racters aid and abet them. That is where their money comes from.”

“You do not like the racters?”

“I dislike all political parties. I am an individual.”

“The people take precautions against drikinger.”

“Yes, but Delphond is not an easy province for bandits.”

“So it is the slavers they fear?”

“If the emperor and the Presidio do not act soon no one will be safe. Vallia is like to be torn asunder.”

Deliasmot was its usual charming, smiling self, a typically beautiful, easygoing, life-loving Delphondian town. Yet even here the new edginess was apparent, the more anxious demeanor, the stricter controls at the gates. Here Covell of the Golden Tongue and I parted, for he was contracted to give a recitation of his poetry, a declamation he called it, and I was for the canal and for pressing on to Drakanium where I would meet Delia.

We made our Remberees and I expressed my disappointment at missing his declamation, for he was truly a golden voice, and then I hurried to the canal to make travel arrangements. The zorca ensured a ticket in a narrow boat. I found a quiet seat where I might watch the passing banks, sliding along all green and golden under the suns, and I dozed and took my meals with the best of them and kept to myself, tolerated here in Delphond, and so came at last gliding with the canalfolk all hauling lustily away under the stone vaulted archways of Drakanium’s watergate.

As a city, Drakanium was simply a larger edition of a Delphondian town, clean, neat, sparkling, bowered in vegetation, filled with the prosperous bustle of a contented folk — at least it had been. The city was just as clean and neat and the flowers bloomed magnificently and the fountains played. But the people hurried about their tasks with worried looks. A regiment of totrixmen were exercising on the parade ground and I judged by their antics they were newly formed. The Jiktar was near to apoplexy as he bellowed orders, and the awkward six-legged totrixes tangled up and squealed and the lances all slanted at odd angles. But they flew nice banners and flags.

I had agreed to meet Delia at the best inn, instead of her villa here, to keep my cover. A hostler took in my message, giving me a sharp look as he went in through the lenken door under the glowing tiles, where the moon-blooms clustered thickly. Bees droned and the shadows lay across the stone-flagged court. I sat down on a bench and a serving wench brought out a flagon of best Delphondian ale. I quaffed it gratefully.

To these people I was a mere wanderer, a tramp, and if the Princess Majestrix wished to speak with me she would, and that was her business, and if she did not, then I would be told and seen off the premises. They are civilized in Delphond.

The hostler came back. He wore a frown.

“I gave your message to the landlord, dom. He says to tell you the Princess Majestrix is not here.”

“When is she expected? Maybe I am early.”

“Oh, she’s been here. You were expected.” He did not add that he couldn’t for the life of him understand why a great and glorious princess should worry her beautiful head over a dingy tramp. He went on, almost casually, imparting his news: “She has had to return posthaste to Vondium.”

I stood up.

“Did she say why?”

He took a step back. His coarse sacking apron rustled as he switched his arms out. “No. She did not say. Just that she had to go to Vondium on a matter of extreme urgency. A courier came in an airboat. From the emperor, it was said. The princess went with him and her suite with her.” He rolled his eyes with the memory of a great dread removed. “She had a ghastly creature with her, a most bloodthirsty monster, all claws and fangs and hair, but they all went in the airboat to Vondium.”

That monster was Melow the Supple, and I felt relief.

Relief that Delia was safe. But what could have caused her to dash back to Vondium? What disaster had struck now?

Ten

Of an independent girl of Vallia

The airboat flew swiftly toward Vondium.

Once I had received Delia’s message I had wasted no time. A quick trip to our villa in Drakanium, a change of clothes, with a flustered majordomo and flunkies running in circles, a hamper of food and drink, weapons, money, and I was away in one of the small fliers we kept at the villa, as we tried to keep a voller or two at all our places.

I did not think my cover had been broken, but then, I didn’t give a damn if it had. What had happened in Vondium to drag Delia away? Was the emperor dead? But everyone would have known — no. No, perhaps not. It paid very often to keep news of the deaths of kings and emperors secret for as long as possible.

