I felt a hot resentment. I’d come out for a quiet evening bellowing out the old songs and this rast wanted to stir up trouble and spoil it all. I determined, mean and vicious, that I’d spoil his fun, that I’d not react, that he could cuss until he was blue in the face and I’d give him no satisfaction. I’d ruin his enjoyment and he could jibe and mock and insult all he liked.

I said to Laka and Nidar, “I’ll play the cramph along. Take no notice.”

Laka knew me and so laughed, falling in with the ploy. Nidar favored me with an old-fashioned look, but said nothing.

The fellow who got his kicks from being unpleasant wore too much gold lace about his buff. His face was lean and marked by a scar, and his mustaches had been clipped. I noticed the emblem he wore at his throat, a little gold strigicaw and swords, swung on a golden chain. He did not speak directly to me but insulted me through his cronies, in the way of these fellows.

“He perhaps thinks we are woflos who come here. His senses probably do not even understand that small thing.”

Nidar leaned across fiercely and said under his breath to me: “Let me blatter the fellow, Nath.”

“Tsleetha-tsleethi,” I said, which is to say, “softly-softly.” Nidar’s offer to bash the fellow in for me amused me. Normally quick to avenge an insult, on this night I wanted to bash this insulting fellow with more subtle weapons than a set of knuckles or a rapier in his guts. He persevered. His cronies tried to help his game. They called him Rumil the Point. I turned my back on them and bellowed for more ale. The song had changed and so we could all sing The Worm-eaten Swordship Gull-i-mo which is a Vallian sailor’s song, for a few swordships are employed in sheltered waters. That song is known in many anchorages in Kregen, and I’d sung it as a render up in the Hoboling Islands.

A hand touched me on the shoulder. I turned. I stopped singing.

Rumil the Point stood up, leaning over me, his lean face black with his sense of insult, because I took no notice of him whatsoever.

“Rast!” he shouted, thumping my shoulder, speaking thickly, either drunk or pretending to be drunk.

“You do not insult me and stand on your own stinking feet!”

I shook his hand off and started to turn back to the two Pachaks, determined to play my part out to the end. By Zair! But he was in a paddy! He just couldn’t believe that I didn’t consider him important enough to worry over. He felt at a loss, puzzled, reduced in dignity, his pride shredded.

“Then I’ll settle you, you zigging cramph!”

I saw Laka’s face go hard and I heard the scrape of steel and so knew I had miscalculated. With a motion I trusted would be quick and fluid enough I slid aside and turned back. This Rumil the Point stood glaring at me. His eyes protruded. The tip of his tongue stuck out, and his face was contorted back, ricked, stamped with an awful terror.

Around his neck clamped a buff clad arm, and the paw-hand gleamed with golden fur.

“Lahal, Nath the Gnat,” said Rafik Avandil. “I see I may be of service to you once more.”

Twelve

A message via the Sisters of the Rose

If I thought that because Delia and I were parted and I was alone in Vondium life would be flat and insipid, I was only partly wrong. Of course, life lacks its deep brilliance and color when Delia is away and I turn to fripperies, but sometimes the trifles turn into matters of more profound importance. The time when I made myself King of Djanduin serves as an example. So life helter-skeltered along in Vondium as I sought to think out the best way of facing the various dangers that threatened. Rafik Avandil, quite enchanted at his opportunity to rescue me for the second time, as he thought, had spent the rest of the evening with us. Laka kept up my disguise as Nath the Gnat, and for this I was grateful. We saw a deal of each other in the days that followed and eventually I was persuaded to move into the inn at which Rafik stayed. I told Turko the Shield, Balass the Hawk, Naghan the Gnat and whoever else absolutely needed to know. Turko and the others grumbled about having to stay in our wing of the palace while I was off roistering in inns, but I explained that I was on to a lead. They were to call me Nath the Gnat. Here Naghan pulled a face, and I chided him, saying, “A great name, Naghan!

And one I am proud to borrow.”

“Just let me have it back, Dray. I shall be Naghan the Arm, I think, if we two chance to meet, in remembrance of that hyr-kaidur.”

“Aye,” I said. “So far I have had no word of a single Black Feather in all of Vondium, and this is strange.”

“Maybe not so strange,” offered Khe-Hi-Bjanching, putting a finger in his book to mark the place. “The signomant held only an empty space for Vondium, remember.”

“I still think that the true reading. By Vox! If only we knew where they would strike next!”

“Agents are out, asking questions. Vallia is being scoured.”

“And,” said Naghan with the old armorer’s shrewdness strong on him, “that is costing a deal of money.”

“If the Opaz-forsaken Chyyanists win, we’ll have no money, you may be sure. And we, along with our people, will hang by our heels.”

“They’ll have to catch us first,” said Turko ominously.

This wing of her father’s palace had been furnished under the supervision of Delia, and I relished that. Even so, I was not enamored of the great palace of Vondium. Delia’s vision had created apartments of great beauty, but still the chill of the imperial presence came through. Rafik’s inn offered a change, at the very least. I just hoped Bargom at the Rose of Valka did not hear I had stayed at some other hostelry than his own. But, then, a few words and he would understand.

The capital city hummed with news. The emperor was returning in state and bringing with him as an honored guest to the Empire of Vallia none other than the famous Queen of Lome. Everyone was agog to see this fabled woman. The reports of her beauty and wealth had spread over this part of the world, dazzling men with impossible dreams. Everyone gave a curse and said how fortunate the emperor was, and how they’d like to be in his shoes. And some of them, saying that, would laugh and add words to the effect that his shoes would be fine and dandy — for now.

One item of encouragement, and of alarm too, we had in those days. Balass received a report that among a group of his countrymen from Xuntal, traders and merchants down in the wharfside area of the city, a man had been heard to speak of the Black Feathers when he’d been drunk. I said, “Then it is up to you, Balass. You are Xuntalese. You can mingle. May the Curved Sword of Xurrhuk guard you.”

“Amen to that, my Prince. By my hopes of entering Xanachang! My people are a fearsome people if they think they are spied upon.”

“It’s of little comfort to tell you that almost any people resent spying. But look at it in a different light. You go to root out evil. Make no mistake, Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword finds no favor in the hearts of the Chyyanists.”

Balass’s firmly muscled body glistened black and silver in the light of the suns streaming in through the high windows, for we met and talked in this small enclosed arena set up within our part of the palace. The silver-sanded floor slid and shushed to the quick scrape of feet as we foined and parried with wooden swords. Turko, I knew, had put in a good many burs of practice with his new parrying-stick, and he handled the klattar now with a sureness that pleased me. Mind you, I’d be the last to suggest it was but a small step to go on to handling a weapon very much like a parrying-stick with one blade and with sharp edges. Its name would be a sword. And Turko, the High Kham, would have none of them. Oby came in, throwing off his tunic, getting ready to have a bout with anyone willing to stand against the liquid cunning of his long-knife. He left the lenken door partly open and Naghan, about to shout out about people being born in bars, stopped. A flunky sailed in through the door. He wore the fancy and immodestly ridiculous court dress for servitors, for we were forced to accept the services of other servants than our own from Valka. He was not a slave. His red and silver and yellow clothes billowed about him as he flew through the air.

I turned to make sure Turko really stood by me. If he had not been I’d have sworn he was the fellow outside thus casually hurling importunate servitors about.

But it was no man.

Through the pushed-open door strode a strappingly handsome girl. Her face was only lightly stained with a flush of blood under the tanned skin from her little exercise. She was clad in tights, with a body-hugging tan tunic strapped about with a lesten-hide belt from which swung rapier and dagger, buckled up in a way which showed she was ready to draw in a twinkling. Her weapons swung in that cunning way I had seen an infinitely more glorious girl scabbard her own rapier and dagger. So, forewarned by the weaponry and the demeanor of this girl, I knew from whom she came. She wore her light brown hair cut short. Her face held that open, frank look of the girl who knows she is a girl and is prepared to treat men as men because that is their misfortune. I liked the look of her. Over her heart an embroidered red rose, twined about with gold threads, resembled very much the little red and gold brooch, fashioned in the shape of a rose, Delia had given me in return for the brooch like a hubless spoked wheel I had given her.

“Llahal and Lahal, Prince Majister,” said this girl, marching straight up to me with a swing of the hips and a lithe and limber step. “You are well met. Here, my Prince.” And she hauled a letter from the small script at her waist.

The letter was written on yellow paper and carried a faint and fragrant perfume to my nostrils. The writing, firm and rounded and yet girlish, in that beautiful running Kregish script, is very dear to me. My comrades stood back. The girl touched the rose embroidered upon her breast. “I have a letter for the Princess Katri. But yours, my Prince, I was instructed to deliver first.” She laughed, a clear tinkling sound. “And the letter for the emperor the last of the three.”

So I, being intoxicated on emotion, laughed too. “I cannot wait, for no reply is expected.” She turned to leave, her legs in the tights very long and lovely. “But there is one lie I shall no longer believe.”

With the letter burning my hands I said, “Will you not stop to take refreshment? And what is this lie?”

She halted at the door and smiled back. “I thank you, my Prince, but I must hurry. As to the lie, all women say the Prince Majister of Vallia never laughs.”

And she went out, swinging, jaunty, laughing, the rapier and dagger swinging at her sides. She was a woman, like my Delia, all woman.

I banished her from my mind and opened the letter. I know the words by heart, but many of them are private so I will simply say that Delia said all was well, she was in good health, Melow sent her love, the task was proving more difficult than she’d expected and she was like to be away longer than she had hoped. There was more, but that is for Delia and me. She finished by saying that the letter to Aunt Katri requested the emperor’s sister to go to Valka to see after Didi, and that the letters were being entrusted to Jikmer Sosie ti Drakanium.

The word jikmer had been crossed through, but Delia had been in a hurry and so I could read it beneath the quickly scrawled scribble. Jikmer. That would be the Sisters of the Rose equivalent to Jiktar. Hmm. These girls had their chukmers, their jikmers, their hikmers and their delmers too, without doubt. The notion charmed me. It all added up, without the shadow of a doubt, to a powerful and secret organization of women who, from my knowledge of Delia, were dedicated to philanthropic and chivalrous ends. What the mysticism might be I, of course, could not know.

I think it was the delivery of this letter with its evidence of an efficient organization of women devoted to purposes with which, from the little I knew of them, I could sympathize, that made me finally put into practice a scheme I had been harboring for some long time. As the scheme developed — and I worked on it with some intensity — I will tell you as it impinges on my story. For now, I would have to wait for the first fruits until Seg and Inch were available.

Also, I must make it clear that I am concentrating here very much on the Chyyanists. A great deal happened in Vondium during this time. Instead of being an idle layabout, I found myself hard at work. As the Prince Majister in the capital with the emperor absent I had many official functions to perform. I performed them. Most were very little of a laugh. I sat in the courts for a time and handed down judgments. I canceled work on a new slave bagnio, letting the slave masters see my scathing contempt, and set the laborers and masons into constructing a building to plans I laid out for them. They couldn’t really understand what the building was for. A visit to anywhere in Kregen where men and women flew saddle-birds through the air would have told them. It was accommodation for a thousand flyers. One day, and alarmingly soon, I fancied, Vallia would have need of them. So life was not all dressing up inconspicuously and sliding off as Nath the Gnat. Often one or another of my boon companions would accompany me, but we made a compact that we kept apart. Turko, as usual, grumbled. But he saw the sense of it. My cover, if it was to be kept, would not be served by my suddenly appearing with friends. In a tavern, Turko could sit drinking quietly and keep an eye on me. We all chuckled over the episode of Rafik rescuing me.

That was a strange time. Here I was in Vondium, the capital of the puissant Empire of Vallia, and my Delia not with me. By Zair! I had fought and struggled to reach this place, and had been dragged here in chains, and never had I thought I’d live here without Delia. It was unnerving. I had all preparations made for the society I formed. There are many secret societies on Kregen. This seems to be a part and parcel of the makeup of all cultures. In the most simple terms, I wanted to instill some of the superb qualities in the teachings of the Krozairs of Zy into Valka and Vallia. But I had no intention of limiting the new order to the island of Vallia. If I could bring Pandahem in and Zenicce and the Hoboling Islands, perhaps even Seg’s Erthyrdrin, that would be even better. I would find men I could trust, men of good heart, of good character yet lusty rogues withal, men who could see evil and stare back at it unflinchingly and do what they might to root out evil and plant the good. Of course, these terms are all relative. Good to one man is a mere matter of decency to another; evil to one man is normal human behavior to another. But there are basics on which men of goodwill may agree. The women had found them, it seemed. Of the various secret societies of Vallia none had asked me to join up. I had felt vast relief at this, for I had taken a firm vow to join none, assuming that the others would regard me as an enemy or, at the best, cold toward them. As the Prince Majister I had to remain aloof, if I could. So do not think I organized the new order out of pique. If they don’t want me to join I’ll start my own club — no. That was not the case. This I believe. I had heard of no order in Vallia that sought to do what I sought. . .

As a starting point the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan would serve. Balass reported back that the drunk — muttering darkly that when the Black Day dawned the Black Feathers would tear down the koters of Vallia and take all their goods — was a newly arrived trader, due to return to Xuntal. Balass looked worried. Perhaps Xuntal was already infected? I said, “I think not. If it is Hamal behind this, then their quarrel is with Vallia. If it is Phu-Si-Yantong, then—”

“Then,” said Balass, very grimly, “it is very possible.”

I could not argue. Yantong sought his maniacal ambition’s culmination in the domination of all Paz. The man was mad. Anyone who wanted to take on trying to rule these wayward folk must be mad. I’d had a bellyful, I knew, of just a very few of them.

“The ship he traveled in,” I said,

Balass nodded. “I will ask.”

Again I said nothing to indicate that Balass should have already asked. He was a hyr-kaidur, used to the arena; spying would have to be taught him.

So my days passed, gathering scraps of information, working at being Prince Majister, organizing the new order. Among the many pantheons of Kregen there is a plethora of minor godlings and spirits. One minor spirit of deviltry had, with assistance from others of his ilk, plagued me in Djanduin. I had allowed the miasmic presence of Khokkak the Meddler to influence me out of boredom and screaming helpless frustration to make myself King of Djanduin. Although, as I say, I do not think Sly the Ambitious or Gleen the Envious had a hand, there were undoubted traces of Hoko the Amusingly Malicious and Yurncra the Mischievous. These devils plague a man. There was no time during that period in Vondium without Delia for them to gain a lodgment in my thick old vosk skull. I was just too busy. One very good reason for my adopting the disguise of Nath the Gnat was to escape unpleasantness from those who sought to oust me. There were more than just the racters. Although Rafik Avandil had said,

“You have come up in the world, dom, since first we met,” and I had replied casually that I’d come into money, he provided me with a useful cloak. As Nath the Gnat I could wander freely in the city and mingle with all kinds of people in the taverns. By doing this I know I escaped many an unwanted brawl or duel. And I was learning.

So the day dawned in Opaz-brilliance when the emperor would return to Vondium. He would arrive in his imposing procession of narrow boats, drawn along the canals and through the water gate into the city. On that day I had to dress myself up and be the Prince Majister, and go down to the canal to welcome him.

Among a glittering group of high nobles and koters, all of whom — or nearly all — hated my guts, I stood, glittering in the suns-shine, watching as the haulers guided the emperor’s narrow state boat into the jetty. When all was ready and the trumpets pealed and the guard snapped to attention, he stepped ashore onto the crimson carpet. There was, as usual, a little undignified shoving to get forward — and to hell with protocol! I hung back, my left hand on my rapier hilt, watching. How the men with the white and black favors fawned about him! Yet each one would sooner see him floating facedown in the canal. The factions vied to be seen in his company. I waited as they advanced down the jetty toward the zorca chariot that would carry him through the streets so the people might see him there as well as along the canals. I saw the woman at his side. This was the fabled Queen of Lome. Banners flew, birds screeched up from the water, zorcas and totrixes scraped their hooves, officers barked orders, the crack and smash of sword and rapier as the drills were gone through, the tramp of marching feet — and over all the high shrilling yells of the crowd, welcoming their emperor back to his capital. Yes, this was a day to remember!

He saw me, standing alone, isolated, shunned by the nobles. Oh, yes, there were many nobles loyal to him, but these had gone pushing down with the rest to show that their loyalty, at any rate, was not feigned.

Standing there in all my foppish finery, for I had dressed up with the explicit intention of demonstrating my feelings for this kind of occasion, I refused to budge. Let the old devil walk past me and offer his hand, and then I would welcome him. He and I had had our moments.

Slave girls sprinkled flower petals before the feet of the emperor and this Queen of Lome. She walked with a swaying, gliding gait and she was heavily veiled, whereat a groan of dismay went up from all the assembly. I looked at her. I’d find out about her, that was for sure. So the emperor, the most powerful man in this part of Kregen, walked past on the crimson carpets. He was between me and the queen. He turned his head. He looked just the same, big and tough with that powerful head, that merciless and demanding expression. He stared at me.

“Lahal, Dray Prescot. And where is my daughter?”

“She is not here, Emperor.”

He frowned. He didn’t like me calling him emperor. “I have heard stories concerning your misdeeds. Attend me tonight. I shall demand a strict accounting from you, by Vox!”

Thirteen

I displease the Emperor of Vallia

The interview with Delia’s father was short and sharp.

“Where is my daughter?”

“She has gone about her own affairs for a space.”

“That will be the Sisters of the Rose. She’s worse than her mother. I shall have this monstrosity you are building torn down. It means nothing and wastes resources and slaves. The new bagnios will be built.”

“More slaves!” I shouted at him.

“Aye, son-in-law! You have served me well in the past, I own that. I don’t damned well like you, at least not much, and—”

“And you can believe that sentiment returned!”

“Do you forget I am emperor?”

He sat up in his lenken chair with the gold and scarlet cushions, and the gold cup shook and spilled his wine. It was his purple wine of Wenhartdrin. We were alone in that chamber where I had bargained before, where we could speak our minds — well, as much as we’d ever reveal them to each other.

“No. I don’t forget. I saw the disgusting display by these damned racter nobles. You know the plots against you? You are aware of the troubles in the northeast? Do you know your own daughter’s Delphond is growing surly and suspicious because of your stinking slavers, your foul aragorn?”

“I have to rule as best I can. By Vox, it is not an easy thing to rule an empire.”

“I know. You’ll have need of proper stabling for the flyers we must have to meet the Hamalian aerial cavalry. Yet you build more slave barracks. Your agents steal away slaves—”

“Not mine! The business is in the hands of Companies of Friends—”

“In which you have darned high stakes!”

“And if I have, do I not have enormous expenses?”

I breathed in hard. Like the scorpion said, it is in a being’s nature to be himself. Vallia had always been like this since he could remember, so why should he change it now because some wild clansman roared in to marry his daughter and shout around impossible ideas?

To get away from the explosion I saw was imminent, I said, “And this queen, this Queen of Lome, this Queen Lush?”

He fired up at this.

“The queen’s name is Queen Lushfymi! I will not have her called Queen Lush. It is an insult and I’ll have the head off the next cramph who calls her that! She is a remarkable woman.”

So wrought up was I that I did not look at him, and so must have missed the first signs.

“Since we knocked the damned Hamalese out of Pandahem,” I went on, ignoring his outburst, “it makes good sense to improve our relations with all the nations of Pandahem. I have been away—”

“Indeed, son-in-law, you have been away! And no man knows where.” I looked at him and he leaned forward, resting his elbow on the carved arm of the chair. “Mayhap you have been in Hamal again, only this time hatching up plots against me?”

I gaped at him.

Then: “You stupid onker!” I brayed it out, brayed it out to this powerful man, the emperor. “I’ve told you and told you, you are Delia’s father and therefore sacrosanct. I’d as soon skewer a Todalpheme as touch you!”

