Copyright © 1978, Kenneth Bulmer

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

First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1978.

This Edition published in 2007 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1

4EB, United Kingdom

www.mushroom-ebooks.com

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

ISBN 1843195593

Savage Scorpio

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

Dray Prescot

Savage Scorpio chronicles the headlong adventures of Dray Prescot on the marvelous and mystical, beautiful and terrible world of Kregen, beneath the Suns of Scorpio, four hundred light years from Earth. Dray Prescot himself is an enigmatic figure. Reared in the inhumanly harsh conditions of Nelson’s Navy, he has been transported to Kregen many times through the agencies of the Star Lords and also of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, mortal but superhuman men and women of the Swinging City. There is a discernible pattern underlying all his breathtaking adventures, he is sure of that; but the pattern and its meanings remain veiled and unguessable.

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

The volumes chronicling his life are arranged to be read as individual books. Now Dray Prescot is plunged headlong into fresh adventures beneath the hurtling Moons of Kregen, in the streaming mingled lights of Antares, under the Suns of Scorpio.

Alan Burt Akers

Chapter One

The Brotherhood Rides Out.

Shrill laughter broke excitedly over the Fair of Arial. The deep hum of many voices bartering, chaffering, driving hard bargains mingled with the roars and snarls from the wild-beast cages, the yells of barkers fronting their gaudily striped stalls, the tinkling of bells, the braying of calsanys. The exotic smells of a myriad different foods being cooked and served, the pervasive aromas of wines, the pungent fumes of dopa, coiled above the sweating happy throngs among the stalls and booths in the broad open space cresting Arial’s Mound. A living breathing tapestry of noise and movement and color proclaimed the holiday atmosphere of the Fair.

The two half-naked ragamuffins, scratched by briars and panting from a long run, who ran fleetly from the forest into the outskirts of the throngs where hundreds of people haggled and drank and sweated and enjoyed themselves, attracted no attention.

The boys were shouting. Above the din only a few grizzled zorcahandlers near them heard much, and these men, anxious about selling to a credulous fop a zorca whose single spiral horn had cracked and been expertly pinned and varnished over, shooed the boys away impatiently. Quickly the boys ran on and tried to attract the attention of others; but everyone was too intent about the business of the pleasures of the Day, too self-engrossed to pay any heed to two dirty ragged lads, acting up a mischief. A group of men who by their equipment and rugged looks were tazll mercenaries, men at the moment without employment, gawped and joked before a brilliant tent where feather-clad maidens swayed and danced, clinking silver bells, flashing white teeth, kohled eyes very inviting as their puce-faced barker waved his arms and shouted hoarsely, jingling silver coins, wheedling the tazll mercenaries to enter and enjoy the dancing. The mercenaries sent the boys off with fleas in their ears. Along the rows of stalls where all the varied produce of the Czarin Sea was displayed for sale the boys rushed, grabbing tunics, pulling decorated sleeves, shouting, and being cuffed and pushed away. Through the packed throngs and the noise moved vendors carrying heaped trays of delicacies, steaming mouth-wateringly. Cutpurses were active and a man must lief keep his eyes open and a hand closed over his purse. A few late Elders, solemn and grave with the importance of the coming ceremony, moved toward the central dais. Priests of many cults and religions walked sedately in the blended gorgeous suns shine of Antares, moving in spaces that opened magically for them and closed as magically after they had passed by. Mostly they were priests of Opaz. There was not one priest of the Great Chyyan, for the last apostle of the Black Feathers had been hanged, very high and very thoroughly from the tallest tree on the island of Nikzm, two of the months of the Maiden with the Many Smiles ago. The Fair of Arial on the island of Nikzm in the Czarin Sea was, in this guise, only a recent institution. Previously it had been the marketplace for the pirates who thronged the busy sea-lanes. From the island of Zamra just over the horizon to the north through the islands fringing Vallia to the west, from past the twin islands of Arlton and Meltzer to the south and Vetal to the east, the people sailed for this seasonal event. Now most of the renders had been destroyed, the pirates rendered harmless. Now the hullabaloo of commerce and pleasure gave joy and holidays to the good folk of the Czarin Sea. Even from south of Arlton and Meltzer, from Veliadrin and from Valka, the people would sail in a grotesque variety of ships and unseaworthy boats to the Fair of Arial. Then, when this fair was over for the season, the folk who followed the Fairs would pack up and travel to the next venue, hoping for richer pickings, perhaps, for more adventure, for a fresh zest and spice to life. For not all of Kregen, that mysterious and ominous planet four hundred light years from Earth is grim and cruel; among the beauty and the splendor there is room and more for fun and frolic and the enjoyment of living.

The two boys, bare of foot, scratched of legs and arms, red of face, continually tried to attract attention and were as continually rejected. A fat woman in a red skirt and black bodice, all wobbling chins and bust and stomach, dropped a wicker basket of loloo’s eggs, well packed with straw and moss. Her hands flew up in horror as the two boys caught at her red skirt, shrieking in her ear, dragging her forcibly to make her listen.

The straw and moss proved woefully insufficient. Loloo’s eggs rolled and cracked and splashed under the feet of the crowds. The woman threw her apron over her head, concealing her glistening face, and although her face was thus hidden and her screams lost in the merry uproar, by her lurching movements it was clear the boys had caused her the utmost terror. She staggered away. The corner tent pole into which she blundered supported an awning giving welcome shade from the twin suns. The awning collapsed. It billowed inward upon rows of men, dedicated drinkers all assiduously practicing their craft, quaffing good Vallian ale from glazed ceramic jugs.

Through all the bedlam of the Fair, belching out like an erupting volcano, the furious uproar from the devotees of Beng Dikkane, the patron saint of all the ale drinkers of Paz, bellowed and burst with the impassioned fervor of men interrupted at their worship. Flushed-faced men fought the tangles of cloth. Billows and humps of the gaudy material disgorged men raging with fury. Ale jugs flew, cascading their foaming contents over the drinkers, over passersby, over the trampled grass indiscriminately, in a wanton paroxysm of involuntary libations. The two boys, who made no attempt to run away and who —

amazingly — did not laugh, would be chastised now for a certainty.

Seg nudged me.

“Brassud, my old dom! Here comes the Chief Elder.” Seg shot me a wary glance from those fey blue eyes of his, his strong tanned face beneath the mop of dark hair very merry as he prepared to mock me in his usual way. “Where are your wits wandering? This is the islanders’ great moment, and here you are, gawping into the air like a loon.”

“I was watching those two lads, Seg. They’ve disappeared in the confusion — but they’re in for a bit of stick, I fancy. Anyone who gets between an ale-drinker’s ale and his stomach has only himself to blame.”

“I’ll allow that,” said Inch, standing up so that his full seven feet of height gave him some advantage in peering over the heads of the jostling thousands. “They’re having themselves a good time down there. The tent’s right over now and there are ale barrels a-rolling every which way.”

The confusion really was rather splendid. But my attention had to be directed to the portly, stiff, embarrassed form of doughty old Dolan Pyvorr. The Chief Elder, caparisoned in a blaze of finery, glistening and glittering in the mingled rays of the twin suns, advanced ponderously upon the steps leading up to the dais. He carried his Balass Rod with great ceremony. The Rod was all of two feet in length, banded by nine silver rings, and topped by a silver hirvel head, all fashioned superbly in Vandayha, the city of silversmiths in Valka.

Seg and Inch and the others of my friends and comrades upon the dais stood up to welcome the Chief Elder of Nikzm. I, too, stood up, for the protocol of princes means less than nothing beside the simple virtues of good manners.

A little scuffle of shoe leather at my rear took my attention. Turko the Shield used always to stand solidly at my back, in peace as in war. Now I heard his voice, low, saying: “By Morro the Muscle, Tarek, tread with care—”

And Tarek Dredd Pyvorr’s answering voice, low, passionate: “You think I seek to harm the prince, Turko the Shield? Are you mad? Have you lost your senses? I, who owe everything to him? He meets my father, and he has asked that I stand with him at that time.”

I took no notice. Turko might be overly officious about caring for my person — that is a great comfort on Kregen, believe me.

A little more shuffling and arrangements went on, and Balass the Hawk and Oby would have to shift along, I guessed. I killed my smile. Yes, we were a real bunch of tearaways, right villains all, comrades in arms, and here we were, dressed up like popinjays and standing on an overly-ornately decorated dais beneath a pavilion of cloth of silver, the focus of attention and — as they say — the cynosure of all eyes, waiting for the great moment, a great inaugural moment, in the Fair of Arial. Among that group on the dais were others of my friends, some of whom you have met before in my narrative, others who, comrades in arms, have not yet found a personal mention. We were here expressly at the invitation of the Elders and People of Nikzm to take part in the ceremony about to begin. That was the official explanation for our presence. The true reason we were here was to meet in privacy, away from the prying eyes and ears of the capital — from which, anyway, I was banished — and all other teeming cities, to take further steps in the formation of the new Brotherhood. Dredd Pyvorr stood a half-pace to the rear and to my left. He was garbed resplendently, as we all were, out of honor to the Elders and People of this tiny island of Nikzm. Now as his father climbed the steps to the dais, Dredd Pyvorr whispered his thanks anew to me.

“You have made me a Tarek, my prince. My father has been raised to become an Elder of our island, and to be Chief Elder—”

“I did not make him Chief Elder, Dredd. That he achieved himself, elected by his peers, out of his honesty and courage.”

The Pyvorrs were hard-working, simple folk, the salt of the Earth — or of Kregen — and once the pirates had been cleared away and their markets closed to make way for the Fair of Arial, the island needed to be handled afresh. Situated just south of the island of Zamra, of which I am kov, Nikzm needed a council of Elders. Also, because he had fought well for us, and because he pleased me in his forthrightness and gallantry, Dredd Pyvorr had been made a Tarek, a rank of the minor nobility and within the gifting of a kov. Seg had made his Tareks in his kovnate of Falinur, and Inch his in his kovnate of the Black Mountains, both in Vallia.

“My loyalty to you is unshakable, my prince. And my gratitude eternal.” In some mouths these words would have raised my hackles, made me think, created suspicion. They did nothing of the kind when spoken by Dredd Pyvorr.

His father climbed up the last few steps, puffing, broad and scarlet, and he bowed. He knew enough of my ways not to go into the incline or the full incline. I bowed in return and held out my hand.

“Well met, Elder Pyvorr. The Fair is a great success.” We could hear ourselves speak, up here on the dais, with the bumblebee murmuring of the crowds around us. The fun over at the upset ale tent continued, and I fancied two small ragged forms would be, eel-like, squirming to avoid capture and chastisement.

“Lahal, my prince! Lahal and Lahal! Indeed—!” and here Pyvorr turned himself ponderously around to survey the magnitude of the Fair with the noise and color and jollity. “Indeed this is an auspicious day.”

I did not know why the invitation to attend this Fair had been sent me in the form it had. But Seg and Inch and the others seemed to know, and had prevailed upon me to attend. Anyway, I wanted to know how the island was prospering, now that it no longer had piracy to depend on for a living. The economy ran well, and the crops grew and the fishermen reported bumper catches, and copper had been discovered in the rolling hills that centered the tiny island. A tiny breeze licked in and flicked lazily at the banners and guidons, at the standards and flags. My old scarlet and yellow flag flew up there, and the red and white of Valka, and the red and yellow of Vallia, and the blue and yellow of Zamra. And, surrounded by panoply, we stood like peacocks in our glittering clothes. Pyvorr gestured to his Council of Elders, all standing gravely to one side, waiting for the proceedings to open. The few guards needed to keep the more importunate of the crowds away from the railed off space at the foot of the dais had no trouble. They were Pachaks, and they were every one a picked man, and they were the first bodyguard of the Brotherhood, not as yet fully inducted into the secrets of the Order; but devoted and loyal and soon to become acolytes. They were not mercenaries, having homes and steadings on Zamra.

The Council Elders all lifted their right hands.

Pyvorr turned heavily back to face me and lifted his own right hand. He glanced across at the rank of nine Womox trumpeters. Their horns were gilded and garlanded with roses above the fierce bull-like faces. Their tabards shone with silver thread. They lifted the long straight silver trumpets. Each massive chest expanded with air sucked into powerful lungs. The trumpets caught the streaming mingled lights of the suns and glittered with silver starpoints.

The trumpeters pealed their fanfare. High and ringing, shrill, imperative, demanding, the silver notes pierced above the hubbub.

Silence did not fall at once. Rather, gradually and with ebbing and flowing disturbances, the uproar slowly faded. People ceased what they were doing — bargaining, buying, selling, eating, drinking, skylarking, testing their strength, having their fortunes told — and drifted out from the booths and tents into the open spaces and alleyways where they might see and hear what went on upon the high dais. The noise persisted as the people settled down in the suns shine for the ceremony. Two dirty, raggedy figures darted out from the mass, pushing and shoving to make their way through to the front where the Pachaks stood on guard with the steel winking in their tail hands, upflung past their shoulders.

The boys shouted; but their shouts were lost in the bellows of outraged anger from some of the crowd. Others in the crowd began to shout, but in a different key, and to push and shove away, trying to escape the pressing throngs.

The boys burst out into the little cleared space at the foot of the dais. The Pachaks, veterans all, eyed them cautiously.

Amid the confusion of shout and counter shout some words jumped up from those in the crowd trying to push away.

“. . . all riding sleeths!” and “. . . leaving us defenseless, open to massacre or enslavement!”

And, coinciding with the two boys’ impassioned shrieks as they darted past the Pachaks and halfway up the steps, a word that grew and rolled about the Fairground and drew into itself much of the dark evil that festers on Kregen—

“Katakis! Katakis!”

“Slavers! Slavers!”

Somehow, my sword was in my fist.

Not all slavers are Katakis, that tailed race of devils, but almost all Katakis are slavers — given half a chance.

I swung about to face that band of brothers there on the high dais. Resplendent nincompoops we looked, decked out in all our finery. But each man wore a sword — except Turko — and each man was a comrade in arms, a bonny fighter, a veteran.

“Brothers!” I bellowed. I lifted the sword in a deliberately theatrical gesture, the long slender rapier blade glittering high. “This is work for the Order! For this we are created.” I yelled at Turko direct.

“Turko — fetch me up those two lads — and treat them gently. Oby — the zorcas. Seg, Inch, Balass—”

But my friends were already running, leaping down the steps four at a time, pouring out to belt across the flattened grass to the zorca lines. And Young Oby raced ahead of them all. Turko appeared with a squirming tattered figure under each arm.

“And keep silent until the prince speaks to you, you Imps of Sicce!”

They slammed onto their feet, and Turko held a scruff of the neck in each ferociously powerful fist. I bent down.

“You have done well,” I said. I spoke evenly but firmly, well knowing the kind of impression I could make if I was clumsy. “Where away are these Opaz-forsaken Katakis? You will lead us?”

“Yes, koter—”

Turko shook them.

Koter is the equivalent of gentleman, mister, and it was clear these two ragamuffins had encountered koters as the highest form of life. Not that I put store by ranks and titles, as you know, except as artifices to get things done.

“Address the prince as prince, famblys!”

“Yes, prince—”

As useful to ask these two if they could ride a zorca as ask them if they had a pocket full of golden talens.

“You take one, Turko. I’ll take this rascal.”

Seizing up my lad, who had a shock of brown hair that was probably more alive than many a languid noble of the court, I leaped off down the steps. Turko followed. Tom Tomor ti Vulheim reined past on his zorca, kicking dust as he slewed around and so pushed back the crowd. Vangar ti Valkanium did the same on the other side. Dredd Pyvorr appeared leading a zorca and Turko would have given her to me; but I waved him on and caught at the reins Oby flung at me. Up went my urchin across the saddle, my left boot went into the stirrup, and with a flick of my hand I was seated. My lad squirmed around, for the zorca may be the most beautiful of mounts, with four tall spindly legs, a marvel of grace and stamina; but the zorca is remarkably close-coupled and there is barely room for two.

“Your name, lad?”

“Tim, if it please you, ko— prince.”

“Right, Tim. Which way?”

He pointed.

The wide expanse of Arial’s Mound covered with the booths and stalls and wild-beast pens and stabling lines, with the now more than a little ludicrous high dais at the center, was rapidly clearing of people. They were running off in all directions. Some, at least, must be heading straight for the viciously-waiting arms of the Kataki slavers.

Tim pointed to the east, a direction that paralleled the coast, distant some two ulms. Dredd Pyvorr reined across, his face furious, highly colored, intense.

“Briar’s Cove, lad? Am I right?”

“Yes, prince, you are right!” sang out the lad with Turko.

“Fambly!” said Turko, incensed. “Only the prince is the prince.”

“For the Order!” I bellowed. As of its own volition, it seemed, my rapier had appeared in a twinkling at the first mention of the Katakis, and had scabbarded itself when the lads had run up, so now, once more, the glittering blade snapped out. I waved it high and pointed forward. “Ride!”

As a group we rode out, past the last scattering fugitives, screaming and wailing, out along the narrow track that led through this neck of the forest, to curve down to Briar’s Cove. It appeared to me the Katakis, with the Fair as cover, had struck inland to take the chief town of Nikzm by surprise. Once they had possession of that, they could sweep up the people as they arrived. Long memories of pirate raids, of slavers and aragorn snatching away whole families, dictated that only those villages that needs must, say by reason of the fishing, would be built on the coast. In this, this section of the Outer Oceans resembled the Inner Sea, the Eye of the World of Kregen. As we rode furiously along, a fresh thought rose to torment me. The Katakis are a race strong and powerful, with a tail that, equipped with bladed steel, makes of them formidable opponents. They are also low-browed, dark, with thick black hair, oiled and curled, with gape-jawed mouths fanged with snaggly teeth, and generally of an evil, pestiferous nature. But we had met and bested them before. The thought that occasioned me some agony was simply this; no force of Kataki slavers would raid here, in the very shadow of the puissant empire of Vallia, for all the empire’s internal problems, unless they raided in strength. They must be a strong and determined band.

And we were few.

I led my men into a battle that could easily end with us all dead or enslaved. Yet no one had thought to count the cost. No one had thought to reck the consequences. Katakis had had the nerve to land on one of my islands to raid and enslave; therefore my band of brothers followed me into headlong action.

Through the coldness of these thoughts the warmth flowed that we were a band of brothers, we fought together as comrades in arms. This would be the first real test of the Order, for every man who rode with me had been invited to become a member, and had joyfully accepted. He had accepted the strictures laid on him, the demands that membership of the Order would entail. The simple, pure-minded and naive chivalry of the first rules of the Order may make me smile now; but they remain as true as ever, despite all that has happened since. We were idealistic, believing that too much violence on Kregen was being used by the wrong people, that we should do what we could to redress the balance. And these Opaz-forsaken Kataki slavers had turned up, right on our doorstep, to present us with our first challenge, our first test.

Certainly, as we thundered along the forest trail, kicking dust and twigs, a bright and colorful company, I did not count the discomfiture of the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. That evil creed had been bested in Vallia, for the time being, and the beating of it had not been at the hands of the Order as an Order. If I am a credulous man, that is understandable, seeing the marvels I have witnessed in my life. But I detected a fundamental and powerful current of fate in this meeting between slavers and the Brotherhood.

Ahead the track twisted around a giant lenk, the oak-like tree growing to an enormous girth and shedding a deep and somber shadow upon the trail. We roared around the angle and beyond a sharp declivity the trees ended and a long greensward opened up. I reined in, my hand upflung, my zorca skidding and sliding.

Slowly, I cantered out into the open.

The others followed.

We stared.

The ground was littered with color, with steel, with bodies and with blood. Slowly, we walked our zorcas through the shambles, the animals restive, not liking the stink of fresh-spilled blood, but obedient and going on, well-trained to the stark realities of war.

“So here are your Katakis, Tim.”

Tim was being sick.

The ground was littered with bodies and with blood — Kataki bodies and Kataki blood. I dismounted. As I looked up I saw for the first time that Young Oby had snatched up the scarlet flag with the great yellow cross upon it, my flag, the battle flag that fighting men call Old Superb. It shone in the mingled suns-light.

“These devils have been killed handsomely,” observed Seg. He bent over a corpse, kicking the limp tail away so that the bladed steel strapped to the tip clinked against a fallen helmet. He picked up a bow. Oh, it was not a great Lohvian long bow; being of a compound reflex construction; but in Seg Segutorio’s hands any bow is a deadly weapon par excellence. He smiled up at me. “I feel only half naked now.”

The Katakis had fought hard. They lay in windrows at the end, piled high. Their wounds were all in front. But they were all dead, methodically butchered.

“Who could have done this?” said Dredd Pyvorr. He looked pinched of face. “Katakis are notorious —

Chuliks?”

