CHAPTER TEN

In the temple of Lem the Silver Leem

I, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia and official upholder of Opaz the pure spirit of the Invisible Twins, did not immediately smash this Lem the Silver Leem idolater and blasphemer across the face, and kick him as he went down.

“Hurry, Hamun, hurry! Your friends will do what they can, but Garnath has spies everywhere!”

He hurried me on, into the bewildering shadows of the aqueduct. The water rustled and splashed far above, and the sounds of slaves working came to us; the doleful clank of bronze buckets and the duller thunk of wooden tubs.

“What—” I was not so much shocked and astonished as repulsed and nauseated.

“Don’t chatter, Hamun! Your friends— Well, we all knew you would win, of course. Lem is your only hope. Hurry and say nothing and keep close.”

Then the idea struck me that it would be useful to know something of this monstrous Lem. All I knew was what I had been told and what I had seen in Migla, and what I judged to be the character of those men I knew who worshiped the foul leem-beast, Lem.

So, forcing myself to remain calm, I hurried on with Nath.

He was not such a bad fellow, anyway, for he had stood as my second, although refusing to fight if the necessity arose, for which I could scarcely blame him. He was acknowledged by Rees, who heartily disliked Lem, swearing rather by Krun. So, as I say, I decided this could be an adventure, and followed Nath Tolfeyr into the shadows.

The Most Glorious Temple had been cleverly hidden, I will say that for these leem lovers. We hurried into the shadows of the aqueduct and, passing through a waste area much cluttered with building materials and old lumber and wrecked carts and fliers, entered a narrow opening appearing casually, as though a mere space between rotting piles of bricks. There we came onto a steeply descending stairway.

“I waited here for you, for I knew you had gone to Casmas. This is my temple; there are others of which I do not know.”

“Let us go down, then, Nath. Perhaps I shall be safe as you suggest.”

He laughed, his cares sloughed off with the closing of the door behind us. We clattered down the stairs.

“Oh, we do not mean to hide you here, Hamun. By Lem, no! Vad Garnath is one of us at least in belief, if a pariah trag in all else.”

I thought I was catching his drift, and I did not like the way of it. But, as they say among my clansmen,

“In for a zorca, in for a vove.” I was here now; I would see this thing through. The darkness was broken at the foot of the steps where a cresset showed greasy light upon the streaked walls. Here a lenken door opened and we went through. The door was guarded by a Bleg, his weird bat-face perfectly fitting the surroundings. His thraxter was gripped naked in his fist and he carried a shield. They guarded their shrine of Lem, then. I took notice of the Bleg’s harness, for as much may be learned from a person’s clothes as his weapons. The Bleg guarding the door wore ordinary swod uniform, the private soldier’s lorica and bronze kilt and greaves. His helmet was unremarkable. His colors and devices were of a flat brown hue, picked out with silver. Brown and silver. Were they, then, the secret colors of Lem the Silver Leem?

When I dub the people I was about to meet leem lovers, it must be understood I mean them to have no connection with the shanks, the shants, the shtarkins, those unholy folk from across the curve of the world, who were also called leem lovers. The name applied in the case here, and was applied as an epithet in the other. I felt these leem lovers here would call those other raiding, murdering fish-heads anything but leem lovers.

“Keep quiet, Hamun. Say nothing. We are late.”

We stood before a tall brown curtain with silver tassels. Cautiously, Nath parted the drapes and peered in. Then he beckoned and we slipped through.