The voller was a fleet craft, for its stabling at the villa envisaged its emergency use, and we made a good thirteen and a half to fourteen dbs.[2]

At this headlong speed I would reach Vondium in a couple of hours. So, composing myself as best I could, I sat down and raided the hamper. Of the details of that meal I remain vague, save that I ate and drank and looked continually ahead for the fantastic sight of Vondium, the capital city of the Empire of Vallia, to rear over the distant horizon.

Once again I was entering Vondium at breakneck speed and with a single definite goal in mind. I flashed over the broad expanse of pastureland and agricultural activity surrounding the city. The waters of She of the Fecundity, the Great River of Vallia, sparkled ahead. There were the Hills, spread out and bowered in greenery, with the flash and gleam of white villas and red roofs. There were the sky-spanning aqueducts. There the grim gray walls and the higher battlements in gleaming yellow and sapphire, the flagstaffs, the conical tower roofs, the long, incredibly thin extensions of archways beneath the suns. Other fliers circled in landing and ascending patterns. The broad swaths of the major canals and ornate boulevards crisscrossed the city, creating islands of stone or brick, the timber and stucco island given over to parks and preserves, islands covered with barracks and factories, islands for sport, islands for all the devoted pursuits that obsessed the citizens of Vondium.

Of it all I fastened my eager gaze on the enormous Palace of the Emperors. Over wide colonnaded streets parallel to the canals we flew, this speedy little voller and I, seeing below the broad wharfside avenues thronged with busy people. Over a cluster of temples, built to foreign tolerated gods, over an arm of a canal leading directly to the Great River where shipbuilders worked on the skeletons of galleons of Vallia, bare and ribby in the light. On, and now I slanted down, aiming for the palace. The majestically architectured kyro before the main façade showed its usual hectic activity and few people bothered to look up at a single small air-boat.

Chafferings in the marketplaces would not be interrupted for so small an event. But what events were taking place within the glowing walls of the Palace of the Emperors?

The instant I touched down on the landing platform above the small garden of the palace wing reserved for the Prince Majister, I leaped out. Delia’s old apartments had been enlarged and improved and when we stayed in the capital we stayed in our own private wing of the palace. I raced inside, seeing servitors running. Delia and I kept no slaves; there were many thousands of slaves in Vondium, aye, and many in the great palace of the Emperors.

Normally we kept only a skeleton staff in our wing of the palace for, to be honest, we spent little time there. Now the place hummed with activity and very soon I had made my way, followed by various flunkies who conceived it their duty to run with me, just in case I might drop something, or require a service — Zair knows why servants will fuss so — through to our inner and truly private apartments. The Jiktar of the guard detail, a Pachak called Laka Pa-Re, bellowed his men to attention.

“The princess?” I asked, not stopping.

“In her apartments and all well, my prince, may Opaz shine the light of his countenance upon her.” Then he added, quite outside the usual military formula: “By Papachak the All Powerful, my Prince, it is good to see you!”

“And to see you also, Laka Pa-Re.”

His men bashed open the balass door smothered with the gold zhantils with diamond eyes, and I went hurrying through. Laka stood back, still remaining at attention, his tailhand upthrust with that wicked steel blade glistening. He had retained his Pachak name for he was a mercenary, a paktun — the silver mortil-head on its silken cord looped over the shoulder of his armor proved that — and perhaps a greater contrast could not be imagined than between his loyal service as a paktun and the thieving deviltry of those masichieri I had been stumbling over lately.

The tall balass doors closed and I looked down the carpeted corridor with the golden lamps and the ivory ornaments, the great Pandahem jars filled with flowers, the silver mirrors, and the doors at the far end opened and a trim figure clad in hunting leathers stepped through. At her heels a prowling, incredibly ferocious Manhound trotted, tail lashing, fanged jaws opened, saying in that growly, spitting, menacing way of jiklos: “. . .Deserves to be spanked, the hussy.”

They saw me.

Delia simply flew at me, wrapping her arms about me, kissing me, laughing and sobbing, saying breathlessly, “I know, my heart! I know what you will say! But this cannot wait!”

I held her close, feeling her heart beating against mine, holding her, the dizzying scent of her in my nostrils, twining around me, making me wonder why I ever was fool enough to leave her. I forced myself to regain my senses. I took her by the shoulders and held her off, looking at her, at her face, her eyes, her mouth, her hair. “Delia! What cannot wait?”