Chuliks and Pachaks command the highest fees as mercenaries, for different reasons. Our small guard of Pachaks remained mounted, instinctively carrying out soldier’s work, scouting ahead, sniffing out the devils who had slain devils.

The body of one Kataki intrigued me. He was a big fellow, although Katakis are as a rule not overly tall. His helmet had fallen off. His face reminded me of that of Rukker. The arrow had punched through his bronze-studded scaled corselet.

At my side, Seg whistled.

“A goodly shaft. . .”

He bent to pull it out.

I said: “You’ll find it will come hard. As a wager, I’ll venture there are six or seven barbs a side. That’s no Lohvian shaft, Seg.”

“But it is as long — what bow is there that — oh!”

“Yes,” I said. And I nodded and felt the anger in me, and the despair, the sorrow, and the vengeful fury.

“I have never met an archer who can best a Bowman of Loh,” said Seg Segutorio, speaking softly. “But you have told me of these devils, and it seems we are to meet them, now.”

“They must be devils indeed to destroy these Katakis, who are devils spawned from Cottmer’s Caverns,” said Dredd Pyvorr, feelingly.

“From around the curve of the world,” I said. “From whence no man knows. They sail in their swift, magical ships, raiding, destroying, looting, burning. They are diffs unlike any in the whole of Paz. They are not men like us. They are the Shanks, the Shants, the Shtarkins, Leem Lovers, vile, to be destroyed, vermin — and yet, and yet, I know they are courageous to sail their ships all those untold dwaburs across the open seas. They are not men like us; but they are men.”

“And they’ll slay us all as soon as look,” said Inch, sourly.

Dredd Pyvorr gripped onto the hilt of his rapier. His pinched mouth shook; then he had control of himself.

“I know of whom you speak, prince. We call them Shkanes — they have many names, all vile. Fish-Heads — yes, their horror goes before them.”

I turned to young Tim, who had recovered and was now busily plundering the dead bodies, a most sensible occupation.

“You said they rode sleeths, Tim.”

“So they did, prince,” Tim looked up, his hands full of rings and chains and brooches, with a wicked-looking dagger stuck into his breechclout. I winced. He could do himself a permanent and most unfortunate injury if he were injudicious.

“There are no sleeths here, you imp of Sicce!” roared Balass the Hawk. He was prowling about looking for a sword more to his liking than a rapier, and hoping vainly to come across a shield. “Sleeths are stupid reptiles, at best, but they’d stick to their dead masters.”

“That means, brothers, that the Shanks have ridden off on the Katakis’ sleeths.”

Oby ran off.

The sleeth is a saddle dinosaur, variously scaled and marked, which runs on two legs, the fore claws stunted and in a way pathetically stupid, and with the long thick tail outstretched to the rear to provide balance. They are an uncomfortable ride and I have nothing to do with them. I am a Zorca and a Vove man. I ride a Nikvove when I cannot saddle a Vove, and I like the superb joats of my Djangs, and I have some time for a few other of the riding mounts of Kregen. But sleeths — no, I do not fancy them. From just over the brow of the slope Oby screeched and waved his arms, so we trotted over there. He pointed down.

The unmistakable tracks of sleeth claws showed in a muddy patch where water trickled past the grasses. The tracks pointed downslope and to the farther side of the greensward where the forest closed in again. The forest did not, at that moment, look in the least inviting.

“Find yourselves battle weapons more suitable than rapiers,” I shouted. “Then we ride to deal with the Fish-Heads.”

No one passed a comment on our riding to deal with men who had already dealt with the Katakis for us. For all their horrific reputation, the Katakis were small beer beside the Shanks, the Fish-Heads, from over the curve of the world.

Our Pachaks trotted in from their scouting duty and dismounted to search for weapons. The choices were plentiful. If the Shanks had taken any weapons from the shambles of the battlefield it made little impression on the numbers remaining. I selected a good stout cut and thruster, a version of the Havilfarese thraxter or the Vallian clanxer, and buckled it on scabbarded to its own belt. Its owner no longer possessed a face, besides now losing his sword.

Because I had steeled myself to go through with the ceremony at the Fair of Arial, a function whose purpose appeared to be known to all my friends and not to myself, I had donned the bright foppish clothes and had forced myself to ignore them, to grow accustomed to them. Now, and, I confess, with some relief and also somewhat pettishly, I stripped off the belts and ripped away the gaudy silks and sensils, threw down the brocaded pelisse and the feathered mazilla — the thing had been irritating and itching at me all day — and so stood forth clad only in the old scarlet breechclout. In a battle a man needs protection from the blow he does not see. With resignation, then, I found pieces of armor that would fit and so donned a semblance of a breast and back, finding a reasonable fit over a padded vest. The scaled armor was flexible enough, the bronze studs barbaric against the black. Also, I took up a bow and four quivers, filling them from other, half-emptied quivers. As for the helmets of the Katakis, these are small and round and completely without embellishment, save for what may be painted on or engraved. The Pachaks are the same about their helmets. No fighting man who uses a bladed tail wants gaudy ornaments in his helmet to interfere with the lean lethal sweep of that deadly tail. Finding one that fit I strapped it up. At the least, it might save my old vosk-skull from a terminal crack. Inch appeared in high delight, tempered only by the fact that the axe he had found was not a true danheim axe, being double-bitted and short in the haft; but, as he said, it would serve to lop a few Fish-Heads’ heads, it would serve. . .

There were no shields, for, as you know, the fighting men of this part of Kregen regarded the shield as a coward’s accoutrement, a stupidity that Balass and I had been doing something to rectify. So Balass had to content himself with a good cut and thruster, and a powerful main-gauche built to mammoth proportions. As for Turko, the Khamster who could rip a warrior apart with his bare hands, the Khamorro who disdained all edged and pointed weapons, he still had his balass and steel parrying stick, a decadence of belief shocking and yet reassuring to me, for he, too, Turko the Shield, could not carry his great shield into battle at my back.

Oby took up Old Superb, and with the old battle flag floating above us, we rode from that scene of destruction and plunged into the gloomy defiles of the forest.

Turning in my saddle I saw the two lads, Tim and his friend, still hard at work. I sighed. Children learn the facts of life hard on Kregen — a phenomenon not unfamiliar to children on this Earth — but the facts they learn on Kregen are altogether more harsh and lurid. Turned in my saddle I noticed the tall whipcord tough body of the tazll mercenary who had been the only one to ride with us when we’d galloped from the Fair. He was a diff, a Khibil, with the hard, sharp, fox-like face of that people, with bristling whiskers and proud dark eyes. He had not dismounted to collect weapons. He carried a long lance, a rapier and main gauche and a cut and thruster. I had not failed to notice the silver mortil-head looped on its silver silken cord at his throat. He was a Paktun, a famed mercenary. He was not of the Order, not one of the Brotherhood, and so I had been wrong when I had so enthusiastically enjoined on us all as a band of brothers that we rode about the Order’s business. But, all the same, he looked competent and tough and a useful man to have in such a fight as we would soon encounter.

Just ahead of him rode half a dozen of the minor nobility created by Seg and Inch, Tareks all, young men devoted to their lords and to the ideals of the Order.

Foleanor Arc, the young Strom of Meltzer, rode next ahead, brilliant, laughing, his guitar slung to his saddle bow and, I knew, causing him great anguish that he could not strum the strings and then give us a rousing song to help us on our way. With him rode Kenli ti Valkanium, straight and lean and grim. They followed Nath Dangorn, called Totrix, who rode a zorca and would have preferred an ugly, six-legged totrix as a mount, and with him Nev ti Drakanium, who owed his loyalty to the Lady of Delphond.

Oh, yes, we were a goodly company, for there were others who rode with us along the forest trails in the somber shadows of the trees, with only the occasional chink of sunlight falling through, burning red when the ruby sun Zim shone down and lambent green when the emerald sun Genodras caught shafts of viridian light through the tracery of leaves. But we were few, pitifully few. Inch and Seg had counted at least a hundred and seventy-five Kataki corpses.

Truly, I had never before been of two minds over the numbers of dead Katakis there might be scattered about. Well, by Zair, to be honest, perhaps only when Rukker had been involved. The way ahead showed a streaming mass of golden light as the commingled shafts from the suns drenched the end of the trail in radiance. We rode out from the forest onto a broad sweep of greensward. Small white flowers grew in clumps among the green. The little breeze tufted the grasses. Away before us the trail, which was in truth only a narrow beaten way where the grass struggled to cling to life, trended through a copse and then rose to skirt a hillside and so round the bend and, presumably, descend to Briar’s Cove. The sound of the sea reached us in long murmured susurrations. Birds wheeled above, but their wheelings soon ceased as they set course for the shambles in our rear. At this sign we all knew the Shanks could not be far off.

I held up my right hand and made chopping motions left and right. The column formed out and we rode abreast. The flowers and the grasses and the breeze, the high blue sky and, over all, the streaming mingled radiance of Zim and Genodras, created an unforgettable picture. We rode on. The long swelling sound of the sea reached us from the right and on our left the small hill was crowned by a ruin from the olden time. White columns leaned, splotched with lichen. The corner of an architrave hung perilously over nothing. Insects murmured among the tall grasses and flowers bowering the ruin. We rode on.

The greenness of the grass was a greenness that held nothing of menace, lush and bright and soothing. Clumps of red flowers grew here and there, mingled with the white star-like blooms. Blue flowers, perfumed, delicate, drifted above tall stems in the little breeze. A few clouds, white against the blue, drifted in counterpoint to the blue flowers starring the grasses.

Truly, there are times and places on Kregen that are heartbreakingly beautiful. But we grim men, panoplied for war, rode on.

The Shanks rode out from the copse fronting us, a dense column that debouched like a dark river in flood, formed a thickly ranked line that extended to flank us left and right, and sat, waiting, their weapons all a-glitter in the light of the Suns of Scorpio.

We had no trumpeter.

There was no need to sound the charge.

If men exist who prey on other men, looting and destroying and killing, then the victims must either perish or resist. To perish is not always easy, if nonresistance is part of a creed. To resist is sometimes the easier course, even if it does, in the end, lead to total destruction. Then, perhaps, it were better not to have resisted at all.

Who could say that these Fish-Heads did not have the right to sail over the curve of the world from their own lands, and burn and loot and destroy our lands?

These questions are imponderables, particularly when you are pounding along at full gallop, the sword in your fist, the suns light of Scorpio beating on your helmet, feeling the jolting lunge of your zorca, seeing the onrushing blur of Fish-Faces, the glitter of hostile weapons, readying yourself for the scarlet moment of impact.

The Brotherhood hit the thick ranks of Shanks and burst through in a welter of flashing blades and spurting blood, of screaming sleeths and zorcas, of men going down and of Fish-Heads being ridden into the turf.

It was all a blur of action. The sword thrust and cut, parried, leaped, slicked with the greasy green ichor of the Shanks, a live brand in my hand.

We were surrounded. The Shanks closed in. Seg’s arrows cut them down as fast as he could draw the string and let fly. Inch’s axe slashed with metronomic regularity, cutting swathes through the fishy bodies. Icy eyes glared at us, the abominable stink of fishy bodies clammied in with a foul miasma. We fought. Balass showed all the skill of the hyr kaidur, fighting with professional skill tempered now with the berserk rage of the warrior. Oby, using men’s weapons, hewed and hacked and drove down his opponents. The clangor of sword against sword beat across that pleasant grassy sward. Blood dropped upon the flowers, the red blood of Paz and the green ichor of the Fish-Heads. The Shanks wore bronzen armor, fashioned into fish scales. They possessed man-like bodies, but their heads were the heads of fish. Many varieties of fish, there were, I suppose. But we slew those we could and did not stop to reck the differences. In their fishy eyes no doubt we looked alike, although a Pachak and a Khibil do not look much alike, and diffs differ from apims like me. And apims differ, too, as Inch’s seven foot of height marks him out from Oby’s lithe youth.

The crowds of stinking Fish-Heads pressed in. Our zorcas reared as we fought, struggling to find space. We were hard pressed. Swords cut and slashed. Over and over again a man would be saved in the last moment by a comrade’s blade. Our brands ran thick with green ichor. Soon our arms would tire. We were all fighting men, warriors of Kregen, men who were inured to hardship and suffering and the clangor of war.

But humanity is frail. Muscles and blood, sinews and breath, can only sustain a man for so long. Then strength will fail and breath come hard. Then muscles will fail to bring the sword up in time, to deliver the terminal blow. And there were many Fish-Heads, over twice as many as in the Brotherhood. We fought magnificently.

But we were pressed in and back. The Pachaks found a weak link in the circle and we smashed our way through. I lifted in the stirrups and waved the dripping sword.

“To the trees!” I yelled. I took the responsibility. I ordered the retreat. I, it was, who took my men away from that death trap.

We galloped hard for the trees and we passed the little ruin atop its hill. There were fewer of us who thus retreated than there had been who so valiantly charged.

At the tree line we reformed. Our zorcas were tiring. We were all panting. Most of us were wounded. Blood shone red upon our armor. And, over all, the sticky green ichor clung, stinking, foul, like a vomit to revolt us all and remind us of the inevitable end.

The dark mass of the Shanks with those evil glittering points of light from point and edge of weapons waited at the far end of the greensward slope. Banners fluttered above them, a multi-colored display that meant much to them and nothing save as targets for destruction to us. I looked at the Brotherhood, panting but determined still. We were few.

“We will chew them up piecemeal and spit them out as one spits out gregarian pips,” I shouted. “We hit the left flank and break clean through and retire. Understood?”

“Aye, prince. Understood.” The cries came bluffly, strong, confident despite wounds and tiredness. I shook my zorca’s reins and led out.

We hit them like a rapier lunge, chopping off the left flank. We lost men, yes, we lost good men; but we trampled down and slew more of them than they of us.

The Shanks — the Shkanes as Pyvorr called them — handled their tridents with superb efficiency. The wicked barbs would degut a man as neatly as a fishmonger deguts a cod. But the wicked tridents had their disadvantages. Seg deflected one with the bowstave in his left hand, his sword blurred down and sliced away an icy Fish-Face, and Inch, the barbs of a trident caught in his saddle, slashed his axe in a merciless horizontal sweep that sprayed bits of fish everywhere.

We reformed back upslope and turned, and hit them again.

Four, five, six times we regrouped and charged.

At each charge we were less. The zorca, as we all believed then, was not the animal for the solid shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-to-knee charge, bodyweight and mass of metal counting more than fleetness and agility. Times change — but that is for later.

Seven times we raced fleetly over the slope, angling the direction of our lunge, trying to chew and chop at the mass of Fish-Heads as a man hews and cuts at a stubborn log of wood to shape it to his satisfaction. The fight was of great intensity during the action; the compass might be small but of individual prowess the battle was of epic proportions.

The arrow storm I had expected to greet us from the Shanks’ asymmetrical bows stormed only once. We lost men; but I shouted and lifted my sword and beat away the glancing shafts, and others bent their heads into the sleet. We charged through that ordeal, losing men — the Pachaks suffered here — and so came to hand strokes, again. After that the arrows fell sparingly and I guessed the Shanks were running low.

If ever the relative merits of the reptilian two-legged sleeth and the close-coupled four-legged zorca could be proved, then this battle matched them and proved decisively the zorca as the master. Pirouetting, dancing nimbly sideways, circling, the zorcas outran and outmaneuvered the clumsy sleeths. This gave us one tremendous advantage. We could drive in, deliver our blows and spin away before the sleeth riders could form front to receive our onslaught.

The grasses stained red and green with dropped blood. Men and Fish-Heads lay upon the stained grass, some howling, some screeching, most dead.

Eight times we roared in, and on the eighth time we were fractionally slow through tiredness and so were nearly surrounded and trapped. We fought free. Sword against serrated sword and trident, we hewed and savaged our way through the pressing ranks, rode with bent heads for the tree line past the white columns of the ancient ruin. We were nearly exhausted. All were wounded. We gasped for breath. Our superb zorcas were near the end.

I rode a few paces before the brothers of the Order — with the Pachaks and the Khibil there in the line with us — and I lifted in the stirrups. I surveyed my men from under the helmet rim.

“If any man wishes to withdraw through the forest, he is free to do so. I shall not think any the worse of him for that. If any one of you wishes to go, then go now, and may Opaz guide your footsteps.”

There were gaps in the ranks, and the gaps closed up.

No man moved back.

The zorcas shifted on their polished hooves. Oby held the scarlet and yellow banner high. I let out my breath.

“Then let us all go forward, together, as a band of brothers.”

“They fight hard, by Erthyr the Bow,” said Seg. He shook his bow at the dark ranks of Shanks, speckled with the cruel glitter from their weapons. “But we’ll have ’em!”

“We’ll take a few with us to the Ice Floes of Sicce,” said Inch. “By Ngrangi, this old axe will lop a few fishy heads.”

“By Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword,” spat out Balass the Hawk. “We can lick them yet.”

“Aye!” sang out Oby. He used an oath of the Jikhorkdun, in remembrance of other days. “You speak sooth, Balass, by the glass eye and brass sword of Beng Thrax!”

Other oaths rose as men swore on their honor. These men would fight to death, however nonsensical that might be. And yet — and yet? Could I detect a wavering among some of those with us? A very slight, an almost imperceptible, reluctance? Some of the shouts and cries carried overtones of hysteria. Some of these men might waver. They could see quite plainly that this affair could end only in their deaths. Where was the sense in that? Yet these men were brothers, of the Order — yet the Order was new, unfledged, with no long-rooted traditions to inspire and uplift and enable men to act beyond their own resources. Could I blame them?

“The island of Nikzm is small,” I shouted. “Since we dispersed the pirates there has been no fighting. There is no garrison to speak of. All that lies between these Fish-Heads and the defenseless people — is us — the Order.” I did not wave my sword. I sat hard and upright and glared upon these, my men, the brothers of the Order I hoped would achieve so much. “But that is not the whole reason why we fight on. Yes, it is the ultimate reason for our being. For the people of Nikzm represent all the peoples of Paz. All the continents and islands here. But we fight for our own honor. We fight in our own eyes, we are our own judges. It is to us, and us alone, that this Jikai belongs. And in honor we must redeem our pledges so freely given.”

The line, so shrunken now, quivered. Zorcas began to sidle. The men were dispirited, despite their words. In only moments one man might break, and with his desertion the whole line could crumble. Was this how my own vaunting ambitions were to end? On a tiny island, destroyed by stinking Fish-Heads?

Was my own pride so vainglorious that I would condemn to death this fine company of men, young and proud in their strength, laughing and merry, send them remorselessly to destruction? For myself? For my overweening pride and ambition?

In that dark moment, I, too, I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, came very close to despair. A voice, an anonymous voice, rose from the ranks.

“Let us ride from hence and gather reinforcements. Let us save ourselves so that we may fight another day.”

I looked.

I confess it, I looked to mark the man.

It was Dredd Pyvorr, Tarek, created by me, given honor and rank, his father uplifted, an Elder, the Chief Elder of this island we fought to save.

“If this is your will—” I started to say, not thinking, not even savage, but resigned. I, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy, resigned to running from my foes!

Another voice bellowed, hard and fierce.

“They charge! See, the Shanks attack!”

I swung about, lowering, hating, filled with anger and remorse and fury and shame. The Fish-Heads bore down on us, a long dark breaking wave of beasts and mounts, tipped with steel, riding knee to knee, hard and savage and utterly without mercy, riding to crush us and smash us into utter destruction.

“Now are we doomed!” The shriek rose and shattered in despair.

The line began to break.

Chapter Two

Kroveres of Iztar

As that dark and glittering onrushing mass bore down on us I cursed my own stupidity and pig-headed vanity and folly. I, Dray Prescot, had led these men to their deaths. The horrid clicking and scratching of many sleeth claws reached us with hypnotic intensity. The tridents glittered red in the light of the Suns of Scorpio — glittered red with our blood.

The line at my back moved and snaked, restively. The zorcas were tired. The men were exhausted. Fool! Onker! I should have retreated at the first, sought what assistance there was in Nikzm; small though it was, it would have made the difference. All the mercenaries at the Fair, the stout country-folk, the fishermen — with what weapons we could have gathered up for them, we would have fought — and I realized even as I thus castigated myself that no simple countryman, no fisherman, was going to meet and best in battle these supremely warlike Shanks. The Shanks lived for battle. It was a creed with them, some divine right given to them by their own dark and fishy gods, driving them on, egging them on to plunder and conquest and eternal battle.

The truth was the Brotherhood had achieved against the Shanks what few groups of men of Paz had ever achieved before. And the cost was high, the payment dear, the final reckoning written in blood and spelling death.

“Brotherhood of Paz!” I bellowed, turning in the saddle, glaring back at the shuffling line. “Those of you who will, go! Flee! Save yourselves. Raise the island, carry word to Zamra, rouse the garrisons. And those that will — follow me!”