The massive cavern must have been natural at first, subsequently hacked out to wider dimensions. Water trickled darkly down one corner, for we were sufficiently near the Black River. The roof writhed in shadows cast by smoking torches and cressets. The foul stink of incense hung in the air. At least a hundred people knelt on the stone floor, all intoning chants, genuflecting, dropping into the full incline, and then the crouch, all clamped in the grip of a controlled yet hysterical religious fervor of adoration. High above the altar a monstrous silver image of a leem gleamed starkly bright. The thing must have been at least twenty feet in length, from the tip of the tail that in life lashed with such frenzy, to the snout of the wicked head with the cruel gaping fangs. Leems are feral beasts. The eight-legged leem is furred, feline, and vicious, with a wedge-shaped head, and fangs that can strike through solid lenk. Its taloned paws can smash a man’s head in like a rotten fruit. Weasel-shaped but the size of a full-grown leopard, a leem is a wild and terrifying beast with which I have had somewhat to do in my own wild life upon Kregen, as you know, and was to have more in the future, as you shall hear. Priests, with gold added to the brown and silver of their robes, stood upon the dais in varying positions of power and authority. To one side a black basalt slab indicated that some of the stories about Lem must be true. A tall iron cage on the other side gaped open, and a fire flamed and fluttered at its base. Shadows writhed like bats in the vast chamber. The stomach-churning stink of leem hung in the air, barely concealed by the pervasive sickly smell of incense.

“Down on your knees, Hamun, for the love of Lem!”

Now.

Had I still been that same Dray Prescot who had faced the Princess Natema Cydones of Esztercari on the flowered roof garden of the opal palace in Zenicce, when all manner of bribes and insults had been heaped on me, when my Delia had faced a horrible death, when— Well, it is an old story, and still rouses my blood when I think of it.

These days the Princess Natema was happily married to my good friend Prince Varden Wanek of the House of Eward, and they had children. And I, the Lord of Strombor, had married my Delia and we had our two adorable twins. But, scatheless, it seemed, I, at least, was still rushing headlong into dangers and adventures!

No longer was I that same Dray Prescot. I had tried to conquer the passionate nature that burst all bonds at first headstrong rush. I attempted to think before I burst into action. That old Dray Prescot would never have bowed the knee to some pagan, blasphemous silver idol in its samphron-oil-lamp radiance. On this occasion, though, I conquered my self. I knelt. As I speak to you on this tape recorder in this South American hotel, I recall even as late as last season I had occasion to rush blindly into just such a foolish, headstrong parcel of trouble as I used to in my younger days. And, in between, during all my days on Kregen, I have always had to face the fact that I will sometimes flail out and bash a few skulls before I stop to think on . . .

Nath Tolfeyr let out a sigh of relief as he dropped to his knees next to me. The atmosphere of cloying horror grew. The chants were in a tongue that had been deliberately fabricated, a doggerel of dialects and neologisms. I could understand it, through the agency of that genetic language pill given me by Maspero. What was being said sickened me. We had, as Nath said, come in late.

What was left of the girl child was being offered up to the silver image. The man with the silver leem-mask over his face held the pitiful torso up, the blood dripping down, making the sacrifice directly to the god. The god! The diseased vomiting of a sick mind, more like . . . Had we arrived earlier, before the child had been sacrificed, I know I would never have, could never have, even though it resulted in my death, meekly plumped down on my knees. So the ghastly business went on, the mumbo-jumbo, and the sexual athletics which followed and closed the religious service. I felt my hand on my thraxter. Maybe it was a duty laid on me by the Star Lords to investigate Lem the Silver Leem. They had not called me to Kregen, four hundred light-years through the void, for nothing.

Presently Nath Tolfeyr whispered: “Stay here on your knees.”

He slipped away. A few murs later he was back, and with him a man robed in the brown and silver, with a great silver mask of a leem over his face, carrying a whip and a chain, and with a rampant, obscene leem in a circle of silver swinging on his breast by a silver chain around his neck. I am fond of silver. The metal was being blasphemed here.

At a beckoning we went with the priest into a side chamber where lamps threw light across an altar with a smaller silver-leem image, a black basalt table, very smooth, and an array of bronze knives with curious bone handles, of black and white.

At least ten men and women crowded in, wearing silver masks over their eyes and across their noses, like dominoes. But I recognized some of them, raffish hooligans and easy trollops from the sacred quarter. They all knew me.