He reared up, opening his mouth, bellowing at me. He did not offer to strike the golden gong. He could deal with this himself.

“You call me onker!”

“Yes, well, if you deserve it by reason of your stupid remarks, you will get it from me.”

He lifted a lace kerchief and wiped his mouth. His hand was shaking. “You had best leave Vondium, leave at once. And, Dray Prescot, do not attempt to return until I send for you.”

I glared at him. “I’ll go and willingly. If you wake up one morning with a knife in your back or your head looking over your shoulders, don’t blame me. I have warned you.” He tried to interrupt, but I went on, and I confess I shouted louder as I said: “And if my Delia is in Vondium and I wish to return here I’ll come back whether you say so or not, by Zim-Zair!”

He lifted his finger, his hand clutching the scrap of laced kerchief. His finger shook, pointing at me.

“Get out! Get out, Dray Prescot, before I have my guards take your head off your shoulders!”

“I’m going, Majister, but remember you tried that once before, and it did not get you far. Remberee, Emperor, Remberee, and I trust you sleep well in your bed o’ nights.”

With that petty remark I took myself off, not well pleased. I didn’t care a fig about being banished from Vondium. The city is marvelous, without doubt, but I’d seen only a tithe of it and had worked and kept to the Savage Woflo and felt miserable. Now I’d find some better mischief. I dug my heels into the polished marble as I walked down the long corridor. Crimson Bowmen of Loh, standing guard at the tall double-leaved doors each with its freight of gilded ornamentation, took one look at my face and stiffened into ramrod attention, mute, unmoving, and, such was my vicious frame of mind I thought the thought without compunction, trembling in their boots lest I bawl them out. Into my own apartment I stormed and kicked an over-stuffed chair across the room. That was mere petty foolishness. If the stupid onker couldn’t see what was going on! He let the racters fawn on him. Well, he was playing their game in that, I suppose, and appeared to be shutting a very blind eye on the other parties out to topple him from his throne and place the crown upon the head of their own puppets. I removed my court clothes and selected a length of scarlet cloth of good quality. I wrapped it around my waist and drew the end up between my legs and tucked it in firmly. A broad lesten-hide belt with a dulled silver buckle held the breechclout in place. A rapier and main gauche each swung from its own swordbelt went over that. The Jiktar and the hikdar were a matched pair, given me by Delia, superb weapons. My old sailor knife went into the sheath over my right hip. I fastened a neat quiver of terchicks over my right shoulder, the swatch of throwing knives snuggling flat and out of the way. I filled a purse with golden talens and silver coins of various countries. A small scrip on the other side held a few necessaries. I was feeling mad clean through. The great Krozair longsword I slung down over my back, the cunningly fashioned double-handed handle raking up to just the right height for me to take a quick snatch and draw the whole gleaming blade free in a single action. That is a knack and a damned useful one on Kregen. I swirled a medium-length crimson cape-cloak about my shoulders and fastened off the golden zhantil-head bosses with golden chains. This was a trifle foppish, but it was worn with a reason. Then, still feeling murderous, I hung a djangir on another belt about my waist, the very short, very broad sword of Djanduin holding a special significance. Finally a great Lohvian longbow and a quiver of arrows all fletched with the blazing blue feathers from the crested korf of the Blue Mountains joined my array of weaponry and I could feel a little better.

What a get-onker I am! But resuming this familiar rig did, without doubt, serve to calm me. Where Delia was I did not know. I could not, in all honesty, make an attempt, a deliberate attempt, to seek her out. But if I went out of Vondium and trusted to Five-handed Eos-Bakchi, that chuckling Vallian spirit of luck and good fortune, might I not find her? No, I did not really think I would, for Eos-Bakchi does not favor grim faces and hard hearts. But I wanted to rid myself of the feel of Vondium, and I wanted the swift rush of air in my face and the sense of the clean onward surge of life upon Kregen to fill me and drive out the black devils clawing at me like the Imps of Sicce. It was necessary for me, dressed as I liked to be dressed, to remember to pull on a pair of black Vallian boots.

Now, over all, a massive buff Vallian cloak would conceal all, and one of those peculiar Vallian hats, wide brimmed and with two oblong slots in the front brim, could be jammed down on my hair. The feather in the hat was red and white, the colors of Valka.

Just then Turko came in, beaming, able to walk freely through into my apartment for I had given orders. He saw my cloak and hat and his face fell. Although it was quite obvious I was dressed for going out, it should be remembered that despite their preference for buff tunics and breeches, the men of Vallian culture habitually don loose lounging robes of many colors in the evening. They are seldom blue, and somewhere on them will the colors of the house or party favor be displayed.

“I had thought to try a few falls with you, Dray, but—”

“That old fool of an emperor!” I burst out. “By Krun! He’s banished me from Vondium.”

“And you’ll go?”

“Oh, aye, I’ll go! I can’t wait to get away.”

“Then we shall—”

“Oh, no, you won’t! Some of you will have to stay here and carry on the work. Just because Delia’s father is a fambly doesn’t mean we have to desert the onker.”

“Well—”

“I’ll probably go to see Inch or Seg. We’ll think of something. I want to know what Balass uncovers. And keep an eye on the Crimson Bowmen. You know half of them betrayed the emperor last time. Trust Jiktar Laka Pa-Re and his men. Discharge at once anyone who accepts a bribe if it can be proved against him. As for me, I’m off.”

“Dray!”

“Remberee, my old Turko. I’ll think of your great shield, but I doubt it’ll be necessary. When the emperor has had time to cool off I’ll reappear and this time I’ll make the old idiot understand.”

“By the time you’ve had time to cool off, you mean!”

“By Zair! Well spoken!”

“Well, by Morro the Muscle! You take care, you hear?”

“I hear.”

“I’ll come to the landing platform with you.”

“I shall ride a zorca. It is good for the liver.”

So we went out and along the ornate corridors. We passed one of the many entranceways to the apartments of the emperor and I saw a man dressed in black and silver abruptly turn and go swiftly into an adjoining passageway past an ivory statue looted from some forgotten city of Chem, I shouldn’t wonder.

I could have sworn he was Naghan Vanki, that featureless man who had so sneered at my pretensions for the hand of the emperor’s daughter. There was no sign of him as we reached the passage. Turko remarked offhandedly, “That fellow took off like a scorched sleeth. What does he hide?”

“Let it rest. The guards must know him or he wouldn’t have got this far without a pass or, if he did reach here, he’d do it with his head under his arm and with chains a-dangling.”

All the same, I was half a mind to go after Naghan Vanki, if it had been him. He’d been one of the party of the airboat Lorenztone when I’d been drugged and dumped into a thorny-ivy bush in the hostile territories.

Then Oby and Tilly and Naghan the Gnat showed up, all pleased to see me and dismayed that I was leaving. But I slowed them down and went to the zorca stables. Mounted up on Twitchnose, a fine strong zorca with a spiral horn of remarkable length jutting from his chestnut forehead, I looked at my friends.

“Remberee,” I said. And then: “By Krun! It is all Remberees for me these days.”

One or two of the grooms looked up at the oath, for that is an oath of Hamal and Havilfar. But I didn’t care. Let the emperor choke on a little more bile when his spies reported. Turko and the others offered to ride a ways with me, but the Maiden with the Many Smiles was up and the Twins would shortly follow so I declined their offer and told them to have a party instead. Then I turned Twitchnose’s head toward the Mustard Gate, which is a strong battlemented tower set in an angle of the northwest walls of Vondium.

Away to the northeast the monstrous pile of mountains known as Drak’s Seat glowered up darkly against the stars, lit by the Maiden with the Many Smiles. I rode on, sunk in odious thoughts, and the zorca riders closed in on each side.

My rapier came out in a moonlit blur of steel under the overhanging balconies where the moonblooms drank up the light. A hulking fellow swathed in a dark cloak husked out. “We mean you no harm, Prince. We are your friends.”

“What friends ride up so suddenly from the shadows?” He lifted, his hands. They were empty. The street led to the Boulevard of Grape Pressers which, bordered by an arm of the Vindelka Cut, would bring me to the gate I sought. They had chosen their spot well. The overhanging balconies, the pressing walls, the narrow slot of star glitter — yes, they had waited here for me, knowing I would pass this way. How?

The answer to that came more rapidly than I expected.

One of the fellows on my left side, a canny position, reined up. He doffed his hat. The moon showed me a thin face with bright sharp eyes, a narrow face, a hungry face. The jaws were hard and lean. I knew him.

“Strom Luthien!” I said, surprised.

“Aye, Prince. At your service.”

He was a racter. The black and white favors showed dark and bright upon his tunic and cloak and pinned to the hat he had doffed. Now he sidled his zorca closer, disregarding my rapier point like a bar of pink and golden light between us.

“There is much to be said, Prince, between the chief party of Vallia which seeks to save the empire, and the Prince Majister who has been disowned and banished by the emperor.”

Those damned secret ways in the walls of palaces? Spies had listened to the emperor and me talking privately. With a sudden gush of relief I felt reborn. This, then, was what the night held. I fancy he was surprised at my tone, for I have, as you know, a certain unsavory reputation with villains.

“Lead on, Strom Luthien. It is I who am at your service. Let us go and talk, by Vox!”

Fourteen

The racters intrigue with the Prince Majister

The fuzzy pink light from the Maiden with the Many Smiles and the golden glitter from a distant torch bracketed to a wall ran gleaming up my blade as I sheathed the rapier. We rode through the nighted streets of Vondium, this parcel of avowed racters and I. They were all apim. There are many so-called menagerie-men on Kregen, as you know, and you also know that they are men even if they are not carrying their spirits and souls in bodies exactly like those of Homo sapiens. To call them menagerie-men is to demean your own sense of your pride in matters of true value. So we rode and if you think I trusted this Strom Luthien then you misread my nature.

Vondium is a large and sprawling city, not occupied by as many inhabitants as the enclave city of Zenicce, perhaps, but large and prosperous and filled with great wealth and luxury. Up the paved roadway of one of the Hills we rode, the Hill known as the Ban’alar, past dark masses of vegetation and long walls concealing the villas of the rich. The Ban’alar holds a number of the richest houses in Vondium. We halted by a fortified gateway outside a stone wall with bronze spikes where four samphron-oil lamps cast their pleasant mellow gleam upon the guards and the gates and the shimmer weapons. The simple fact of four samphron-oil lamps conveys adequately the wealth of this house. We were passed through and rode silently along a winding pathway bordered by missals and flowering shrubs. The sweet scent of night-blooming flowers reached me, most soothing. But I kept my senses alert as we dismounted and slaves ran to attend the zorcas. We passed through ornate halls and lushly furnished corridors and so out a glass door into a crystal-walled conservatory. Heat smote me. The walls and ceiling were fashioned of fireglass and the crystal which resists great heat showed the steady beat of furnaces beyond.

The place was crammed with exotic plants, many from the jungles of Chem, and others from Zair knew where upon the face of Kregen.

In a wicker chair stuffed with cushions the Dowager Kovneva Natyzha Famphreon awaited me. I let her have a half-bow, a small mark to show irony, rather than any mark of respect.

“So you come to see me, Prince Majister.”

“The invitation was pressing.”

“Strom Luthien had his orders. You would not have been harmed.”

I looked at her. She had been carried in her palanquin this morning, joining in the rush to greet the emperor. Now she let go one of her famous barking laughs. Yes, I knew her, this famous old biddy, this Dowager Kovneva of Falkerdrin. She must now be almost a hundred and seventy. Her face contained that nut-brown, cracker-barrel experienced look of iron authority. Her mouth curved down at each corner and deep grooves extended the arc of her rattrap mouth so that all her habitual callous command lay revealed in that dominating face. Her lower lip was upthrust in a perpetual sneer. And as I could see by the way she was dressed all in gauzy silks, that carefully pampered body of hers remained as lushly alluring as ever. She kept her priorities in order, did Natyzha Famphreon. Standing with his hand on the back of her chair, her son the kov looked at me uncertainly. He was a weak-chinned, spineless nonentity, his every thought and deed ordered by his mother. That was not his fault, but rather the fault of his breeding. He was still the Pallan of the Armory, and through him his mother wielded enormous powers.

Many of the pallans, the high officials, the ministers or secretaries of state, had changed since my absence. But. Natyzha Famphreon held onto her power with iron claws.

“You say I would not be harmed. If you wish to talk I will listen for a mur or two.”

She didn’t like my tone.

“Will you remove your hat, your cloak?”

They could all see the bow stave thrusting up. The hilt of the longsword was hidden by the upstanding jut of the cloak’s collar.

It was warm. I said, “I am comfortable. Speak.”

“Let us drink a little wine first. I await others who wish to speak with you.”

As to drinking wine with these racters, that was another matter. That I had been called in for conversation meant they had a zhantil to saddle, and I fancied the purpose of my presence, alive and without a slit throat, was to make an attempt to seek my alliance. After all, however they had found out about my banishment from Vondium, they knew and therefore counted on that to make me amenable to their proposals. Those proposals must be obvious. So I refused the wine and waited for a space, removed my hat and looked about this luxurious conservatory.

What a wonderful world this planet of Kregen is! What a profusion of life seethes and ferments there!

So much there is to know of Kregen, so very much, and so pitifully little have I been able to speak into this microphone. But if you who listen to these tapes have some small inkling of the wonders of Kregen, the marvels, the beauties and the horrors, then you will grasp at the wider reality and the sheer vastness of it all. And I never forget that sheer size, although counting for a considerable amount, is by no means that most important criterion of value. Most assuredly so. So the racters, to bring back the thoughts which crowded my mind to the scene I awaited, so these racters might be the largest political party of Vallia with most of the big guns; they were not, in my view, by any means the best. Not by a chalk. Presently in came Nath Ulverswan, Kov of the Singing Forests, just the same, tall and lean and with his scarred face vivid in the fireglow. He wore a lounging robe all of deep dark purple, and the black and white favor was pinned to his shoulder. For all the informality of his attire, the rings and the jewels about him, he carried a rapier and main gauche belted up around his narrow waist. I said, “We have had no real addition to our parties to talk, kovneva.”

The old biddy cackled at this, sticking up her lower lip. Nath Ulverswan was notorious for saying so little as to be practically mute. He gave us a surly “Lahal” and sat down and the slave girls brought wine. The third attendee — one tended to discount the Kovneva’s son in these affairs, rather cavalierly, true

— turned out to be Nalgre Sultant, Vad of Kavinstok. I was hardly overjoyed to see him, for we had pointedly ignored each other during the times when official business threw us together. He did not forget my harsh treatment of him when the galleon Ovvend Barynth had been attacked by shanks. He was not only a dedicated racter; he hated my guts.

Now he stalked in, and I saw the way he postured, using those thin lips and arrogant eyes to put me in my place as a loutish clansman who had had the temerity to burst into civilized Vallia and marry the emperor’s daughter. He gave me a nasty look and sat down on the other side of the Kovneva with a mumbled “Lahal.”

I cocked an eye at Natyzha Famphreon. “Any more?”

“One only, for this night’s work.”

The trouble with these Opaz-forsaken racters was that they were evil in ways they could not understand themselves to be evil. They were not committing any consciously criminal acts. If I died, they would joy, but they would not send stikitches after me to assassinate me in a dark alley — at least I did not think so. My death would have to come as a result of an open quarrel, the legality of my demise beyond dispute. They made their money through the possession of land and all the wealth that brought. They also operated the Companies of Friends, the trading ventures of Vallia. A great deal of their wealth came from slaving and investment in slaving. With the ruthlessness of those in possession, they ensured the continuation of their wealth and with it all their fancy titles and the very real powers they had taken into their hands.

Under torture, each one, I have no doubt, would swear she or he did what they did for the ultimate good of Vallia. They believed this. This kind of conviction made it hard for anyone with differing views to make any kind of coherent sense in their eyes.

Each of these people with me now, discounting the young kov, was a personality: Natyzha Famphreon, Nath Ulverswan, Nalgre Sultant. Each was a strong personality, a real live person with passions and desires and secret hungers and fears they overcame. Of their family lives I knew little. But to them I was a mere wild clansman from the wide Plains of Segesthes, the Lord of Strombor, a man from outside who had dared to wed the Princess Majestrix and to make himself the Prince Majister. That I had won the title before the wedding would no doubt conveniently slip their memories. The last racter who wished to speak with me arrived. By the tardiness of arrival and by the sweat stains on Trylon Ered Imlien’s buff riding clothes I judged my apprehension had come with speed, and these conspirators had been summoned with great urgency. This Ered Imlien, Trylon of Thengelsax, I had seen from time to time and, knowing him to be a racter, had treated him with my usual courtesy tempered with viciousness. I supposed he detested me like all the rest, and I returned the detestation with what I hoped was greater measure.

A short, squat man with a square red face and deeply set eyes of Vallian brown, he moved with a rolling gait and boomed every word and liked to use a riding crop on his slaves just to tone ’em up, as he would say, bellowing. “So he’s here, is he!” he bawled, bashing his riding crop against his booted leg. “Well, put it to him, kovneva. Tell the rast what we want.”

This vastly amused me.

It did not amuse Natyzha Famphreon, and her lower lip thrust upward like a swifter’s beak rising over the apostis of a beamed foe. “We waited for you, Ered. Have the courtesy to bear with us.” Cutting irony was lost on Ered Imlien.

“Why wait? Time presses. The bitch queen is gloating this very minute.”

“Just so. Now, Prince Majister.” And Natyzha Famphreon gestured so that we listened and marked her words. Indeed, she was an old biddy, but she had power and was accustomed to its use. “We know you have been banished from Vondium. How does not matter.”

“Oh,” says I, very easy, interrupting. “Spies only cost gold.”

“Just so.” That was a fact of life to her, if not to me, as you know. “The emperor is no longer fit to rule. We run the empire. There is no shilly-shallying about that.”

I wanted to argue the point, but reality forbade. The emperor had the final say in many things, and he balanced party against party, but the power of the Racter party so often bent dividends and results in the directions they desired.

So I said, “I may have my disagreements with the old devil; he is sometimes impossible to live with. He hates me.” This was not exactly true. “But he does rule the empire. He keeps you racters toeing the line, for one.”

They didn’t like this. Again, it was only a half-truth.

“He hates you,” spat out Nalgre Sultant. “He is not alone in that.”

I ignored the man.

“There is no profit in supporting the emperor any longer,” said the kovneva.

“He is doomed!” bellowed out Ered Imlien, red of face, grasping his wineglass as though to splinter the delicate globe.

Movement and shadows beyond a glass screen attracted my attention. This place would be like most of the villas and palaces of Kregen, a rabbit warren of secret ways. But I fancied I could find my way out. Now I saw past the end of the glass screen the unmistakable outline of a Chulik’s head. Chuliks, powerful warriors trained from birth to the use of weapons, have oily yellow skins and shave their heads to leave a long pigtail. But the characteristic that betrayed this Chulik to me was the upthrusting tusk at the corner of his mouth. I saw this plainly. Chuliks generally command higher hiring fees than other races, Pachaks apart, and are finicky in their choice of employer. Their delicateness does not come, as it does with Pachaks, from honor or sentiment; their choice of employer rests solely on his or her ability to pay. Now this Chulik lifted his head, talking to a comrade, and the profile showed me the hard tusk lifting from his curled lip.

Two savage tusks, a Chulik has, and he uses them when he fights, as I can testify. If I had to fight an army of Chuliks here — well, wasn’t that half my reason for going with Strom Luthien in the first place?

So I dissembled a trifle and made the conversation more general, and hinted obliquely that, well, perhaps the time had come for me to give up my allegiance to the emperor. I did say at one point, rather sharply,

“But if the emperor dies, his daughter and her husband will take the throne and the crown. You have thought of that?”

“If the emperor dies you are out of it, Prescot. If he dies before things are settled the land will run red with blood, for it will mean civil war, without doubt.”