Lumpily turning in the saddle and ready to clap in heels — no man who is a rider uses spurs to a zorca

— I hesitated, and turned back. My face must have borne that old intolerant, savage, devil’s look. I bellowed.

“Seg! Inch! Balass! Turko! Oby!” I shouted, loud, intemperately, viciously. “Tom! Vangar! Nath! Kenli!

Naghan! You do not ride with me. Your duty lies in other places closer to your hearts! I order you to ride and seek succor! Ride!”

They left it to Seg to speak for them all.

Seg Segutorio lifted his bow. He smiled that raffish, fey grin of his, his blue eyes very bright and merry in that tanned face beneath the shock of black hair.

“Oh, aye, my old dom. We’ll ride. We’ll obey your damned high-handed orders. Only it happens that the quickest way for us to ride to do your bidding — prince — is to ride straight ahead. Straight ahead!”

“And if any lumpen Fish-Face happens to get in the way, let him look out,” Inch finished.

“Famblys!” I shouted, feeling the gush of warmth, the anger, the pride at their folly, the agony and the shame. “Idiots! Onkers! It is my duty and mine alone — it falls to me—”

“Sometimes you take too much on your shoulders,” said Turko. His magnificent muscles bulged. I blinked. In Turko’s left hand a green-dripping sword caught the lights of the twin suns. “Turko? A sword?”

He laughed. “They broke my parrying stick. This serves in its stead. Had I my great shield, now, then—”

The clicking scrape of the advancing sleeths bore down on us.

The line shifted and yet, and yet they would not ride off. For a space the tension hung. Now I knew that they must ride. I had been wrong, criminally wrong, in thus dragging these men to their deaths. In my own folly and pride I thought I had been doing the right, the noble, thing. But nobility can be bought at too high a price. It was folly to have these men slain to no purpose now. If we all died here — as we would, as we would! — how would that help this tiny island of Nikzm, let alone the mighty empire of Vallia?

No thoughts of my Delia must be allowed to enter my stubborn old vosk-skull of a head. None.

“Go!” I bellowed. “Save yourselves!”

A few men shook out their reins, they would not look at me. But I did not blame them as they began to turn their zorcas’ heads, ready to ride back through the dark defiles of the forest. So this was how all my brave dreams for a great Brotherhood had foundered! The Order was finished. It had never even begun.

I turned back to face the oncoming mass of Shkanes, and I wished I could have had my old Krozair longsword with me, and I kicked in my heels and the zorca lunged forward for the last time. Headlong I belted for the black and silver glittering mass of Fish-Heads. A shrill and shocked shrieking began — began to my rear.

I did not look back. The zorca flew fleetly over the grass where the blue and red and white flowers starred the green, where drops of red blood stained across the flowers. The shouting at my back increased and voices mingled in shocked disbelief. I looked up to my left, toward the white ruins. I stared, disbelieving.

A light glowed among the white tumbled columns.

A golden yellow light, lambent, blazing, growing in color and luminosity, swelling. And at the heart of that refulgent radiance the figure of a woman astride a zorca. A woman wearing golden armor, astride a white zorca whose single spiral horn blazed with golden light. I stared and the mount beneath me ran loose. I stared at the apparition. She wore golden armor and carried a great banner which flowed freely outspread in a breeze no one else could feel, an unearthly breeze from a land beyond the senses of normal men.

“Zena Iztar!” I screamed it out, shaken, dazed, wondering. “Zena Iztar!”

This was the supernatural woman who had visited me on Earth when I had been banished there for twenty-one miserable years. Then she had used the fashionable name of Madam Ivanovna. She had appeared to me before, using supernatural means, and I believed she had helped me. She was not, as far as I then knew, aligned either with the Savanti or with the Star Lords. I gaped and the zorca eased up, and slowed down. Zena Iztar lifted the great banner so that all could see the device coruscating upon the crimson surface.

Outlined in white upon the glowing crimson banner the deep royal blue of her cogwheel device forced itself upon my own senses, yet I had never grasped the significance of that emblem. Always before Zena Iztar had appeared to me alone, with those around us frozen in a timeless sleep. Yet now — now from the shouts and excited and shocked exclamations that broke from the brothers of the Order, she could be seen by us all.

Her voice reached us. Golden, ringing, full-bodied, her voice floated above all the sounds of coming battle, over the shouts and yells of the men, over the clicking scraping advance of the sleeths and the hissing malevolence of the Fish-Heads, over the mingled jingling of war harness.

“Men of Paz! Brothers of the Order! Comrades in blood! Those you call Fish-Heads must be shown the error of their ways. The Order demands sacrifice, loyalty, utter devotion, unswerving purpose, obedience.” She lifted the banner in her left hand and golden coruscating sparks shot from her armor. In her right hand a sword — a sword! A sword like unto a Savanti sword — lifted high and pointed. The brand pointed at the Shanks. “Death is a small price to pay for honor! Brothers of the Order! Your duty in honor is to be true to yourselves and to Paz and to the Order.”

The light began to fade.

I shook my head. There was much she had said with which I would not, could not, agree. But a great deal summed up something of what I struggled for.

But, in the name of Zair! How did she know the Order existed at all?

But, then, she was no mortal woman. She understood many secrets I longed to know, could see into the hearts of men, must surely comprehend the doings of Kregen and attempt to mold them to her own ends. The Shanks pressed nearer. They were confident now. They had withstood all we could throw at them. They had suffered and had lost a goodly number from their ranks. But they could see how we had suffered. They shrilled their hideous screeching war cries and they came on, fishy, stinking, scaly, repulsive, deadly.

They had not seen the golden glowing apparition of Zena Iztar.

Her chiming voice rang out for one last time before the vision disappeared.

“Fight for what you believe to be true, Men of Paz. And, remember, never speak to anyone not of the Order of my presence, for I am sacrosanct. This is a stricture laid on you as members of the Order —

and a privilege. Follow Dray Prescot. Jikai!”

The first man to move was Dredd Pyvorr.

With a high lifting shriek he set his zorca in a straight dead run at the oncoming Shanks. We saw him galloping madly into the thickest of them. We saw his sword swirling and smiting left and right, saw him engulfed as a stone is engulfed in a pool. In the same instant we were all once more in motion, roaring down, headlong belting down into the repulsively stinking mass of Fish-Heads. Dredd Pyvorr had shouted as he charged for the last time.

Over and over he had shouted as he roared to his death.

“For the Brotherhood of Iztar! For the Order! For Dray Prescot! Iztar! Iztar!”

I felt the coldness running through me.

There were manipulations here, superhuman twistings of normal human men to supernatural ends. Then we hit.

The red roaring madness of battle descended on us. I am contemptuous of that notorious red curtain that falls before the fighting man’s eyes — so it is said — but it is a thing that transcends humanity and must be used and manipulated in its turn so far as a man may. We fought. We fought. I think, now, as I thought then, that Zena Iztar brought some of her magical powers to our assistance. Nothing else, in all sanity, serves to explain what happened.

The few of us, the few Brothers of the Order of Iztar, smashed and beat and routed the confident might of the Shanks from around the curve of the world. We destroyed them. The survivors ran. The sleeths poured blood as the Shkanes poured blood. Green ichor fuming onto the grass, smoking under the suns. We pursued them.

Down the long slope and through the copse and so down the last curve of the trail into Briar’s Cove we pursued them, slaying all the way.

Memories are scarlet and monstrous and do not pass.

Our arms did not tire. We were possessed of superhuman strength. Tireless, we smote and slew and drove them down to the beach where we slew them in the water as they tried to reach their ships. Those ships with their clumsy square upperworks and the sleek fishlike lines below water, with the tall banded aerodynamic sails, pushed off with the last few remnants. The black and amber sails slid up the tall masts, curving to the breeze. The ships pulled away, sliding easily through the water, and we stood on the beach and shook our fists at the Shanks, and cursed them, and jeered them, and felt, perhaps, as no men of Paz had ever felt before.

We did not attempt to sail the ships in which the Katakis had landed after the Shkanes. I knew that no ship of Paz, not even the superb race-built galleons of Vallia, could catch a Shank ship. Some of the very best galleons built in Valka might almost match a Shank vessel, and we were working all the time on improvements; but these Kataki vessels were mere small editions of argenters, broad and squat and with a pitiful sail plan. They were broad-beamed and capacious and designed to hold slaves. We stood and jeered and fumed until the last Shank vessel vanished from sight, and then we turned back to the dolorous business of clearing up after the battle.

There was much talk, and much to talk about; but one single topic dominated every conversation. Zena Iztar.

Dredd Pyvorr had been the first to drive into battle at her instigation. He, it was soon apparent, was the original martyr of the Order. His name would live enshrined.

Traditions were built in this fashion.

And, too, I detected a difference about these men. Some inner strength had been vouchsafed them. They were not the same men who had agreed to join the Order. They had been refined, refined in the crucible of agony and battle, and now they gleamed with a luster of spirit I found mightily reassuring —

and also worrying in that nagging anxious way I have when events pour past without due design and thought spent upon them.

As with my membership of the Order of Krozairs of Zy upon the Eye of the World, I will not speak of much of our discipline. Much had been taken from the Krozairs, for their Orders are justly famed, and workmanlike, martial and mystic, devoted to Zair, and designed to sustain morale and spirit in the deepest of adversities. So I will content myself with a few remarks only. In the old days of Valka, when that island of which I am Strom was its own kingdom, they had their own knights, men of high-caliber, renowned, given the honor prefix of Ver to their names. This, we chose to resurrect, and members of the Order of Iztar were called, among ourselves, Ver Seg and Ver Inch, and so on. Ver Seg Segutorio was the High Archbold.

This I welcomed and refused to take on any particular position for myself, preferring to be a plain member, a simple Ver of the Order.

We called ourselves Kroveres.[1]

Kroveres.

The name rang and reverberated, as the name Krozair rings and reverberates. We were the Kroveres of Iztar.

Also, and at the time much to my displeasure, another name was also used, and I asked questions and was told. Was told.

Seg said to me: “We are the Order of Kroveres of Iztar, Dray. Now we must build. This little Island has witnessed a miracle.”

“Surely,” I said as we rode lumpily for the Mound of Arial. “And you still haven’t given me any idea why we came here in the first place — except to check up on progress.”

He laughed.

“Why, you may as well know now. I think Elder Pyvorr will be mourning his son—” All the laughter fled.

“It was a great deed, Dredd Pyvorr’s. We shall remember him in the Kroveres.”

“Yes, that is so. And?”

“And, my old dom, you were asked here to be given the new name of the island as a gifting. You are the Kov of Zamra. Zamra is just over the horizon to the north, and this little island is called Nikzm—”

“I know!” Nik as a prefix means half and as a suffix means small. In the names of lands and islands, however, the prefix often carries the meaning of small, for Zamra was by many times more than twice the size of Small Zamra, Nikzamra, Nikzm.

“The Elders and people of the island have decided and issued the necessary patents and the bokkertu has been concluded to call the island Drayzm. Drayzm. So, my old dom, we are also the Kroveres of Drayzm.”

So, as you can well imagine, I was not overly pleased.

I passed it off; but Seg gave me a hard look, and said a word or two about thick-headed, vosk-skulled ingrates, and how Delia was muchly pleased—

“Did Delia know about this, then?”

“Oh, aye. You don’t think we’d go behind your back without consulting Delia, do you? You’ve told me how they made you Strom of Valka — well! This is no new title — and I know how you feel about them, as I do. They are useful in this world.”

“That is sooth, by Vox!”

And Inch leaned forward to say, waspishly: “And if the Kov of Falinur lost that one, he’d not give a damn, hey?”

“Too right!” snapped back Seg. He had had great trouble in his kovnate of Falinur. “Except — except Thelda would—”

“Aye,” I said. “Thelda likes mightily to be a kovneva. And so she should. She deserves it.”

Inch laughed and chick-chicked his zorca and we rode on. But I began to think how best to relieve Seg of Falinur and find him a kovnate where he was not regarded with hatred, through no fault of his own but because of the ingrained animosity of the people to anyone who deprived them of slaves. Then, of course, the problem would arise that the new kov would almost certainly approve of slavery, as did most ordinary men and women of Vallia. Slavery, Delia and I had sworn, was going to be rooted out of Vallia. I looked beyond that, as did Delia, I know now, until it was finally uprooted from all of Paz. As we rode back this kind of talk naturally led on to the problems of Vallia, the huge island Empire. Delia’s father, the emperor, had once more gained a breathing space with the destruction of the Chyyanists; but there were always fresh factions seeking to drag him down and install the puppet of their own choice as emperor.

“Mind you, Dray,” said Seg, reflectively as we cantered gently into a defile ready to begin the last ascent to Arial’s Mound in the last of the suns shine. “The nobles loyal to the emperor remain loyal, or most of them. He couldn’t rule without them.”

“But the opposition parties still continue, also,” pointed out Inch. “They keep changing alliance and pattern; but they are still against the emperor, the whole family.” Here he looked at me. I nodded somberly. Vallia is an enormous patchwork of many different sized estates, run by nobles —

by kovs and vads and trylons and Stroms and all the others — and there are many parties and factions, not all of whom seek to destroy the emperor. At this time the main party was the Racter Party, and the second the Panval Party. The Fegters were growing in strength and there was always the North East of Vallia, an area traditionally troublesome. But when Inch mentioned the family of the emperor, he was thinking of Delia and me and our family.

“And, to cap it all,” said Seg, “there’s this Queen Lush. Thelda is still captivated by the woman. I fancy this queen has her eyeballs firmly set on the emperor. You’ll have to have a say there, Dray.”

“Sink me!” I burst out. “If the old devil wants to get married again I won’t stop him.” I added, nastily:

“Give him something else to think about.”

“Well, my old dom, you’re still banished from Vondium.”

I grumped in the saddle, and we rode on. By Zair! But I was anxious to see Delia again and find out about our erring daughter Dayra. And even Lela still had not put in an appearance. I’d not seen them for years and years. It was just not good enough. So I was not in the happiest of moods as the final rites were gone through, the Kroveres of Iztar dispersed to their homes, the island was renamed Drayzm, and, at last, at blessedly last, we could take off for Valka and home — and Delia.

Chapter Three

Of Processions and Mercenary Guards

The airboat swung in a wide graceful arc over the glittering sea and the dancing wavelets of the Bay of Valkanium threw back splintered shards of ruby and emerald, merging into a deepening golden-speckled radiance as the Suns of Scorpio sank beyond the bulk of the Heart Heights of Central Valka. The sight was gorgeous and nostalgic and always, invariably, awakes in me vast and moving memories. I slanted the boat down toward the high palace and fortress of Esser Rarioch, and joyed that I was coming home. There was much work to be done. With a premonition I tried unsuccessfully to shake off, I faced a future in which the harsh clangor of strife, the wicked scrape of assassins’ steel and the devious and vicious intrigues around an emperor’s court held no lure for me whatsoever, and to the Ice Floes of Sicce with the headlong adventure of it all. But I would face danger and the most deadly peril, as I knew, as I knew, and as you shall hear.

The world of Kregen, four hundred light years from Earth, is indeed a beautiful world. It is also a horrific world. It is real. And yet I was more and more convinced that the beauty and horror cloaked far deeper truths. If the Star Lords, who had brought me here from Earth many and many a time, alone were responsible, as I had once thought, with the Savanti attempting to combat them, then how could I either resist or support so powerful a group of — a group of what? Were they men? Were they superhuman beings, divine in origin, godlike in power? I did not know. The Savanti, the superhuman but mortal men of the Swinging City of Aphrasöe seemed, at least to me, to have more easily understood aims. The Savanti wanted to make of Kregen a better and more civilized world, and they supported apims to do that work for them. Apims, that is, people like Homo sapiens, formed a goodly proportion of the various peoples I had so far met on Kregen. But whose word was it? Did it belong to diff or apim? Or neither? I did not know.

These wider problems of Kregen stayed with me as the flier landed on that high upflung landing platform and we stepped down to be greeted by my High Chamberlain, old Panshi. He looked grave. He bowed formally, his wand of office held just so in the prescribed position of welcome and warning.

“My prince! Messengers from Vondium came for the princess; they left sealed packets and have departed these three days.”

Well, Delia was off with her Sisters of the Rose, hunting up information on our wayward daughter Dayra. I trusted she was being assisted by our eldest daughter Lela.

“Thank you, Panshi.” We walked swiftly in the last of the suns sets glow toward the outer chambers. “I will see the packets. First I will see the princesses — Velia and Didi.”

As I stood by the cots and looked at the two tiny forms, cherubic, sleeping, tiny fists closed, puckered mouths breathing gently, I sighed. What future lay in store for them, on this harsh and hostile planet of Kregen? Delia and I had been blessed by our daughter Velia, when our first daughter Velia had been so cruelly slain. But she had given us little Didi, the daughter of Velia, my Lady of the Stars, and of Gafard, the king’s Striker, Sea Zhantil, renegade and man. I sighed again and bent and kissed them and so left them to the capable hands of the nurses and of Aunt Katri, who shooed me away with a fine air of hustle. As the emperor’s sister, she spent more of her time with the emperor’s daughter and her children than she did in the capital of Vallia, Vondium the Proud.

Panshi handed me the packets as I sipped the first light wine of the evening. Heavily sealed, they bore the stamps of Lord Farris of Vomansoir, Chuktar in the Vallian Air Service, a great man, utterly loyal to the emperor, who looked upon Delia as a daughter. With a brutal tug I broke the fastenings and took out the letter.

It was circumlocutory, filled with respect and devotion; but its message was more brutal than the gesture I had used to unseal it.

Briefly; the emperor was gravely ill. No one could fathom out the nature of his illness. There were new doctors who promised much but could find no cure. The presence of the Princess Majestrix was requested.

Turko walked in and saw my face.

“Aye, Turko. Bad news. The emperor is like to die.”

“Delia—” said Turko, on a breath. His magnificently muscled body and his handsome face reassured me. He understood.

“He may be an old devil. But he is Delia’s father. He once ordered his guards to take off my head, instantly, but—”

Turko half laughed. “Aye! Seg has told us often enough. He has said your surprise when you saw him will last the rest of his life.” Sharply, he added: “When do we leave? Now?”

“Aye.”

“Remember, you are banished, by the emperor’s strict decree.”

“To the Ice Floes of Sicce with the old devil’s decrees. Delia will have other messages, so she will know. She will go. And there is danger in a capital city of an empire when the emperor dies. We will pack up and leave at once.”

Panshi was summoned and ran instantly to do my bidding. I felt that grim chill of premonition again. There were many forces conspiring to drag down the emperor, Delia’s father. I was an old sea-leem, a render, a paktun, a buccaneer prince, the king of a fabled far-off land — I admit it freely. I wanted to be in at the death — if there was to be a death. I must add, not for myself alone. Delia must be supported. The emperor’s grandchildren must be apportioned their rights. I knew my Delia would think only of her father’s health and life; and I being that same Dray Prescot who is more of a rogue than he appears, thought also of what might follow the death of the emperor.

One thing appeared to me certain at the time. I did not then want to be the Emperor of Vallia. I was sincere in that. But what was to happen would be in the hands of the various doctors, the wizards and the gods of Kregen, each acting his part, each with his own rapier to sharpen — or, in the case of the doctors, with his own needle to sharpen — and, as always, I took as my guiding light through the maze of conflicting loyalties and treacheries the single dominant fact of my life. The well-being of Delia alone mattered. For her I would throw over kingships, kovnates, princedoms. They mean little, anyway, apart from the obvious comforts and the powers to alleviate suffering. Even, I would cast aside all I worked for with the Kroveres of Iztar. Even — and I shudder to confess this, for it is a horrendous crime — even I would disavow the Krozairs of Zy for the sake of my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

Banishment from Vondium still hung over me like a cloud. It seemed sensible to land first at my own Valkan villa at the crest of one of the reserved hills of the capital, and equip myself suitably for admission to the palace. So I donned decent Vallian buff, with tall black boots, and slung a rapier and main gauche at my sides. I clapped on one of those peculiar Vallian wide-brimmed hats, with the two oblong slots cut in the front brim. The raffish curling feather was red and white, the colors of Valka. Also, I wore a red and yellow favor on my left shoulder, to tell any inquisitive rast who wanted to know that my sympathies lay with the emperor. For Vallia’s colors are red and yellow, as are mine, except that the Vallian cross of yellow on the red flag is a saltire. So dressed, and carrying a heavy pouch filled with tied leather bags of gold talens, I took a zorca-ride up to the palace.

Turko, Balass, Oby and Naghan the Gnat refused any orders from me to remain in the villa. They said they’d go with me, even if they had to hang about outside the palace, and go they would and that was that.