“I am forbidden to tell you.”

I felt outrage.

“Who can forbid the Princess Majestrix of Vallia? Your father—?”

“No.” She looked gorgeously lovely, yet filled with a distress I could not hope to understand then.

“All I can say is that I love you, that I must go, that — by Vox!” she cried, which made me realize how serious a matter this really was. “By all that I hold dear I will tell you as much as I may — and more, I dare say, if you hold me so and look at me like that.”

My ugly old face must have been a sight, by Zair!

“Well?”

She spoke more calmly. “I must hurry. You know I am of the Sisters of the Rose. . .”

“Yes.” I began to have an inkling now.

“I dare not tell you, even though you mean all there is in the world to me. But, but, dear heart, you are a man.”

“And you are a woman and, to pile the cliché upon the banal, I give thanks every day to Zair that it is so.”

“Do not laugh at me, my darling! This is women’s business. The Sisters of the Rose, we hold our secrets

. . . well!” She flared up as her thoughts sought utterance. “Do I question you too closely about your precious Krozairs of Zy?”

I felt only a small shock.

“No, my love, you do not. For you know I am under vows.”

“And may not a woman, even if she is your wife, also be under vows?”

Instantly I felt the biggest boor in two worlds. I felt an onker, a calsany. What right had I to pry into exactly those areas of my Delia’s life that were, through other forces, denied her enquiry in mine?

I drew her to me and kissed her. The kiss was long and passionate and if she was in a hurry to be about this mysterious business of the Sisters of the Rose she was in no hurry to end the kiss. At last I stepped back and released her.

“You have everything for the journey? Melow will go with you? Weapons, clothes, money, food, the fastest voller?”

“Yes, yes, my heart!” She laughed. “Do not take on so!”

“When you go venturing out into Kregen, my love, you must take all the protection you may.”

“That is true. But the Sisters of the Rose take care of their own. We do a great deal of good, in a quiet way. We have opened two new hospitals for sick slaves in the past year. And when there is a war . . . well, you know.”

Yes. I did know. The Sisters were invaluable. There were other feminine orders, of course, notably the Sisters of Samphron and the Order of Little Mothers and the like. Delia often abbreviated in the Kregen way, calling the Sisters of the Rose the SoR, as I abbreviated the Krozairs of Zy to Krzy. This was important, truly important.

So I contented myself with making sure she had everything I could think of — save myself — upon her journey. Melow would go, and a female Manhound, a jiklo, can rip up a wersting or a neemu and the chances of a strigicaw are not all that bright.

Melow the Supple jagged her fangs and said in her hissing voice, “Do not fret, Dray Prescot. The princess is a canny girl and knows her way about. I can but wish you had eased two more sets of twins into the world for me.”

“Hush, Melow!” said Delia.

The Manhounds of Kregen are indeed a fearsome sight. Artificially bred to run on all four like hunting cats, ferocious of aspect, deadly in killing skills, superbly muscled, they can strike terror into the stoutest heart. Yet this Melow the Supple, for whom I have a great fondness, savage and vicious as she was, was a kindhearted mother of twins. She was dressed in bright clothes, for she loved brilliance in dress, with neatly groomed hair and wearing sandals over those gut-ripping claws. I put out my hand and touched her cheek.

“Take care of her, Melow.”

She grimaced and hissed, as much as to say what an onker I was and I ought to know better than even to mention so obvious a thing.

Then I said another stupid thing.

“Thelda?” I said to Delia.

Well Thelda, Seg’s wife, had been companion to Delia in some fraught moments in our lives, and she always meant well, and she always said that she was Delia’s best friend. I knew Thelda belonged to the Order of Sisters of Patience — I invariably found a high amusement at that particular trifle of appositeness — so I couldn’t be surprised when Delia very calmly said, “This is a matter for the SoR, my love. Now you have delayed me long enough. Come on, Melow.”

She kissed me again and I let her go reluctantly, saying, “But you haven’t said when you’ll be back.”

“When you see me.” Then she relented, and said, “I’ll be as quick as I can, I promise.”