“And you would run that risk?”

“It would be no risk for us,” said the kovneva, and she chuckled in her crone-like way, her gorgeous body incongruous in the soft swathes of silk. “For we will win whatever the intervening chaos may be.”

They believe that, these high and mighty of the world.

Of course, by Makki-Grodno’s disgusting diseased left kidney, it is often true.

“Do you expect me to connive at the murder of my father-in-law?”

“If you were a man with blood of Vallia in him, if you had the breeding, then it would be nothing to you.”

I did not say, “If that is breeding a fellow is better off without it.” But it was a near thing. The swathing buff cloak could be ripped off in a twinkling. Depending on the danger, it would be the longbow or the longsword. Either would suit me in my frame of mind. Eventually they offered a deal in which I would have no part of the death of the emperor and in which I would keep all the lands and titles I now held in Vallia with the exception of Prince Majister. They could not know how little I valued that. In return I was not to oppose them, and was to make sure my people did not interfere during the coup. I asked about this, but they were too cagey to give me any details. Without attempting to imply any false modesty, it seemed to me they were anxious to get me out of the coming conflict because they feared my influence. They must have some apprehension of what I could do. Otherwise the terms would not have been so generous. Whether or not they’d keep their side of the bargain would be in the laps of the gods.

Had I been acting only for myself, for the old impetuous Dray Prescot who thumped before he thought, I’d have roared out some obscene suggestion at them and then gone swinging into action. I felt a keen regret that I could not do this. I needed the exercise. But more than mere gratification of my injured ego hung on this. The fate of Vallia depended to a very great deal on what was decided here in this conservatory. It was in my interest to appear to go along with them, giving them rope, so that I might more surely bring them down into ruin.

So I said, “Let me think about this. There is the Princess Majestrix to be considered.”

Ered Imlien burst out with: “Do not worry your head over her, you onker. The Princess Dayra occupies her mind.”

Furious, Natyzha Famphreon rose from her wicker chair. “Speak not of things of which you know nothing, you fambly!” She would have gone on. But I took a few steps toward this Ered Imlien and clutched up his buff tunic in my fist and shook his head a little and I glared into his eyes.

“But you had best speak to me, rast! And quickly!”

Fifteen

Of Natyzha Famphreon’s chavonths, and her son

“Speak up, cramph!” I loosed my grip a little and some air flowed down with a great whooping gasp into his lungs. His face was a bright purple, like a rotten gregarian. He wheezed. I thought his eyes might roll out of his head. So I shook him again, just to keep him in the right frame of mind. He choked out: “The Princess Dayra, she is nothing more than a—”

I hit him before he could say whatever he was going to say.

I suppose I was oversensitive about my daughters because I had held my Velia in my arms as she died. I could never forget that — what father could? So I hit him again and said, “Speak carefully, Imlien, speak very carefully.”

“I do not know!” he blubbered out, his face already beginning to swell, a trickle of blood down his chin from a split lip. “I hear only that she—”

“Careful!”

“She runs wild! I cannot tell more for I do not know!”

I became aware of the conservatory again, and of the others frozen in postures of horror. The Chuliks had trotted out from behind their glass screen, their weapons ready, and the kovneva waved them down. If they wanted a fight, by Vox! I was in the mood now, right enough, to my shame.

“He speaks the truth, Dray Prescot! No one knows what your daughter Dayra is up to. That is where the Princess Majestrix has gone. More than that no woman knows.”

I let Ered Imlien fall to the floor. I glared at the kovneva. “You are not of the Sisters of the Rose?”

She drew that gorgeous body up and her lean crone-like face sharpened. “No.”

She made no offer to tell me which order owned her allegiance. I did not ask. She would not have said if she did not wish to.

“It seems,” I said, “that if we make a deal I shall have to watch this lump of offal.”

“I will answer for him. He is a trylon. Thengelsax is too close to the northeast for his comfort. His estates are raided. He is foolish only in his concern for his estates.”

“And his people?”

“They fight for him as is their duty.”

The idea that Dayra had something to do with the raids from those hard folk of the northeast crossed my mind. But it seemed too preposterous. And, anyway, was not all the island one? Was not Vallia Vallia?

Perhaps there were no raids at all, and this was an invention of this miserable Ered Imlien to his own dark ends. I looked at him. He was drawing himself up and quite automatically reaching out for his riding crop. If he’d attempted to hit me with it I hadn’t noticed. But it was broken in half. Had I done that?

“You have shamed me, Prince,” he said, and the words gritted out through his teeth.

“Not so, Imlien. Not so. You have shamed yourself.”

“One day—”

“Ered! Keep silence!” Natyzha Famphreon glowered on the miserable trylon and Ered Imlien turned away, muttering, but he kept silence as far as I was concerned.

To the kovneva I spoke and I admit with some trepidation. I was astounded at the quality of my voice. It hardly sounded like the bull-headed, vicious, intemperate Dray Prescot I knew.

“And can you tell me nothing more about my daughter?”

She shook her head. I thought, but could not be sure, that a dark gleam of triumph crossed those arrogant features.

“Nothing more is known.”

There was nothing more I could find out. Whatever it was that Delia had gone to sort out, I could only hope that she and Melow would be successful and return swiftly to me. They had to be successful! We had lost one daughter. We could not bear to face the anguish of the loss of another.

I forced myself to calm down. I could trust my Delia. She was supremely competent in these matters. I had a job to do here and that I must do. There was one other matter I wished to discuss before I left here, either walking out with all due civility, battling my way out with the Krozair brand in my fists or carried out feet first.

So I smashed myself out of that fearful frame of mind. One must, as they say on Kregen, accept the needle.

“We have ranked our deldars in this matter of the emperor,” I said. “And we agree I shall think on it. Tell me, Natyzha Famphreon, what know you of the Black Feathers?”

Her arrogant old head went up at this. She started to walk between lines of potted plants, twirling the green fronds. We all walked with her, although Ered Imlien kept well clear of me. The onker was swishing his broken half of the riding crop about and trying to bash his boot and hitting his knee, whereat I was minded to laugh.

“The Black Feathers? Ah, you have heard of them?”

I said in a nasty voice, “If I had not heard of them I would scarcely be able to ask you.”

She had the self-consciousness to flush up at this, at my suggestion, at my tone. She snapped a twig from a sweet little loomin, and twitched the flower about, not gently.

“The provinces are full of rumors. Nothing certain is known, as nothing is certain about anything in this life.”

“The provinces, but Vondium?”

“I gave orders to my crebents of my estates to root out the priests. They did not catch one. Here in Vondium I have heard nothing.” Then the sly old besom glanced at me and drew the mauve and white flowers down her cheek. “Perhaps you, Prince Majister, are of the Chyyanists?”

“I have no time for slallyfanting in this, kovneva. I too have attempted to root out the evil and now, I think, it is time for stronger measures. You are aware of the creed preached by the priests of the Great Chyyan?”

She flicked the flower. “I care not. They are not of Opaz and therefore are damned beyond redemption.”

Had this old biddy been a commoner she would undoubtedly have formed one of the people in the long chanting processions that wound through Vondium. “Oolie Opaz! Oolie Opaz!” they chanted, up and down, singsong after singsong cadence. “Oo-lie O -paz! Oo -lie O -paz!” On and on and on.

“I know they wish to break our heads and take all that is ours,” said Nalgre Sultant. He looked vicious and mean, a very natural expression for him. “Red revolution! Aye! That is what these Chyyanists want.”

I did not think these nobles had penetrated as far as we had in discovering details of the Chyyanists. I pondered. It might be advisable to tell them more than they already knew. I detested the racters. They had the power and the money. The Chyyanists wanted to take that money and with it the power, in the here and now. Those ends were admirable, in one sense, if they could be achieved reasonably. But red revolution is not reasonable and I have had a hand in more than one red revolution. Once you start to sweep away the old, the process can get out of hand. If Vallia ran red with blood from any cause, I would sorrow. And I did not believe the designs of Makfaril were simple honest revolution. How, once a little power is put into your hands, the evil and corruption grow!

So I told them what we had discovered. They took these revelations seriously. They would. They were experienced people with much at stake.

“Then the Chyyanists present a present threat.” The kovneva had stopped twiddling with her flower.

“Once the temple is brought to Vondium and the priests begin to suborn the masses . . . Slaves too, I hear, are sometimes present in the congregations.”

“They aim to enslave the racters,” I said with some satisfaction.

“That has been tried before and was ruthlessly put down. Once the temple is erected in Vondium the evil will gain a greater hold. We must watch every entrance and stop these priests. The idol you describe is not an easy thing to move.”

“I’ll get my men down to the docks,” said the kov, the kovneva’s son, and we all turned to look at him, shocked, as though a ghost had spoken.

“Yes, my son.” The kovneva spoke in a soothing tone. “You do that”

No real surprise could be felt by me that these highly placed nobles should know of the Chyyanists. This kind of information would flow into their bureaus all the time. Now they would take more concern over the Black Feathers. This all added up. It all made sense. But I was banished from Vondium. I said, “I am banished from Vondium. I shall leave now, unless you have any other ideas, and see what I can do in the provinces. I am concerned over the Great Chyyan.” I had told them that Hamal could be the basis of the new creed, but they indicated that did not signify. They’d smash Hamal when the time came. Even Nath Ulverswan was almost reconciled to that view. The main threat, as they saw it, was against themselves. There was no point in my telling them that my chief concern, a concern almost approaching a guilty anguish, was for the poor deluded people who believed this evil creed and imagined they might indulge in all the goodness of Kregen, at once, in the here and now. These noble racters would never comprehend that point of view.

Further talk and a little more bargaining more or less sealed the compact in the view of the racters. If they suspected I merely toyed with them, for I was scrupulous in not giving my word, they did not reveal it. If I was going to have to fight my way out, that, too, did not appear on the surface. The Chuliks had gone, dismissed by a wave of the kovneva’s hand. We walked through the farther recesses of the conservatory. It was a remarkable place. Cages had been positioned about in which were kept examples of many kinds of wild animals, so the place was also a miniature zoo. I said, “We are now talking in circles. I will leave.” I gave a hitch to the cloak and brought the hat up ready to clap it on my head. I was ready, also, to whip out longbow or longsword and swirl the cloak back out of the way for action.

On the way in here I’d observed the fantamyrrh as was proper. It occurred to me I might not be in the mood to observe it on the way out.

Intrigue and dark secrets flourished here as the exotic plants flourished in their heated glass houses. The passions and the feral viciousness here were scarcely matched by the savage beasts penned in their cages.

A number of the kovneva’s Chail Sheom, her pretty little slave girls in their silks and bangles and silver chains, trailed after her carrying her fan and her perfumes and the gewgaws inseparable from a great lady of high rank. Two hulking fellows carried her chair. I had given these slaves a casual glance and saw their hangdog expressions. They brightened up with smiles and laughs when the kovneva looked at them, which is the way of slaves. It sickened me.

Now, as we stood there with the intrigues between us and the secret passions held down, as we made our plans and no doubt made alternative plans to deal more effectively each with the other, so the realization struck through to me that I, that same Dray Prescot who had so ruthlessly driven the slavers from Valka and had fought them over the fair surface of Kregen, was in reality standing here and plotting with Zair-forsaken slave masters and slave profiteers.

I moved away, gripping the hat, stood by a cage in which a graint shambled upright to grip the bars. The others moved with me and I didn’t give a damn if they saw my face and guessed my thoughts. At that moment I’d have cheerfully seen them all consigned to the Ice Floes of Sicce. A scattering screech and a ripping, tearing, chopped-off scream from the cages we had just passed brought us all around to stare upon a scene of horror.

Two feral beasts leaped from the blood-streaming wreckage of a half-naked slave girl to smash a second away with a splintered skull and to spring on two more. The beasts were chavonths. Past them I saw the two chair men running. Someone had deliberately opened the cage. Someone who hated the Dowager Kovneva Natyzha Famphreon had released these savage killer beasts upon us. The scene etched itself on my brain. The parallel lines of cages with their heavy iron bars. The maddened beasts within, scenting freshly spilled blood, joined in the savage chorus. The slave girls huddled, naked arms upraised, silks splashed with blood, feathers and fans and jewels spilling across the floor. The chavonths chewed up their victims and turned, their muzzles smeared, to glare with venomous fury upon us.

And the nobles, these racters, screamed and clawed and ran past me screeching their fear, to find their way blocked by a stout iron grille at the end of the row of cages. Whoever had planned this had schemed well. I fancied the chair men were the culprits. They had run free, arguing a pre-knowledge. But they had so arranged affairs that the chavonths penned us in against iron bars. We were the caged, the chavonths the masters now!

Chavonths are known as treacherous beasts. They are six-legged hunting cats, powerful, and their fur is patterned in hexagons of blue, gray and black. Their fangs may not match those of a leem, their speed not equal that of a strigicaw, but they can smash a man’s head in, their claws can disembowel a poor naked slave girl.

Nalgre Sultant pushed past me and ran for the end of the alleyway and stood, shaking the iron bars that blocked him off, screaming, screaming. Ered Imlien swung away, his red bloated face green. Nath Ulverswan gripped the arm of Natyzha Famphreon and they stood, crouched with their backs to the bars, glaring with awful horror upon the death that snarled at them. The chinless nincompoop, Natyzha’s son, Kov of Falkerdrin, stepped forward. He drew his rapier and main gauche. I could see the side of his face, see the sweat dripping there, the way his teeth caught his upper lip. His body trembled. But he stepped out before his mother and the twin blades he held caught the fireglass glow and gleamed.

The dowager kovneva husked out a word. “Jikai!” she said.

This would not be a Jikai — well, perhaps a little one — but it would prove to be highly instructive, that was for sure.

I said, “This is not work for a rapier, kov.”

His voice panted. “That I know. But it is all the weapon I have, that and my dagger.”

I threw off the swathing buff cloak and unfastened the golden zhantil heads and tossed down the gold-laced crimson cape-cloak. Then I drew the Krozair longsword, for the time for bowmanship had passed. Seg might not have agreed, but I knew what I knew about the Krozair brand.

“When they leap, Prince,” said this young kov, “do you take the left hand one and I—”

“Give them no time to spring,” I said, and took the Krozair longsword’s hilt into both my spread fists and so charged forward, swinging the brand up in a deadly arc of steel. Through all the hubbub I heard the gasps of horror at my back. What I looked like Zair alone knows. I hurtled forward. The chavonths had given me no time to smash forward to save the slaves; all were dead or fled. Everything had happened with shocked speed, a few heartbeats separating the first scream and the instant I sprang.

This was what living on Kregen was all about, this horrific transformation, in an instant, from peaceful living to berserk toy, from graciousness to terror.

This must be done right the first time, and quick, damned quick. . . The two chavonths did not leap exactly together and so I was able to position and slash at the first. The gleaming blade of the longsword swept in that vicious chopping circle as my hands and wrists and forearms rolled over, and the muscles of my back ridged and extended and I felt all the old pull and power. The steel sliced through the chavonth’s furred hide just above his left forequarter — his left foresixth — and I went with the blow and rolled away and the slashing claws razored past. A single roll brought me up and a single twist turned me and a single leap brought me from the side against the second chavonth. The Krozair brand licked out like a bar of blood. I drove it point first into the lean furry flank. A blue hexagon imploded. The onward rush of the great beast almost snatched the sword from me, but a Krozair knows how to hold onto a sword hilt. I gave a vicious twist and then withdraw, swirling the blade instantly into an overhand chop that crunched down on the chavonth’s backbone just abaft his center pair of legs.

The yelling shrieking of the wounded chavonths erupted in the iron-barred area, the stink of freshly spilled blood poured out in a warm effluvium. There was no time to stop. This beast was done for, although he spat and clawed futilely at the air and at his ruined back. The chinless kov was trying to get in at the first chavonth, trying to dart his slender rapier in past the wicked claws of its remaining legs. I hurled myself forward in a desperate rush and almost, almost I saved him completely.

But a wickedly tipped claw swept in from the side and gashed all down his ribs and he shrieked and fell back and then I was on the chavonth and the terrible Krozair longsword rose and fell, rose and fell, and three blows took the poor chavonth’s head clean off.

Natyzha Famphreon had not fainted. Nalgre Sultant, seeing the dead and dying cats, dragged out his rapier and made a great show of coming forward, twirling the blade, ready to face all comers. Nath Ulverswan kept his grip upon the kovneva. Ered Imlien reluctantly walked forward. He was not afraid, that I knew, but he had not considered what had happened as being possible. I bent to the kov. His chinless face, so unlike the chinless, pop-eyed face of Chido, glared up at me and a grin ricked his lips. His side was badly torn, but he would live. He was in some pain.

“I tried. . .” He spoke with an effort. “My mother . . . it was my duty . . . but . . . but a rapier. . .”

“Lie still, kov.” His name was Nath, but I could not call him Nath. There are many Naths on Kregen.

“Lie still.” I looked up at the others, all recovering from the fright, all sorting out the story they would tell.

“You zigging cramphs!” I bellowed. “Run and send for a doctor! Run, you nurdling onkers!”

Ered Imlien ran past the corpses of slaves, the dead and dying chavonths, swirling his rapier, to fetch a doctor.

I held this Kov Nath of Falkerdrin, easing him, feeling only a vast pity, a contempt that embraced all his stupid family and the pride that sustained them. I glared at Nalgre Sultant.

“Fetch cloths from the dead slaves, Sultant. We must staunch the wounds. Jump to it, you rast!”

He jumped.

So we waited for the doctor, for I would not allow Kov Nath to be moved. He lapsed into unconsciousness as the doctor arrived, so the acupuncture needles to ease his pain were not necessary and the doctor, a client of the house, could get to work to stop the bleeding and to draw the ragged wounds together and apply his healing paste. Some doctors of Kregen are useless, many are expert; one chooses where one can.

I stood up.

“I am leaving.” I picked up my cloak and the cape-cloak. “I will wash elsewhere, wash this place from me. Until I see you again, Natyzha Famphreon, take good care of that son of yours. Maybe we have all misjudged him. Perhaps all Vallia is wrong about him.” Then I went out and no one offered to stop me and I did not observe the fantamyrrh.

Sixteen

Kadar the Hammer rides north to Seg Segutorio

Now began a period of my life on Kregen that, even now, looking back, I cannot decide if I should curse horribly over it or simply stand with my fists on my hips and roar with laughter. It was all a great foolishness. I made my way by the dusty roads northwestward. When it rained in a lashing gale of Kregen that drenched everything and everyone the roads turned to a quagmire and it was useless to attempt to flounder on. Then I sought sanctuary. After leaving Natyzha Famphreon’s house where we had hatched intrigues against the emperor, I had called again at our villa in Vondium — the Valkan villa owned by Delia and myself — and besides having a long and glorious bath, taking the full Baths of the Nine, I equipped myself a little more lavishly for the journey.

The villa did not see us all that often, for we stayed at the emperor’s command in the wing of the palace given over to our use. But everything was ready, as it was bound to be. So I took a strong preysany loaded with supplies, with a harness or two of armor, spare weapons, provisions. Also I packed the old brown blanket cloak and the bamboo stick with the concealed blade. That had served before; it might serve again.

During the ride north to Seg’s estates of Falinur I was embroiled only in four small skirmishes and rode for my life only once, preferring that to fighting the stinking pack of drikingers who howled hairily at me from the roadside and hurled stones and spears and would have skewered me through had I not ducked and clapped in spurs.