“If Tilly was here, she’d go as well,” said Oby, stoutly.

The little Fristle fifi, Tilly, was away with Delia.

I nodded. “Very well. But we don’t want any swordplay.”

“We do not want it,” said Balass, evilly. “But we may get it, by the carbuncle on Beng Thrax’s posterior.”

At the time I knew little of Vondium. It is a great and wonderful city, split by many wide boulevards and by the canals that are the glory of Vallia. I knew more of Ruathytu, the capital of the Empire of Hamal, arch-enemy to Vallia. I knew the way to and from the palace from various points within the city — from the villas we possessed, from Young Bargom’s inn, from some of the gates, from the prison of the angels. We rode out sedately, taking the broadest ways, determined not to get into trouble. We came to an intersection, where a wide avenue passed over a canal — it was the Samphron Cut —

by one of the myriad bridges of Vondium. This bridge, of ancient and weathered stone, had been decorated with sculpted heads of zhantil and mortil. The fierce old faces had worn away until now they looked merely pathetic, savage fangs blunted and broken, mighty jaws crumbling and lean. Across the intersection passed a long procession, chanting. Many and many a time have I seen these processions, garlanded, brilliant with colors, bright with banners, carrying the sacred images proudly aloft, sprinkling the holy dew-drops, winding in long sinuous trails through the streets and avenues of Vondium. They changed as they walked, the long rolling mesmeric singsong of “Oolie Opaz, Oolie Opaz, Oolie Opaz.”

Usually the emphasis falls on the first syllable of each word, so that the long chant goes on and on and on: “OO -lie OH- paz, OO -lie OH -paz, OO -lie OH -paz.” Up and down, up and down, a hypnotic singsong chant in time with the shuffle of many feet.

But now all the emphasis, although apparently the same, rolled into a melancholy dirge. Effigies of the emperor were being carried along, heavily draped in black. The yellow and red of Vallia was fringed with heavy black tassels. Many tall poles were entwined with symbolic leaves and flowers, and topped with gilded and silvered skulls. These people, devout, devoted to Opaz, mourned the emperor already. The signs of passionate intercession broke spontaneously from the long columns, men and women flinging themselves into ecstasies of supplication, impassioned bursts of oratory and prayer to preserve the life of the emperor. But the dominant impression remained of a funeral procession, of the pious regrets and observances for a departed monarch.

“By Vox!” I said. “The old devil isn’t dead yet!”

We rode on toward the palace and the traffic flow thickened with many riders and palankeens and chairs, with the zorca-chariots flickering their tall spindly wheels, varnish and paint and gilding catching the light of the suns. At the time the palace in Vondium always caught at my throat by its sheer size, its grandeur — as always I reflected that this beauty and glory and power would have been flung aside as nothing by Delia when she would have fled by night with me, a penniless outcast. Up to the various guard details we rode and, at first, a chingle of the golden talens and the swift transference of a bag procured our passage. These guards did not know me — as I did not know them. They were mainly apims; but a few diffs of the kinds most favored in Vondium stood their duty. Further into the warren of courts the going became tougher.

Here were stationed the first details of the emperor’s personal bodyguard, the Crimson Bowmen of Loh.

“No way through here, koter,” observed a matoc, a non-commissioned rank, anxious to be promoted to Deldar and put his foot on the first rung of the long ladder of advancement. The gold worked with him.

At the next court, where flower sellers waited in long lines, their flowers all blue — a color not favored in Vallia — the guard detail was commanded by a dwa-Deldar. He looked at me. The gold did not move him. We dismounted.

I said to my friends: “Wait here and do not cause mischief.”

“But—”

“Wait!”

I took the Deldar aside confidentially. I showed him the gold. He started to shake his head in the shadow of the marble column and I put a dagger into the small of his back, twisted it so he could feel the point, and said gently: “It’s the gold or the steel, dom. The alternatives are open to you, the choice yours alone.”

He made the sensible man’s choice.

When we went back I said to Turko and the others: “Do you go back to the main square. I shall not return this way.” I spoke forcefully. “If you do not leave now you will be taken up.”

Such was the evil nature of my face that they went, albeit grumbling. Past the next courtyard I found myself in a portion of the palace I knew slightly, and so could duck through a small door and enter the more somber shadows of the inner precincts unobserved. There would be more guards yet I did not think I would have skewered the Deldar; but it was no certainty. Mind you, I did not recollect the Crimson Bowmen being stationed so far out of the main bulk of the palace before. They usually stood duty inside the palace.

Inside, as I strode along and mingled with the many people hurrying to and fro, a common occurrence in these huge households so that I was for the moment not noticed, I spotted a distinct change. The guards stationed at doors leading to the various inner areas were Chuliks. I felt surprise. Chuliks do have two arms and two legs, two eyes, one nose and one mouth; but they are diffs of so savage and ferocious a nature that many diffs, let alone apims, hesitate to call them men. They habitually shave their heads save for a long pigtail, their skins are oily yellow, they have two three-inch long tusks thrusting up from the corners of their mouths, which are cruel rattraps. They are trained from birth as mercenary fighters, and can use many weapons with great skill. They will remain loyal when paid, and sometimes afterwards, if the prospects seem good.

A few nasty ideas began to circulate around my thick old head. The emperor, despite one nasty experience and a recent scotching of another, still reposed trust in his Crimson Bowmen. Why, then, should he replace them with most expensive mercenaries who were generally disliked?

Perhaps I should have used more guile getting in to see my father-in-law, and instead of taking the direct, golden-paved route, have broken in through one of the many secret passageways. Persevering, on I went, noticing the air of tension and gloom about the place, but ignoring that in my determination to get through. Long and overly-ornate corridors, mirror-faced, tiled with scenes of the chase and the hunt, led me on ways I knew. This was now the main corridor that led from the outer courts of the palace to the first of the succession of anterooms opening onto the emperor’s private apartments. The thickness of the scurrying crowds thinned. Soon, as I approached a tall balass door guarded by two Chuliks, I stood almost alone.

They regarded me as though I had crawled from under a stone.

“You had best begone from here, calsany,” said one. He wore a most fancy uniform of red and black, lavishly garlanded with golden cords, with black belts studded with bronze. At his sides he carried scabbarded a rapier and main gauche and in his right hand a three-grained staff. The tassels were red and black, the colors of the emperor’s slave masters.

“Will gold unlock that door, dom?” I spoke up cheerily, most friendly. My hands hung limply at my sides. “I know it well, having passed through many times. The Chemzite Stairway lies beyond, and this door is seldom closed—”

The left-hand Chulik stopped my prattling.

“These are not normal times, rast. The emperor is dying. No one passes here save those with authority. Schtump!”

Schtump is a most abusive way of saying clear off, and in normal circumstances could never have been used by a Chulik mercenary to a koter of Vallia within the palace. But times they were a changing-oh.

“Since,” I told these two yellow-skinned, pigtailed mercenaries, “you will not take gold — take this.”

Oh, yes, it was foolish, vainglorious. Even as I twisted the left-hand one’s three-grained staff free and clouted his companion over the ear with it, and brought it back to drive the bronze butt hard into ridged gut muscle, I was ruefully thinking that I was becoming overly talkative in these latter days. But, by Zair, that would change!

I gave each one a thoughtful little tap alongside the helmet rim, just to make sure, and leaving them slumbering pushed the balass doors inward. I heard a gasp and twisted at once, fast, to see only the long golden furred legs and delightful tail of a Fristle fifi disappearing past a pilaster along the wall. Friezes of strigicaws and shonages ran along the cove here, and the door slammed sharply. I made no attempt to follow. Instead, I pushed on through and ran up the weirdly deserted Chemzite Stairway. In normal times the balass doors were thrown back and the Stairway thronged with courtiers and supplicants and advocates and nobles, all going about their business with the emperor’s personal staff. Now all those highly-placed nobles with access to the emperor were confined to a few of the great halls. I passed along through narrower stairways, walking the marble of a balcony, and looked down at them as I went. From all over the Empire of Vallia the lords and ladies had come to Vondium to be in at the death. Each one had personal reasons of avarice or ambition or fear. As I walked along quietly, looking down at the assemblage of waiting nobility, my lips wrinkled up. A fine crew they were! Not a one, I daresay, spared a thought in sympathy for Delia, their Princess Majestrix. Not a one thought for an instant that it was a girl’s father who lay dying.

But, then, that was not entirely true, for nobles like Farris would care. Many of them I recognized. Some of them I have already introduced to you in these tapes, and many more there were of that crew waiting to step onto the stage and strut their little part, before shuffling off, and, by Vox, a lot of them horizontal, too . . .

But, adhering to my plan, I will tell you of these high and mighty nobles of Vallia as and when they came into contact with me. And, too, I did not forget that I had vowed to myself to be the new Dray Prescot, the quiet, conciliatory peace-loving man who would talk first. If the emperor died then the streets of the capital might flow with blood. Everyone knew that factions waited for the moment to strike. And, as is the way with desperate men banded together waiting for a single event to strike, each party believed itself to be the most powerful, or the most advantageously placed, or having the most moral force. A detached observer could see only tragedy ahead.

But, of course, there were few — if any — detached observers, for everyone had a zhantil to saddle. And I, Dray Prescot, I was not detached. Oh, I tried to be. I told myself I wanted none of it. But I knew if some hulking lout brandishing a sword and flaunting colors and feathers tried to steal what belonged to Delia, or what should rightfully belong to our children, then all my fine detachment would vanish and the old Dray Prescot, of the devil’s face and intemperate manner and vicious determination, would jump in, sword swinging, as he had done long and long in the old days. . .

As was inevitable I was at last stopped by four Chulik guards before an ivory door banded in gold and emeralds. They wore the red and black and carried the three-grained staffs. They were less polite than the last. True to my desire to be the rational easy-going man I ought to be, I attempted to talk. The polearm slashed toward me with deadly intent. They’d knock me senseless and hustle me down to the dungeons. The three-grained staff, very convoluted, very ornate, the black and red tassels swinging, the bright curved edges glittering with much honing against the solid olive of the metal head, struck for my skull.

I slid the blow, took the polearm, twisted it free and held it parallel with the ground. I pushed. The Chulik tumbled against the gold and emerald and ivory door. He went: “Whoof!” That was as much from surprise as from having the air knocked from his lungs.

His companions set on at once, so I had to twist the staffs free and, partially regretfully, tap their skulls. As the last slumped down I heard a hard, brittle voice say: “If you do not drop that staff this instant you are a dead man.”

Without turning I knew what stood behind me. I dropped the staff. Without seeing the flight of an arrow it is damned difficult — nigh impossible — to judge which way to jump, which direction to use. Slowly, I turned around.

Yes — four Bowmen and an officer stood there, their bows fully drawn, and the lamplight glittered from the sharp steel heads. The odds were against me. I might have dodged, given the mystic disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, had the occasion warranted. But I persevered in my peaceful overtures — here, in the palace of my father-in-law, for all that I was banished, here!

As it was, I said to the officer at the head of the four Crimson Bowmen: “I do not know you. It is clear you do not know me. I have pressing business—” I got no further.

“Take him to the cells,” said this officer, in his brittle voice. “Question him — Naghan the Pinch will know what to do. You know your orders.”

The officer in his trim Crimson was a Hikdar, a waso-Hikdar, and the pallid hardness of his face and blankness of the stare in his blue eyes would give any nefarious culprit wandering the palace a severe case of the frights. I looked at him. I thought I knew this type — always a dangerous assumption — and I stared past him at the four Bowmen.

One, I recognized.

I said: “Lahal, Neg Negutorio. Why do you stand in the ranks? You were an ord-Deldar the last time we met. I would have thought you a shiv-Hikdar by now—”

That was as far as the officer was going to allow me to prattle on. My attempt at distraction would not fool him. Furiously, he bellowed out: “Seize him up! I’ll have you all jikaidered, by Hlo-Hli! Bratch! ”[2]

This was a threat no swod was fool enough to ignore.

Three of the Bowmen, taking their bows and arrows into their left hands, reached out with their right hands.

Neg Negutorio gaped at me.

“Dray Prescot!” he said. And: “The Prince Majister!”

The Hikdar took a step back. The hands of the three Bowmen fell away. Neg shook his head. “Prince. Times have changed. There are many new faces in the Guard. Dag Dagutorio, our Chuktar, has been sent home, and replaced by Rog Rogutorio.” He wet his lips. “As for me — I was degraded — it was a trumped-up charge — and now I must obey orders I care not overmuch for—”

“Silence, cramph!” shouted the Hikdar. He stared at me with venom in his face and a twitch about his jaws. “If this is truly Dray Prescot, the Prince Majister of Vallia, then is he forsworn! He is banished from Vondium! Seize him! Chain him! Send word to Kov Layco we have taken up a rare prize. Bratch!”

For a second a paralysis gripped the Crimson Bowmen. Then the four Chuliks groaned, more or less together, and opened their eyes. Like the fierce fighting men they were they came to their feet, grasping their ripped-free rapiers, and the points glittered, centered on my chest. These diffs would have no hesitation in killing me if that proved more convenient than attempting to restrain me.

“The Prince Majister is banished from Vondium and sets foot within the city at his own peril!” howled the Hikdar. “Seize him! If he resists — slay him!”

The Chuliks stepped forward. My hand gripped the rapier hilt. In the next second blood would splash luridly across the golden and emerald and ivory door—

“Hold!” rang a clear, perfect voice. A voice I knew. A voice that means everything in two worlds.

“Hold! The Princess Majestrix commands! Touch the Prince Majister at your peril!”

Chapter Four

Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga

“The emperor my father has revoked the edict of banishment that should never have been passed on the Prince Majister! Get about your duties.”

So, together, side by side, we walked along through the ivory and gold and emerald doorway. We left four Chuliks with blank, yellow faces, and three Crimson Bowmen disgruntled, and a waso-Hikdar raging with icy, baffled fury — and one Bowman with a single enormous grin plastered all over the inside of his martially stiff and unmoving features.

Delia!

She held my arm. I was dizzyingly conscious of the limber suppleness of her as she walked at my side. She wore a long dress of deep purple, unrelieved by any ornament save two brooches, one fashioned into the likeness of a rose and all of rubies and gold. The other was the hubless spoked wheel of precious gems I had given her, the emblem of the Krozairs of Zy.

“My heart — my father — he is ill, so very ill. He is dying, I am sure of it. The doctor—” Here she gripped the scrap of lace between her fingers.

“I will see the doctor. We should fetch Nath the Needle—”

“It is no use. Doctor Charboi is most highly respected, and his associates. But they will not let Nath the Needle see my father.”

“I think they will,” I said.

Nath the Needle had doctored me, and he had taken care of Delia. If the emperor’s new doctors did not want Nath about them, that was a matter of concern to me. In the ante room beyond, Seg and Thelda hurried toward us with Katrin Rashumin, the Kovneva of Rahartdrin. She was now wholeheartedly devoted to Delia. With them, Nath the Needle looked just the same, if a trifle absent-minded rather than bewildered in this strange, claustrophobic atmosphere of the imperial palace where we waited for an emperor to die. And, too, here came Tilly, the gorgeous golden-furred Fristle fifi. Now I knew it was she I had seen running off to fetch Delia.

“And has the emperor really pardoned me?”

“Not yet. I said that, for it needed to be said. But he will.”

I smiled at Tilly and she laughed, and sobered at once.

“You remind me once again of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa.”

“And the silver chains are all melted down — master.”

That little minx Tilly knows how to infuriate me, and how I detest being called master by her. As for Thelda, Seg’s wife, she could not do enough for Delia. She had been in Vondium, and Seg had called there after the meeting of the Brotherhood, arriving well before me. Thelda fussed and organized and sorted out all the tangles, she would have everybody running, and was properly reverential when she came within three doors’ distance of the sick room. I do Thelda an injustice. She had made Seg a fine wife, and she was a good and loving mother to her children, and yet, and yet, still, I could not stop myself from remarking on the silver heart in blue flowers, from time to time, jocularly, and then feeling the biggest villain in two worlds. Poor Thelda!

“And Nath the Needle is most hurt, dear Dray,” said Thelda. A magnificently-shaped woman, Thelda always looked incipiently plump, and yet was not. A disturbing trick to play on a man.

“Nath attempted to treat the emperor,” said Seg. “He was rebuffed by this Doctor Charboi. He has an enormous reputation and is newly come from Loh. He is not,” Seg added, “a Wizard of Loh. But he acts with all the highhandedness of one of those— those—”

“Yes,” I said. Ordinary men perforce spoke carefully when they mentioned any Wizard of Loh.

“Aunt Katri was so upset,” said Delia. “She frets in Esser Rarioch, I am sure. Everything seems so — so odd.”

I could feel the unease within the palace as in all Vondium. Things had changed in Vallia, imperceptibly, and little attention had been paid when, for instance, the old Pallans died or retired and new Pallans —

secretaries or ministers of state — had replaced them. Dag Dagutorio had left suddenly for Loh, and Rog Rogutorio had taken his place as Chuktar of the Crimson Bowmen. The emperor’s chief adviser in these latter days was a kov I did not then know, one Layco Jhansi, the Kov of Vennar. His was a name I was to come to know passing well — to my sorrow, I may add — but at the time he was regarded as the savior of Vallia, the man who would hold the empire together, the emperor’s Right Hand. Automatically I thought of Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, the King’s Striker, who had died so far away from Vallia, loving still the memory of our daughter Velia, and I would sigh, and — then — wonder if this Kov Layco could give half the loyalty and allegiance past blindness that Gafard had given his mad genius King Genod.

We passed on and the presence of the Princess Majestrix opened all doors. Yet I gained the distinct and unsettling impression that our little group formed, as it were, a conspiracy, here in the palace. Once the difficulty of my banishment had been cleared up it should have been plain sailing. But it seemed to me, incredibly, as though we hatched a plot. And all we wanted to do was have a doctor we trusted give a second opinion on the condition of the emperor.

Slaves scuttled about their eternal tasks, always an affront. The Archer Guard of Valka which I had instituted had been sent, so I was told the moment I mentioned their absence, to Evir, the most northerly province of Vallia, to help quell a disturbance there. I felt as we walked on that I would welcome the presence of my Archers of Valka right there and then, above that of the mercenary Chuliks, for all their worth and valor as fighting men, and above the Crimson Bowmen, who were fresh strangers to me. The mood of the palace baffled me. I sensed the heavy oppression, and yet I felt the heady intoxication of terror could not be adequately explained away merely by the emperor’s impending death. The factions would fight. There would be slaughter and murder. There would be burnings and looting. But, all the same, the intense, indrawn, coiled-spring of horror I sensed in the very air of the palace contained so much more of menace that, quite instinctively, my hand rested on my rapier hilt as we walked — rested not in an affected, courtly way of fashion, but in the hard professional grip of the bladesman ready to draw in a twinkling.

Doctor Nath the Needle looked exactly as when I had first met him, when I’d been recovering from the infection from the shorgortz and the intemperate orders of the man who was now my father-in-law, the man who was now dying and whom Nath had been forbidden to attend. Dried up, wispy, wearing his old dark-brown clothes, his tawny yellow hair roughly combed, he looked just the same, and he held the same old velvet-lined sturmwood case of acupuncture needles under his arm.

“I am happy to see you, prince,” he said, most formally.

“And I you, doctor,” I answered gravely. “I do not know what this nonsense is about your being refused an audience of the emperor; but we’ll go in and see him now.”

Nath nodded and then, because, as was proper, the Princess Majestrix walked first, and Thelda and Katrin walked a half-step to her rear, and Seg was trying to catch a bundle of wool about to fall from Thelda’s bag, Nath and I walked at the rear.

Nath began to talk as these savants do, increasingly oblivious of his surroundings, absorbed by his own thoughts.

“The shorgortz poison — you remember that, I am sure, my prince — is proving of fascinating interest. The Blue Mountain Boys captured a specimen in a pit and, knowing my interest, for I sent messages and gold to Korf Aighos, they extracted the poison and forwarded me a sample. It is indeed remarkable. Incredible, if a doctor may ever use that word. I have conducted experiments, see—” Here he halted and began pulling papers from the pockets in the flaps of his old brown coat. I swear dust flew. He bashed the papers about — they were ordinary paper and not the superb paper made by the Savanti — and crumpled them up and dropped some. I helped him collect up these vital medical discoveries.

“I shall look at your work with great pleasure, doctor; but later. Now I want you to see the emperor and tell me just what is the matter with him and what must be done to cure him.”

Nath the Needle favored me with a look, jolted back to the reason for his presence here. He made a singularly apt remark about Charboi; but he was perfectly willing to try again. He sneezed a couple of times, stuffing the papers away.

If I thought the obstacles to Nath the Needle seeing the emperor had all been overcome, then I was an onker indeed.