The atmosphere grew more tense, and that abominable incense stink wafted in, carrying with it the stench of leem.

The room was hot and crowded.

“Take off his green jacket!” commanded the man in the silver leem-mask. “Take it from hence and burn it.”

About to protest I was severely nudged in the ribs by Nath, who had donned a silver mask. His was not as large or important as that worn by the priest, but it was more impressive than the dominoes worn by the witnesses.

Well, I will not go into details of what followed. It nauseated me at the time, and does to this day. I was stripped. Eventually we were all naked, but still those others wore their masks. A mask gives a person a great sense of power. It conceals truth and enables a man or woman to don a new personality. The blasphemies against Opaz were uttered with a glee that told me these people were doomed and damned. I think, even then, had they known of Zair and included him in their obscene blasphemies, I would have broken all their necks. As it was, they could not, of course, touch the true core of belief. Partway through the ceremonies a heated iron was brought. The brand was very tiny, shaped in the uncial for the Kregish letter L. This was branded on a personal part of my anatomy. I endured this. I knew that, thanks to my immersion in the Pool of Baptism of the River Zelph, all brands wear away from me in time. The pressure grew. Chants rose. Customs were followed that, I suppose, the painted cavemen had already discarded.

The sacrifice was a chicken, and, again, I felt a reprieve.

The blood was sprinkled upon me, in my hair, daubed on my face. Women rubbed the blood in. Well, I’ve waded through rivers of blood, as the cant saying has it. It meant nothing. From a hyr-lif — and that was a blasphemy, also — the rules, the penalties, the obligations were read out. Once initiated, the converts were meant to be kept. There are silly secret societies like this on Earth, where a knife is brandished and threats are made to disembowel if the petty little secrets are revealed. But these fanatical followers of Lem the Silver Leem were not bluffing: they’d gleefully spill my tripes if I betrayed them; indeed the drawing out of guts was merely a small penalty among those recited to me with such lip-smacking appreciation.

Lem, the Silver Leem, they said, was real and awful and possessed of the greatest powers. Once under his protection the acolyte could look forward to great prosperity, massive good fortune, much money, and an orgy every full moon.

Given that they excluded the three smaller moons of Kregen, and the Twins naturally coincide, this meant a ripe old time would be had. I was not light-headed by this time, but I was genuinely feeling sick, and the stink of the incense got down into my stomach.

I cannot speak of the rest of it.

Eventually, now a full-fledged acolyte of Lem, I was taken away to another cavern, hollowed from the ground away from the Black River. Here everyone settled down to drinking and dancing and wenching. From this point on the religious aspects of the night’s doings grew less, and the affair turned into an orgy one might chance upon in a frenzied dopa den of the sleaziest portions of a city of Kregen. They gave me a silver domino, and I wore this, out of shame.

For, Star Lords and their mysterious commands or not, this was not my idea of life. I had already disliked Lem, now I detested and despised the evil cult of Lem.

Who knew how many poor children they had bought or stolen away? A slave child would hardly be missed, and a missing child from the shanty clum towns outside the city walls would not raise a single voice in protest. Even a child taken from the guls’ quarters would soon be forgotten after a few of the routine inquiries made by the watch under the laws of Hamal.

Along with the silver mask I had donned a short tunic of brown, trimmed with imitation silver lace. I sat at a table with Nath Tolfeyr, and I drank a little wine. It was good stuff, too, thick and purple and potent, so that I mixed it well with water. When they began singing I found I could not join in, for the songs were obscene ditties about the exploits of Lem, but I saw Nath frown, and I essayed a few unmelodious warblings.

So there I was, apparently sitting at ease, with a pretty shishi at my side plying me with wine, drinking and singing, when I looked up and saw a blocky figure come striding up between the tables. He was dressed in brown and silver, and he wore a curved dagger suspended on silver chains at his waist. But despite the silver leem-mask over his face, I recognized him.

Nath said: “We have a new acolyte, Hyr-Majister. A worthy addition to our strength, a great convert.”