This kind of flight was a different matter from running from one’s foes. These poor devils might be evil in the eyes of honest folk, but all in good time my plans called for the alleviation of the conditions that created bandits, if it could be contrived, rather than for the removal of the drikingers themselves. The zorca-ride jolted up the old liver, as I had said. I am fond of the canals and the canalfolk of Vallia, but somehow this canter through the heart of Vallia seemed more in keeping. The canal folk are a staunchly independent lot, and the men and women of the cuts do not call themselves koters and koteras as do the gentry of Vallia; they are vens and venas. But as I passed through the green countryside I would stop at bridges over the canals and talk and spend some time, for I was maturing plans and had no wish to rush. After all, I was not hurrying to a rendezvous with Delia. A strong eastward swing was advisable toward the north of Vindelka for the Ocher Limits thrust a tongue-like protrusion between that province and Seg’s Falinur to the north. I made no attempt to revisit either of the Delkas, and decided firmly against a sentimental side trip to the Dragon’s Bones. All through this central portion of the island large lakes are to be found, with the Great River twining through, and the canals boring on with man’s ingenuity at work to maintain the levels by lock and lift. So I trotted on and entered the Kovnate of Falinur and at once I saw what Seg meant about the demeanor of his people.

They did not offer hostility, although they did not know who I was, and when I put up at an inn and told them my name was Kadar the Hammer they merely sniffed and took no more than the usual notice of a stranger one expects. But the undercurrents were strong. As a simple smith, for that is what they took me to be, out seeking some gainful employment, I posed only the threat of any itinerant labor to the homegrown product. But a laughing group of koters passed, tyrs and kyrs and even a strom, and these gentry aroused dark hidden looks of anger and envy. Falinur, as Seg had said, was like to erupt in violence at any moment.

These people had backed their late kov against the emperor with the third party and had lost. So why should that still rankle? Perhaps, for I did not bring the precise subject up, perhaps it was not that which was causing their hostility to Seg. Whatever it was, we had to put it aright by fair means. Any other way would be as abhorrent to Seg as to myself. Anyway, with tough independent people as are most Vallians, brutal repression would repercuss with a vengeance.

A shrunken little fellow with one eye and swathed in furs against an imagined cold gave me a portion of the answer. He rode a hirvel and led a long string of calsanys, all loaded down with trinkets that this ob-Eye Enil hawked from village to village. We rode together for a space, and I listened.

“Aye, Kadar the Hammer! You may well ask. We ride through Vinnur’s Garden here and the land is rich.” His one eye swiveled alarmingly to regard me with cunning. “And where the land is rich, there, by Beng Drangil, men will fight and kill for it.”

The Great River which bordered Falinur’s eastern flank made a kinked loop to the east here on the border between Falinur and Vindelka. The Ocher Limits ended to the west. In the fertile area of Vinnur’s Garden riches could be won by agriculture on the fertile eastern sections by mining on the more barren western. The border between the two kovnates ran to the north of Vinnur’s Garden. The people living there had been under the rule of both Vindelka and Falinur at differing times. Now Vindelka demanded their loyalty, and their taxes. But many folk north and south of the border wished that dividing line to be redrawn much farther to the south, cutting off Vinnur’s Garden from Vindelka and giving it to Falinur. It was scarcely necessary for Ob-Eye to say, “But the new kov of Falinur, this Seg Segutorio whose past is a mystery, refuses to countenance any move against Vindelka.”

Ob-Eye wandered the central portions of Vallia, and although he confided that he had been born in Ovvend, he could look upon these squabbles with the single eye of the interested observer. I knew why Seg would not allow his people to go raiding down into Vinnur’s Garden, why he made no move to annex the place from the Kov of Vindelka. For this Kov of Vindelka was Vomanus, a good comrade to Seg and me, and we had fought at that immortal battle at the Dragon’s Bones. But I sensed this did not explain all the hostility to Seg and Thelda. As we rode north and left the parochial problem of Valinur’s Garden to the rear, still the impression I received was one of implacable hatred to the Kov of Falinur. I own I was put out by this, upset, angry and baffled. There were slaves still in Falinur, though there were not many. And I gained some more insight. Acting not just because it was my way but from honest conviction, Seg had given orders that from henceforth no slaves would be allowed in his kovnate. He was obeyed surlily and his edict was broken more and more often, for all that his guards rode to stamp out the evil. One consequence of the abolition of slavery, in intention if not yet in fact, was the resurgence of the slavers who preyed where pickings were ripest. This added another strand; it still did not explain it all. So, taking the chunkrah by the horns, I began direct questions about the Black Feathers.

The answers Ob-Bye gave me filled in about another fifty percent of the problem. Yes, there were temples and priests and traveling churches spreading the great word and, by Beng Drangil, the great day is coming, the Black Day, and in that day will the Great Chyyan reward all his loyal followers! Thus spake Ob-Eye Enil, swearing by Beng Drangil, the patron saint of hawkers. This was no fantasy. This was stark reality. As I jogged along toward Seg’s kovnate capital city of Falanriel, a place which, despite its architecture, I always looked forward to visiting, I realized more and more the hold the Chyyanists had on these people.

On a day when the suns broke through scattered clouds and the joy of living should have burst all worries — and, sadly, did not — we trotted through a ferny dell. With horrid shrieks designed to chill us, the drikingers leaped from the ferns, waving their clanxers and rapiers and spears, roaring at us to surrender or be chopped.

With a curse I ripped out the clanxer scabbarded to Twitchnose. A smith may carry samples of his wares. If it came to it I’d use the longsword on them.

Then I checked. The bandits closed up around us, fierce, hairy men with thickly bearded faces and bright merry eyes, darting the points of their weapons at us. But Ob-Eye pulled out a leather wallet from his loose tunic, opened it, waved a scrap of black feather in the air.

“Peace, brothers!” he squeaked. He was only a little frightened, I saw, and marveled. “We are all Chyyanists together, you and I. Listen to what Makfaril has said through his priests, listen and rejoice, for the day is coming.”

And then these fearsome bandits set up a yelling and a hullabaloo and crowded around, laughing, slapping their thighs and bellowing greetings, and every other sentence had to do with the Black Feathers. In no time a fire had been lit and we were sitting around listening and smelling roasting vosk haunch. The wine went around. It was good too, plunder from a vintner’s caravan. Good humor prevailed, although the leader, a ferocious villain with a spade beard he had threaded with gold wire and with golden earrings that caught the lights of the fire and of the suns, did bellow out, “By Varkwa the Open-Handed! If many more travelers are Chyyanists the pickings will be small!”

“But soon all Vallia will be ours for the looting!” bellowed his lieutenant, and the gang set up a racket of laughter and promises of what they would do on the Black Day. Chief among these was the heartfelt desire to go into Falanriel and sack the place and take all. And what they would do to the kovneva, the high and mighty, stuck-up, prideful and ignorant Kovneva Thelda, would have set the Ice Floes of Sicce alight.

I chewed on succulent vosk and kept my face down. Listening would help more than a stupid sword-swinging affray. Was this another piece of the puzzle? Was poor Thelda, who always meant well, overdoing her part as a kovneva? She loved the title and took immense pride in her status. Yet once in the long ago she had been forced to spy and scheme for the racters. Now my good comrade Seg had her in his keeping. I made a little vow that not only would I speak to Thelda as a friend, I’d stick a length of steel blade into any of these drikinger cramphs who tried to harm a hair of her head. But, all the same, she could be a terribly tiresome woman, and goodheartedly never be aware of it. There could now be no doubt that the Chyyanist creed had caught on like a prairie fire here in Falinur. An attempt had been made to spread the word in Veliadrin. Delphond had been under attack — I was sure Delia was right and there was the black feather to prove it — even though we did not know how far the Chyyanists had reached there. I fancied that Inch in the Black Mountains and Korf Aighos in the Blue Mountains would be facing the same challenge.

If I allowed myself to be swayed by the megalomania I have been accused of, I could see a clear pattern. But Natyzha Famphreon and the other racters knew of the Black Feathers, and their provinces had been infiltrated also. Makfaril, whoever he was, surely intended to sound the call for the Black Day at the same time all over Vallia. With a little knowledge I have of human nature, with a little knowledge of running affairs of state, and with the knowledge borne in on me by the demeanor of bandits around the campfire, I knew with a dark foreboding that Makfaril might not be able to hold his followers to his timetable. The explosion might erupt at any moment, triggered by any silly stupid event. The day of the Black Feathers could strike tomorrow. . .

That ride up through the heart of Valka was all a great foolishness. Bits of it recur to me now. I had hoped the long ride would soothe me and calm me down, but the more I saw and heard the more fraught and tense I became. And the burden of my fear, a true and deeply abiding fear, must be shown by the first words I spoke to Seg after the joyful Lahals.

“And the news from Delia, Seg? Where is her letter?”

He shook his head. “No letter from Delia has arrived here, Dray. There are packages for you forwarded on, flown in from Vondium and Valka, and coming from — well, you know the names.”

I did. There would be estate information from Strombor and chunkrah counts from Hap Loder and the Clansmen. There would be news from Kytun and Ortyg in Djanduin. But I hungered to hear from Delia, for now I knew she struggled against some unknown evil that threatened our daughter Dayra. I asked after Thelda, and Seg spread his hands and said she had been visiting in Vondium and was momentarily expected.

The impression Seg gave was that he wanted to take up his great longbow and go ask the emperor to repeat the words that had banished me. I fancied the emperor would find life exceedingly uncomfortable thereafter if he did repeat them.

“Well, by Vox! how long does he think to keep you banished, the old onker?”

“Only from Vondium. And the Black Feathers have not sprouted there as yet.”

“Come and wet that dusty throat of yours and let us see what we may contrive.”

We went down from the battlemented gateway and so across the outer yard and through the inner walls and up through narrow winding stairways of stone into Seg’s private chambers in the Fletcher’s Tower. Once it had been the Jade Tower, but Seg had changed all that. This castle fortress of his, frowning down over the city of Falanriel, had been built to withstand a protracted siege. Seg kept the place amply stocked. He had a small guard of Bowmen of Loh, backed up by a regiment of Pachaks with a few other diffs in their different specialities. He was no fool, was Seg Segutorio, over these matters, with the wild fey ways and shrewd practicality of his mountain people.

All the same, as we sat and drank in the quiet ease of his rooms, I had to say, “It does look as though we are the high and mighty of the land now, and grind down the poor.”

“To the Ice Floes with that, my old dom!” Seg looked annoyed. “I was a miserable starveling, a mercenary, a slave. I know. If a man works in my province of Falinur he is assured of a living and of comfort.”

“Slaves?”

Seg made a face and drank his wine. “These devils are sly and secret and run slaves no matter what I do to stop ’em.”

“Vinnur’s Garden—”

He did not let me go on. “My nobility here, all owing their fine estates to me, all prate on and on about marching into Vinnur’s Garden and taking it for Falinur. But Vomanus—”

“He is seldom at home. He is almost as much of an absentee landlord as I am.”

“Well, I have put in my stint here. And it looks as though I’d have done better to have stayed in Vondium, or visited Erthyrdrin again, for all the good I have done here.”

When I told him, during the course of our long talk through the evening and most of the night, about Natyzha Famphreon and the chavonths, he grimaced and said, “I’d rather not hear what she did to her slaves. They’d all be punished to make sure the guilty got it in the neck, to the devil with the innocent”

“Aye.”

“And they actually expected you to fight your father-in-law?”

“Not exactly fight him. But certainly not assist him.”

“Remember the Dragon’s Bones?”

“Now there was a bonny little fracas.”

“Bonny little fracas! Dray, Dray! That was High Jikai!”

“I wouldn’t have said so, but it was squeaky, all the same.”

“Those days when you and Delia and Thelda and I marched across the hostile territories! Ah, but they’ll never come again.”

I was not at all sure of that. Kregen is a world of ups and downs. So we talked on through the night, amicably drinking, and our thoughts were as often of the stirring past adventures as of the terrors of the future and the problems we faced.

Two days later Thelda arrived back in Falanriel, flushed, bright-eyed, bouncing, filled with glowing stories of her time in Vondium. She had been desolated that her great friend Delia had not been there. Of all her sprightly babble we took the due meed of attention. “And the dear queen! Queen Lushfymi! What a charming woman she is, and so regal. I own she has quite won me over. And yet the ignorant fools call her Queen Lush. It really is a disgrace.”

Seg asked a casual question about the Queen of Lome and Thelda fired up instantly. “Beautiful, oh, yes!

She is radiant. And so cultured. She is rich too. Lome is not the largest country in Pandahem, but her wealth is dazzling. The presents she brought, the length of the procession — the animals and the people and the displays — you should have seen it all, my dear. You would have enjoyed it.”

“I’m sure,” said Seg, looking at me with a straight face.

Seg and Thelda loved each other; that was true, and gave me great joy. When couples split apart friends are hurt also. I felt as confident as of anything that Seg and Thelda knew each other well enough by now. As for their children, the eldest son, named Dray for some odd quirk of desire on Seg’s part, was off adventuring. The twins were at school. No — here Thelda pursed her lips up most comically — Silda, the girl, was with the Sisters of the Rose.

I sat up.

“But you are a Sister of Patience, Thelda.”

“It’s none of your business, my dearest Dray, for you are a man. But, yes, I am. And Silda hankered so after the SoR I had to let her go. I own it mystifies me.”

In his droll way, Seg said, “Delia was mystified too.”

So, of course, that explained it. It also made me think again about what I both might and ought to do. A very great deal of our conversations concerned Queen Lushfymi, the Queen of Lome. Lome is the country situated in the northwest of Pandahem where the long east-west central chain of mountains sweeps up northwestward and, extending out to sea, forms the straggling line of the Hoboling Islands. Lome is rich although not overlarge, occupying the space east of the mountains to the border with Iyam. East of Iyam lies Menaham, occupied by the Bloody Menahem. Then comes Tomboram where I harbored most guilty memories of Tilda and Pando. And, in the jutting northeast corner of Pandahem is situated Jholaix. One smacks ones lips at the thought of Jholaix.

So after the Vallians had kicked the Hamalese out of Pandahem after the Battle of Jholaix, it seemed the emperor was attempting to make friends with at least one nation of Pandahem, for that whole island had been in a state of near-conflict with Vallia for many seasons. I welcomed this move. It was statesmanship at the level I sought. I devoutly wished Vallia and Pandahem to come together in comradeship, at first against Hamal and then, and much more importantly, to stand together with other countries of Paz against the raids of the shanks from the other continental grouping on the other side of Kregen. What with talking about Queen Lushfymi and arranging a party for the castellan’s eldest son who was about to go off to be a mercenary, disdaining service under his father, Thelda was kept busy. Seg and I rode and hunted and talked and drank. But for his generally subdued air, Seg was in good spirits, considering the circumstances. He got through a prodigious amount of work. But for the malignant animosity in which these confounded idiots of Falinur held him, he would have been a perfect kov. As for Thelda, she was quite wrapped up in her own doings and seemed unaware of the atmosphere. Seg had even refused to go up to Vondium to greet the emperor on his return, as Inch had likewise not gone, because of his concern.

How I felt the old guilty stab that, when I asked him, he would always manage to get away to aid me!

And more importantly, how he would race across half a world to rescue me from a sticky corner, as you will know.

Only two sword-swinging occasions of note occurred during that stay in Seg’s castle of Falanriel, the castle some men called the Falnagur. I will speak of one only, seeing that the other bore on threads of intrigue outside my present concerns, but intrigues that were to plague me woefully in later days, as you shall hear.

The messenger staggered through the main gate, his zorca dead a dwabur down the track, his blood bedabbling his hacked armor. The story was soon told, and familiar. As we mounted up and set spurs to our mounts and galloped headlong out through the frowning gateway of the Falnagur, I found I harbored deep agonies of indecision. Could I cut down some poor wight of a ponsho farmer, a chunkrah herder, a vosk breeder, because they had been willfully misled by the devil Makfaril and his creed of Chyyanism?

We rode through the night with the moons casting down their fuzzy pink and golden lights, our shadows blobs of purple darkness, the sound of the hooves and the clattering of armor clear warning to all who would listen.

Seg had placed a number of people he thought loyal and hardworking in positions of trust, trying wherever possible to choose native Falinurese. But as a result these folk were regarded as the minor nobility, which they were and hated accordingly by the rest. In a steading a mere three and a half dwaburs off along a tributary of the Great River, Tarek Nalgre Lithisfer was besieged and near to exhaustion. We rode. A tarek is of the minor baronage, a gift within the giving of a kov. Seg had told me of Tarek Nalgre, saying he valued him. Now the Black Feathers had risen openly against him, burning barns and dreadfully killing women and children, and I knew that a bamboo stick might not be enough, that the edge of steel might horrendously have to be employed.

In any event, we were able to ride and scatter the besieging people. Mixed with my remorse I found a little comfort in the fact that the hard core of the besiegers was formed of a body of drikingers, three or four bands joined together to effect the mischief. We fought them. Seg’s Bowmen shot their terrible shafts. His Pachaks twirled their tailhands and the blades glittered under the moons. Yes, we fought these bandits, for the country folk mostly ran when we galloped up.

But I did not enjoy the work. I mention it to illustrate just how far the malcontents had aroused the countryside and in allying themselves with the Black Feathers acquired a kind of respectability in the eyes of the ordinary folk. It is often thus. Bandits, knaves, villains, all take on the jargon of a new and zealous creed, an idealistic revolutionary appeal, and use what is honest and subvert it to their own dark ends. Had Chyyanism been an honest religion, had Seg and his baronage been ruthless tyrants, then the situation would have been entirely different. Although it seemed I fought for the haves against the have-nots, the truth was far from that.

We trailed home with one or two wounded, having made sure Tarek Nalgre was safe. The steading had not burned. Seg left a guard there. But our resentment against the Chyyanists had been inflamed. The immediate cause of this outbreak had been Tarek Nalgre’s order that a certain slave girl was to be released immediately. The girl’s owner, malignant, had appealed to the local leaders of the Chyyanists, and the burnings and killings had followed. No, I was in an ugly mood as we rode back to Seg’s castle, the Falnagur, and doffed our armor and rubbed our bruises and counted the cost.

“This Tarek,” I said to Seg later, as we tried to relax after a capital meal, quashing all guilt thoughts. “He seems a quality fighter and man.”

“Aye. He is a bonny fighting man, and honest and loyal.”

“The very man for the order.”

Seg looked pleased at this, for he took his position within the order with great seriousness. I spoke to match his mood.

“We must begin with seasoned men. Once we are established and have a base and the beginnings of a tradition — how the Krozairs are fortunate in that! — we can enroll likely young lads and give them the full benefit of proper training.”

“And will you find one of your Krozair brothers willing to travel all this way, to teach what he may regard as breaking his vows?”

I had thought of that. “There is no betrayal in teaching young men to be upright and honest and to respect their own strength. There is altogether too much banging and bashing around on Kregen by the strong against the weak. I speak in general terms. I think we are both too cynical and beyond the naive area of simple chivalry. Sometimes a man must be a bit of a villain to survive. But if more people thought more and struck less, then the demands of villainy would die out.”

Looking back and seeing myself as I was then, I can smile a little indulgently at my foolish self. Even then I was dreadfully young in the ways of Kregen, for all my vaunted experience — at least, vaunted by others, not by me, who knows far too much about Dray Prescot for comfort. Came the day when I told Seg and Thelda I must wish them Remberee. I shook my head when they asked if I would visit Inch.

“I think not. His letters say that his Black Mountain Men have little sympathy with the Chyyanists. And as for the Blue Mountain Boys, there was a most distressing occurrence with a Chyyanist priest. Something to do with burned tail feathers, I believe. Most injurious to pride and stern ends.”

Seg managed a smile at this. He did not burst out with a complaint that he only wished his Falinurese were of the same caliber as Inch’s Black Mountain Men. For that I respected him. He was entitled to the complaint; fate alone had decided this.

“Well, Dray my dear,” said Thelda in her managing way, “then it will be Delphond, I suppose. Or,” and here she cocked her head on one side in a calculating way, organizing things for me, “or you could go to Strombor. I need some of their beautiful—”

“Thelda!” said Seg, half laughing. So whatever it was Thelda wanted from Strombor we did not find out.