We debouched beneath overhanging arches lavishly decorated with exquisite mosaics depicting — oh, the pictures were filled with the fire and passion of Vallia’s turbulent past. Across the wide marble-floored space where cool fountains sparkled in the perfumed air, where fruit trees bloomed and delicately colored birds flitted from branch to branch, the long white wall barring off the emperor’s quarters as approached from this direction showed a solid crimson and black band along its foot. The guards stood shoulder to shoulder, a Crimson Bowman and a Chulik, alternating. Pacing toward us came two Jiktars, high officers, one a Bowman of Loh, the other a Chulik. Delia proved herself a princess in her handling of them.

Haughtily, yet with just the right amount of friendliness stopping this side of condescension, she avowed the Prince Majister was now free to walk in Vondium, that she intended to see her father, and her suite would go with her. The guards stood back. We walked through. Although I did not smile, my fist no longer rested on the rapier hilt. A little thing — but revealing. . . There was no mistaking the abrupt dispatch of a Bowman runner, a lithe young man fresh from Loh, learning his trade.

The light chilled. Heavy doors swung inwards. I knew just where we were, now, and had studied the plans of the palace drawn up many seasons ago when this wing had been built. At last, past a bevy of waiting nurses and minor doctors, we entered the sick room.

The place struck me with a chill repulsion. Delia visited her father constantly, had been drawn away by Tilly’s startling news. He lay in the wide bed, on his back, the covers drawn to his chin and pettishly pulled half down one side. His wasted face spider-webbed with etched lines, the cheeks sunken in. I saw the hand he extended to his daughter and was shocked at its skeletal aspect. He had always been a firmly fleshed man.

His flesh was wasting away. His condition really was serious, and Delia’s concern struck me, suddenly, with an anguish for her I detested and found biting and acid and altogether hateful. My Delia! Well, everyone must go through the agonies of seeing loved ones die. Because Delia and I had bathed in the Sacred Pool of the River Zelph in far Aphrasöe, the city of the Savanti, the Swinging City, we were assured of a thousand years of life and the rapid recovery from wounds and illness. The wounds I had taken in the Jikai of the Brotherhood of Iztar against the Shanks were already healed. And yet, I had held my daughter Velia in my arms as she died. What agonies mortality tortures us with. Nath the Needle moved carefully forward in his best professional manner and shooed us from the bed. He took immediate command of the four nurses, pale women, nervous, worried, and at his directions one of them turned back the coverlets and the others lifted the emperor’s shrunken body and opened the fancy silk shirt over his sunken chest. I went with Seg to stand over in the bay window where a flick-flick plant looked as though it needed a heaping handful of fat flies. The six flunkeys, armed, who stood along the far walls, blankly regarding the proceedings, could be ignored. The emperor, apart from certain follies, lived a spartan life.

I said to Seg: “D’you know what’s happened to Queen Lush? I thought for sure she’d be sobbing at the bedside.”

“She had to return to Lome. Some pressing affair of state. The emperor saw her off — Thelda says he was in full health then.”

“We haven’t seen the last of her. She has designs on the emperor. This dire news will bring her scurrying back.”

“Aye. It’s bad, Dray.”

“Yes. How stands Falinur?”

He knew what I meant. The old recklessness of his face sobered, for the men of Erthyrdrin, Seg’s homeland, are fey and wild and also highly practical. “I have worked hard there, trying to make the kovnate into the kind of paradise you have in Valka. There are always cramphs against whatever I try to do. Their malignancy lingers on. They remember. I wouldn’t take a sheaf of arrows on their loyalty.”

I made no comment on this bleak if expected news. “And Inch? I fancy the Black Mountains will stand with us.”

“The Blue Mountain Boys have resolved their ancient quarrels with the Black Mountain Men. That is more Inch’s doing than Korf Aighos’s — he is one man I wouldn’t trust with my bow — but he is loyal to Delia. Between them they have made those mountains and the zorca plains into a stronghold.”

“There are other nobles willing to stand up and be numbered. As for Delphond—” I sighed. I thought, then, that Delia’s pretty little province of Delphond, a charming, lazy, contented place, now that the Chyyanists had gone, could never raise even a pastang of real fighting men. There had been changes in Delphond the last time I had been through, as you know; but the old carefree, easy-going ways persisted

— and I would not change them.

“Lord Farris will bring in Vomansoir.”

“Yes. And, if it comes to the fluttrell’s vane, we can strike across quickly and so pinch out—” I stopped. Delia and Thelda with Katrin came over to us and the conversation became general, still concerned, low-voiced. I glanced at the doctor. Nath the Needle looked grave. He peered into the emperor’s mouth, pulled down his lower eyelids, felt and prodded him, tut-tutting to himself. No acupuncture needles had been used by Doctor Charboi, and Nath had not opened his sturmwood case, so I gathered the sick man was in no pain.

Very carefully, using a piece of verss, that finest of snow-white linen, Nath wiped the emperor’s mouth. He folded the cloth delicately and placed it into his lesten-hide satchel. Sight of the piece of pure verss reminded me vividly of the Kroveres — for verss represented the purity for which the old vers of Valka had been famed.

Nath glanced up and met my gaze. He nodded and indicated he was ready to leave, which surprised me, and the door burst open with a crash onto the somber sick room and a group of violently angry men and women entered.

As I stared at them, at their red faces and their gesticulating, ring-laden hands, the sumptuousness of their dress, their jewels and lace, all the habitual airs of wealth and command and authority, I felt repulsion. I felt revulsion. Their vicious unthinking demands on everyone about them they could master, these I had witnessed many times, on Earth as on Kregen, and despaired of, and resisted, and, I own the matching of violence with violence to be a sin, there, in that sick room of a palace where an emperor lay dying, I was particularly revolted by their violence. I am a peaceful sort of fellow, liking the quiet life, and yet I have, to my shame, been forced many and many a time to match violence with violence. The Kroveres of Iztar were one response. I own, I have never made a secret of it, I own the matching of violence with violence to be a sin, and yet I hoped for so much from the Kroveres in milder civilized ways.

But — these people. You will meet them all as my story trundles along. Of them at the moment it is fit you should see just three.

The first was Doctor Charboi. Here on Earth he would have been impeccably dressed, crowned with a distinguished mass of silver hair. He would have worn a neat Harley Street suit, and have commanded the highest prices for nostrums and soothing words from the highest in society. On Kregen, where a person’s hair does not ordinarily turn white until past two hundred, Charboi had the red mop of Loh, and he presented the full-fleshed, country-club figure of a man in the prime of life, brisk, efficient, demanding. And violent.

“Out!” he shouted. He was violent. No doubt of it. “Out!”

The second man hulked in the room. Massive, bulky, he towered against the lamplight and it was clear from the set of his mouth and the clamping thrust of his jaws and chin that he spoke seldom. Apim, he was, but built like a Chulik. All the time his powerful figure remained planted at the shoulder of his mistress. He wore the heavy brown tunic called a khiganer, double-breasted, the wide flap caught up over his left side with a long flaring row of bronze buttons, from belt to shoulder, and from point of shoulder to collar. That collar stood stiff and hard and high, encircling his neck. Gold glittered there. He wore buff breeches and tall black Vallian boots, gleaming with polish, spurred. He wore no baldric; but the lockets for a rapier and empty main gauche swung from two jeweled belts. His sleeves were banded after the fashion of Vallia, indicating his allegiance. Brown and green bands, with three small diagonal slashes, marked him for Venga. The sheer ferocity of that lowering face impressed me, the lambent bestiality slumbering in the tiny dark eyes, the cragginess of the jaw. He was a notorious Bladesman. This was Nath the Iarvin, ruffler, Bladesman, bought body and soul by his mistress. The third person was a woman.

Thin, she was, hard-edged like a diamond, brittle and bright, with a flame about her that consumed all who were unfortunate enough not to know how to handle her. Her dark hair was caught in a diamond-encrusted net. She wore riding leathers of a sheening green, making her mannish figure even more angular, and long black boots, like a man. On her left shoulder was pinned a golden brooch fashioned into the form of a wersting seizing a korf, the vicious Kregan dog crunching down on the soaring bird. A rapier and dagger were scabbarded at her narrow waist. I fancied she could use them passing well. High, her face, white and scornful, with deep, grey-green eyes, and arched black eyebrows. Red, her mouth, thin and bitter and drawn in at the corners, red and like a wound above her sharp chin. She could have cut ice with her glance.

This, then, was Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga.[3]

She stared at us narrowly, reminding me of the way those carnivorous hunting risslacas stare unwinking at their prey.

“Get out,” she said. And her voice, I swear it, hissed asa risslaca hisses before he pounces. “Schtump!

Layco Jhansi, the Kov of Vennar, the emperor’s Chief Pallan, has placed me in charge of the sick room and of all the emperor’s wants, answerable only to him. I do not care who you are. The Princess Majestrix may stay, because she is the emperor’s daughter. The rest of you — out! Schtump!”

I did not speak.

She pointed her riding crop at me. It did not waver.

“You may be the Prince Majister. But you are nothing more than a trumpery clansman, a hairy barbarian. And you dare to bring in another doctor! Have a care lest you go too far.”

The crop circled to include Seg and Thelda and Katrin, and then rested, accusingly, on Nath the Needle.

“Let the emperor die in dignity, as befits the end of a great man. You profane his greatness. This doddery buffoon pries and prods — beware lest your heads topple before the suns descend.”

I opened my mouth — and then closed it. I speculated on the inner mysteries of philosophy, how the worlds roll through space, how a woman may change a man and the man change an empire, how violence breeds violence, how women are so often nonsensical creatures unfit for their own company, let alone a man’s, how I was the new Dray Prescot.

She slashed the crop down. “Now get this rabble cleared out! Go, now. Or I call the palace guard.”

Seg was staring at me with that old half-mocking smile on his face. I knew what he expected. Nath stood back from the bed, outraged; but keeping his composure remarkably well. Thelda was already boiling up and Katrin was standing by ready to lay in after. These two ladies were high born, coming from great families, kovnevas both. Delia — Delia looked at me and I managed the smile I can always find for her, and I shook my head, ever so slightly, and so she smiled back at me, uncertain, disturbed, but ready to follow my mood, trusting me. What a wonderful woman is my Delia among all women!

I did not speak. Conscious that I was acting a part, I felt a word would shatter that charade. I could with words have broken this headstrong woman, made her see the errors of her ways, given Doctor Charboi the fright of his life. And no damn guards would have stopped us, either. But I did not. Even now, had I done so, I am not sure it would have changed anything that followed. The details of the tragedy and the heartbreak might have been different; the end results would surely have been the same.

“Are you going?” demanded the bitter, icy voice. This Ashti Melekhi switched her crop around and on the instant would have shouted for the guards.

A weak, breathy voice spoke and for a disoriented moment, so wrapped up were we all in the tension of the situation, we could not understand who was speaking. Then Delia dropped to her knees by the bed, clasping her father’s shrunken hand.

“Delia.” The emperor gasped with the effort of speaking. “My daughter.” He worked his thin lips around each word, as though forcing each one out against enormous forces pent within him. “Aph—” He stopped and swallowed, his Adam’s Apple jumping erratically. “Hamal. Todalpheme—”

“No!” shouted Charboi, storming forward. “That is not to be thought of! Do as the vadnicha commands. Go!”

If the rast put his hand on Delia’s shoulder to pull her away from the bed I would have forgotten my play-acting and being the new, considerate, understanding, nonviolent Dray Prescot. But he still had the sense not to commit such a flagrant act of lese-majesty. Perhaps, had he taken refuge in his doctor’s status, and allowed his temper to lay a hand on Delia, and I had acted as I would surely have done, the world of Kregen would be a different place today. I do not know. I do not really think so. It does not matter. For what was to happen, happened, and that is all that matters, in the whirl of vaol-paol.

“You’re not going to stand for this, Dray!” demanded Thelda. Her face betrayed shock and anger, and, also, another emotion. Seg put his arm around her waist and drew her away, and I looked at her, so she went, but not without a squib or two.

The Vadnicha Ashti Melekhi stared with those narrow grey-green eyes after Thelda, and I knew they had sparked before, like a diamond cutting butter — and, suddenly, I knew how much I cared for Thelda, my comrade’s wife, despite all. That would not stop me from gently tormenting her, of course, or stop her from fussing and over-pressuring and, in general, of being Thelda. Seg looked back past me over Thelda’s shoulder, and I put out a hand and so stopped Katrin from blowing up. Nath picked up his sturmwood case and walked with measured tread for the door, but he looked mightily offended. So, at last, Delia rose and kissed her father, the dread emperor of a mighty empire, and we walked out sedately, together, side by side.

Still I had said no word.

The brittle voice cut the air after us. “Good riddance to a rabble! Now, Charboi, see if you can undo the damage that doddering incompetent may have done. I am going to find Kov Layco and tell him to make sure these cramphs never have a chance to sneak in to pester the emperor again.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Charboi, very huffed with himself.

So I took myself off at the side of Delia, and I pondered.

Chapter Five

Of a Ruffianly Meeting at The Rose of Valka

“In the old days, my Vovedeer, we’d have slipped six inches of good Zeniccean steel into the guts of the cramph! By the Black Chunkrah! I am astonished the fellow is walking about with a head on his shoulders!”

And Hap Loder tossed the rest of his wine down and roared for more. The inner private snug of The Rose of Valka resounded with heated talk and argument. I knew what must be done. But it must be done the right way.

“Yes, Hap, you fearsome rascal. That is the way of the clansmen who ride the plains of Segesthes. And I know that is what most of my comrades would have done. But unthinking violence will not solve the problems of Vallia now.”

“That is right, by all the shattered targes in Mount Hlabro!” quoth Seg, who as a kov of Vallia much bethought himself of his adopted country’s welfare. “I’ll own I was surprised at first. But that she-leem would have called the guards. Then there would have been a right merry set-to.”

Wine went the rounds. Palines and other luscious fruits lay heaped on bronze plates, ready to hand. The people gathered here, and drifting in as the evening wore on, were all my comrades, gathered from many areas of Kregen. After the adventures in the Eye of the World, when I had been saved in the nick of time by these same lusty fighters, we were enjoying one last carouse, although the dismal news of Delia’s father laid a gloom across the meeting.

Inch had brought his lady newly arrived from Ng’groga, his home, a charming girl, all of six foot six in height, of a fiery nature and a bold eye, who, I felt with a twinge, would cut Inch down to size. Their taboos still operated, at least to some extent, for they could not be married until — and then so much metaphysical profound casuistry erupted about our thick non-Ng’grogan heads that we could only rock back and hold our sides and laugh. Inch and his taboos. . .

I liked Inch’s lady, Sasha, and she quickly became a part of our roistering group. Of Sasha there is much to speak, later. . .

My own Wizard of Loh — I say “my own’ but that is to pitch it too high, these famous wizards being their own men; but Khe-Hi-Bjanching owed not only his status but his life to me, and he proved trustworthy and loyal. Also, since those early days, he had matured. Now he was a wizard capable of extraordinary feats.

He listened gravely as I told him what the emperor had said and of Doctor Charboi’s reaction, and what I felt I ought to do. He frowned. He looked — and I was startled — he looked most confoundedly put out, frightened, even. This moved me to say, half-jesting: “What, Khe-Hi! A Wizard of Loh, scared of anything at all in the world! That is indeed a ponsho-bitten leem.” Which is to say, something so extraordinary as to be almost unbelievable.

“By Father Mehzta-Makku!” said Gloag, his bristle hide most carefully groomed, his whole appearance sleek and elegant as befitted my Crebent of the House of Strombor in Zenicce. “I would think three times before I accused a Wizard of Loh of being the cleverest man in all Segesthes — and then I’d hold my tongue.”

Khe-Hi-Bjanching wet his lips. “I own I am grown different from other wizards.” His voice held a flat deadness I did not like at all. “In the service of our prince I have grown into my powers. I am good. There is no sense in denying it. But I have access to some secrets I would not turn over, as I would not stick my head into a chavonth’s jaws.”

The racket around us in the snug subsided as they realized some serious talk was going on. They listened, soberly.

“Say on, Khe-Hi. You know, I think, what the emperor asked. You share Charboi’s apprehensions?”

“Apprehensions!” Bjanching gripped a fist on the sturmwood table among the wine glasses. “It is more than that. We wizards, well, all men speak of our art. We are adepts. Sorcery is child’s play to us. But if you seek out the Todalpheme of Hamal and they tell you — you will be as great a pack of fools as they!”

“But,” protested Seg. “The Todalpheme are good, wise savants. They predict the tides. They are sacrosanct. No man dares raise a hand against them. How can the Todalpheme be evil?”

“They are not evil, kov. Of course not. But a secret has fallen into their possession and they do not understand it.”

The samphron oil lamps gleamed on their faces. They sat and stood in a circle there in the private snug of The Rose of Valka in Vondium. I can see them now, so clearly. My comrades. Men and women who had gone through the fire with me, aye, and were to go through again — and damned soon, too. I am a lonely man, a true loner, as you know; yet I have been blessed with friends such as I believe no other mortal can ever have been blessed with. The charismatic power that clings about me, the yrium, so difficult to define and yet so starkly obvious when the truth is seen, that does not explain it all, not all. . . Jaidur, my youngest son, sat very quietly for him, for the overturning of the misconceptions of his world were taking time to work through. My second son, Zeg, Pur Zeg, a noted Krozair of Zy of the Inner Sea, now the King of Zandikar, was away there in the Eye of the World, a great man, Bane of Grodno. My eldest son, Prince Drak, had been sent for. Vomanus of Vindelka, newly arrived from some far-off corner of Kregen, listened intently, and as the half-brother of Delia shared a lively concern over the fate of the emperor, who was not his father.

Yes, we were a ruffianly crew. The others of whom you know were there, and there were new faces, also — Dray, Seg’s son, and his twins, Valin and Silda. They listened avidly and spoke little, conduct very becoming. Seg had named his firstborn son Dray when he thought I was dead. This Dray’s real name was Seg, of course, as the firstborn, so that he might carry on the Torio. Valin was a good Vallian name, and Silda was the name of Thelda’s mother.

We argued on, with the wizard genuinely concerned to deflect us from what increasingly we saw as the only way to aid the emperor. But you who listen to these tapes know far more than my comrades there in the comfortable snug of The Rose of Valka. Only I understood with Delia what the Wizard of Loh was hinting at. When the emperor’s daughter had fallen from a zorca, he had raised heaven and hell to find a cure. He had been put into contact with the Todalpheme of Hamal through an airboat salesman, for at that time Vallia and Hamal were on more-or-less speaking terms. The information had cost a great deal. The Todalpheme of Hamal, it was rumored, knew also of a fabled land where miracle cures might be effected. Delia had been taken through the various secret channels in a flier and had at last reached Aphrasöe, where the Savanti had been too long in making up their minds whether or not to cure her. So I, that uncouth sailor, Dray Prescot, newly arrived from Earth and out of the thunder of the broadsides as the seventy-fours drifted down into the battlesmoke, had taken it upon myself to cure Delia. That I had done so, and into the bargain assured her of a thousand years of life, was past history. But the whole business was wrapped about with mystery. During my journeys on Kregen I had asked always for news of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, and no one had even heard of the place. To me, then, it had been paradise. And I had been thrown out of paradise. But real life had caught up with me and engulfed me, so that, for me, Paradise was Valka and Strombor and Djanduin and the Great Plains of Segesthes. I speak, you understand, of the time in Vondium when the emperor lay dying. Fragrant Azby, the other places, what has happened to me since — ah, well, all that must wait its due turn. Even when I had at last discovered that the Todalpheme of Hamal had been the ones responsible — or, at least, could put me in touch with the ones responsible — I had been in no case to prosecute further inquiries or do any more about it. Real life has a habit of rolling along everything before its onward surge, ambitions, dreams, nightmares, the daily grind.

The gravity of the burden of our conversation was lost upon no one there. The light from the mellow samphron oil lamps gleamed upon our faces, and reflected without edged menace from scabbarded blades. The menace breathed all about us in the night of Vondium, under the seven moons of Kregen. Even those two rogues sensed the atmosphere. One drinking happily, the other drinking, but seeming somewhat empty without a wench on his knee; my two favorite rascals, Nath and Zolta, understood what went forward here. And how they reveled in this whole new world outside the inner sea! Any fears I had had that they would be overawed, fail to fit in, become dejected and morose, had evaporated. Nath and Zolta! Fine, fearsome, rascally rogues, my two oar-comrades — and great-hearted Zorg dead and gone and food for chanks in the Eye of the World.