I wilted a little at the blasphemous use of the “Hyr-Majister” for this scoundrel. Vad Garnath stood looking down at me through the slits in his silver mask and I saw his eyes glittering like a leem’s eyes through the leem eye-sockets.

“I see.” His hands played with the dagger. No one else, as far as I could see, wore arms.

“You have wrought well, Hyr-Jik.”

“I felt it would be to our mutual advantage.”

Vad Garnath turned, unable to bear the sight of me. Nath, I heard quite distinctly, chuckled.

“He called you Hyr-Jik,” I said.

“Yes. The higher ranks are graded in the normal way. But we have, also, darker significations.”

Nath Tolfeyr was an adept, then. “Jik” is the familiar abbreviation for “Jiktar,” as I have often used it, as

“Del” is for “Deldar” and “Hik” for “Hikdar” and “Chuk” for “Chuktar.” Nath had given me now an insight into the hierarchy, and I detected the old familiar story of the intrigues and jealousies of politics. As the Hyr-Majister, Vad Garnath had been making himself unpopular. Now that I was a member of the secret cult he would be unable to attack me directly and have me killed; in this Nath Tolfeyr and those others who now considered themselves my friends had calculated aright. But I thought I might understand men like Vad Garnath a little better than they did. So it would behoove me to put my shoulder to the wheel and help along in the overthrow and ruin of Garnath.

Then I checked.

Cayferm!

I had to put all this foolishness behind me. Tomorrow I would seek out Ornol, the gul, and bribe him. I would choke the information out of him this time, instead of allowing him to weasel out of it.

“When does this finish, Nath — I mean, Hyr-Jik?”

“When the last one falls asleep. But you may leave if that is your wish.”

“It is.”

He rose. That must have been a signal, for others rose, also, and so it was as a body that we went to the robing rooms to don our everyday garments. My green jacket was gone.

“Green is a color not allowed here, acolyte,” said Nath. “And the name of the Holder of the Green is never mentioned here.” I knew he meant Havil. They never mentioned the name of the state religion’s god, but they reviled the name of Opaz. Now that was interesting . . . it showed where their true fear lay. Most of the revelers would remain immersed in the debauchery until the break of day. The little party now leaving would slip out of the hidden stairway two by two. Most would have waiting link slaves and preysany litters standing securely well away from this plot of wasteland. As we went up to put our silver dominoes into their appointed stations I saw the man in the mask who had conducted my induction ceremony remove his mask. Lo! It was Strom Dolan.

I had remarked previously that I considered Strom Dolan to be a fussy Bladesman, with exaggerated ideas of his own importance. Now I began to see why he entertained those ideas. He took my arm as we went up the stairs.

“You have been saved, Hamun, out of our friendship for you and for the Trylon Rees. Sadly, he refuses to join us. And, you, too, blasphemed the all-glorious Lem when you challenged Vad Garnath.” He waggled his finger. “You must put all that aside, now that you are an acolyte and have seen the true way.”

Nath coughed and, abruptly, I understood. Nath Tolfeyr had told Strom Dolan that I wished to be converted and to adore Lem. He had saved me. Why?

“I shall remember, Strom Dolan.”

He jumped a little at my use of his real name, for he was a Hyr-Prince Chuk in the Lem hierarchy. But we were out of the tunnel now, under the stars and the moons.

We shook hands, but not in the Hamalese way. We said good night; we did not say Remberee. We shook hands and we used words that were sacred to Lem. All this was childish stuff, of course, but at least it gave me valuable knowledge as to how pappattu was being made. I fancied I’d know a damned leem lover from now on.

Nath said he would accompany me. We were lucky in picking up a link clum outside the Thoth Jikhorkdun. The massive pile reared against the stars. Despite what had transpired this night my mind went back to the island-realm of Hyrklana, and the capital of Huringa. There, in the Jikhorkdun, I had fought as a kaidur — as a hyr-kaidur! So when Nath passed some remark about meeting footpads, a disgruntled pack of clums, or slaves on the run, I slapped my thraxter and said: “By Kaidun, Nath! If we cannot see off a pack of mangy curs like that, may our arms fail with the glass eye and brass sword of Beng Thrax!”