“I shall,” I said, “go to Vondium.”

“But!” said Seg.

“But,” said Thelda, “you are banished! The emperor has published an edict of proscription. The dear queen told me so herself. You will be taken up if you go back to Vondium.”

“Maybe. And again, maybe not. But I am not prepared to let the emperor stand any longer between what I must do and my own frail desires. By Vox! I am tired of shilly-shallying around.”

“So it is Vondium then, my old dom.”

“Aye! And if the emperor or any of his men try to stand in my way it will not be me who will be sorry!”

Seventeen

What chanced during the bath of Katrin Rashumin

Well. From those stupid boastful words you will see exactly how I had been rattled. If only I knew what Delia was up to! If only I was sure that Dayra was safe! To Vondium I would go and try to sort matters out.

And if any chanting, hypocritical, venomous Chyyanist priest got in my way with his damned Black Feathers he had better look out sharpish.

And so, with yet another vainglorious boast in a most un-Dray Prescot-like fashion, I took one of Seg’s fliers back to Vondium.

I’d be either Nath the Gnat or Kadar the Hammer as opportunity offered. On Kregen one has to handle names carefully, for names are vital. I own to a delight in handling names, and yet I do not forget that however important names are, and however much it behooves a man who wishes to keep his head on his shoulders to remember names and get them right, it is the reality behind the names that matters, the personality and inner being that counts.

The twinkle and shimmer of Vondium rose before us and the flier swooped down. Seg’s pilot helped me unload my zorca and the pack preysany, and I stood to wish him Remberee. Then I mounted up and, wearing my old brown blanket cloak and with the bamboo stick across the saddle, started to jog gently along the dusty road toward the city whose topmost towers were just in sight. If I had been put out of countenance by the changes in Vallia after my absence of twenty-one years on Earth followed by the seasons at the Eye of the World, I could only be dismayed by the changes in Vondium during this my latest absence.

The first thing I saw was a wayside shrine to one of the old minor religions of Vallia, tolerated and even given some small affection by the masses who hewed to Opaz. The shrine’s old statue had been removed and the niche with its symbols and little flickering lamp was bedecked with black feathers, and the crude statue of a black chyyan replaced the old. I reined up, staring.

An old toothless crone at the roadside cackled.

“Come the day, good sir, come the day.”

I said nothing, but shook Twitchnose’s reins and cantered on.

By Zair! Did the emperor — did the nobles — do nothing about this?

There was no difficulty in getting into Vondium. The place bustled with life. People scurried everywhere. The guards at the gate barely gave me a glance. They were Rapas, and usually relished a little idle amusement in hazing travelers they considered suitable game for sport. Now I rode through and found myself in a beehive of rumor and speculation and gossip. The brilliant colors, the jostling lines of calsanys, the palanquins, the tall flickering wheels of the zorca chariots racing fleetly along the wider boulevards, the long steady streaming of narrow boats along the Cuts, the shouts and yells of vendors, all the heady brilliant hurly-burly of a great city broke about me as I guided Twitchnose and the led preysany toward the smith’s quarter and the tavern called the Iron Anvil. The area was known to me only vaguely — this was not Ruathytu — but after a few directions I arrived and, by showing the edge of a golden talen, secured a room in the hostelry above the tavern. From here I would have to work. It would not be proper for me to reveal all the steps that led in the end to a plain lenken door, brass-studded, in a flat gray stone wall on the Hill of Tred’efir. The hunt began at a hospital for slaves, led by way of a school for the children of poor mothers, through a number of other establishments, to this calm white-stuccoed house in its bower of greenery. The guards would only let me through into an outer courtyard, and there I had to kick my heels. The guards were all girls, young and limber and rosy in their health and strength. They were clad as the messenger from Delia, Sosie ti Drakanium, had been clad, and they handled their rapiers with the professional ease of those who understand pointed and edged weapons. There were also girls wearing cool floating robes of many colors, who came to a pierced stone screen to peer at me and laugh quietly amongst themselves.

Presently a lady whom I can only call the Mother Superior came out, although that is nowise her rank or calling.

“Kadar the Smith?”

“Kadar the Hammer, and it please you, lady.”

She nodded, studying me. Her smooth face within the framing crimson cap and veil reposed in calm confidence. In her I could trust, as far as a man may trust a woman. I told her what I wanted. She did not laugh, but the corners of her eyes betrayed extra wrinkles and her soft mouth turned up, just a little.

“You must know that is impossible.”

“I wish only to speak with the chief of the Sisters. That is all. If you wish I can be blindfolded, in a darkened room. But I must speak with her.” I had no need to put any false emotion into my words. “This is very important to me.”

“Is it important to the SoR?”

“I do not know. I think so.”

“You are honest. But the thing is impossible. Now go, and go in peace, Kadar the Smith.”

“Kadar the Hammer. Very well, I will go. But I will not give up.”

But she turned away and made a sign and lo! four sharply curved reflex bows held in young supple hands — and four exceedingly sharp steel arrow heads — pointed at my midriff. I took the hint. After all, had some wandering gypsy-like woman approached me and asked to see the Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy I might have reacted in the same way. So I went.

Now I would have to play my penultimate card. I had not wished to do so, for although Katrin Rashumin had been a good friend to Delia and had benefited from our advice over her island kovnate of Rahartdrin, I had not seen her lately, for obvious reasons, and had no way of knowing her present feelings. But, as they say in Hamal, one must come to the fluttrell’s vane. A single inquiry elicited the information that the Kovneva of Rahartdrin was in Vondium. I took myself off to her villa, a most gorgeous place and splendidly eloquent of her position, for her fortunes had vastly improved after Delia and I had sorted out her island estates for her. We had had to discharge a crooked Crebent and put a stop to certain nefarious practices. Katrin had been grateful then. I think she always remembered a certain flight in an airboat with me, and remembered it with regret. But she had remained loyal to Delia, or so I hoped.

The porter regarded me with disfavor.

“Go away, rast! We have our own smith, young Bargom the Anvil! He will make mincemeat of you!”

The porter was a Fristle, and his cat-face bristled up with his whiskers bright and stiff. I sighed. At this time I had noticed that the Vallians, as a general rule, did not favor diffs. There were very few diffs among the wealthy and the nobility. They employed diffs as servants and guards and had no scruple about enslaving them.

The villa’s wall ran alongside the road for a space and then shot off at a right angle through woods. Further upslope lay the abandoned villa of Kov Mangar the Apostate. I slipped along between the trees and soon found a place where I might climb over. The way was not difficult and I saw no one, walking rapidly but without obvious signs of haste through a large market garden filled with lettuce and gregarians and squishes. I even picked a handful of palines as I went.

The kitchen gateway showed ahead and just as I was casually about to enter, a Brokelsh guard and a girl, a young Brokelsh slave girl from the kitchens, came out, laughing and talking together. The guard, a big fellow, all bristly hair and bully-boy manner, swelled his chest under the armor. His hand fell to the clanxer at his waist. He wanted to show off for the girl.

“What are you doing here, onker?”

I, Dray Prescot, took a chance. It was a risk. I said, “By the Black Feathers, dom! I am glad to see you. Where away are the confounded stables?”

At this he relaxed at once. I felt my relief at the easy outcome of the confrontation more than tempered by the vast feeling of unease. Chyyanism was here, in a great noble’s villa. Well and truly had the Temple of the Great Chyyan reached Vondium. So much for the protestations of vigilance given me by the racters!

So with a direction to the stables I wandered off, saying my thanks and moaning over the hardness of life. Presently, by taking a smart right turn, I managed to find a smaller doorway near the stables. Actual ingress to the Villa’s interior could only be achieved by my sending a Fristle guard to sleep standing up, but I did lower him gently to the ground. Then I walked swiftly inside, not looking around, and began to nose my way toward Katrin’s apartments. I did not wish to cause too much mayhem, but a little was inevitable.

Had she been anywhere else but Vondium there would have been no problem. The trouble with secret societies is that they are secret. At the least I knew Katrin Rashumin to belong to the Sisters of the Rose. Or so I had gathered from the way Delia had spoken on occasion.

A big burly Womox, his fierce upthrusting horns wound with golden wire, bellowed at me, and I had to skip and jump and put him to sleep horizontally. His harness fitted me, more or less. It hung about my waist, but the shoulders snugged well enough.

So it was as a guard in the employ of Kovneva Katrin I went a-visiting. The colors of Rahartdrin are yellow and green with a double red stripe slashed diagonally across them. Katrin also had a fondness for the lotus flower, so this was emblazoned on the breast and back of the brown shifts of her servitors and was picked out in embroidery on the guard’s tunics. So I marched along and took no notice of anyone and no one took any notice of me, which is perfectly normal in these gigantic households of many slaves and many guards, not all of whom are apim.

I was stopped by two Pachaks at an inner door. You know about Pachaks. There was no talking my way past these two fine fellows and I would not slay them, for Pachaks are dear to me, so I had to feint with one, knock the second down and deal instantly with his comrade. This I did. Then I pushed through, taking the ivory wand one of the Pachaks had gripped in his upper left hand as his sign of office and tour of duty at the kovneva’s private apartments.

I was allowed past a number of girl slaves and somewhat effeminate man slaves until, at the last, I reached places that, by the perfume, the sounds of running water and the warmth and languorous feel in the air, told me plainly enough that no man, and certainly not some hired mercenary, not even a paktun, more likely a thieving masichier, would ever be allowed.

So, saying simply, “If you do not let me in to see the kovneva she will have you girls flogged jikaider,” I walked past the befuddled maids. They shrieked out as I dragged the purple curtains apart. Scents of steam and soap and unguents arose. Katrin was taking a small and private bath, not one of the Baths of the Nine, and a gorgeous black girl from Xuntal dropped the sponge in her terror as I barged in. I knew I had perhaps ten or so murs before the guards came arunning, and they would seek to kill. I made no mistake about that, no mistake at all.

Katrin turned lazily, the soapy water running over one gleaming shoulder, and she looked at my legs and the bottom half of the uniform and the war harness and she said in her caressing voice: “You realize you are a dead man?”

And I answered, “Only if you give the word, Katrin.”

And she looked up, shocked, the blood rushing into her face, the water swirling in soapy whirls about her body.

“Dray!”

“Aye! And don’t shout all over the villa or—”

“Yes, I know!” She stood up, completely uncaring of her shining soapy nakedness and said in her sharp woman-managing voice to the Xuntalese maiden, “Xiri! My wrap!”

With the lotus-flowered wrap about her she walked swiftly to the door and said to someone outside,

“No one enters on pain of death! Tell the Pachak Jiktar! Hurry! No one, mind!”

Then she kicked Xiri out and slammed the door herself, drawing the heavy purple drapes. She turned to me, and the lotus-flowered wrap half dropped from a shoulder. It was not coquetry. I know she had tried once, and she knew what Delia meant.

“Thank you, Katrin. I have no time. The emperor—”

“I do not know if he will kill you if he finds you in Vondium, my silly woflo. But I would not take bets on it”

“I must know where Delia is.”

“Ah!”

I wasn’t sure. Did she know?

Her dark hair, gathered into a protecting net, broke in a cascade as she ripped the cap off. Her face had softened over the years, but still she could act as haughtily as any fabled Queen of Pain. Her lips, a trifle thin, smiled up as she tossed her hair loose and began to rub her body with a yellow and green towel. The two slashed stripes of scarlet looked like threads of blood.

“I have an appointment with Master Hork in two glasses. He is a master Jikaidast and I hope to learn much of the game.”

“I’m playing no game.”

“You cannot see Delia, has she not told you?”

“Only that she has gone away, and an onker knows that.” I eyed this Katrin Rashumin evenly, knowing what I knew about her. “I am in a desperate hurry. I must speak with the chief lady of the Sisters of the Rose. She will help me, I am sure she will.”

“The chief lady,” Katrin said, laughing, and there was a deal of mockery in that laughter. “I do not think there is a single man who knows her name or title.”

“Well? Blindfold me, then, a darkened room. Katrin!”

“You remind me, my dear Dray, of Tyr Korgan and the mermaid. You Valkans are famous for your songs.”

“In the end you know what the song says occurred between Tyr Korgan and the mermaid. I must meet the Lady Superior — I do not know her rank or name or title. Katrin! Listen, my daughter Dayra, there is some trouble and—”

“Trouble!” About to go on with a quick and passionate outburst, Katrin held her tongue. The effort brought a flush again to stain her cheeks, made her grip the green and yellow towel. When she had recovered, she said, “Let me do what I can, Dray, out of our friendship. But I will promise nothing.”

“A message for Kadar the Hammer at the Iron Anvil will reach me. But for the sweet sake of Zair, hurry!”

“It would be more appropriate to swear by a goddess, do you not think?”

Katrin had probably never left Vallia. Certainly she had never visited the inner sea where the power of Zair was very real. So I said, “In the blessed name of the Invisible Twins made manifest in Opaz, neither man nor woman. Katrin, hurry!”

“And my Jikaida?”

So I knew she had learned from Delia. Her Jikaida, I knew, along with the Jikaidast, this Master Hork who was famous in Vondium for his command of the Chuktar’s right-flank attack, could be forgotten. We had been old allies, against her will; now I thought with sincerity she would do what she could.

“I will have you smuggled out of the villa. Talk does no one any good, these days in Vondium. The queen. . .” And here Katrin revealed the differences between herself and Thelda. “The queen is a dear creature and has her damned spies everywhere.”

My own calmness amazed me. This calm was like those brazen flat calms which often precede a violent rashoon of the Eye of the World. But I managed to say, “This Queen Lushfymi. Is the alliance progressing? Does the emperor find her congenial?”

“Oh, most, most congenial. Queen Lush is all woman, and I know.” She lifted and redraped the wrap. “I will see you safely out. Xiri can be trusted, as can the Jiktar of my guard.”

“I can only thank you, Katrin, and ask you to make all haste.”

“The SoR are not inexperienced in intrigues!” She spoke as sharply as she had during the entire interview. Then: “Xiri!”

So I was seen out. Just how I was going to make myself wait for Katrin’s message eluded me. I have waited for happenings in my life. On every occasion the wait has been unpleasant, it seems to me. Secret are the ways of Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio, secret and deadly. Plots and intrigues flourished in Vondium. So much of the world is open and bright, filled with the clamor of sword and spear, the bright blaring of the war trumpets, the quick onward rush of mailed chivalry and the high conflict of flyers in the air, and so much is dark and hidden in sorcerous ways, phantasms conjured from the hideous vaults of time, wizardly powers breathing a miasma of fear across the bright suns-light: there are also the darkly secret machinations of ambitious men and women to topple thrones and seize powers and take all unto themselves. Well may Kregen be called Secret Kregen.

Outside I walked almost blindly. I had just passed over a cut on a little brick bridge with pretty little caryatids entwined with loomins enhancing the loveliness of the setting — in my stupor I noticed this by reason of the abrupt chaos that broke beyond. One of the long chanting processions passed down the parallel Boulevard of Gregarians. They were clad in bright clothes, garlanded with flowers, carrying the images and the flags, with flowers and music everywhere and the chant, the omnipresent chant, going on and on and on. “Oolie Opaz, Oolie Opaz, Oolie Opaz.” Over and over again. The people near the center of the procession abruptly scattered. People were falling and struggling on the road. The chanting wavered and died and then picked up again only to falter and fade away. I saw clubs upraised. I saw the distorted faces of men and women who, bare-armed, brandishing bamboo sticks and balass rods, were smiting the worshipers of Opaz, driving the procession into a shrieking, formless mob.

And more I saw. I saw the black-feathered hats. I saw the lifted staffs entwined with black feathers. I saw the hateful symbols of an evil creed flaunted openly, chastising the worshipers of Opaz, the manifestation of the Invisible Twins.

All roiled into a screaming confusion. The bamboo stick in my hand might be put to some use here. So I ran off the little brick bridge and across the Boulevard of Gregarians and plunged into the shouting ranks of the Black Feathers.

Most of the worshipers of Opaz were fleeing, or scrabbling about on the ground with bleeding heads and broken limbs. I delivered a few tasty thwacks with the bamboo, letting all my frustrations boil over, dealing out buffets that stretched the followers of the Great Chyyan senseless alongside their victims. Someone set up a yelling about the guards, and the mobiles galloped up on their totrixes. Everyone was running, and the long official staves were beating down on heads and shoulders. People scattered. Screams shattered the bright air. I ran. I had no wish to be hauled up before a supercilious magistrate or some petty noble and my identity revealed. I ran and as I ran so I struck three shrew blows that crunched in on black-feathered hats.

The blue coolness of an alley served to conceal me, but I ran on and took no notice of any who sought to stop me. At last I reached the Tunnel of Delight and passed through onto the brilliant Kyro of Jaidur Omnipotent with the hard-edged double shadows of the Forlaini Hills Aqueduct lying across the broad smooth paving stones. I slowed down and walked. People paid me no heed. Everyone was about private business. Riots were more common now than anyone could remember since the third party sought to topple the emperor. I forced myself not to tremble. What could the emperor be about? What was the old fool doing? Didn’t he know how this evil creed of Chyyanism had taken so strong a grip upon his citizens of Vondium that a religious procession, one of the most sacred rites of Opaz, could be set upon, attacked, beaten and scattered? Were the racters all blind or fools?

Why was the canker of Chyyanism being allowed to eat out the heart of Vondium the Proud?

Eighteen

The Sisters of the Rose are kind to me

The chief lady of the Sisters of the Rose, whose rank and title and name would never be revealed to me if the Sisters had their way, condescended to see me. The message reached the Iron Anvil as I sat, not drinking, sharpening up my old knife, sitting alone in a dark corner of the inn. The smiths talked about their trade and of bad times for business and of the latest consignment of copper to arrive down the Great River and of the price of tin. The serving girl, a little Fristle fifi, whispered that strangers wished to speak with me, so I rose and went outside, the bamboo held ready. Cloaked figures riding zorcas awaited me. I mounted the animal they provided and with only the single word “Rose!” uttered between us, followed where they led.

While it would not be proper for me to reveal all the circumstances of the meeting, I can say that through it all I had no sense of being ridiculous, of acting the fool. Here was I, a fearsome fighting warrior, renowned swordsman, savage clansman, told to strip off, to wrap a piece of white cloth about my loins, to stand meekly in a room with two samphron-oil lamps shining up, leaving the end of the room partitioned by a pierced ivory screen in absolute darkness.

From the screen the soft rustle of feminine garments told me that the chief lady did not wear hunting leathers or the grim panoply of war, as many of the Sisters did. And this was fit and proper. The Sisters of the Rose, after all, is a female order, and girls do not have to ape the ways of men. Although when they do, by Zair, they often are very good indeed.

“You wished to speak with me, Kadar the Hammer. Your request was put most forcefully; a very strong case was made out for you. Why do you plead to see me?”

I said, “I think, lady, you know my name.”

“Kadar the Hammer.” A light tinkle of laughter. “Is that your question? You had forgotten your name?”

“I can never forget. I do not know yours. In that, you have the advantage, lady.”

The laughter stilled. Then: “I know you. I can tell you nothing.”

I flared up. “This is not good enough! I must know where my Delia is. Is she safe? Is Dayra safe? Just that, just that to put my heart at rest.”

If this powerful and secret woman decided to obey the emperor’s orders and handed me over to him, there would be a few broken skulls. That I knew. But that was a trifle.

“A man’s heart, aye! Now there is a wonderfully elastic object.”

“I did not come to bandy words. Tell me, for the sweet sake of Opaz.”

“Your Dayra has been . . . is causing. . .” A hesitation and then, in a sharper tone: “Your Dayra is proving a true daughter of a wayward father.”