“I know, Dray,” said Vomanus, carelessly, popping a paline into his mouth, chewing and swallowing —

a barbarous habit, for the paline is a berry of superlative performance on a man’s digestion: “I know what the emperor did and said when Delia crippled herself falling off that damned zorca. For a start he had the beast’s throat slit. But this Opaz-forsaken airboat salesman was eager to sell, and we poor fools of Vallia eager to buy his rubbish.” The old sore spot again. . . “He gave names and addresses to the emperor, and Delia was sent, all neatly packaged. The fellow was some kind of defrocked Todalpheme acolyte, I believe. Came by his information evilly, I’ll warrant. Still, it must have been successful.” And Vomanus smiled broadly at my Delia as she regarded him gravely, thinking of those times. We had told no one of our experiences in Aphrasöe.

“So we do the same,” I said. “We take the emperor to this place known to the Todalpheme’s contacts. We effect a miracle cure, also.”

“Aye!” they shouted, ready to brave a world.

“But,” said Seg. “How do we start? You saw how those rasts kept him mewed up.”

“Aye. But we can find a key to open the cage.”

“I would have thought, Dray Prescot, that the emperor’s daughter and the Prince Majister, her husband, could take the emperor to a doctor without such a to-do!”

Thus spake Thelda.

Seg started to say something; but, quickly, Delia broke in gently to say: “We will, Thelda, my dear, we will. And you will aid us, I know.”

“Well, of course!” Thelda turned to me, high of color, heaving of bosom, glowing with resolution.

“Prince, am I not Delia’s best friend?”

Very, very carefully, I said: “Yes, Thelda.”

All the old subjection to the racters that had made of Thelda a tool for political designs had gone. Her family, well-born but poverty-stricken through foolish gambling of a rake-hell grandfather, had not been able to give her any assistance in life save that of offering her as a tool for the racters in return for gold. Her marriage to Seg and her friendship with the Prince and Princess, her own status as a kovneva, and the known wildness of her friends, had protected Thelda from the unwelcome attentions of those who might have sought to employ her again.

“It’s high time we did something,” growled Inch, very tall and grim in the lamplight.

“Aye!” roared those wolfish fighting men — and those vulpine lady-friends and wives. “Aye! For Delia and for Dray!”

Well, it was all very pretty. But it shod no zorcas, as my clansmen would say. The door swung open as Young Bargom, the proprietor, hustled in. With him came Prince Varden Wanek and Natema who were staying at a merchant friend’s house because one of the children’s children had a slight fever. Nath the Needle had hurried round there, and now he came in with Varden and Natema, looking excited.

“What news, Nath?”

“It is as I suspected,” he said, swirling his cloak off and sneezing and almost putting his satchel on the table. Someone caught it. He mumbled around and produced a small vial. It held a colorless liquid.

“I refined and clarified the emperor’s spittle. There is no doubt. He has been fed solkien concentrate—”

A gasp broke from many gathered there.

Nath nodded, not pretending to lecture. “A most lethal and unpleasant poison. It is secret — and the secret of its discovery even more so. But,” he said without false modesty, “I know it. A deadly mixture of the tree Memph, the cactus Trechinolc, a little of the bark Liverspot, one or two other spicy ingredients, all balanced to waste the flesh, to dilute the blood, to destroy most subtly.”

Delia swayed. I put out a hand and she grasped it, staring into my face, trying to smile for me and failing.

“Oh— Dray!”

“Tonight,” I said. Everyone hung on my words. “Tonight we will go in by certain secret passageways I know of, ways that were inspected with Largan the Rule, the palace architect—”

“Dead and gone these many seasons,” said Vomanus.

“I’m sorry to know that. But we may make our way in and we may make our way out bearing the emperor. It is the way I should have taken today, but did not. Thelda! Can you see to the nursing facilities for Doctor Nath the Needle?”

“Of course!” She tossed her head, and then said: “And I do not wish to hear about vilmy flowers, and especially not about fallimy flowers! So there!”

Oby said: “I will see to the fliers.”

Turko said: “I’ll see to the provisions.”

“Right. And, friends all, bring your weapons sharp.”

“Aye,” they growled. I own, trying to see them critically and not as the dear friends they were, they were a cutthroat bunch and no mistake.

Of course, it had to be Vomanus, careless, bright-eyed, casual, who said: “Mind you, Dray. My half-sister is heir. If the emperor dies you would have a good claim to the throne yourself.”

I just looked. The rapscallion had the grace to look away and adopt a less negligent attitude, half-perched on a table. But the thought was there, hanging, ugly, in the air of the snug. What each one thought I do not know. What I thought I am not sure. “I want nothing of the emperor save what I already have — his daughter. Unless — unless the evil days are too evil.” My memories embraced Djanduin and what I had done there.

The door opened on the little silence and Bargom thrust his head in and bellowed: “Prince Drak!”

And here was my son, Drak, Prince of Vallia, most wroth, fuming with rage. He flung his cloak off in a great swirl and hurled it at a chair, snatching up a pot of wine from the table.

“By Vox!” he said. “By all the grey ones of Sicce! They wouldn’t let me see grandfather. They threw me out up at the palace, that bitch Melekhi and her scum! And, on the way here, stikitches tried to do for me, assassins tried to skewer me. I tell you, Vondium is become a madhouse!”

Chapter Six

We Pay a Duty Call on the Emperor of Vallia

Two closed carriages took the raiding party to the portcullised gate below the Jasmine Tower. The bulk of the Tower wheeled against the stars, blazing in those familiar constellations over Kregen. She of the Veils shed a fuzzy pink and golden light, icing the gables and rooftops, contouring the domes with mysterious shadows, lending a deeper menace to the darkness beneath the craggy walls. The carriages, pulled by four krahniks apiece, rolled to a stop close to the edge of the dried-up moat. Here the old Canal of Contentment, very short, curved about the rear re-entrants of the palace walls. To either hand the long curtain walls vanished into the darkness, battlemented against the sky. No one spoke a word. Seg and Inch and Turko, Balass, Vomanus, Hap and Oby. We left the carriages concealed beneath the end arch of a colonnade where moonblooms opened their petals to the drenching moonlight. We crept upon the sentry like leems. We did not kill him, for he was a Rapa, and merely earning his hire. That he was a Rapa guarding the palace in Vondium itself clearly indicated that times had changed. His vulturine face with the fierce warrior eyes either side of his beak stared blankly up at the moon. Soon She of the Veils would be joined by the Twins, and then there would be too much light for nefarious purposes.

So, we respectable citizens of Vallia crept along in the shadows like assassins, spies, drikingers. Sharp left inside the narrow wicket I turned past the buttress and so found a narrow crack in the inner wall, a crack seeming merely the ruin of time, plastered over against the fall of the towers. But the plastering was a mere shell, covering stout wood, and the wood pivoted and revealed a square opening, a foot on a side. I gripped the iron handle, shaped like the handle of a spade, and pulled. Almost soundlessly, so well wrought was the masonry, the section of stone pivoted about itself. The opening widened into a narrow doorway and onto stairs leading down.

Down we went and with the practiced knack of those accustomed to such things flint and steel lit the lanterns. The stairs leered below us, dark and sinister, running strips of water, darkly stained, brilliant in the lantern glitter.

Down we went.

Niter caked the walls lower down, and greenish slime hung in greasy tendrils. On we went along a jagged corridor where Inch appealed feelingly to Ngrangi, immediately hushing himself and rubbing that tall head of his.

These labyrinthine windings of corridor and tunnel and stair are virtually dictated by any palace architect on Kregen. A whole system of secondary channels exists alongside the proud and ornate halls and chambers. Many of these secret runnels I had had blocked up when first living here; but I had a map of those I knew of remaining in my head. To find the sick room was not difficult; merely tortuous. I put my eye to the eyehole in the wooden screen and looked out into the room in which the emperor lay dying, in which Vadnicha Ashti Melekhi had screamed invective and had myself and my friends thrown out.

Doctor Charboi was in the act of rising from the bed. A glass shone in his hand. His smooth face looked well satisfied. He spoke to someone out of my angle of vision.

“He will sleep now. Quite safely.”

The voice that answered, all cut glass and splinters, all vicious neemu-hiss, said: “Very good, doctor. See that he is not disturbed. Have the guards called at once. The young prince thinks he is very masterful. Kov Layco was most angry.”

“I have done my work well, vadnicha.”

We knew what devil’s work that was.

“I do not deny it. You will be paid.”

Charboi gathered up the implements of his trade and went toward the door. He knocked and the door opened. I saw the crimson-clad arm. So the Bowmen kept the door sealed, now, and opened only to those they knew. I did not smile. But I rather fancied Ashti Melekhi would have some hard explaining to do to Kov Layco Jhansi, the emperor’s Chief Pallan.

If she chose to remain in the room she would have to take her chances with us. We would have to quiet her before she could cry out and warn the guards. Charboi had only just got away; I think I half regretted that at the time. But, there’s no time like the present — I was about to bash open the secret door and spring leem-like upon her, when she appeared. She walked to the outer door, and paused, and looked back.

I waited.

I saw her face. All thin and white and scornful, that face, with its red mouth and arched eyebrows. And she smiled. That smile would have held a Manhound for a space. Bitter, cunning, devilish — and, yet, also, I guessed, a little regretful. I do not wish to paint Ashti Melekhi in colors that are all black. I believe she was an accomplished player on the lute. I know she kept an aviary of exotic birds. But, in the death of an emperor, it is hard to paint lighter tones when the emperor’s daughter is your wife. Then, with a small golden staff slung on a jeweled chain about her neck, she knocked upon the door. The Bowmen opened for her. She said: “Watch the door. Hold it.”

“Quidang, my lady!”

No one was going to come into that room through that door this night, unless it was over the dead bodies of the Crimson Bowmen and their new Chulik mercenary partners. So she went out, all feline grace and thin glitter, hard and brittle and oddly manlike and I wondered when I would see her again.

Gently the secret panel eased open and I stepped into the sick room. The nurse on duty sat looking at the emperor and, I swear, a tear glistered on her pale cheek. The flunkeys were gone. The nurse did not see me, she saw nothing more as the black scarf whipped about her eyes blindfolding her. Turko held her arms, very gently, and we tied her up and laid her comfortably on a thick rug of Zeniccean-made fleecy-ponsho, a gift from Strombor, with a golden cushion for her head. She did not struggle and, no doubt, poor soul, was scared witless.

We lifted up the emperor and placed him carefully in the litter we had brought, using his own bedclothes. He weighed pathetically little for a man who had once been so strong and robust. With a single quick look around the sick room we returned through the opening and I, going last, latched the secret panel shut.

Our return was uneventful. I began to think we had planned so well as to negate all problems. Onker!

We took turn and turn about to carry the litter, for each of my comrades knew my views on manual labor, the status of nobles, and the mumbo jumbo of aristocratic privileges. We knew the routine of the palace guard. The Crimson Bowmen were professionals and would keep up their hired mercenaries to the same standards. The guard commanders changed the sentries every three burs — two hours by terrestrial reckoning — and we had taken almost the whole of that time. We anticipated leaving just before any trouble from the guard reliefs with their watchwords and their lanterns and their ready weapons.

With soundless speed we filed through the concealing opening, the emperor carried smartly if gently enough, and I reset the plaster-coated wood. At the opening of the gate we paused. Someone swore; but so low the words did not carry.

The two closed carriages were gone.

The pink and golden moonlight, strengthening slowly as the Twins eternally revolving one about the other gradually added their luster, threw odd shadows from the battlements. The damned carriages were not there. Someone had unmistakably purloined them, for they had been left firmly tethered under the colonnade, and the krahniks, useful draught animals, had shown no inclination to break free and trot off. I caught Seg’s arm.

“We walk,” I said into his ear.

“The emperor—?”

“Once we clear the palace precincts we become a drunken party with a casualty. There are eight of us. We should not be molested—”

That, onker that I am, was as far as I got.

The devils were clever and they were quick and they very nearly had us. The deadly glitter of steel in the moonlight . . . The quick indrawn breath as killers pounced. . . The scrape of sandals across time-worn stones. . .

My own rapier jumped into my fist and I swear it was only a fraction of a second faster than my comrades’, for we were a right tearaway bunch and, after the first quick shock of the ambush, a certain pitying sorrow for our would-be slayers afflicted me. In that, I suppose, the old haughty pride we all fight down reared more of its ugly head than is strictly desirable. Turko’s brand-new parrying stick flashed with smooth-oiled steel and balass, and a lunging rapier skipped and twanged away. Turko put his hand on the fellow and the cramph went sailing up, spread-eagled marvelously against the moons.

“Hai!” said Turko, reflectively, unruffled, taking a sober enjoyment. Hap’s short clansman’s axe whirled and bit, withdrew and bit again — fast, fast!

Inch licked out deftly with his great Saxon-pattern axe, and lopped, and reared up, stark against the stars, and so went with the swing, rhythmically, shearing blood and ribs and backbone in a dark welter of spraying offal.

Seg and Vomanus, who had been carrying the litter between them, placed the emperor down as fast as was decently possible. One of the attackers, mere ghost-like figures bundled in dark cloaks, shrieked and shrieked as he held, unbelievingly, onto his insides which were now outside. Silence was of no more consequence.

“Leave a few for me!” bellowed Seg, ripping out his blade, plunging on.

“And me, by Vox! Can’t a fellow have any fun!” And Vomanus twinkled his rapier out, very smooth, in that typical careless way of his.

Balass and Oby, in the rear, struggled to get out.

I, Dray Prescot, just stood. I just stood there, my rapier glinting in my fist, and I wanted to laugh. Yes! I wanted to bust a gut laughing. What poor fools these fellows were, to attempt to slay a mean bunch like us. How comical!

So I took no part in that swift and deadly struggle beneath the Moons of Kregen. Balass got in a few whacks with his superb new sword we had built back in Valka. The others stood, weapons ready, crouched, looking about into the shadows.

Young Oby stalked out, mightily upset. His wicked long-knife gleamed sharp and clean.

“Not one,” he said. “A right leem’s nest. You might at least have saved me one.”

The others laughed. Gravely, with broad smiles, they promised Oby first pick next time. They were not speaking altogether idly. So, I stepped out at last.

“Pick up all the gear. We are all reivers, mercenaries. We do not scatter good weapons about. Bundle the offal into the canal. And do not take all night about it. The guards will be here in less than no time.”

“Aye, Dray,” they said, but softly, already at work. We did not know what further hostile ears might be listening, affixed either side of eyes that had witnessed horror. I thought that no other stikitche who had witnessed what had happened to his comrades — there had been twelve of them — would want to come rushing out upon his death.

We all knew, deeply and with conviction, that this attack must herald some fresh horror, that what all Vondium feared must come to pass and the future lay drenched in blood. This was a prospect that appalled me, careless as I may be in these things. We had to take the emperor to Aphrasöe and there effect a cure and so bring him safely back to his capital and reseat him on his throne, defeat the dark plots of his many enemies, and bring a fresh period of peace and stability to all Vallia.

“Take up the emperor. Quick and sharp. Pull your scarves about your faces.” I glared at Inch. “And, tall man, hunch yourself over. We have to win back to the inn.”

Silently, feral as leems, we padded away moments before the guards arrived with much heralding of their coming, made our way back to The Rose of Valka where the supplies and the fliers were waiting for us. Among the gear we had stripped from the corpses were twelve fine metal masks. I will have more to say on the subject of metal-work and masks, for the Masks of Kregen form a fascinating, beautiful and horrible story of their own, but for now I will say that these masks were built of fine-quality steel, crafted by a mastersmith. They were all alike; triangular nose, curved lip opening, cunningly slotted to slide above an apim’s ears, with brow ridges over the eye orbits chiseled into the semblance of hair. Mass production is, as you know from Hamal, practiced to some degree on Kregen; but of necessity hand-crafted objects like these must differ in detail, one from the next. They were genuine stikitche masks, most costly; but they did not match the assassins themselves. Each one had worn ordinary clothes, buff, green, amber. I shook my head.

“Although it may seem a foolish thing to say, these do not appear to have been professional stikitches.”

They all took my meaning. No assassin is going to parade around with a special badge that lights up and proclaims he is an assassin. But some marks of the trade do sometimes show.

“Look at these,” said Oby, his nimble fingers turning over the badges in the lamplight of the snug. The twelve badges were of a wersting with a korf in its jaws.

“The bitch!”

“Yet they must have followed us to the palace and waited — they cannot report back to her,” I said.

“This is serious. Ashti Melekhi considers herself powerful enough to assassinate the Prince Majister.” No ridiculous thought of self-importance crossed my mind, only the facts as stated. “This must not deflect us from our purpose. The emperor comes first.”

“I think,” said Hap Loder, judiciously, “that I may return through Vondium. I may have a few words for the lady.”

So we all laughed. Clansmen are regarded as the devils of barbarians they truly are in Vondium — was not I a Clansman?

Thelda was all tears and alarms as we bundled the masks and badges into a big black cloak; but Seg hushed her, and young Dray gently took her for a fortifying sip of strong wine. Sasha simply took Inch’s fearsome axe and tut-tutted, and taking up a cloth began to polish until the true steel shone. Inch caught my eye and smiled. “The lassies of Ng’groga are trained to support a man, in more ways than the merely amorous.”

At this, Tilly bristled up, her fine slanted eyes catching the lights and gleaming, very cat-like.

“You apims think we Fristle girls are trained only for the arts of love, like your sylvies! Well, you are wrong—”

“But, Tilly,” said my son Drak, very chivalrous. “All the world knows how the Fristle men care for their womenfolk.”

“And we can show our claws, too, Prince Drak!”

I knew that to be true, by Zair!

Melow the Supple, recovered from the wound she had taken in defense of Delia, a story they would not tell me because it concerned the Sisters of the Rose, let rip one of her curdling, snarling chuckles. A ferocious Manhound, once of Faol and now of Valka, she said: “Women know how to look after their brats where I come from.”

And her son, Kardo, who never voluntarily leaves the side of Drak, broke out with his own harsh laugh at this. I did not marvel. But I knew a whole lot of people on the Island of Faol who would never believe Manhounds, the fearsome jiklos, savage hunting beasts genetically manufactured from human beings, could ever laugh, let alone share poignant human emotions. As for Shara, Kardo’s twin sister, well, she always went loping savagely at my daughter Lela’s side, and where they were, Opaz knew. Delia could tell me nothing of what was happening to our daughters, save they were safe. The Wizard of Loh, Khe-Hi-Bjanching, pushed forward. We all waited respectfully for him to speak. The snug in The Rose of Valka, went suddenly quiet. “You are all going on this expedition. But, my prince, why not have the Melekhi woman arrested? The poisoning will stop then, and—”

Nath the Needle shook his head. “The process is too far gone. Only this miracle can save him.” We all knew that Nath was a renowned needleman among his friends; he had no need to advertise. What he said we believed.

“But you are all mad, mad!” cried the Wizard.

“We are surely mad, Khe-Hi,” I said. “Of a certainty. But I daresay we will muddle through. I shall go ahead to make the arrangements with the Todalpheme while the expedition is put together. We meet at the Risshamal Keys — you can find at least one of the men who will know the rendezvous.”

“So,” said my Delia.

“One thing,” I told them. “The assassins who attacked Drak must probably have been the same bunch. I think we will all be better off outside Vondium, anyway.” My son’s fate must be considered involved with mine by Melekhi — which it was not, in truth. He, as the Amak of Vellendur, had his own path to hew. I intended to find a Stromnate for him as soon as may be; but he had run Valka for me with Tom Tomor and the Elders, and done well. As the son of the Princess Majestrix he must know that eventually, given the longevity of Kregans, he stood a better chance than most of becoming Emperor of Vallia himself. I finished somberly: “The emperor must be got to Aphrasöe, and nothing must stop that. Nothing. The fate of all Vallia hangs on that. Until the emperor is returned to the throne, fit and well, anarchy and blood will rule in Vallia.”

These tough warriors of Kregen understood that. I could leave the final preparations in good hands. Weapons, food, drink, clothes, supplies, all would be taken care of. As for airboats, well, the gigantic skyships Seg and Inch had stolen from the emperor to rescue me in Zandikar had been returned, not without a sniff and a few cutting remarks from the old devil. So now we would fly in somewhat smaller vollers; but large, well-found craft, all the same, carrying spare silver boxes to uplift and power them in flight.

Of provisions we would take enough to withstand a siege. Of weapons we would take an arsenal, for that is the Kregan way. All in all, as we stood to say our Remberees, we were a most lively company. Delia made sure I was, myself, accoutred and weaponed correctly. We said our private farewells in a small private room of Bargom’s off the blackwood landing, where the samphron oil lamps burned low, and the smell of night-blooming flowers carried heady scents in the lustrous air. Then the small voller I would use was hauled down from her tether. I kissed Delia and climbed aboard. The stars spread above, the lights glowed from the windows around the small courtyard, built onto the flat roof at the rear of Bargom’s The Rose of Valka. I observed the fantamyrrh. I waved to the others.