He glanced at me in the wavering light of the torch upheld in the clum’s hand. “By Havil, Hamun! You speak like a kaidur!”

“I had an interest in the Jikhorkdun,” I said, slurring the word and thus betraying an amateur knowledge.

“It passed.”

“I confess I rejoice in the games too, the spectacles.” And here he launched into an enthusiastic description of the latest games, in which kaidur had fought kaidur, and coys had struggled for their lives against wild beasts, and all the old stories of the amphitheater came out. I looked at the clum going ahead with the torch, a painfully thin lad with a shock of brown hair. His ribs stuck out above the dingy green loincloth swathed around his middle by a length of rope. He was in poor condition, half starved, no doubt living in some filthy hovel in one of the disgusting shanty towns, working long hours at night with his link light, desperate for customers and then dependent on the whim of those who employed him. The usual price was an ob an ulm. Some of these fine gentry of Ruathytu thought it a jest to turn a link man away with a toe, which is a copper coin worth one sixth of an ob, or, even, with nothing at all save threats. The clums and guls of Ruathytu use the word “havvey” instead of “toc,” which is precious to them, forming the coin of which they see most. If you see any connection between the slang word “havvey” and the great and glorious name of Havil — well, you are right . . .

We went to Nath Tolfeyr’s lodgings and he said he did not mind if I slept on the floor. An old campaigner sleeps on floors as a matter of course. I did not wish to disturb Rees’s household at this late hour. Just before we paid off the link-man, Nath leaving that task for me, I spoke as he lowered his torch. He would extinguish that the moment his customers had gone. Torches cost money. He could find his way back in the dark, on the lookout for customers, shouting, “Loxo! Loxo!” “Loxo” is one of the names in Kregish for these torches of wood with their wrappings of tow and pitch. “What is your name, link-man?” I said.

“Naghan, if it pleases you, Notor.”

“Well, Naghan, here are seven obs.” Seven obs had once led me to a duel. He took them, joyful at receiving twice his hire. Then I tossed him another coin. “And here is a silver sinver. I find I have suddenly lost my taste for silver.”

“Thank you, Notor! May Havil bless you, Notor!” He would have babbled on, but, feeling the greatest get-onker in two worlds, I went inside and slammed the door so the frame rattled.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Of a fire and an abduction

The next morning, after I had taken an extensive bath to rid myself of the odor of the previous night, an incredible thing happened to me. I went along to one of the tailors’ shops in the Street of Threads, which opened off the Kyro of the Vadvars, and there I bought a brand-new, brilliant green jacket. I tried it on and, of course, it was far too narrow across the shoulders. The stitching creaked. The shopkeeper, a wizened gul with tired eyes and tailor’s chalk marks all over his own worn but immaculate clothes, exclaimed in surprise. Most of the gul shops here were owned by Horters or nobles, and the guls must go home to their own quarters at night.

I felt the snow-white ling fur trimming. I am fond of ling fur. I think of my Delia and the Plains of Segesthes when I touch that smooth, silky fur.

“Can you alter it?”

“Indeed yes, Notor.”

“This afternoon, then.”

He bowed me out. He’d have to insert a fresh panel all the way up the back, a good two hands’

breadths wider.

The incredible thing was, simply, that I felt pure relief at wearing a green jacket. Incredible — positively eerie! That I, a Krozair Brother, should actually feel I was cleaner wearing the green! Well, I think this goes to show how much that depravity of the night before, with Lem the Silver Leem, had affected me. I promised myself as I strolled along toward Rees’s villa, I would seek out Ornol that night. Too many side issues had taken my feet from the path. Mind you, it did occur to me to wonder just how the wise men of Vallia were performing with the information I had sent them via Delia and the emperor. Just as I was going past a baker’s shop and sniffing the delightful flavor of those long Kregan loaves, I was hailed by Tothord, the Elten of the Ruby Hills. He looked animated.