I saw her to the voller. And it was no joke; she’d selected our fastest four-place craft. I saw the way she solemnly observed the fantamyrrh as she stepped aboard.

I stood back. The guards and the retainers stood in a ring, all looking up. The voller sprang away, with Melow looking over the side like some frightful gargoyle, and rose up into the limpid air with the streaming mingled lights from the Suns of Scorpio lighting up her side and blazing like a beacon.

“Remberee, my love!”

“Remberee, my heart!”

And the flier spun up and away and soared over the glittering rooftops of Vondium. Damned independent in their ways are the girls of Kregen.

But, then, that is just as it ought to be.

Eleven

We sing the songs of Kregen

“All praise to Papachak of the Tail!” said Laka Pa-Re, and he thumped his empty flagon back onto the stained sturmwood table with a crash. All around the low-ceiled room of the tavern men were drinking and shouting, a few were brawling, some were trying to play Jikalla and being continually interrupted. The clatter of dice sounded from the corner and on the opposite side a Pachak was tail-wrestling a comrade amid spilling wine bottles and toppling ale flagons.

This was the famous tavern The Savage Woflo, an example of the warped Kregan humor that either amuses or infuriates, for the woflo is a wee creature of extremely timid nature, overfond of cheese. Among the tables ran remarkably pretty girls of various races carrying wide wooden trays stacked with foaming jugs or exotically shaped bottles. These serving wenches were, unfortunately, slaves. They were clad in transparent draperies, with tawdry bangles and beads, with colored feathers, all designed to enhance their natural beauties. Well, I suppose that in some cases they did. But generally cunning old Urnu the Flagon, landlord of The Savage Woflo, had an eye for female beauty and his wenches — I dislike the commonly used word shif for these serving girls for it indicates a contempt I do not feel —

were every one carefully chosen at the auctions and paid for above the standard price. Normally I avoided places like this and when in Vondium and in need of a quiet drink I would go down to Bargom’s Rose of Valka by the Great Northern Cut. Bargom, a Valkan, did not employ slaves and aroused some bemused envy that he managed so well without their unwilling aid. Now the Pachak paktun, Laka Pa-Re, yelling for more ale, handled these slaves girls with a courtesy I fancied was not assumed for my benefit. This tavern, the famous Savage Woflo, was much patronized by the guardsmen. No female customers were allowed. Such a thing was still possible in Vondium. This was a male preserve and, I suppose, on Earth would have been choking with smoke as well as the fumes of alcohol.

“By Mother Zinzu the Blessed!” I said, lowering my flagon. “I needed that!”

Saying that little aphorism cheered me up, although Laka had never heard of Mother Zinzu the Blessed, the patron saint of the drinking classes of Sanurkazz.

“You do me great honor, my Prince, in drinking with—” he said, until I shushed him. I wore simple buff tunic and breeches and swung a rapier, as we all did here, where brawls and good-humored swishings of blades were common occurrences. I wished to look inconspicuous. Laka also wore plain buff, out of uniform.

“If you must call me anything, let it not be prince,” I said. “Rather, merely call me Nath and have done.”

“Aye, my Pri— Nath!” he bellowed, and used that cunning tailhand to whip a fresh flagon from a passing girl’s tray. She squeaked and laughed — all simulated, for that was how the customers liked to think these girls behaved — and ran on with slender flashing legs to fetch more ale. There were Fristle fifis, and sylvies, and shishis here, as well as other races of beautiful girls. There were no Rapa girls or Och maidens, but then there were few of their menfolk in the tavern either. A parcel of Chuliks sat glowering at a table, steadily drinking. When the singing began the Chuliks would depart to find a place where a fighting man might drink without having to sing. That is the way of Chuliks. I had come here because — and then to admit the true reason would be to betray more, perhaps, than I cared to. I knew that I would hear gossip here that might be overlooked in the echoing corridors of the palace. Also, I felt sure that one of the emperor’s agents would be here listening. What he would report might not tally with what he heard.

For the emperor’s position had been steadily eroded.

Covell of the Golden Tongue had said the tavern plots were all moonshine. Maybe they were. But I felt the need for a drink and a song in masculine company.