“Remberee,” I shouted down. The voller rose. “Remberee.”

“Remberee,” they called up, dwindling into the shadows below. “Remberee, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia. . .

If they finished my interminable ridiculous rigmarole of titles I lofted up and far out of earshot long before they finished.

Chapter Seven

Hamun ham Farthytu Asks Questions

Speed was vital. There was no time to scout my approaches to the hostile and malignant Empire of Hamal. I had been there before and knew my way around. The voller flashed through the sky of Kregen, heading south, over the sea, on course for Denrette on the east coast of the southern continent of Havilfar.

Hamal’s capital city, Ruathytu, lies some sixty dwaburs to the west up the River Havilthytus. This great river empties into the Ocean of Clouds opposite the southern end of the Island of Arnor. The city of Denrette stands at the mouth of the river, and I found it a strange and yet compelling place, filled with the bustle and clamor of fisherfolk, tainted with that dourness so characteristic of Hamalians, yet not without a certain energy that, three hundred miles from the capital, gave it a semblance of the shadow of the real, a reflection of the dark glories of Ruathytu.

Down by the shore, of course, the place stank of fish. But set atop small hills the houses and villas of the wealthier folk bespoke the nature of their affected reflection of the splendors of the capital. The city was large enough to boast an arena; but I steered well clear of the Jikhorkdun. I had had my fill, for the time being, of fighting in the arena away down south in Huringa, the capital of Hyrklana. There happened to be a sennight of games in progress as I arrived. For a single mur I was tugged by nostalgic memories. For a heartbeat I considered going in to join the multitudes to discover how went the fortunes of the Ruby Drang. But I did not. Anyway, quite often here in Hamal the colors and the orders were different from those I had known in Huringa.

Instead, knowing a sick emperor waited, I took myself straight to the Akhram. The Todalpheme, the wise men of Kregen who measure the tides and keep track of the suns and the moons in their courses, who predict eclipses and who are sacrosanct, would welcome me as any ordinary traveler, anxious to improve his knowledge, of the world and of their lore. Their secrets are open, freely given to those who will join them, and difficult of access to people without that astronomically oriented frame of mind. I carried fine gifts we had put together in Vondium. The information could be bought, for the emperor had bought the knowledge once before, and where once gold has eased the way gold will find the opening easier of attainment. Set boldly atop a promontory right out at the eastern escarpment, with a sheer drop to the ocean below, the Akhram presented a massive picture of authority and power and ancient wisdom, its craggy walls one with the rock on which it stood. The dominating pharos would beam out at night, warning the imperial skyships of Hamal and the constant mercantile flying traffic, directing them on their inward courses toward Ruathytu. The Hamalese are not great sailors of the sea. They do not have to be, seeing as they manufacture the vollers which can fly through the empty wastes of the sky. I walked quickly up the winding path. The river flowed in its deep gorge below, cut through the living rock. Away to the north various channels of the river emptied out and the marshes stretched remote under the suns, filled with immense flocks of wildfowl. There, also, prowled the aerial predators, saddle birds gone wild, and, among them, the untamed chyyans.

The air smelled sweet with the sea tang. The blaze of the suns fell about me, the twin intermingled rays of red and green from the Suns of Scorpio. Antares, the double star, poured down floods of light. I breathed deeply of the wine-rich air, swinging the lesten-hide bag containing so much wealth. The thraxter belted at my waist seemed in that limpid air and in that sybaritic setting to be an anachronism, unnecessary.

Yet — I could never forget I trod the stones of Kregen.

Carts were toiling up the hill, carts loaded with the produce of an empire, drawn by massive old quoffas with their patient faces and hearth-rug hides, bringing a pang of remembrance. I gave a shoulder to help heave a cart from a rut and the Xaffers, diffs so strange and remote they were always a mystery to apims, thanked me in their fashion, and I strode on, filling my lungs, my eyes fixed on the grey dominating pile of the Akhram above with the gilded domes flashing brilliantly.

The carts and the workpeople toiling up served the Todalpheme. For a single instant I had the horrified thought they were on the same errand as myself, seeking the whereabouts of the Swinging City. This was a nonsense. The secret was known to very few. The voller salesman who had sold it to the emperor for Delia’s sake must have been an adept in a secret society of one kind or another if he had been ejected by the Todalpheme. Secret societies always seem to flourish when men and women think about their world and their place in the scheme of things. I walked on, trying to appear inconspicuous. The knee-length white robe did not materially help in that, for it was a rustic dress, telling these folk I was a country bumpkin. They wore the working clothes of Ruathytu, blue or grey or green, where they were not slaves, and they knew my dress as provincial. Even the thraxter marked me, for the rapier and main gauche had grown apace as a fashion in Hamal.

The guards carried thraxters and shields, in the fashion of Hamal, and stuxes, also, the spears of varying kinds for varying work. The Shanks who raided from over the curve of the world generally steered clear of the coasts of Havilfar, the southern continent that contains Hamal and Hyrklana — and Djanduin to the south west. These guards were here to protect the Akhram not from Hamalese, although they would do that quickly enough if necessary.

With a polite greeting I was passed through. The Akhram! Well, these observatories of the Todalpheme are marvelous places, to be sure. When a world possesses two suns and seven moons the mysterious workings of heavenly bodies and the conflicting surgings of the tides demand a man’s application to mathematics and accurate observation and a thorough-going knowledge of his world. These attributes the Todalpheme possess to a high degree. Once, I had been offered the opportunity of joining the Todalpheme, and had gracefully declined.

Akhram — for usually the chief Todalpheme calls himself just Akhram — lifted up the golden necklace. The gold and rubies glistered back at him in the rays of the suns through the arched windows overlooking the sea. Wide-winged birds pirouetted out there and the noise of the waves reached us, although the beach was not visible. The chamber was airy, light, with a flick-flick plant, and many scented flowers. That superb Kregen tea had been served, and, gratefully, I sipped watching Akhram as he stared at the treasure heaped over the lenken table.

“Fine, fine, Amak,” he said. “Princely gifts.”

“I respect the Todalpheme too much to weigh the price of gifts.” I spoke bluffly, stoutly, cunningly. “It is not the value that matters.”

He smiled that remote little smile with which the ascetic will acknowledge the gluttonous follies of the world. A tall, grave, distinguished man, Akhram, almost a hundred and eighty years of age, in the prime of life, with much work still to be accomplished. I will not go into overmuch detail of the transactions in the Akhram of Denrette. They kept me waiting for a space, to cool my heels, then suggested if I sought a cure it would be better to consult doctors, or seek spiritual assistance from any one of the many Bengs and Bengas whose saintly miracles could cure. Akhram himself seemed to size me up, and we talked, and I convinced him that my desire to discover the whereabouts of Aphrasöe was not mercenary. He nodded, and put the necklace back among the piles of treasure.

“We, Amak,” he said, “are not the scarlet-roped Todalpheme. You will find them. They know the secret. We can but point you in the right direction.”

He called me Amak because I had, naturally, assumed my secret identity of Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley. I use the overly dramatic word secret. As Hamun ham Farthytu I was a real person, with a real identity, able to move freely about Hamal, the mighty empire in deadly opposition to my own country of Vallia. But that is what comes of being a spy.

He understood my intense desire for speed, for the person dearly beloved by me — and others, I added significantly — was a most highly placed personage and it would not be too much to say that a deal of Hamal’s future depended on the recovery. Thus he said, with a small, deprecating smile: “We have given this information before, for a price. There is a tortuous route to follow; but we have learned ourselves shortcuts. I think—”

“For Hamal, Akhram,” I said, most seriously.

“Yes.” When he told me I understood why no one I had spoken to hitherto had heard of Todalpheme wearing scarlet ropes about their waists. The old color had come back again to haunt me. I did not smile; but I took up the map Akhram showed me, and with my old sailor skill committed it to memory. Right over to the west, west of the Tarnish Channel of Havilfar, out below the forbidden island of Tambu, the island of Bet-Aqsa. Bet-Aqsa.

There we must go, and at once, to inquire of the scarlet-roped Todalpheme the whereabouts of Aphrasöe.

Listening as Akhram spoke in his quiet voice in the high-vaulted library of the observatory where we had gone to find the map, I had the suspicion he did not truly know how the secret had come into the hands of the Todalpheme of Hamal. As a puissant empire, the strongest power in Havilfar — if, in my arrogance, you excepted Djanduin — it seemed logical for Hamal to come by strange shreds of knowledge, secrets gathered from the four corners of the continent. Maybe some of the Todalpheme down in the Dawn Lands might also know that the Todalpheme of Bet-Aqsa knew of a place where miracle cures might be effected. All that concerned me now was to take my flier as fast as she would fly to the rendezvous up among the Risshamal Keys.

More and more I was determined to avert the consequences of the emperor’s death. For the streets of Vallia would run red with blood, the alleys pile with stinking corpses, the crops would burn, the livestock starve, thousands of hapless wights would be branded and herded off to slavery — all these atrocities would happen — might happen, would probably happen — if the Emperor of Vallia died. Making all due observances as I took my leave, giving them Remberee, I took myself off and walked smartly back down the stony path to the waiting flier.

The Risshamal Keys are merely a number of long, fingerlike extensions of small islands, rocks, cays, shoals and reefs running out in a northeasterly direction from the northeastern corner of Havilfar. I had been shipwrecked there in the old Ovvend Barynth. In setting up the rendezvous we knew the certain men who could aid us. As I took off and flew up into the streaming radiance of Antares I wondered who it would be who would guide my friends to the island of the Yuccamots along the Risshamal Keys. Flying eastward out over the sparkling sea I cleared the coast and then headed north. The Island of Arnor passed away astern. The suns poured their floods of opaz light upon the sea, and I saw a few ships sailing there — not many. A number of vollers passed; but none offered to stop and search me. The simple precaution had been taken of painting out the Vallian recognition signs, and the voller might have come direct from Ruathytu or Paline Valley for all anyone might know. I flew northwards and Bet-Aqsa lay to the southwest. I had always harbored an inkling that Aphrasöe might lie upon some island in the Outer Oceans, and had favored the easterly direction. Maybe — and I hoped most fervently that I was wrong — maybe the Swinging City was situated on the other grouping of islands and continents on the other side of Kregen, around the curve of the world. Kregen runs a longer mileage in the equator than does Earth, for all the fractionally lesser gravity, and there is a damned lot of ground to cover. The continental grouping in which, so far, all my adventuring had taken place, is called Paz. From the other continents and islands around the curve of the world sailed the fearsome Fish-Heads — call them shanks, shants, shtarkins, shkanes, it makes no difference to their viciousness — to plague and harry us. Every so often their marvelous fleet ships would sail upon an unsuspecting shore and there would follow horror and desolation. I had fought the shanks before the Jikai with the Kroveres on Drayzm, and would fight them again. Always, like any sailor of Paz, one eye was always roving the far horizons to catch the first glimpse of those tall wing-like sails of the shank ships.

And then, as I plunged on through the thin air toward that brave company of friends awaiting me at the Risshamal Keys, I looked up and saw a giant scarlet and golden bird, flying high, circling, watching me with bright black beady eyes.

I swore.

I shook my fist.

By Zair! Not now, not now!

The great hunting bird circled. The raptor was a familiar sight, a hateful sight. This was the Gdoinye, the spy and messenger of the Everoinye, the Star Lords.

Through their malign agency I had been flung about space between worlds like a yo-yo. When I had so intemperately refused to obey their orders I had been chucked back to Earth to rot for twenty-one infernal years. If the Gdoinye was spying on me, all well and good, for I knew the Star Lords kept an eye on me from time to time. But if the Opaz-forsaken bird was warning me that I would be required to perform again for the Star Lords. . .

I sweated. I clenched my teeth and stopped myself from shouting up insults, as I usually did when the golden and scarlet raptor hove into sight.

If the bird did swoop down and speak to me I would try to be conciliatory, be the new Dray Prescot, refrain from hurling abuse and calling the thing a cramph, a rast, a kleesh. But it swung about up there, glinting magnificently in the opaz radiance, and then calmly flew away. I let out a great gusty breath of relief.

What a time to be dragged away from Kregen!

Chapter Eight

A Brush with Flutsmen

Thinking that, with the appearance of the Gdoinye, the Savanti might have sent their white dove to spy on me, I cast a good look around. I could see no sign of the dove. Well, that meant little, although, to be sure, it made more sense for the Savanti to spy on me now, seeing that my intended destination was their secret island.

The long low straggle of islands of the southern fingering of the Risshamal Keys showed as an extended yellowish grey stain upon the water ahead. The Yuccamots inhabited many of the little islands and gained a precarious living fishing and trading, in communication with the local sailing craft. I had no fear of them, for they were a simple folk and had shown us kindness before. They are, I am glad to say, enormously proud of their broad thick tails, and of their webbed feet.

The Hamalian Air Service was another matter. They maintained a string of stations along the Keys, and it behooved me to avoid those.

What did happen, with the blinding speed of precipitate action upon Kregen, whipped up a nice little froth to send the blood thumping through the veins and open the pores, a trifle. Out of the roseate glow of the red sun Zim, shot the dark forms of riders urging on their saddle flyers. With my fingers up against my eyes I peered into the dazzlement even as I thrust the control levers hard over and up.

They were flutsmen up there.

Flutsmen!

By this time I knew a little of their nefarious ways. Later, I was to learn more. But now, these mercenaries of the skies, flying their fluttrells with sure confident skill, out for plunder and lopped heads, bore down screeching on me. To them, I represented loot, easy pickings, a lone flier in a voller. If they could take me before I rose and speeded enough to elude them, why, then they’d toss me over the side into the sea, and pilot the voller back to their base. They’d sell her and her contents and get drunk on the proceeds. Then they’d go reiving off for more easy plunder. Usually, the flutsmen work for hire, bands of professional mercenaries, paktuns of a sort. I’d hardly demean them to the low quality of masichieri, those scoundrels who are more employable bandits than honest mercenaries, but often enough they came close, by Zair. I fancied this band were freelancing, tazll, harrying for themselves. There were about thirty of them, too long odds for me to want to tangle with them, in view of the urgency of the task before me, unless I had to.

The emperor must come first. A fight could wait. There is always opportunity for a fight on Kregen. . . The voller lifted. Slowly. Too slowly.

The fluttrells turned their big heads with those large ridiculous vanes into the wind and opened their jaws and lanced down.

I glared up savagely. By Krun! I wanted no fight. But if these haughty, vicious flutsmen wanted to come to handstrokes, then I’d accommodate them. With a juicy Makki-Grodno oath, having to do with the putrescent diseased innards of Makki-Grodno’s disgusting liver, I snatched up the great Lohvian longbow. If I couldn’t shaft a few of the yetches before they reached me I hadn’t been trained by Seg Segutorio, the master bowman of Erthyrdrin!

Down they swooped, their green-feathered harness tight about them, their closely-fitting green-feathered caps with the flaring knotted clumps of ribbon streaming out in the wind of their passage. Flutsmen on the rampage present a brave spectacle. Completely confident of themselves they swooped down, each man ready with crossbow, volstux or long whippy sword.

Before they could start shooting I cast the first shaft.

Clean through the feather-adorned armored body of the leading flutsman the clothyard shaft punched. The brilliant blue feathers of the shaft’s notching came from the crested korf of the Blue Mountains of Vallia. Always, Seg would say that the king korfs blue feathers were just that fraction superior to those of a crested korf; but he would affirm that the beautiful bird, the korf of Kregen, provided the best feathers for the shafts cast from a Lohvian longbow. I thought about this as I loosed again. Before the leading flutsman had time to slide from his high saddle and dangle from the leather straps of his clerketer, the second shaft took his wingmate. The third shaft took the third man in the vee. Shouts of rage battered down . . .

“Cramph! You should know better! To slay a flutsman is to die!”

I didn’t bother to reply in words but sped another shaft that parted the teeth of a yelling flutsman and did nasty things to the back of his skull. His saddle flyer spun past, spraying bits of the flutsman’s bone and gobbets of brain.

Yes, the korf provides the best fletchings. We’d been experimenting in Valka with the rose-colored feathers of the zim-korf. I’d had a few shafts made up and the warmly-glowing red feathers dyed a brilliant blue. Seg, when I’d tried him, had expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with the shafts, and why was I making such a thing out of it. When we washed the dye away, letting the blue color leach out to reveal the brave old red, Seg’s face was a picture.

But, as the other flutsmen closed in, I had time to loose twice more — loose the blazing blue feathered shafts in deadly true arcs. Each time the arrow punched cleanly; then I took to my sword. The Krozair longsword felt good in my fists.

Ah, me! How often I have thought that. But now, with an emperor sick and near to dying, was no time to consider my new image, the quiet, conciliatory, peace-loving Dray Prescot. With the Krozair longsword in my fists, my hands spread in that cunning Krozair grip, I went to work. Mind you, the first and chief use of the sword at the moment was to ward off the shafts that sliced toward me with the artful two-handed flicking taught in the Krozair disciplines. I battered the bolts away joyfully. I own it. The blood thumped around my veins. The voller shot up now as the speed increased vertically and we went slap bang through the middle of the fluttrell formation. In a clashing smother of flapping wings and raking talons the voller shot up and broke through. For an instant I was slashing and hacking away to my heart’s content. Thrusting is a chancy business in these circumstances, for obvious reasons.

The voller clanged as the wooden hull gonged to repeated blows. But she won free. We sprung through the giant saddle birds and up into the suns shine — save for one. One fluttrell rose abruptly directly before me.

There was no chance to swerve the flier. Bird and boat crashed together with an almighty smash. Staggering, I kept my feet, braced, wrathful, the wicked Krozair brand slanted up and forward. The bird was entangled with the stem of the boat, where the fancy gilding was all scraped away. The stout leather harness did not break. Its wings thrashed. The rider, freeing himself from his clerketer, leaped right nimbly down onto the tiny deck, superbly balanced on supple legs, and came for me directly. His green feathers flaunted in the light.

“Die, onker!” he shouted, and cast his stux.

The spear flew. The Krozair longsword flicked and the spear, ringing like a gong, caromed away into the blue.

Nothing daunted, the flutsman came on, drawing his thraxter. He presented the sword, point first, the Havilfarese cut-and-thruster held in skilled firm grip, and leaped down with a wild panache. Powerful, he was, limber in his strength, supremely at home in the air. The longsword flicked left, halted, surged back, twisting. The thraxter spun up in the air, end over end, sparkling. The sharp steel point of the Krozair brand held without a tremble on the throat of the flutsman, just above the green collar of his lorica. He glared at me, panting, disbelieving. He was a strong well-built Brokelsh. His bristle body hair bristled even more. A strong, virile race, the Brokelsh, and many people consider them coarse and uncouth. Not apims, of course, the Brokelsh. Had this fellow been wearing a silver or gold trim to the collar of his lorica I might have had a little more exercise in twitching his sword away. He gaped down at the sword. His expression was one of enormous surprise, as though he awoke from a dream of midnight houris and wine to find himself in this predicament. His goggle-eyed amazement amused me.

“Why should I not slay you now, dom?”

He shook his massive head and licked his lips. His mannerisms were those of a man, diff or apim, both.

“I am a flutsman, apim.”

“Aye! A reiving mercenary of the skies who owes no allegiance to any save his own band, despite the hire fees you take. Well, many of your band have gone down to the Ice Floes this day. What say you, Flutsman?”

His blunt chin went up. Uncouth they may be, the Brokelsh, exceedingly hairy with a coarse black body hair; but they are men.

“I am Hakko Bolg ti Bregal, known as Hakko Volrokjid. Perhaps I deserve to die. I do not think so. I have a great hatred for all you Hamalese — and mayhap that will serve.”

“In that case, by the disgusting tripes of Makki-Grodno! I shall not slay you. I do not want your blood on my blade.”

I said this, you will perceive, to conceal the truth.

He squinted his eyes down, this Hakko Volrokjid. I, too had had trouble with volroks, those winged flying men of Havilfar. “And this blade,” he said. “I have not seen its like before.”

“And I’ve not heard of Bregal.”

“A small town, in Ystilbur of the Dawn Lands.”

“I have heard of Ystilbur. An ancient land.”

“And razed with fire and swords by you rasts. By Barflut the Razor Feathered! I would dearly love to slay you all!”

“Seize your fluttrell, before the onkerish thing strangles himself on his own harness. Get you gone. I am not a Hamalese. And, dom, if you meet me again, remember, and tread small.”

He glared for a heartbeat at me, his bristly face working, then he scrambled back and grappled his bird, who would have bit at him had he not clouted it over the head. I spoke big, like that, to conceal deeps I did not want this Brokelsh flutsman, Hakko Volrokjid, to see revealed in me. He freed the bird and vaulted up into the saddle, doing all this with the practiced ease of your true flutsman. He buckled up the clerketer. His bristly face lowered down on me.