“Have you not heard, Hamun? They are bringing in a new batch of prisoners today! I shall watch the procession, and then it will be the Jikhorkdun for me!”

For him and half Ruathytu. This Tothord gloated over the torture of those poor devils of prisoners of war as they were thrust into the arena, to be slain by armored and armed men, or to be devoured by wild beasts. I did not keep up with the Jikhorkdun here in Ruathytu. It was messier even than the Arena in Huringa, where I had fought as a hyr-kaidur. They had been days, though!

I took an amith-trolley with Tothord to see the procession come splendidly down the Arrow of Hork to the Arena. I went merely because I thought I would carry the information and a report to Rees and Chido, and thereby cheer them.

A whole regiment of infantry preceded the prisoners. This regiment, and like a good spy I committed to memory their number and their strength, was the twenty-first regiment of foot, the numerals blazed proudly forth on their shields. Their band marched ahead, their colors flying in the radiance of the suns. Then came the prisoners. They staggered and shambled, loaded with chains, and I saw that many had bloody feet, after their long march up through Hamal from their homeland of Clef Pesquadrin, in the western portion of the Dawn Lands, under the shadow of the mountains. They were slender, nut-brown-skinned men, with long, lank black hair that fell past their shoulders. Most had been stripped of their clothes, but some still wore scraps of leather and the remnants of once brave harness. Yes, they staggered and stumbled as they walked, for they had been pressed in the last stages of their march to reach the Great Jikhorkdun on the time allotted to them. I had to turn away. Tothord stood there on tiptoe, yelling with the rest of the onlookers, his mouth open and spittle upon his lips, his face frenzied.

Well, and might not just such a procession of beaten Hamalians be treated with the same reception, in a few years’ time, when paraded through the streets of Vondium?

Then a tremendous shriek arose from the crowd and I swung back to look. The prisoners had passed and a second regiment swung along just coming into view. But, between them, snuffling with heads low, their matted hair combed into arrogant upflung cockscombs and streaming out behind, loping along on human hands and feet grown into ferocious killing instruments, their serrated jagged teeth gleaming — yes

— jiklos. Manhounds!

There were twenty of them, held in leash by iron chains, and their keepers were armored and armed with long prodding goads, which they used with great care. These were the famous Manhounds of Faol, which is an island in the far northwest of Havilfar. How, then, had these beasts — beasts, for all they were apim! — come to be in the south? Then I realized there would have been ample time to have brought the manhounds into the parade and so give an extra titillation to the excited crowds. The prisoners from Clef Pesquadrin knew exactly what was in store for them in the Arena, poor devils. Turning away, barely remembering I ought to note the number of this second regiment (the two hundred and fifty-first regiment of foot), I blundered off. No one paid me any attention. Because I had had my green coat burned and the new one was not yet ready, I had a gray coat slung over my shoulders. I went on toward Rees’s villa.

The people of Ruathytu were still well fed, I reflected, with ample food and all the items of civilized living they required. If the clums could afford to buy it, there was food available for them also. No, this great empire of Hamal had not even begun to feel the pinch of war. Well, by Vox, I vowed, if they attacked Vallia they’d very soon learn of the miseries brought by war!

When I got to the villa I was met by distressing news.

Rees’s Chamberlain met me in the entrance hall. He was a lion-man, also, immensely big and burly, with a fantastic ruffed mane of blowing gold. He wore a robe of decent white, as we had done back in Paline Valley, and a bunch of keys swung from his belt — as did a thraxter, also. He carried a wand of office. It appeared to be a solid gold wand; later I discovered it was mere sturm-wood gilded over. This man, Korgan the Keys, bore so sorrowful a look on his face I thought Rees was dead.