“And if I am wayward that I do not quarrel with. But you have educated Dayra! I have been away and I own my fault in that. But Dayra—”

“Do not blame the SoR for all! We teach chastity and humility and pride. We teach a girl that she is a girl, and in this world a girl must be as good as a man. Not better. As good. We are all people in the sight of Opaz, the manifestation of the Invisible Twins. Dayra could not exist without a man and a woman.”

“And I am that man!” I bellowed, despite my promise to myself to behave. “And I ask about the woman!”

An indrawn breath. Would I be hurled out? Would a steel-tipped shaft drive through? Would — exotic thought — a bevy of half-naked damsels seek to destroy me by women’s wiles?

Then: “I shall tell you, Kadar the Hammer, that the woman of whom you speak is alive and well and reasonably happy. She goes with her eldest daughter in search of her wayward daughter. When they are successful they will return.”

So that explained why Lela, as well as Dayra, had not visited their father in Vondium. “Suppose they are not successful?”

“That may well be. The task is difficult. But Opaz is all wise. If that should be her will then so be it.”

Naturally Opaz, being the twinned life-force, could be either male or female. “If so, your lady and her elder daughter will return.”

“And is that all you will tell me?”

“There is nothing more to tell. You are supremely fortunate even to have spoken with me, Kadar the Hammer. The emperor is looking for a smith to sharpen up the edge of his headsman’s ax.”

That was as clear a warning as you could desire, or not, considering. The rustle of clothes told me she was leaving. There were a thousand questions buzzing in my stupid head, but I could speak none of them. I was led out by competent girls who carried their bows nocked and their rapiers naked in their hands. Of what use or value my knowledge that I could have fought and beaten them all? Would that bring my Delia any closer? Of course not. Only half reconciled to what I considered a fobbing off I dressed and, once more clad in the old brown blanket cloak and with my bamboo stick in my horny fist, I was seen off into the moons-shot darkness. I have said nothing of the rites surrounding this interview or of the room itself. Or of what I observed. Quite so.

One thing I believed with all my heart: my Delia was safe. And Lela and Dayra — whatever that little minx had been up to — were safe, also.

So, and not as easily as I may make it sound, I could go back to the more congenial task of mayhem and murder and smashing up these Opaz-forsaken rasts of the Great Chyyan. The last thought I allowed myself about the Sisters of the Rose was the reflection that a fellow had to brace himself up and keep a brave face on it when these scheming women put on that kind of show. Many a man would have been half dead with fright at all the mumbo jumbo, and his knees would have knocked together when he stood in the dread presence of the chief lady of the SoR. Before I went back to see Natyzha Famphreon and try to shake some sense out of the dealings — or apparent lack of them — of the racters, I’d have to nip back to the Iron Anvil. I had no real desire to investigate her warren of a villa with only a bamboo stick, despite the concealed sword, although if it came to the fluttrell’s vane I would do so.

“By Odifor!” spat a Fristle who balanced an enormous load on his head. He staggered against the doorway of a house whose overhanging balcony dripped vines and moonblooms. I was scarcely aware of bumping him. “Look where you’re going, you apim rast!”

I turned my head away and walked on. There were far more important demands at work this night in Vondium than a stupid affray with a Fristle. His cat-face looked fierce and his whiskers shone in the light of torches. I supposed then that I might some day learn to rub along with Fristles. Walking thus in a heightened frame of mind, to put my frame of mind in a certain light, I realized that all Vallia could go hang to the Black Feathers just as long as Delia and the girls were safe. But then I reconsidered. That was only a half-truth. It is often easy for the outcast — and I had been chucked out of Vondium — to look at himself in the role of poor Pakkad. No one of Kregen could say with certainty if Pakkad had been a real person of if he was a figure from myth. He had been cruelly treated by the arch devil, Mitronoton, the Destroyer of Cities, the Leveler of Ways, and nowadays, although seldom referred to, Pakkad stood for the image of the pariah and the unwanted. As for Mitronoton, the Bane of the ib, the Reducer of Towers, he was a devil of horror that no sane man would approach. The Fristle snarled some obscenity or other and hitched his bundle straight; a string snapped and the bundle burst, and a glittering shower of trinkets and trashy bangles and rings cascaded to the cobbles. An uproar began at once as, from nowhere and at this time of night with the moons shining above, a torrent of children burst out and fell upon the gewgaws.

Young girls and boys were scrabbling along the cobbles, snatching up the rolling bangles and rings, stuffing little ornamental figures into their breechclouts. I realized in my half-blind wanderings I had blundered into a net of poor alleys off one of the jewelry souks. The hullabaloo was rather splendid. The Fristle was frantically attempting to preserve his wares, yelling threats and trying to bash kids away and being tripped up and — it was all over in a twinkling — standing up and shrieking his anger and casting about upon the empty cobbles.

He found one trashy little figure of Kyr Nath made from cast brass and he flung it down so hard it bounced and hit a laughing fellow in the eye. That started more trouble. I ambled off, deliberately not going fast.

Of such trifles are the destiny of empires made.

The last I heard of that incident — as I thought, as I thought — was a fat apim with an apron yelling:

“The Fristle stole this stuff! Thief! Thief!”

The Fristle let out a yell and raced off. The apims followed all a-yelling and a-screeching and the whole pack vanished into a side alley, even more odiferous than this one. So, going on, I came out at last into the silversmiths’ wharf running alongside a canal that gleamed limpid and pinkly golden in the night. I saw the Fristle running across an arcaded bridge. He saw me too, for the moons-light picked me out brightly. Only a handful of other people were walking near. He knew me. He vanished into the shadows. I dismissed him — thieves would have to be treated as rulers usually treated the devotees of Diproo the Nimble-Fingered — and walked on to the Iron Anvil in the smiths’ quarter. My surprise was complete when I found the Wizard of Loh Khe-Hi-Bjanching waiting for me in my room. As I came in he started up; the steel in my fist winked at his throat and then I recognized him. I drew back.

“Dangerous to do that, San.”

He laughed a nervous laugh and felt his throat.

“All right, Turk.” As he spoke the curtains over the window shook and Turko the Shield climbed in. He was followed by Balass the Hawk. Then Oby wriggled in, most fierce, slapping his long-knife into his sheath.

Well!

It turned out that Khe-Hi wished to obtain a piece of my skin, a hair and a piece of toenail. I do not give these things lightly, for although it is all stupid superstition, there is no doubting the power of the Wizards of Loh.

“Phu-si-Yantong has been searching for you, Prince,” said this wizard who had followed me. “I need to create a new and somewhat different . . . ah . . . arrangement to hold him off. He has let you slip out of his range of observation. But he has been in lupu and spying a very great deal lately. I think” — and here Khe-Hi chuckled in a very down-to-earth and unwizardly way — “I really think the old devil is worried.”

“Amen to that.”

I had noticed that Khe-Hi did not mention that he was creating a spell or an enchantment. They were for the lesser sorcerers.

So needing the simple artifices of that trade, he had come to find me. And the others would not let him go alone. I asked, “And how did you know where I was and my name?”

“We had a flier letter from Seg, from Falinur, and—”

“And from now on I’m staying where I belong,” said Turko the Shield truculently. “By Morro the Muscle! At your side with my shield lifted.”

“That will not be very practical in Vondium.”

“Well, my long-knife will arouse no comment,” said Oby.

We all told him coarsely that his long-knife would not arouse comment anywhere — except Khe-Hi, who was above that kind of nonsense, of course — whereat he grew most enraged and lively and started swinging his arms about.

Balass the Hawk butted in with: “I know most about the Black Feathers so I am the one to go with the Prince.”

While they wouldn’t have started in on each other with the weapons each knew so well how to use, they waxed exceedingly warm. I said, “No one goes with me. This is a lone task. Balass, what of the Black Feathers?”

His story confirmed what I had seen. Someone had brought a temple into Vondium. Wandering priests had gathered. The city was like an overripe shonage, ready to burst and spray every which way.

“By the brass sword and glass eye of Beng Thrax!” I used the old arena oath talking to Balass, the hyr-kaidur. “When will your spies find this Opaz-forsaken temple! By Kaidun! Time grows perilously short.”

“We have men out everywhere. The racters also search.”

A thought occurred to me and I turned to Khe-Hi. “If Phu-si-Yantong has missed me and is searching, will not your visit here put him on my trail once again?”

“No, my Prince. I can cover myself and those with me. He cannot find you through us.”

“That is some comfort. But if he really is this Makfaril, and there is no proof, what chance is there he will come to Vondium himself?”

Khe-Hi pursed up his lips. “Very little. He can work his mischief through his agents.”

“Quite so. Well, be off with you then, the pack of you.”

They wanted to contest this, but I would have none of it. So they climbed out through the window, agile as monkeys, even Khe-Hi, who had done a little climbing with me on Ogra-gemush. Working swiftly, I donned my familiar scarlet breechclout and strapped and buckled my weapons about me. This time, to be on the safe side, I shrugged on a close-fitting coat of mail, a mail shirt presented to me by Delia, one of those superb harnesses of mesh mail manufactured in the Dawn Lands around the Shrouded Sea in Havilfar. The value of that single piece of armor would leave a rich man breathless. I swirled the big buff cloak over all as usual, but this time hung the Krozair longsword scabbarded at my left side. I picked up the faithful old bamboo and went to place it safely in a cupboard when those confounded Fristles arrived to ruin that particular scheme.

The Fristle thief, no doubt calling on Diproo the Nimble-Fingered, had rustled up some of his friends. The door burst in with a smash and they catapulted into the room. For the tiniest fraction of time I thought they were my comrades, come back this time to insist on going with me. Then I saw the fierce snarling cat-faces, the up-pricked ears, the lean jaws and the furry hides. Spitting their fury, they charged straight for me.

They carried long-knives and wharf-rat knives, and two had stout staves tipped with bronze. The bamboo switched up and deflected the first stave, bounced off the skull of its owner, lined up and prodded deeply into a furry midriff. Two Fristles staggered out of the fight. But the others, three or four, bored in. A flung knife whistled past my head as I moved and smashed into the horn window. A stave swirled down at me and I ducked and stepped back, making no attempt to strike with the bamboo. I was annoyed. I was quite unsure whether to bash them over the head with the bamboo or to whip out rapier or djangir and settle their hash.

So stepping back, I trod on a forgotten gregarian and skidded. I skidded across the floor, flailing my arms to remain upright. I lost my balance and staggered back.

With shrieks of feline glee the Fristles flung themselves on me. They had no compunction. The thief had lost his night’s swag and he wanted to take his revenge out on my hide. I rolled, ready to spring up and bash them all properly, when a great booming numim voice roared joyfully: “Now, by Vox! What a pretty pickle!”

And in rage Rafik Avandil waded in, his clanxer deftly cleaving down a Fristle skull and slicing back to chop another. The other Fristles screamed now, screams far different from those shocks of savage fury of a moment ago.

“If I make a habit of this, Nath the Gnat, blame only yourself!”

And the golden numim, Rafik Avandil, joyfully dispatched the next Fristle and kicked the last headlong out the door and down the blackwood stairs.

Nineteen

In the Cavern of Abominations

The way I extricated myself from the possible little embarrassment of this golden numim’s discovering all my arsenal of weaponry buckled up about me, when I was a mere wandering laborer, amused me at the time. Afterward, well, as they say, no man or woman born of Opaz knows all the secrets of Imrien. I gave an almighty yawn and covered my mouth, palm out, and said, “I crave your pardon, Koter Avandil. I am for bed. I have had a plaguey day. How did you find me here?”

If he thought I shot the last question out a little sharply, he gave no sign.

“I heard the commotion and ran up, hoping for a little exercise. It seems I was in time, once again.”

“And much am I beholden to you, Koter Avandil. What are you going to do with the Fristles?”

“The landlord will take care of them. Come with me. You cannot stay here now.”

This was an eventuality I did not relish. I reached up and touched the bowstave. He nodded, half smiling, his whiskers fierce.

“Yes. I see you have bought yourself a bow with the money you acquired, to go along with your zorca. You should be careful how you spend your cash. Buying things you cannot use is a dangerous pastime.”

“Yes,” I said with a fine free meekness, adding, “koter.”

He laughed again, that great booming numim laugh. “I warrant the fellow whose throat you slit for the money wishes he was here to spend it instead of rotting in a ditch.”

“If you think that, why bother your head over me?”

“You ask questions, Nath the Gnat, more than is seemly.”

“I crave your pardon. But the landlord will throw these cramphs out and I can sleep.” I kept forgetting, the more he pestered me, to add the required koter into the conversation. He saw I meant it when I again refused his invitation, so at last he left. I pondered. One more day, would that make so much difference? I could go up and see Natyzha Famphreon later, after sleep. Yes, that would be the answer. I somehow or other did not relish the thought of slipping out the window and finding Rafik Avandil smiling and waiting below for me.

Had I not sent my comrades away they would have created a diversion. Those Opaz-forsaken Fristles. But for them I’d have been halfway to Natyzha Famphreon’s villa by now. So, cussing away in my stupid fashion, I stripped off the gear and slept.

The sleep was needed and I awoke refreshed before dawn with that old sailor’s knack of setting alarm bells ringing in my skull, echoes of Beng Kishi’s Bells. I ordered up a huge breakfast which I demolished in short order.

The fate of empires hangs on tiny threads.

But for the Fristles I would have been long gone to the racters; but for the state of the haggard old crone who served the breakfast I would have left at once. Now there is disease on Kregen, as seems to be inseparable from man and his nature and the state of the universe in which we live. The ordinary ailments are treated matter-of-factly, and the needleman of Kregen are skilled at relieving pain, even during surgery, with their cunning twirling needles. I have not so far mentioned the disease which strikes horror into the heart of a Kregan. It is seldom mentioned in polite conversation, just as once on this Earth cancer was not a subject for decent conversation. Kregans can confidently look forward to two hundred years or so of life. Right up until their very last years they do not change much, do not appear to alter. This disease — I will tell you its name just the once — this chivrel prematurely ages its victims. Oh, the men and women stricken down live on. They tend to die around their two hundredth year or before, rather than living that extra golden autumn, but their appearance and their strengths are those of ancients of days. This, as you will readily perceive, explains the appearance of old crones and decrepit men in my narrative of life on Kregen.

The serving woman was old, suffering from that disgusting disease. How it was caught, how transmitted, no one knew. No cure was known. Whenever I think back to my days on Kregen as I fought for what I believed was worth fighting for and recall the conversations and the oaths spoken, always I change that particular curse into a different English equivalent — leprous is an example. People were not afraid to live with the sufferers. Body contact, breathing the same air, none of these things caused the disease. So instead of flinging my cloak around me and rushing out, I stayed and helped her stack the tray and lifted it so that she might open the door. I was in the act of closing the door after her, ready to don my equipment, when the ghostly form of Khe-Hi-Bjanching materialized across the chamber. He stared at me, peering, as though his trance state of lupu was not perfect. Then his misty body solidified. It seemed the wizard stood in the chamber with me.

Never had I seen the lupal projection of Phu-si-Yantong spying on me as clearly as I saw Khe-Hi. He held out a paper. Like an onker I stretched out my hand to take it. My fingers passed through the yellow paper. I cursed. Khe-Hi pointed. So, a fambly to the end, I looked down and read what he had written. Famphreon’s villa is under observation by the emperor’s spies. As I finished reading, the lupal projection of my Wizard of Loh thinned and wisped and vanished. I stepped back. By Krun! Was I to be foiled by a pack of miserable imperial spies?

I debated.

A hot gratitude to my friends for their work made me realize that they, having discovered the information and sending it as fast as they could via wizardly sorcery, would feel poorly rewarded if I simply barged up there anyway. Mind you, they’d half expect that kind of oafish barbarian behavior from Dray Prescot. But intrigue breeds intrigue, plot conjures forth counterplot.

No, by the Black Chunkrah! I said to myself. I’d play this one very coolly indeed, like a warrior prince rather than a naked, hairy, howling barbarian.

And then the door opened and I swirled about ready to use whatever weapons might be necessary. Rafik Avandil started back.

“Nath! You look—”

“Koter,” I said, and I let the barbaric instincts leach from my muscles. Zair knows what he thought then. A civilized man can display the quickest of reactions when, here on this Earth, he is aware, with his civilized sense, of an automobile hurtling down on him on swishing rubber tires. Then he will jump. With my Clansmen on the Great Plains of Segesthes and venturing among the southern forests I had learned to jump when a leem attacked. Rafik Avandil slid his half-drawn clanxer back into its sheath. He had not touched his rapier. He carried both swords in a fine raffish way, slung low on his left hip. He said he had come to see if I was all right.

I said, “You show great concern for a common laboring man.”

“I am at a loose end. You appear to bring me opportunities for a little light exercise. Let us go out and find an open-air tavern and sit and drink sazz and watch the girls.”

I, Dray Prescot, replied, “With a will, koter.”

Mind you, at the first opportunity, crossing a wide avenue where the zorca chariots rolled glittering in the dawn lights and the people were already about their hurrying scurry of another day, I lost him. I skidded down a narrow alley on the far side and watched him go running along the avenue, in a right paddy. Numims, as I knew from my friend Rees, have generous hearts. Well, some of them. So I spent the day prodding and prying. It became clear that, dressed as I was in an old brown blanket cloak, I could penetrate places closed to anyone not of the laboring classes. In Vallia the social structures were organized differently from the way they operated in Hamal with the guls and clums there. So, all in the fullness of time, I picked up the black feather and rolled it in my fingers, looked at the fat apim with the sweaty jowls and small vosk-like eyes and said, “Tonight, dom. I shall be there, to the greater glory of the Great Chyyan.”

That had been in a dopa den. I gulped the fresh air as I went outside, for all it was blowing from the fish wharf nearby. The search had not taken me overlong. I pondered.

If I chanced my arm and visited Natyzha Famphreon and the emperor’s spies took me up, that would place the old devil in a pickle. Would he take my head off this time? Or would he think of his daughter?

The racters with their schemes would have to wait. The Black Feathers posed the greater threat. The impression of the great city as a gigantic wen about to suppurate and burst and release all the evil oppressed me. Black feathers were to be seen, worn in the fashion of the colored favors of Vallia. My ugly old face drew down into grim lines. Intemperate and headlong as I am, I forced myself to ignore this tawdry panoply of evil and wait until the night’s meeting.

I thought of Delia. In all honor I had rejected the notion of having Khe-Hi go into lupu and seek her out. That would negate the understanding between us, if not question her self-sufficiency as a woman. The chief Lady of the SoR had said Delia was safe. I believed that, and suffered and hungered for her, and so compensated my own evil by my intentions to deal harshly with the priests of the Great Chyyan. The chanting of “Oolie Opaz” heralded yet another procession, flower-bedecked, carrying the golden images, wending along a boulevard. People moved respectfully out of the way. According to the season the words of the hypnotic chant are slightly varied, and among all the Oolie Opazes are to be heard the Oolie Ravox and the Oolie Ra-drak. Oolie, Oolie, they sing, gyrating, swaying, flower-bedecked, letting their inmost spirits lift and rise and soar and conjoin with the spirit of Opaz. Well, I walked discreetly along in the rear, gripping the bamboo staff, and ready for — aye, more than ready, longing for! — a dastardly attack from the fanatical adherents of the Black Feathers. Then a few skulls would be tapped and the claret flow.

A crowd of people in ordinary rough clothes burst from a side avenue. They belched out onto the boulevard. The black feathers flew. I started forward and out of that screaming mob a single face jumped. The face of a man leading them on, waving his arms, berserk with rage, screaming, urging his followers to smash and destroy.

Himet the Mak!

“Right, you cramph!” I shouted. “I’ll get you!”

Foolish, stupid me, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, shouting across a street brawl, promising a villain what I would do to him! How low I had sunk!