“I shall not forget you, apim. Be very sure of that, by the Golden Feathered Aegis!” He drew up the reins, handled most cunningly in one fist. Then he shouted down words that surprised me, although they should not have. Many a paktun — although he was far too callow to have earned the coveted mortilhead — would not thank a man for giving life. They might feel shame, depression, humiliation, the outrage of their professional ethics, depending on their beliefs. But this young flutsman bellowed down: “I thank you for my life. May the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh have you in his keeping. Remberee!”

And with a great beating of wings the fluttrell swooped away and this singular flutsman was gone. I poked my head over the side of the voller.

The flutsmen toiled along after me, all in formation, the wings of their flyers going up and down, up and down. Hakko Volrokjid spun away through the level wastes to join them. Then, all in formation, they swung away and strung out in a beeline for the coast to the west. Hakko flew strongly after them. So, guessing what was afoot — or, rather, in the air — I looked ahead and there were the fliers lifting from the scattering of cays and bearing up for me.

A single look reassured me.

They were not vollers of the Hamalian Air Service.

My friends, waiting at the rendezvous, had witnessed the little aerial affray and were no doubt thirsting to get into the fight.

This was true — deplorably so.

The moment my voller touched gunwales with Seg’s impressive craft he yelled across: “One missed, Dray — the blue flash of feathers was not to be mistaken.”

“My finger slipped on the string.”

“Aye!” he roared, joyously. “You always had slippery fingers.”

Inch bellowed across from his flier. “A good long axe, Dray — that’s what you need up here in the sky.”

Other greetings rose from the other fliers. We formed a little fleet, a tiny armada, there off the coast of a hostile empire. But we wanted nothing of Hamal on this trip.

I landed the little voller across the deck of the large flier Delia had provided for us. She waited for me, alight with joy at my safe return. All my comrades and their families were here, in good spirits, although chafing to have missed that little spat of a fight. So I knew the emperor was not yet dead. Delia smiled at me, her face pale.

“He still lives. But he is weak, so very weak. We must hurry.”

I shouted out the course to Vangar.

“Southwest! Southwest at top speed.”

We were on our way to Bet-Aqsa and the men who might tell us where away lay Aphrasöe, the Swinging City of the Savanti.

Chapter Nine

In the Akhram of Bet-Aqsa

The encounter between the ranked Pachak swods and the Rapa Deldars had been sanguinary in the extreme. Two Chulik Jiktars, powerful, had been swept away in the bloody rout, and an apim Paktun and a Brokelsh Hikdar were thrown with the others regretfully back into the velvet-lined box.

“Do you yield?” demanded Delia, most fierce.

“Aye,” I said. I did not tip my king over in the terrestrial way of chess but I pushed back in the chair and, looking on the ruin of my forces, said: “Aye, I bare the throat.”

Jikaida is a game where women can be so damned deceitful it amazes mere mortal men. But I could not help adding: “I notice you are using as your Pallan a female figure. I still do not recognize the representation.”

“You are not meant to.”

I glanced out through a port. The airboat fled on through the level wastes of air, speeding towards Bet-Aqsa. We had slept and eaten and I had thought to occupy the mind of Delia by Jikaida, that absorbing game that dominates so much of Kregan intellectual thinking, giving opportunities for rigorous mental disciplines. I did not pick up her Pallan, the most powerful piece on the board. But I cast the gorgeous little figure a most baleful glance.

Delia smiled. “She carries the yellow cross on the scarlet field. What more could you ask?”

I grunted. “Only that she play for me, woman!”

At this, Delia laughed, and so I knew much of her fear for her father had been damped by the amazing success we had so far enjoyed in our mission to save his life, and with it the life and well-being of all Vallia.

Most people have a game of Jikaida stuffed away somewhere in a dusty cupboard; most people play from time to time. It demands much more than the game Jikalla. Some folk play so often that the game becomes their life. Gafard, the King’s Striker, who was our son-in-law and who was now dead, had once earned a living as a Jikaidast, a man — or woman — who sets up in a suitable place and challenges all comers for wagers. Such Jikaidasts are regarded differently in various countries; usually they are given honor and I, for one, gave them due honor within the craft.

Most people who are halfway serious about Jikaida also own at least one personal set of playing pieces. Although the opposing colors are usually blue and yellow, sometimes black and white — almost never red and green — the individual figures are embellished in wondrous ways. I happened to have been using a mixed set in which diffs and apims filled the functions of representing the various pieces. I admired the fine martial appearance of the little warriors, of whatever race they happened to be. Delia had produced a marvelous set, all of delicately carved ivory and balass and gold, including Pachaks and Djangs. With, of course, her confounded mysterious female figure as her Pallan.

Now, lifting up my own Pallan, a neat little apim with a finely wrought Lohvian longbow and a sword too long for comfort, I laid him away in the balass box.

“Having bared the throat, will you wet it with some wine?”

Our son, Prince Drak, came into the stateroom just then and did the honors, pouring Gremivoh, the vintage favored in the Vallian Air Service.

“It is all going amazingly well,” he said. He still experienced difficulty in calling me father, and Jaidur always avoided the embarrassment. “The island will be in sight within a bur or so.”

We spoke for a few moments of the trip and the prospects, ground we had covered time after time. Drak expressed himself as most pleased that when we had stopped off in Djanguraj for fresh provisions, nothing would stop Kytun Kholin Dom and Ortyg Fellin Coper and their families from joining us. Then, speaking to Delia although looking at Drak, I said: “Can you tell me why this well set-up, handsome son of ours has not married so far?”

Drak’s powerful features lowered on me at this, and Delia shook her head in a quick admonitory way.

“That is my business,” said Drak.

“Oh, aye,” I said. “But the emperor is your grandfather. We are going to save his life. Rest easy on that. But, one day, it is likely you will be emperor.”

His head went up at this. Powerful, Drak, hard and strong, filled with a dark purpose I could only admire at a distance.

“Yes. Consider that well. With a family to sustain you, you will seem an even better choice to the people and the Presidio.”

“And you?”

“Me? I want only your well being — as for the emperor — throne, crown, title, wealth — they are all gewgaws. I have enough of that kind of thing already.” Here, again thinking of Djanduin of which land I am king, I paused. “At least, if it comes to it, and if your mother agrees, why, then. . .”

Drak set his glass down carefully. He was worked up, his handsome face, dark and powerful, set in harsh lines of determination that, I suspected, were very like those lines I see in the mirror when I shave.

“I do not anticipate becoming emperor while you or mother live.”

He went out then, quickly, and the sturmwood door slammed somewhat too hard.

“I really do not know what to make of that boy,” I said.

Delia laughed: “You do realize, my heart, that because of our dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism, we are younger than he is?”

“Deuced odd that, by Zair!”

She became grave, on a sudden. “They — the Savanti — they would not let me go — you remember

— and you — it was a dreadful journey to the pool—” She bit her lip, and said, on a rush: “Suppose they will not let father be cured?”

“I have thought of that. We fly directly to the Pool of Baptism. Once we are there and your father is cured, it will be too late for the Savanti to interfere.”

So we agreed on the plan between us. I felt some confidence that with the tearaway bunch of ruffians with us, and with the fine navigation of Vangar — I would help, of course — we ought both to find the River Zelph and the Pool and take care of any opposition along the way. What the Savanti might say I did not much care. I own I felt some concern over what they might do. But they were, as I knew, a civilized people who wanted to make of Kregen a world fit for people to grow into fulfilled lives without the dark fears that plagued them now. The stakes were too high to draw back now out of phantasmal fears of what might be.

We went up on deck into the clean swift rush of wind.

Our friends were peering ahead from every flier. Wersting Rogahan, who could shoot a varter and hit the center of the Chunkrah’s eye every time, had been the man they had found to guide them to the Yuccamot island in the Risshamal Keys. He had been shipwrecked with me in the old Ovvend Barynth, a rough-tongued rapscallion, an old sea-dog; but he was a man I fancied I understood and could rub along with. He had advanced just one step in rank since I had had him made up to so-Deldar, and was now a ley-Deldar. He still wore that dark strip of chin beard under his jaws, his lean knowing face was just the same with the broken nose and the mahogany tan of a life spent at sea. Up here in a flying craft he had donned a buff shirt where normally he went bare-chested, and the old buff trousers cut off at the knees might have been the same pair he’d worn when we’d shot our varters in competition against the pursuing shanks.

“Land ho!”

The shrill yell skyrocketed up from Oby, perched high. He pointed ahead. Soon we all saw the low dark outline of coast, with hills beyond, and the cream of surf and the wink of rivers. Bet-Aqsa was a sizeable island, triangular in shape and some one hundred eighty or so dwaburs across at the widest part, smaller than the forbidden island of Tambu to the north. Kytun Kholin Dom, my fearsome four-armed Djang comrade, bellowed across the wind-rushing gap between fliers: “So that’s where those Drig-loving reivers live, is it? Now we know, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! we will pay them a visit and return their gifts to us in fire and the sword!”

Well, knowing my Djangs as I do, and knowing of the raids they suffered from the sea people — not the Shanks — I could not be surprised.

If the inhabitants of Bet-Aqsa as distinct from the Todalpheme of that place made a habit of raiding the western coasts of Havilfar, secure that their home was far enough west to deter anyone reckless enough even to think of sailing that far into the Ocean of Doubt, then they would be in for a nasty shock. The place was secretive enough, Zair knew. Events were changing fast on Kregen, and the world would never be the same again.

Over the horizon to the north and east the forbidden island of Tambu presented no lure. I had met men who claimed to have been there and the stories about the place, not all apocryphal, I feel sure, were calculated to curdle the blood. Gruesome, distasteful, the stories, most of them, as I was to discover. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps the forbidden character of Tambu could be explained away by the unsuspected presence there of the Savanti.

That, we would soon discover.

Over the island we flew, seeing towns and villages of peculiar aspect, and long rolling downlands, forests, marks of cultivation. A few fluttrell patrols winged up after us; but we flew vollers high and fast and left the laboring saddle birds far below. Also, there arose other flyers riding beasts new to us, flying steeds of remarkable appearance, all speckled with ruby and amber feathers, with gappy jaws and long whiplike tails. Still and all, despite their efficient wingspan, long and wide like an albatross’s and despite the gesticulating figures upon their backs, they were outdistanced also.

“Straight to the Western Akhram, Vangar,” I told the captain of my Valkan Fleet, admiral, Chuktar, flag-captain and skipper of whatever voller I happened to be flying in all rolled into one efficient, loyal, great-hearted man. He nodded and bent to his map, the self-same map I had drawn out for him from my memory of the one shown me by Akhram of the Todalpheme of Denrette.

Soon at the best speed of our vollers the western coast came in sight, a green-blue glittering expanse of water stretching out beyond the last fingerings of land, a vast mass of empty water stretching out no man knew whither. This was the Ocean of Doubt.

“There!” screeched Oby, pointing, the wind in his hair.

A collection of yellow-green onion domes rose from the edge of an inlet. Ships lay moored and signs of activity from what were clearly dockyards showed that these people kept themselves busy, an impression heightened by the size of the town strung along the water’s edge. The low yellow fortress guarding the mouth of the inlet was not lost upon us. These folk trafficked upon the sea, and yet they built defenses. We all thought we knew for whom those stout walls had been built.

The Akhram stood aloof from these mundane pursuits, the cluster of onion domes glistening in the limpid air.

How far we had come! Right to the edge of the known world — over it, for all we had previously known of these foreign parts. Where one might have expected to discover an uncouth half-savage people, it was clear there was wealth down there, industry and commerce — and, for sure, a deal of loot from the coasts of Havilfar, including Djanduin.

I had argued with my friends and overborne them.

Delia said: “But I should go with you! I have been to Aphrasöe before. Therefore—”

“Therefore you will stay here, with the fleet.”

She pouted at me, making a mockery of my heavy-handedness. But I would not be swayed. I had brought a fleet and a large body of fighting men, for that is the best way to travel on Kregen when you are in a hurry and will meet foes — and carry a bedridden, dying emperor. The very best way, of course, is alone, like a savage clansman in hunting leathers — and, truly, better even than that, is just the two of you, just the two, alone in the whole wide world of Kregen. . .

So I would not be swayed now. Nath the Needle said he dare not leave the emperor. The poison wasting away the once stalwart frame was insidious, and any cure that might once have been possible was long since too late, by far. All he could do was administer what antidote he could. Every bur the emperor had to take a teaspoonful of the nauseating mixture Nath prepared, swallowing it down past clenched teeth we had gently to prise open with silver levers. Also, acupuncture needles had to be used, carefully inserted in the right nodes and along the correct lines to ease the increasing pain. I had studied assiduously with Nath the Needle as well as other eminent doctors to discover all I could of the arcane mysteries of the needleman’s art. I could insert a needle now and know with sure certainty that it would do the work intended.

Making preparations as the fleet hovered over the Akhram, I gave my last instructions. “I go alone and hope to win through with gold and peaceful talk. If I am not back within three burs then, Seg and Inch, you’d better fly down and see what is keeping me. I trust you will bring a few sturdy fellows with you, and, as well, leave another pack of sky-leems up here to guard our return.”

They nodded. They were not joking, even if I tended to treat this whole escapade as just that. They didn’t like me jaunting off by myself. Even I had to admit that that was because they cared for my leathery old hide, and not, as I dearly loved to believe, because they fancied I was hogging all the action. All my experiences on Kregen so far indicated that the Todalpheme were quiet, studious, peace-loving men who wished only to get on with their tasks of tracking the course of the moons and the suns and of predicting the tides. They kept up a force of brown-clad workpeople who were not slave, superintended by the Oblifanters, answerable directly to the Todalpheme. The Oblifanters and their work force were not cloaked by the universal acceptance of the sanctity of the Todalpheme. They might be entrapped, made slave, killed. So they were a rougher bunch. Their methods of work I had seen at the Dam of Days.

The voller spun away and I was lunging for the cluster of greenish-yellow onion domes within the long walls.

While it is not true to say that one Akhram is very much like another, they must all share a deal in common as to the purpose of their architecture. They each possess an observatory and a library and a refectory. As I expected, after a wait, I was shown into a small room where Akhram would see me. Gold, even among the Todalpheme, sometimes eases the way. But the Todalpheme welcome students visiting them, and within the framework of their vital occupations will delight in conversation with visitors, seeing that they are usually cut off from normal human intercourse. As a rule they lead solitary lives, at one with the waves and the winds and the tides. I anticipated only the problem of convincing the Todalpheme of Bet-Aqsa that I was genuinely in need of secret information. Some thought had been taken as to my dress.

To go with the orange favors of the Djangs would be to excite instant suspicion if not hostility. To go as a Vallian would mean little, except to create wariness almost as much as a Hamalian. Finally I donned a simple short russet-colored tunic, edged with a deep yellow, belted with lesten hide and a great golden buckle — petty ostentation, this last, but designed with a purpose. A rapier and dagger swung at my sides and the old longsword jutted up over my shoulder. I hung a long white cloak around my shoulders, clear of the hilt of the longsword, and fastened off the bronzen zhantil-head clips. The unworldly combination should provoke interest, at the least.

“And are you a prince, dom?” said Akhram, coming into the chamber and sitting down. He was a fat and fleshy man, with pursed lips despite the fat jowliness of his cheeks, and pouchy eyes. I did not like the sound of that “dom” which is common among ordinary folk as a greeting name, and among friends as a mark of affection. For the first time I felt unease, that I had blundered.

“That is not of importance.” I put to him the reason for my visit. I opened the lesten-hide bag and showed him the contents. As I did this I watched his eyes. My hackles rose. He was a Todalpheme; I do not deny him that. And, also, I knew there was much and much I did not know about Kregen. But he was like no other Todalpheme, least of all an Akhram, that I had met before.

“Pretty baubles,” he said, lifting the golden chains. But his face betrayed far different emotions from his words.

“All yours, Excellency.” I used the word deliberately. “The man is very sick. Only the Savanti can cure him.”

He looked up quickly, the golden chain swinging from his soft plump ringers. “So you know their name?

The brothers grow careless. And you have come far?”

“A goodly way.” I pushed the heavy bag nearer. “Tell me where lies Aphrasöe and these are yours and I will leave at once.”

No strangeness afflicted me as I considered what I said, what I demanded. The search for information had upheld me for long periods of my life upon Kregen. It was a secret I had hungered for, suffered for, something I had thought meant more to me than anything else in two worlds. Paradise! I had been thrown out of the paradise that was Aphrasöe, the Swinging City. I had asked and asked and always to no avail, and then real life had taken me in and the Swinging City had dimmed. And now, here I was, calmly offering gold to buy the secret. Weird!

So the strangeness of it all did affect me, after all.

“I think, dom,” said this Akhram, touching his lips, which shone, moist in the lights through the open windows. “I think the bag of treasure is mine, whether I give you the secret or not.”

“How so?”

“We do not impart this to everyone who asks. It is a high trust placed in our hands.”

Again, I blundered.

“I do not believe that. You came by the information by chance—”

“Do not presume!” He flared at me, shaking already with an anger he did little to control. This Todalpheme showed a petty emotion. “We have sent our men before. Good men. In vollers that cost a great deal of money in far Havilfar.”

By saying “far” Havilfar, he sought to entrap me into some kind of reaction by which he might judge my place of origin.

Stony-faced, I said: “I need the information and I need it in a hurry. I do not quarrel with anything you say of your acquisition or trust of the secret. The man is like to die. You will tell me.”

“And if I will not?”

I put my hand on the bag.

He sneered. “We have sent brothers to Aphrasöe and often they do not return. Gold will not buy their lives.”

“I do not ask any escort.”

Then he said the revealing thing I had sensed and which had caused my blundering, my stiff-necked talk.

“No,” he said. “No, we are not as other Todalpheme.”

He wore a fine sensil robe of yellow. His thick waist was girded by a scarlet rope. He was, in truth, one of the Scarlet-Roped Todalpheme, men I had sought over the face of Kregen. And now I had found one of that brotherhood and he was proving two-faced, obstinate, greedy, attempting to cheat and defraud me, attempting, also, to browbeat me.

He reached out a hand and touched the bag of treasure.

“I think this is mine, already. I think you had best be gone before worse befalls you.”

I said: “Do you consider yourself sacrosanct?”

His astonishment was genuine.

His eyes glittered through abruptly down-drawn lids. Yet he answered obliquely. “You wear swords, dom.” He paused. His use of the word dom continued to offend me. I saw quite clearly in it a patronizing sneer; dom is the word between friends for friend, or the kindly word indicating no hostility. Except, of course, when it is used in irony, and then the circumstances are perfectly plain. There are subtleties in the use of words. Here, this Akhram was baiting me. Why? He thought he could take the treasure and kick me out. He had guards, powerful armed men at call.

He put his hands together and continued, heavily. “You wear swords. Only a madman would offer violence to a Todalpheme.”

Yes, on occasion I am mad. But I was not as yet mad enough to risk everything on a cheap retort, something like: “I am mad, dom, mad enough to do your business for you if you do not speak up —

quick!”

Instead, I said: “What impediment is there to telling me? Surely the gold is not all there is to it?”

He hesitated again at this. I can judge time passably well. The three burs were drifting away through the glass.

“We have been warned by the Savanti. They do not relish strangers visiting them.”

This sounded likely. I remembered the vexation with which Maspero, my tutor, had greeted the arrival of the flier carrying Delia. With her had been three yellow-robed, scarlet-roped men — and they had all three been dead.

He leaned forward. “Perhaps, if you told me the name and identity of the sick man. . . ?”

Now it was my turn to pause. Information. The Todalpheme were avaricious for news of all kinds. A mistake now — in all sober truth the fate of Vallia trembled on what I said, hung there, stark and brutal before me.

I said: “It is the Emperor of Vallia.”

“Ah.” He pushed back in his carved chair and smiled. He glanced at the bag of treasure. “One bag of gold is an insult.”

“So that is it. You are greedy.”

He flushed. “Take care, rast, lest you regret hasty words.”

All I had learned as a good Kregan warred within me with myself. I have a nature. My nature has to be quashed. The Todalpheme are sacrosanct; no sane man will raise a hand against them. But what of tradition, what of the truth of the question when a great empire may run red with blood? Where lay my duty now?

He watched me slyly. He saw the twitch of my hand toward the rapier hilt. He smiled wetly. “The fate of a man who raises a hand against a Todalpheme is awful — awful.”

Was my just punishment if I violated the basic tenet of this solemn Kregan belief worthy payment for saving the life of an emperor, of preventing the torrents of blood that would follow? Would my Delia thank me for destroying myself in saving her father?

The decision was mine.