“No, Notor. He is not dead. But Doctor Larghos the Needle fears for his life. None may visit, save Lady Rashi.”

“May Havil and Krun have him in their keeping,” I said quickly, but not automatically. I promised myself that if Zair would condescend as a good god should to save the life of my friend, I would perform certain obligations when I once more trod good Zairian soil on the southern shore of the inner sea. Chido and his father and sister had left for Eurys less than a bur ago. They had flown. The old Vad had said, icily I guessed, that if his son Chido’s friend had chosen to stay out all night then they could not wait around on his pleasure to say Remberee. Well, that fitted the traditional character of the man, all fire and dignity and pride.

So, disconsolate, I wandered off, at a loose end in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. Drig knows that is an open invitation for idle hands and mischief!

The rest of the day passed somehow. I took the baths of nine, and loitered about the colonnades, and took meals in the Kregan fashion, six or so square meals a day minimum. By mid-afternoon the street throngs had thinned considerably and the bestial drumroll bursting out of the Great Jikhorkdun and the other Arenas told where the people had gone.

Feeling pretty beastly myself, I took myself north over the Bridge of Swords that leads from the vast kyro before the Great Temple of Havil the Green, across the River Havilthytus. I walked along quietly, inconspicuous enough, toward the soldiers’ quarter. Here the massive square-cut blocks of the barracks rose in neat regimental checkerboards. (I do not say like Jikaida boards, for I have a finicky sense of propriety in these matters.) I was able to get close enough to an outside block and to creep unobserved along the brick wall to the gateway with its wooden doors. The sentry went to sleep standing up, with my help, and I lowered him to the ground. From the bushes a mere four double-armfuls of brush and twigs, all nice and dry from the suns’ radiance, were sufficient. I struck flame with flint and steel and set the brush alight. Waiting until after the flames took and abruptly crackled up fiercely, I ran off. Moments later I again walked up the road out of the tree shadows. A little crowd of passersby had gathered and, together, in a companionable exchange of considered opinions, we watched the barrack block burn down.

The soldiers ran and the fire engines galloped up — quoffas going as fast as they could drawing huge vats of water, totrixes drawing the equipment — but they couldn’t halt the flames. The smoke rose, a black smudge against the bright sky.

Petty? Of course. A great blow for Vallia against Hamal? Hardly. A venting of spleen, a letting of bile?

Certainly.

But, then, it is true: Drig will find work for empty hands.

An aqueduct from the hills to the north passed close by these soldiers’ barracks. Farther south it split into two, one branch going to the Great Temple and the other to the Hanitchik on its narrow island due east. I eyed the tall stone-built arches. Hmm. I remember that little “Hmm” most clearly. Now, had I a few barrels of gunpowder . . . I sighed, and took myself off to prepare for the night. On the way I called in at the tailor’s. The green jacket was ready, the white ling fur soft and silky, magnificent. The fur was wasted as trimming, really, for it is long and lightweight, and ideal for warm coats. But such is the way of these decadent societies. I paid over the golden deldys and went back to the villa.

I had not expected my arrival to be greeted in the way it was.

Rashi, Rees’s charming wife, clasped me into her arms sobbing and crying and shrieking all over me. Young Roban was standing in the dining room doorway, distraught and crying with huge dry sobs that shook his body. The chamberlain, Rorgan the Keys, lay stretched dead upon the floor, his blood dribbling away, for he had not died easily. I could see that, with the eyes of a warrior; but there were no dead bodies in a ring around him, as there surely had been when at last he had sunk down, his fouled thraxter snapped across.

Across the entrance hall the bodies of two slave girls lay sprawled indecently, where they had been flung forward by the stuxes that still jutted up from the center of their slender backs, the cruel iron heads deeply buried.

Other slaves showed terrified faces, peering around corners and from doorways. None would approach this frightful scene of carnage.

I held the shaking form of the lady of the house, and stared about. “Rees!” I shouted. “In Zair’s name!