Before I could bash my way through the struggling, frenzied mob the guards arrived, the mobiles on their lunging clumsy totrixes, laying about them with the long official staves. I ducked a blow. Himet was running. I saw him cast a vicious glance of baffled rage at the guards. He dived into an alley between a tavern and a private house of some wealthy koter. I followed. Men and women ran with me. The black feathers pinned to their clothes incensed me as they riffled as the people ran. One priest of the Great Chyyan would be a prize worth taking.

The fleeing mass broke across an adjoining square. Fragments of the main body ran into side turnings. I stuck with a gang of men who intrigued me. Although dressed as ordinary laborers they carried themselves with the air of soldiers. They kept together. Some tavern or inn at which they stayed would offer a place to spy on them. These must be masichieri, common mercenaries of low character, employed by the priests of the Great Chyyan. All the masichieri encountered in Autonne had been accounted for and it was highly unlikely any of these would recognize me. A coin does not often bear a true likeness and they would not have been court portraits. Himet was the man to recognize me, and as we passed through barred suns-light and shadow, I kept a wary eye on him.

This was a chance and I would seize it. Soon the outlines of a half-ruined tower appeared ahead, standing alone in an abandoned plot of ground between two canals. Little as I knew of Vondium, I knew of the ruined temple of a minor religion devoted to the worship of Hjemur-Gebir. So the Chyyanists were up to their old game of taking over small or discredited religious shrines. The masichieri passed in a bunch across a wooden bridge over the canal and headed for the tower. Gray stone showed the livid blotches of algae, and vines and creepers hung down, patterned with blazing Kregan flowers. All pursuit had vanished. As an orderly group we entered the fane. No one challenged me. There were many bands of masichieri here, and many were strangers.

A huge stone caked with detritus and bat droppings lifted as powerful muscles hauled the iron-linked chains. Two by two we dropped down into the black hole thus revealed and crept carefully down the slimed steps. Luminescent fungus grew. Water dripped dolorously. Down and down we went, spiraling around a gigantic well in the solid earth. Echoes bounced eerily. The flare of torches lit in ruddy hues the sheen of water below and the slimed path. Along the path we passed, two by two, and no man spoke. However poor quality these mercenaries might be, they were well drilled. No one spoke a word until we all passed through an ancient doorway with rotting posts decorated by lichens and bulging fungi. A new world opened beyond, for in the deepest recesses of the crypts of this deserted fane had been built a soldier’s barracks. The bunks, the arms racks, the cooking and toilet facilities were all of the best. The instant everyone was in, and there were about sixty or seventy men, bedlam broke loose. Everyone was talking and shouting at once, laughing at what they had done, knocking a poor old woman over, kicking a young worshiper of Opaz in the guts when he was down. They complained bitterly of the untimely arrival of the guard. They had not expected that.

Himet the Mak stood up and they quieted down. He regarded them from the far end of the chamber from a dais of stained stone.

“Rest and eat, my bonny masichieri. Then we will sally forth again and break a few more heads of these Opaz-loving cramphs!”

“Aye!” they roared it back at him. I kept my head down.

Four or five other priests, evidently of the same importance as Himet, harangued the masichieri. Then we all sat down to tables loaded with ample if coarse fare. So I ate. Very few Kregans turn down the offer of a square meal, particularly if it is free.

Among the bunks and along the walls between the arms racks, stands held uniforms, black leather and bronze harness, with black leather helmets, all adorned with the black feathers. There were also shields here, as well as parrying-sticks, oval shields with the black representation of a chyyan painted against the thin bronze coverings to the linden boards.

As I ate, my head down and spooning the food up like a wild beast, I kept one hand against my brow. My eyes seldom left the figure of Himet the Mak, dressed now in flowing black robes embroidered with the golden chyyans. He laughed a great deal and was most lively. Yes, I said to myself, by Vox, you cramph, you may laugh now!

The chances were I would have to grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him out. I’d given no thought to means of egress. So much for the cool calculations of a warrior prince! In this I had acted in my natural barbaric manner, red and wrathful, recking nothing of consequences. After the food the masichieri spent the time in the usual ways of swods waiting for duty. They drank sparingly, although more than I would have allowed my men in like circumstances. They played Jikalla and gambled with knucklebones and dice and some pulled out Jikaida boards with games in progress. This proved they had been here some time. Presently I was able to lounge off, with a few coarse remarks, and follow where the priests led down a narrow corridor, smoking with cheap mineral oil lamps, to a moldering door at the far end. Here guards waited, men in uniform. I waited also, until an appropriate moment, and then the guards went to sleep standing up. I propped them against the architrave and eased the door open, went through like a leem and shut it silently. Beyond the door the corridor continued, ominous, quiet, with the flat tang of oil lamps burning from brass hung bowls.

Creeping along, I listened at the closed doors lining the passage. Not a sound disturbed the silence. The corridor opened out into a vast shadowy area, lit by vagrant shafts of light falling from a ceiling hazy and distant, festooned with creepers and hanging vines. Lamps and torches shone about the walls. A circle of mighty stone columns upheld the cavern roof. Above that roof the people of Vondium went about their business all unknowing of the chasm beneath their feet, or of the squat and hideous idol crouching on its black obsidian plinth at the center. The image was of a toad-thing, enormous, crouched, malignant. But its eye sockets gaped emptily, the jewels they had once held long since gouged away. The stone was cracked and flaked away and one of the front clawed arms was snapped off and lying in a scatter of detritus. This, then, was the pseudo-god Hjemur. No wonder honest folk had abandoned his worship!

There was no sign of the priests. If this was to be the place of the temple — and I doubted that — a labyrinth of warrens would stretch out ahead. I went forward cautiously, moving from shadow to shadow.

Spiderwebbed niches along the ebon walls held crumbled statues, tentacles and tusks and obscene conjurations cracked and broken and tumbled away. The blight of powerful superstition had gripped an enslaved people and here lay all that remained of that once-mighty devilry. I passed the profane rotting idols and my fists gripped the bamboo and I prowled, I think, as a leem prowls seeking prey among the chunkrah herds.

Shadows ahead, dark forms, moving in the dim lighting from guttering torch and wavering lamp, halted me, motionless, scarcely breathing, ripe for abrupt massacre.

A small party of masichieri in black armor, led by a deldar, passed uneasily. They gripped their weapons and their eyes roved. They spoke in low whispers, oppressed by the evil of this ancient and profane shrine.

“Come the Black Day, dom, and I’ll never go down a cellar again!”

“Come the Black Day and I’ll be drunk for a sennight.”

“Come the Black Day and I’ll take my pay and be off to Menaham before Armipand can jump!”

Yes, they were uneasy here, these rough tough sadistic mercenaries. They talked of guard duty, of dopa and women and were gone, walking carefully through the torch-lit shadows. I let them go. They were masichieri, mercenaries for hire; I needed to get the scrawny throat of their paymaster between my fists.

A sudden outcry ahead made me halt again. The sound of scuffles, blows, the grunted cursing of men in action, left me unmoved. Then a woman’s scream rang shockingly through that cavern of abominations. I could hold back no longer. Fool that I was, I ran and hurled myself through the crimson and ocher shadows, whipped out the sword from the bamboo and raced on, and found nothing. No sign of men or women struggling met my gaze as I searched. Had I heard some phantasmal echo of infinite evil from ancient times? Did the foul deeds perpetrated here linger on?

The torchlights near the toad-thing had revealed dark streaks running down the obsidian slab. The marks of dark blood looked recent; there might be a thousand seasons between now and the time the sacrifice screamed and shrieked until the jagged glass knife slashed his or her throat. Prowling on around this vast cavern I saw hideous things, abominations, things that were never meant to exist in the sweet sunshine of Zim and Genodras. A strange sliding clicking drew my instant attention to a jagged wall where the naked rock gleamed with the green of lichen. Shadows flittered like bats. Pressed close against a slimy pillar forming one of a rectangle enclosing a small side chapel — and the very word “chapel” brings a blasphemy upon the evil of that place — I saw a rope ladder swinging down from the darkness above. At its foot a man stood, grasping the end, shaking it. The wooden rungs clicked against protrusions in the stone.

He turned slightly and I saw him.

His powerful numim frame was clad in brilliant armor, gilded iron corselet and greaves. His helmet glistened. He held his clanxer in his right hand as his left hand released the ladder. He swung about, big and burly and fighting grim. I felt only the smallest surprise.

About to step forward and say, “And what brings you here, Rafik Avandil?” I saw the slinking shadows at his back, stealing up from the dimness between torches. I saw the black and silver and the quick glitter of weapons, and so I cried, “Your back, Rafik! Beware!”

He swung about like the great lion-man he was, and the first leaping shadow slashed and clanged a great gong note from Rafik’s helmet. A gigantic buffet sent the man sprawling back. His comrades recoiled. They gathered themselves. Without thought, I flung myself forward to stand back to back with Rafik Avandil. A noose clung about my leg and I tripped headlong.

A figure bent over me. Hands gripped my throat. A harsh, husky voice said, “Not another word, dom!”

I could not speak. I levered up and other hands bore down on me. I was lifted like a log of lumber. A crazy vision of Rafik running fleetly along past blasphemous statues — he vanished with a wink of bright armor quenched by the shadows — the sound of men breathing hoarsely by me, a sudden exclamation. The keen edge of a knife hovered under my chin. I could just see it. It was a thick, heavy long-knife, and it would slice through my windpipe as a butcher cuts up chops.

“Hold!” The men carrying me upended me and slammed me on my feet so my neck snapped my head forward and stars flew. I dragged the right-hand man around and smashed him into the left-hand one and a very hard, very sharp point came from nowhere and rested against my throat.

“Stand still, Prince! By Vox! You’ll have us all killed!”

I stared owlishly.

In the erratic illumination I saw Naghan Vanki standing before me looking charged with rage, emotion almost making his features unrecognizable. Always before he had been smooth and bland and unremarkable.

“The cramph got away, jen,” said one of his men, coming up. They all wore the black and silver, hard and supple leather, with steel bands and bracers. Vanki kept the point of his rapier at my throat. His men hung onto my arms.

“Keep silence, Prince. May I tell you something? You are a dead man unless—”

“I thought you served the racters, Vanki. Don’t you know they are leagued with me now?” It was a ploy.

He started and then his face assumed that blank, indifferent look. This was the man I suspected had drugged me and thrown me into a thorny-ivy bush to perish miserably in the hostile territories. I had the desire to know, if I was to die now.

I asked him.

“You may be a prince now, the Prince Majister; then you were a savage clansman with ideas beyond his station. No one wanted you to marry the Princess Majestrix.”

“In that you lie, Vanki. The Princess Majestrix wished it with all her heart.”

“Aye! That is why when the other wanted to slit your throat there and then I counseled moderation. You owe your life to me, Prince.”

“Alone, in the hostile territories, on foot, with the Klackadrin to cross?”

“You are here, alive, now.”

“And for how much longer? How much is the cramph Makfaril paying you.” I stopped suddenly. Then I gasped more than I liked as I spoke: “You, Naghan Vanki, are Makfaril!”

Without any change of expression, he said, “You are a prince, yet you are a clansman still, aye, and an onker!”

“Someone comes!” said one of his men, hissing from the shadows. In a bunch we melted into the darkness beyond the pillared chapel. Black and silver clothes, black and white for the racters, black feathers for the Chyyanists. I felt then that if Naghan Vanki, who on his own admission had connived at my death, was not Makfaril, then he was very high in the hierarchy and in all probability knew who the leader of the Chyyanists was.

It was pointless for me to call out. The masichieri would be less merciful than Naghan Vanki. They’d have slit my throat and gleed in the doing of it, back there in the hostile territories. Without binding me in iron chains or stout lesten-hide ropes a man can only hold me for so long. There will come a time when he may be taken. I gave no thought to the silent ferocity of these hired men of Vanki’s. They kept a perfect stillness. Perhaps Rafik Avandil had brought men with him down the rope ladder. So, taking my chance, I slipped the rapier point and dealt each of the wights holding my arms a most gruesome mischief with my knees, then ran fleetly into the darkness of the Cavern of Abominations. In the maze of tumbled stonework and fallen rock, the pillared chapels and the half-ruined warren of rooms beyond, there was little chance Naghan Vanki and his men or the masichieri would find me. But, equally and frustratingly, I had as little chance of finding Himet the Mak or one of the other priests of the Black Feathers.

A sensible idea would be to get out of the place and rouse a strong body of loyal soldiers, from Natyzha, from the emperor, from my own Valkans, and return here with fire and sword. That would be the sensible course.

In matters of this nature I am woefully lacking in sense. I no longer had the faithful old bamboo sword-stick. The rasts had not taken my sailor knife, and I drew this now and held it ready as I padded through the semidarkness. The shafting light from above probably came from a higher cavern whose floor was fitted with fireglass crystal. How far above that lay the surface I did not know, for we had descended that slimy spiral stairway to a considerable depth. However, far into the bowels of Kregen we were, I had no mind to return to the surface without a priest of the Great Chyyan to prod along before me.

The grotesquely carved pillar around which I edged screened off what lay beyond. Tumbled walls and toppled arcades, all built within the cavern, surrounded me. I rounded the corner. . . The masichieri were surprised and sprang out under the flaring torches. There was only one thing I could do: I charged headlong for them. I bellowed “Hai!” and raced in with the knife held point up and thrusting for them.

I saw the slinger. I saw him unwind. I skidded on a fallen rock and tried to duck and then . . . The stone must have struck me fair and square between the eyes. I dropped headfirst into the deep dark cloak of Notor Zan.

Twenty

Makfaril’s sacrifice

Someone was saying from a great distance: “The yetch is the Prince Majister of Vallia? It is difficult to believe.” The words boomed and went up and down as though echoing in a gigantic sea shell. “What did he want creeping about down here?”

And the coarse answer: “By the Black Feathers! Whatever it was he will never find it now. Makfaril has ordained his death.”

I opened my eyes. Well, cells are cells. This one cut from the rock boasted a barred window through which torchlight streamed, so I crawled across with all Beng Kishi’s tinkers hammering out their bells in my skull, and listened as best I could.

“Come the Black Day and all the princes and Princesses will dangle-o!”

“Aye, dom. And then you’n me’ll be princes.”

They sounded apim. Masichieri. Hired killers. My head resonated and nausea clutched me. But escape must be attempted at once. Strike while the iron is hot. I tried to stand up and my legs buckled and I slumped back again. The guards talked on outside.

“Course, most of us will grab what loot we can and hightail it back home. Vallia is rich. By Havil! The plunder!”

So the cramph was from Havilfar somewhere, Hamal probably.

“Yes. You’re right. But I’m going to sit in the throne for once, aye, and if any princes or kovs is about I’ll use ’em for a footstool before we cut ’em up.”

A hawk and a spit and: “Once they get this meeting over the priests can go and spread the word. I’m tired of waiting. The quicker they learn the day and go home and tell their people the better. Then, dom, then our swords will drink blood and our pockets will be filled!”

“Aye, may Armipand rot ’em all!”

My legs wavered. I leaned against the wall and shoved upright. I panted. I did not touch my forehead. The blow from the stone must have left a ghastly mess up there and if the blood had dried I did not wish to disturb it. Only my thick old vosk-skull of a head and the dip in the Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe had saved me. I stilled the trembling in my limbs. Talk about David and Goliath. That flung stone had nearly done for me. But I felt my strength coming back. I dragged deep lungfuls of air. I forced myself to stand free of the wall and pace about, grunting, working my muscles back to life.

“. . . Beautiful piece. A waste to sacrifice her first.”

I stopped and listened again.

“One of ’em got away. But the man’s safely mewed up.”

“Bitch women. Why can’t they attend to women’s affairs and leave men’s to men?”

Thank God, I said to myself, Delia and Dayra and Lela were safe dwaburs away from here. Although nothing had ever been said about where they were going or where they were adventuring, I had somehow assumed it was in the north midlands of Vallia.

Well, this was getting me nowhere. While there was no way of telling just how professional these two masichieri were, they were mercenaries, and therefore I must give them the benefit of hard professional competence. If I made a single mistake they’d not wait for Makfaril to implement his ordinance on my death, whatever gruesome affair that was to be.

A trampling of iron-shod sandals in the corridor was followed by jocular remarks from the two guards to others of their ilk who passed, giving me a little time.

“What a beauty! Treat her gently!”

“Ah! Makfaril’s girls will see to her!”

“What I wouldn’t give. . .”

I waited until the guards passed. Apart from the old scarlet breechclout I was naked. Simplicity, that was the only way. Simpleness in plans can defeat the most cunning of experienced professionals. I leaned against the door and spoke through the iron bars. “Tell Makfaril I have vital information for him. Bratch!”

When Makfaril came I’d fling everything into one wild lunge and so finish the cramph. But these two were incompetent professionals. One looked through the bars, saying, “How do we know you speak sooth?”

“Fetch Makfaril and you will soon see.”

So, poor fools, they swung the door open to make sure of me. They were armed. I was naked. It made little difference.

I stood up and slid the thraxter from its scabbard. I took the other one’s short compound reflex bow and his quiver of arrows and slung them over my shoulder. A knife, too, would be useful. . . The two masichieri slumbered on the floor. I shut the door on them and shot the bars and bolts. A short corridor lit by a single torch led onto a wider cellblock. Probably the sacrifices had been kept here in the old days. At the corner I halted as a screech of metal sounded. Cautiously, ready to fight or run — I was annoyed and did not wish to waste my strength on masichieri when Makfaril was here — I peered around the corner.

The scene was arresting in its action and before I could sort it all out in the tricky light it was all over. A guard screamed and spun away from a door. I saw a girl drive a long thick poniard into his neck, saw her as a fleeting black-clad sprite, her long limbs splendid as she sprang to the door. The sheening black leather stood out against her white skin. Her mass of brown hair obscured her face, but she was not Delia. She was not Delia. The door opened to her quick fingers and a man staggered out, looking ghastly, with blood dried upon his face and his dark hair draggling with caked blood and his left arm all broken and dangling awry. Quickly the girl dragged him along, taking no notice of his broken arm. She moved with feline grace, like a hunting cat — all the old images sprang into my mind. Like a tiger-girl she dragged the shambling man along and together they vanished around the corner. I loped along the corridor and looked after them. The next set of cells lay dusty and deserted and of the panther-girl and the man she had rescued remained only a double line of footprints in the dust. I wished her well. But I had my own zhantil to saddle.

Up. I must go up. Without doubt these cells for the sacrifices would be low down in this pestiferous place. So I hunted stairs and upward-sloping corridors, and only four guards died on the borrowed thraxter. The straight cut-and-thrust sword of Havilfar is keenly adapted to this work. At the end of a long corridor which by its width and height indicated I must be leaving the deeper warrens, the figure of a girl moved across from one side passage to another. For a single instant I thought she was the girl who had rescued the bloodied, broken man. But this girl’s black clothes riffled with black feathers, and she carried a wide silver bowl steaming with fragrant water. She vanished and I padded on. That splendid girl who had used her poniard so ruthlessly, she reminded me of Sosie ti Drakanium, Delia’s messenger. Her gleaming tanned white skin and her long lissom legs — yes, well, there had been a sight more skin than black leather on view. All the same, had I not disposed of the two guards at my cell door, of whom she could have had no knowledge, her rescue would have gone awry. Still, she could not know that.

As I prowled on, very much like a leem among ponsho pens, the absence of people made me realize that the time was much later than I had thought. The palaces of Kregen — and there is an evocative phrase for you! — of which I had knowledge all contained runnels of secret passages and concealed doors. This ancient temple of abominations followed that pattern. I was perfectly confident I could find my way out to the surface and probably emerge through some hidden opening an ulm away from the ruined tower of Hjemur-Gebir, but I wanted to leave dragging a rascally priest of the Great Chyyan with me.