Most great nobles of Vallia kept up their villas in Vondium even if they only visited them once or twice a year, and their guards patronized establishments like this, so there were many varieties of uniform and colors among the civilian dress. The Vallian Air Service was notable by its absence. Also, Laka was one of the few high-ranking officers present. I noticed three other Jiktars and quite a few hikdars, but the majority of the drinking, gambling, shouting men were deldars and swods. When I had quizzed the Pachak paktun as to why he had said he was pleased to see me, he had answered evasively, even defensively, but now he was thawing out and eventually he said: “It’s like this, my Pri— Nath. I drew guard duty on the Prince Majister’s wing of the palace. I do not grumble at that. But I see things. I hear things. There are men among the guards — aye! Men I have known! Men who speak behind their hands. They have been bought by gold.”

“Who is doing the buying? And to what end?”

He took a swig and wiped his mouth. “For one, the Racter Party. Oh, yes, they have a hand in everything in Vallia. But why should Naghan Nadler, who has been a paktun for twenty seasons and will make ob-deldar soon, take gold?”

“Why?”

“Why, because they want to buy his sword! And others like him. There are plots against the emperor. Everyone knows that. A little gold spread around now will buy loyalty when the plots hatch. That is my opinion.”

“And you have reported this?”

He opened and shut his lower left hand, and his right hand gripped and tugged at the pakmort around his neck on its silken cord. “I wanted to speak to you.”

I was not sure if he had done right. But this was no time to suggest he might better have taken another course. What struck me, forcibly and with a chill of foreboding, was the frightening thought that whichever of the parties — or perhaps all of them — that were bribing guards to fight for them had reached the swods. A simple swod may well be a terrible fighting man, but it is the captains and generals who carry the say when bribery is in the wind. I felt pretty confident that Laka had not been approached because all men knew once a Pachak had given his nikobi to serve an employer his loyalty remained steadfast. But a swod in the ranks, being given gold, told to obey orders that would not come from his employer, this typified the destruction of values, the end of one way of life and, if a new began, a system barely nameable as life.

So, as you can see, I was in a highly wrought state.

Hadn’t I suborned guardsmen before, to fight for me against their employer, and, by Vox, wouldn’t I do so again? But at the least, no mere petty ambition had driven me, to topple a throne for the sake of the power.

So we drank and talked and I watched the clientele, seeing the many different patterns of banded sleeves, each set of colors denoting a man belonging to a noble house. Even among these soldiers and guardsmen the white and black favors were flaunted openly, along with the white and green of the panvals and other color combinations. A Pachak hikdar, squat, leather-faced, roaring his good humor and slopping ale, plunked himself down on the bench opposite Laka and bellowed a greeting. When the confusion died down Laka introduced him as Nidar De-Fra, an old mercenary comrade newly arrived in Vondium with his master. This Nidar wore banded sleeves, for he was in uniform, the banded colors of unequal widths of blue and green and yellow, with two thin vertical stripes of white. It must not be taken that these color-banded sleeves of Vallia are like the tartans of the Scottish clans; but with their color-coding, once a man saw a combination of shapes and colors he would know it again and know the owner. This Pachak, Nidar De-Fra, had given his nikobi and his sword to Kwasim Barkwa, the Vad of Urn Stackwamor. He was in the capital because his master wished it. Anyway, as all men knew, the emperor was due to return from his journey around the far southwest. Here the Pachak laughed and said that the southwest was a joke and all men knew the future of Vallia lay with the northeast.

There is good comradeship among the Pachak mercenaries, and their intricate system of nikobi can sort out the rights and wrongs of employment and the puzzles of when a man may in honor fight a comrade under employment. Now these two talked of old days. I looked for a moment at Nidar. He did not wear the pakmort, but he was wholly convinced that northeast Vallia must demand self-determination and break away from the empire. This astounded me. I clamped my ugly old mouth shut and listened. When Nadar’s term of service with Kwasim Barkwa ended he might take employment with a noble of the south, and then he would be as vociferous that the empire should stay in one piece. A mercenary may not have to believe in his master’s cause to fight for him, but the Pachaks are deadly serious when they hire out as paktuns, and give their loyalty.

A couple of brilliant Fristle fifis came out with streaming silks and started to dance; they were soon chased off and then the swods began to sing.

So, as you may imagine, I let all my problems slide away for a space and gave myself up to hoggish relaxation. There are many finer things in two worlds than sitting in a tavern singing with swods, and this is so. But all the same, when you are singing and roaring out the old songs, the world takes on a marvelously brighter hue.

My Delia had gone off and left me at home. The idea intrigued me. I felt no indignation. She was as entitled as I was to her ownlife. Our shared life was so intense and passionate that nothing could interfere. I was dragged away by a great ghostly representation of a Scorpion, blue and shining, whirling me away to some other part of Kregen to fight for the Star Lords, or hurling me back to Earth in despair. Delia had gone because her vows, vows like mine to the Krozairs of Zy, impelled her. I had discarded at once any notion of following her secretly. That would shame us both. Anyway, with Melow along, she should come to no harm. And she could handle weapons with the best of men. I knew that. So I, Dray Prescot, left at home with the dishes, sang with swods in a tavern. We sang the Lay of Fanli the Fristle and Her Regiment of Admirers and the Lay of Faerly the Ponsho Farmer’s Daughter and Tyr Korgan and the Mermaid. The Jikalla players stopped pushing their counters around the board and the dice fell silent in the cups. We roared out King Naghan, his Fall and Rise, and Eregoin’s Promise.

Then these hard-living, hoarse-voiced, hairy fighting men drew on a sudden maudlin melancholy, and led by a fellow with a thin reedy voice we warbled out The Fall of the Suns. This is a menacing song, for its cadences and images invite mournfulness. It tells of the last days when the twin suns fall from the sky and drench the world of Kregen in fire and blood, in water and death. I am not overfond of it, for all the deeper truths it expresses in its roundabout way.

So when a flushed fellow, bulging his tunic and wildly slopping his ale, leaped to his feet and started bellowing out the first lines of Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie, I, for one, joined in with a full-throated roar. And the rafters shook as the swods came to those famous lines that always crease them up, and great gusts of laughter swept across the room as we sang out: “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.”

Yes.

We kept that refrain going until we were all well-nigh bursting. The serving girls scurried in with more flagons and great was the relishment thereof. We quieted down as the tall thin fellow with the reedy voice favored us with a solo, choosing parts of the song cycle composed from fragments of The Canticles of the Rose City concerning the doings of the part-man, part-god Drak. Naturally my thoughts winged to what my Delia was doing now, how she was faring, and I offered up a fervent prayer that she would be kept safe.

We did not sing The Bowmen of Loh, for almost all the Crimson Bowmen were away with the emperor. It seemed to me my course was reasonably clear. I would have to discharge all those mercenaries who had become untrustworthy by reason of accepting bribes. I would seek to discover who had paid them; I would make no attempt to match the bribes, gold for gold. If a man takes gold from another when in employment his trust is forfeited. I had experience of that when I’d been a renegade and contracted to Gafard the Sea Zhantil, the King’s Striker.

The decision about reporting to the emperor what I had so far discovered about the Chyyanists would have to be taken. There was, in truth, pitifully little to report. A minor religion would appear to offer little danger to the emperor, beset as he was by combinations of powerful nobles. While everyone in Vallia regarded as a foregone conclusion that the conflict with Hamal must reopen at some time in the future, for the present the uneasy state of truce between the two empires offered some hope of continuing peace. The emperor would brush aside any suggestions I might make along those lines, and his Presidio, torn as it was by internecine strife, would greedily pursue the path of individual power. By Zair! The worst thing of all was how lost, how at sea, empty and forlorn I felt without my Delia. When I’d been dragged away from her before I had struggled always to return to her. I had cursed and raved at the forces keeping us apart. But know well, this was a topsy-turvy situation and one I just did not relish at all, at all, as Sogandar the Upright might say.

The swods were just beginning The Maid with the Single Veil and the serving wenches were giggling and laughing as is their wont when that song is sung, when a fellow at the adjoining table, leaning across, began to make directly offensive remarks. He was getting at me. There is no mistaking the idiot who intends to pick a quarrel.