The deserted stone corridors, the decayed barrenness of it all as I wound my way back to the giant cavern of the idol of the toad-thing, convinced me the first meeting was already being held. The other meetings for later on, one of which I had arranged to visit, now meant nothing. This meeting, here, was the vital one. For Makfaril would tell his assembled priests the date of the Day of the Black Feathers. The priests would return to their congregations all over Vallia. They would scatter like a loathsome pestilence all over Vallia and prepare their followers and, come the Black Day, they would strike!

In the end the long ululations of a moaning, whining chant, a succession of weird cadences echoing through the dusty and deserted chambers, led me to the scene. I cautiously came out upon a high ledge of rock, drowned in shadow, and so could look out and down into the torchlit bowl of the cavern with the grotesquely evil idol crouching at the center on its ominous plinth. The black obsidian altar from which the long rusted streaks of dried blood cut corrosive swathes was covered by a wide-spread cloak of black feathers. The cloak was formed into the likeness of the four wings of a chyyan, covering the altar and what lay upon it.

When I had looked down from the balcony that had collapsed in Autonne upon a gathering of the Black Feathers I had had an inkling of what might follow. And here was the reality! This gathering was far removed from that first one. Here the long ranks of the black-feathered priests droned out their chant in perfect rhythms. Tall candle flames flickered among the torchlights, casting gleams that winked back from weapons and armor. The black arms lifted in ritual observances. A knot of high priests upon a fallen block of stone to one side led the chanting. I gazed at the scene, ignoring everything save the gigantic form of a chyyan, chained with silver chains, fluttering its four wings above the toad idol. A real chyyan. Its rusty black feathers showed the true horror of the situation, as it clashed its wings and hissed viciously, its scarlet beak open and its scarlet claws striking wildly at the air. The horror lay in this: how could any sane man regard this feral killer of the skies as a god? What difference lay between the living and breathing chyyan and the decayed stone idol of the toad-thing?

Half-naked girls partially clad in scraps of black feathers gyrated wildly. They swirled black-feathered fans. The stink of incense rose dizzyingly. The priests chanted, a long rigmarole of praises to the Great Chyyan and how he was immortally twinned in spirit with Makfaril. Staring down from the shadows of the ledge into the wild torchlights with the naked sprites dancing and the wafting coils of smoke and the chanting lines of priests, I felt the nausea well in me.

The chyyan clashed his wings and tried to drag his head away from the chain around his neck. The chain ran down to a small windlass plugged to the stone floor. The chyyan was captive — aye! — captive to the odious desires of Makfaril.

Captive the killer bird might be, but all the virulence of his nature showed itself in the venomous hissings and the violence of his movements. His scarlet beak gaped ready to rip and rend, his scarlet eyes gleamed like freshly spilled blood. The thunder of his wings and the hissings from the devilish beak clashed and blended with the sonorous chanting from the black-feathered ranks. The masichieri stood around the walls, standing well clear of the blasphemous rotting statues in their niches, watchful, on guard. What they guarded against, deep here in the vile depths below Vondium, I did not know. The place must have borne some resemblance to the dire evil of Cottmer’s Caverns. I saw the guards, their black leather, their metal, the black feathers adorning them. I saw their thraxters and the oval shields they bore, their bows.

When the chanting ceased a high priest stepped up onto the pedestal below the statue. He raised his arms. Above his head the chyyan hissed and spat and struck fiercely downward, his scarlet beak flashing above the priest’s head.

Himet the Mak and the knot of other high priests stood in a solid block of blackness at the side. The high priest began a shrill chanting harangue, promising everything, promising all Vallia would be turned over to pillage and plunder, promising that Makfaril would make of them all new men and women.

“Behold, the Black Day dawns! Behold, Makfaril the beloved of the Great Chyyan will reveal to us the day chosen! On your knees, prostrate yourselves, perform the full incline for our leader, twinned spirit with the Great Chyyan! Makfaril! Makfaril!”

In a sighing rustling of feathers the whole congregation prostrated itself. Each man performed the full incline. I stared, fascinated. Power was being exercised here, power I understood, power I had fought against time and again.

The gargoyle head of the toad-thing moved. It lifted. The stone jaws gaped, wide and wider. The head lifted and the jaws gaped and a shaft of golden illumination sprang from the opening. A figure stood framed against that radiance, a tall strong figure silhouetted against the glow.

“Rise up, my people, and give thanks to the Great Chyyan!”

The voice boomed and rolled about the cavernous chamber in eerie echoes. The figure stepped down from the blasphemous mouth of the toad. Clad all in black feathers, imitating a chyyan, the figure of Makfaril stood limned in the golden light.

“Sink me!” I whispered, and slid the bow into my hands. “By Zim-Zair! I’ll feather you, you rast, aye, and with a shaft fletched with your own damned black feathers!”

The short compound reflex bow, a construction of laminates of wood and horn with a sinew backing, did not contain the supremely long powerful strike of a longbow, but it would serve. I took up an arrow and nocked it. I’d shoot the rast clean through his black heart. If it was Naghan Vanki then the treachery of the hostile territories would be avenged, although that was now the least of my concerns. I lifted the bow.

Then I paused. There might be something to learn when the rast addressed these black priests of his. He spoke, gesturing widely, almost laughing, so commanding a figure and so completely in his power were these poor duped fools.

“The Black Day dawns!” he bellowed in a roar. “Behold, the Day of the Black Feathers is at hand!”

The congregation, prostrate, let fly a long wailing cry of delight.

“Long and long have we waited. And to seal our compact, to prove to the Great Chyyan our love and devotion, we offer a sacrifice. We give a life into the Great Chyyan’s keeping, earnest of our intention!

We shall strike! Red will flow the blood! And all, my people, will be ours!”

At a signal priests stepped forward, prominent among them Himet the Mak. They ripped away the black feathered cloak in the guise of four chyyan wings. They tore it away from the sacrifice spread-eagled upon that blasphemous obsidian slab.

I stared.

White and voluptuous and naked, thonged by wrists and ankles and yet still glaring up with blazing defiance, my Delia lay spread for the sacrifice.

Redness, roaring, madness, blackness! They were winching down the chain, drawing the violently thrashing chyyan down by the neck. Its scarlet beak slashed the air above the altar, above the slab of sacrifice. Its scarlet eyes saw that superb white sacrifice spread out for it, and now it no longer fought the chain. Hungrily it darted its beaked head down to rip and tear and gorge upon that lovely flesh. The bow spat.

The arrow winged true. The shaft gouged deeply into one scarlet eye and the chyyan screeched and thrashed and clashed its wings. Makfaril darted sideways with a ferocious leap and the second arrow splintered against the toad-thing where he had stood.

As he leaped, the black chyyan cloak spun away from him. The black feathers floated free. And Makfaril stood revealed clad all in glittering armor, with thraxter and rapier and parrying-stick, a glorious golden numim, powerful, ferocious, bellowing savage commands.

“By Vox, Rafik!” I said, and leaped.

Headlong I leaped from the high ledge and crashed down onto the heads of the priests. They scattered and I felt bones crunch and break. There was no time for me to be winded. I was up and running and the sword in my hand cut left and cut right and there were dead men in a blood-soaked swath behind me and I scarcely heeded them. Only one thing I saw. Like a maniac I raged through the press and reached the slab of black obsidian.

The screams and shouts roared in the cavern. Arrows splintered about me. I cut down two priests, saw Himet running away, shrieking, scrambled onto the plinth.

Four slashes, four sure quick cuts, and Delia was free.

The blood must be paining her cruelly, but she forced herself to stand beside me. Masichieri were running. If we were to die here then we would die. How we died would matter only to us. I did not forget my daughter Velia in those mad manic moments of blood. Death could touch me. I knew that.

“My heart!”

“They said you were safe!”

“So I was, until Melow was wounded.”

I cut down the first of the masichieri. If I was exalted, if I was drunk on the red rage and the red blood of battle, then I admit it. I fought. My scarlet breechclout felt wet and sticky with blood and my body gleamed a single crimson flame of blood. But so far none of the blood was mine. Delia had a dagger, snatched from the severed hand of a mercenary. Then she had a thraxter. We fought off the dais and back past the toad-thing. An arrow nicked my left shoulder. I stumbled back and hacked a priest across the face, drove the point past the guard of a masichieri, past his oval shield, deeply into his neck. Delia slashed a fellow off my back and I withdrew and whirled back again and chopped the man trying to chop Delia.

Like two blood-splashed phantasms, we hacked and hewed our way toward the back of the statue. We could not go on. There were just too many of them.

The blood stood out in livid patches across Delia’s skin.

Black feathers swirled about me. Black chyyans painted on shields closed up and bore in. A golden gleam glinted at the back of the masichieri. A great numim voice bellowed: “Do not kill him!”

As soon call off hunting dogs from the carcass of a kill when the hot madness is on them. I slashed and beat away the lunging points, slid the slashing blows. Delia was a brilliant form of red and white, of tanned skin and spilled blood. I snarled deeply and charged headlong at the clustering shields. No coherent thought was left to me now. Only the desire to slay Makfaril and thus avenge our deaths. . . Somewhere through the madness beating in my skull I heard Delia yell. “Dray! Keep your fool head down!”

Through all the red roaring madness on me, through the thunder of blood in my head, the beat of blood about my body, the roar of warring multitudes in my brain, I heard my Delia. I dropped flat and squirmed about, and Delia was at my side, gasping and laughing, and a masichieri tumbled down on top of us with a long shaft feathered through him.

Screams burst out from horror-stricken throats.

From the walls, from the niches where the rotting idols slumbered, the Crimson Bowmen of Loh methodically swept the whole cavern with the arrow storm. That sleeting hail punctured skull and leather armor, struck through mail vest and oval shield alike. Among the Crimson Bowmen were the lithe and lissome forms of girls, all clad in trim rose-red tunics, slender and quick, shooting with a deftness to equal the men’s.

“The Sisters did not forget me, then, after all!”

I looked for Seg as we shielded beneath a barrier of dead bodies, but I did not see him. This was the emperor’s work. The Crimson Bowmen of Loh, and the Sisters of the Rose. The shrieks died down to moaning whimpers and soon a dread silence hung over that cavern of death. Slowly Delia and I stood up. I swirled a black feathered cape about her glowing blood-spattered loveliness, and so we waited as Naghan Vanki walked slowly through the heaps of slain. The Bowmen had killed with that sleeting storm of clothyard shafts and not a priest or masichieri remained alive.

“So you were not Makfaril, Vanki,” I said.

His expressionless features, white and contained, did not reveal a single iota of himself as he said, “Had I been, you would surely be dead, Prince.”

Then, with cool insolence, he turned and bowed deeply to Delia. “Princess Majestrix,” he said in that flat and chilling voice. “The emperor my master will be overjoyed that you live.”

Delia is, after all, a princess, and knows how to conduct herself. She held out her hand. I saw the bloodstains.

“Thank you, Naghan. You have proved yourself a loyal servant to my father today. And to me.”

“Always, my Princess, to you.”

So that solved that problem.

Even then I still could not make up my mind how I regarded all those gallant men of Vallia who adored their princess and would gladly die for her — aye! — as so many did die and joy in the giving of their lives for that of my Delia.

“And Makfaril?” I said in my surly, oafish clansman’s way.

“He ran back through the idol of Hjemur,” said Vanki. Then, waspishly, he added, “I had thought you would stop him, Prince.”

The cool effrontery of the man had no power to enrage me now. I felt amused. He served the emperor. He was the emperor’s spy and, as I more than half-suspected then, the emperor’s spy-master. Now girls crowded up and quickly more seemly clothes were found for the Princess Delia. We walked toward the exit, past the droves of dead bodies. I saw the Jiktar in command. He looked a little at a loss, for once Naghan Vanki’s use for him was finished, Vanki lost all interest in him. I said,

“Jiktar! Gather up all the arrows! Send search parties to comb out all the runnels. Have the dead disposed of and if you find any living, question them. Check all the cells.” Then, because I was the Prince Majister and these things are expected of simpletons in that position, I added: “And, Jiktar, you and your men are to be congratulated. You shot as I expect Bowmen of Loh to shoot. There are barrels to be broached tonight.”

I did not mention the great word ‘Jikai.’ This had not been a Jikai. Rather, mention of barrels brought vividly to mind what the shooting had been truly like. Fish. . .

Naghan Vanki and an advance party of his men had climbed down the rope ladder. Makfaril — Rafik Avandil — had discovered the ladder, but I had prevented his immediate arrest. Vanki was cutting about that. “And this villain Rafik has been close to you, Prince. He led us to you. Why he wished to have you under so close an observation we do not yet know. But, when he is found, we shall question him.”

Naghan Vanki, the emperor’s spy-master, might not know. But I knew. When my wizard Khe-Hi set up his sorcerous interference, preventing the monstrously egomaniacal wizard Phu-Si-Yantong from spying on me, that villain had sent his tool to seek me out and report my whereabouts and continue the spying on my movements. Yantong wished to rule all Vallia through me. Well, his plans to bring about the destruction of Vallian life and open this land to his greedy authority had fallen into ruins this day.

“And you suspected Avandil all along?”

“Since he came here from Hamal pretending to be a loyal cheerful Vallian koter. The emperor’s agents never sleep. We dogged his footsteps, except when interfered with. That he was Makfaril was a surprise.”

“And the emperor knew of this?”

A look of such cold hardness passed over Vanki’s corpse-white face as to make his resemblance to the imagined devils of Cottmer’s Caverns vivid and repulsive. “The emperor, may he live forever, knows we serve him as best we may. He has other problems weighing on his mind.” Then Vanki looked at me with all the chilling presence of a dedicated, clever man who understands not only his own power but also his own limitations. “The racters . . . you must realize, Prince, how much more powerful they are now? Had you been seen visiting them you would have been taken up.”

“But, Naghan,” said Delia, smiling, holding my arm. “Not now, I think?”

“There is a night to be lived through yet, my princess.”

I pointed to four Bowmen who marched in step. They carried a burden between them by arms and legs and the golden wink of glittering armor scintillated among the heaps of slain.

“You will not question Makfaril now, Vanki.”

We looked down on the body of the numim Rafik Avandil, Makfaril, tool of Phu-si-Yantong. From his throat above the golden rim of the corselet protruded the hilt of a long slender dagger. I pulled it out and the blood welled. The jewels clustered on the hilt were red, and they formed the outline of a rose.

“It is mine,” said Delia. “But how—”

“What is more to the point, my love, is how you came here?”

We walked a little away from Vanki and his black-and-silver-clad men. The chamber of death bustled as the Bowmen did as I had commanded. Delia looked at me, her head on one side.

“Again, my heart? I will tell you all that I may in honor reveal. Melow was wounded and I saw her safely to our Delphondian villa here in Vondium. I went about the business that took me away — just for now let me keep that close, for I will tell you, I promise, when I am able — and I remember nothing from the moment I was drugged in some damned inn until they whipped that black covering off me and I saw—”

She shivered and I put my arm about her. “It was wicked and scarlet! Hissing! I thought then that—”

“Yes, well,” I said, an onker to the end. “You know what thought did.”

When I asked about Dayra and Lela as we made our way through the maze of chambers and past the barracks and so up the circular slimy stair and out into the fresh air of Vondium, she told me they were well and as far as she knew dwaburs away and busy about business for the Sisters. She had left them with instructions to come and see their father as soon as they were able. Her smile was sweet, yet I saw the weariness in her. Her experiences had been horrific. Mine had been compounded of her horror, lumped together with my own and hurled full in my face, as a leem springs, near-shattering me when I saw the black-feathered cloak whipped away to reveal the naked body of my Delia spread for sacrifice. The devilish hand of Yantong was in this, surely. The sacrifice of the Princess Majestrix would have been used in ways I could not comprehend. Chyyanism was finished. All the priests who would have carried the word for the day of uprising were dead. Makfaril was dead. The Day of the Black Feathers would never dawn in Vallia.

The simple people who had been hoodwinked would wait and they would grow restless. If they rose the insurrection would be in uncoordinated attacks, sporadic, local, able to be dealt with. Then the people would tire and lose faith and in the end they would curse the Great Chyyan and his twinned spirit, Makfaril.

“It is sad that people like the Racter party have triumphed,” I said later, as we went through into our private apartments in our Valkan villa on its hill in Vondium. “But better, I think, than had the Great Chyyan triumphed.”

“The racters are blind in their evil, as we know. Most are corrupted by their own wealth and power. But Makfaril was not Phu-si-Yantong then, after all. And my heart, Naghan Vanki, who is a monstrously clever man, said this numim kept close watch on you.”

“Aye! Too close, I think.” The callousness of Rafik Avandil seemed to me symptomatic of much that is evil about Kregen. Phu-si-Yantong had spied on me in Delia’s temple, knowing my own wizard could foil his lupal projections. So he had sent those poor doomed Rapa masichieri and Avandil, his tool, had slain them and appeared to save me, just to gain my confidence. I recalled what one of the Rapas had cried out in horror. And Rumil the Point — had he too been an instrument of Yantong’s? I thought the Fristles heaven-sent to aid Avandil’s schemes. So, smiling at Delia, I walked into our private room. “But the numim is dead, and with him for a time the schemes of Yantong.”

“The racters have grown stronger, I think. But my father? They will seek to use him even more ruthlessly now.”

“They believe they have a compact with me. That can be used to your father’s advantage.”

“But he has banished you from Vondium.”

I looked up out of the window. She of the Veils cast down her golden light, tinged with a pink fuzziness. The Maiden with the Many Smiles stole gently over the fantastic silhouette of Vondium, bathing rooftops and spires with a second roseate wash of fire. All the stars of Kregen glowed in their brilliant constellations. I turned back to the sumptuously furnished room. Truly, life on Kregen is a hurly-burly of ups and downs. But who would have it any other way?

“Your father has been emperor for a long time. Now he has this Queen Lush of Lome to worry him, along with the new factions seeking to destroy him. I shall have to make him see sense.”

“And if he will not? You called him an onker. He will not forget. He is my father, and he is a terrible man in his wrath, a true emperor.”

“Perhaps onker was too harsh for your father. Not for an emperor.” I yawned. “I care not for tonight . .

. Now I am for the Baths of the Nine. Then I shall eat a stupendous meal. And then I shall sleep the rest of the night away.”

“That, my love,” said Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, “is what you think.”

Notes

[1]Although a fresh supply of cassettes from Dray Prescot has come into my possession, for which we should thank all the gods of Kregen, I am convinced there are some cassettes missing. Krozair of Kregen finished with Dray Prescott and Delia reunited in the Eye of the World. They must have rescued Didi, the daughter of Gafard and Velia, from the Grodnims. Textual evidence lends support to the idea that the rescue was hairy in the extreme. But the present volume, Secret Scorpio, begins with Prescot and his friends on Veliadrin seeking out the secrets of the Chyyanists. How much is missing we cannot tell. A.B.A.

[2]*dbs. Dwaburs per bur. A dwabur is five miles. A bur is forty minutes. About the author

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

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

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

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Contents

A Note On The Vallian Cycle

1 – Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan

2 – “It is Dray Prescot, the devil himself!”

3 – Burning eyes of a pagan idol

4 – Eggs of evil

5 – The Stromni of Valka explains

6 – At the Temple of Delia in Delphond

7 – Koter Rafik Avandil, lion-man

8 – A disrobing at the Running Sleeth

9 – Nath the Gnat misses the Princess Majestrix

10 – Of an independent girl of Vallia

11 – We sing the songs of Kregen

12 – A message via the Sisters of the Rose

13 – I displease the Emperor of Vallia

14 – The racters intrigue with the Prince Majister

15 – Of Natyzha Famphreon’s chavonths, and her son

16 – Kadar the Hammer rides north to Seg Segutorio

17 – What chanced during the bath of Katrin Rashumin

18 – The Sisters of the Rose are kind to me

19 – In the Cavern of Abominations

20 – Makfaril’s sacrifice

Notes

About the author

The Dray Prescot Series