What has happened here?”

A voice quavered from the head of the stairs, an old man’s voice, and I looked up, over the trembling shoulders of Rashi.

“Hamun,” said Rees, the lion-man, from the head of the stairs, where he stood supported by two of his retainers. His face showed a sickly greenish-yellow. “Reesnik, my son — they have slain him . . . slain him . . .”

Then my friend, Trylon Rees of the Golden Wind, pitched full length down the stairs, out of the helpless feeble hands of his retainers. Gently I set Rashi aside and ran to Rees. He was not dead. I lifted my head and yelled.

“Doctor Larghos the Needle! Here, man, as you value your life!”

Larghos came forward, with blood smearing his white coat, holding his bag open. A spray of needles tinkled to the floor as he stumbled. I grasped him and held him up.

“I have seen—” he gasped. “Saffi is gone, gone!”

“Look to the Notor,” I growled.

The doctor, regaining some semblance of sanity, for it was not his blood that so dreadfully smeared his coat but the blood of the few guards left alive, bent to Rees and began his healing work. Looking about, I tried to think. Someone in this madhouse must know what had happened . . . but then I knew too, with the sick feeling of dread certainty, just what devilish business had gone on here. Vad Garnath had had his revenge! He had slain Rees’s son and taken away his daughter Saffi, to sell into slavery.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I give my word

Rees gave a long moan from the floor, a shuddering tortured cry of agony. I jumped across. Doctor Larghos looked up, his face contorted with grief.

“He will live, Notor, just. He must be taken upstairs, but carefully, for he is sore wounded internally. He will live, by the grace of Havil.”

“Men!” I bellowed. I looked around and half a dozen faces disappeared behind pillars and doorways. I leaped for the nearest and dragged out two retainers by the scruffs of their necks. “Help me with the master or you die!” I meant it, too. Between us, and with exquisite care, we took Rees back up the stairs and into his room where we placed him back in his bed. He groaned as he lay back, but his feverish eyes remained open, staring up at me with a glitter that told of the torture eating at his brain.

“Hamun — old friend—”

That was not strictly true, for we had known each other for so short a period. But what he felt I felt, too.

“Do not speak, Notor,” said Larghos.

“I must. It was Garnath, Hamun. Garnath!”

“Aye.” I fussed with the sheets. “The laws in Hamal—”

“The law cannot touch him, for there is no — no proof.” Talking was agony for him, but he forced the words out. “I know it was Garnath. But all who saw him are dead — dead, like Reesnik.”

Doctor Larghos tried to silence him, but the lion-man snarled — a little, weak snarl — and said in a breathy whisper: “I would go seek him out and demand just restitution, Hamun. But—” His glazed eyes rolled and he looked down the bed. “I — am not — able.”

What could I do?

What could I say?

I do not make friends lightly. I value those I have.

I gently pressed his shoulder back to the pillow. I stared down into his lion-face.

“I will go, Rees. I will tear the rast to pieces if necessary.”

“Saffi . . .”

So, I had to say it.

“I will bring Saffi home, Rees, safe and sound, if she lives.” Then I saw the pain in his eyes, and so I added quickly: “She does live, Rees. Believe in that.”

He nodded and a last whisper came from him just before Larghos thrust in the Notor Zan needle that would put him into a deep sleep. “I trust you, old fellow. Saffi . . .”

I stepped back from the bed.

I had given my word. I would break my word to Lem the Silver Leem, to an overlord of Magdag. But not to Rees, not to a friend.

Tonight I was to go to seek Ornol, and in some foul dopa den bribe him to the secret Vallia would need. I had perjured myself in this fresh promise. Delia would understand and forgive me, but I would not forgive myself. What was the life of the daughter of an enemy of Vallia worth? Nothing? Nothing!

This brilliant golden beauty, Saffi — she was Hamalian. I owed my loyalty and devotion to my Delia, to her father the emperor, and to my lands of Valka and Vallia. If I failed, and the Hamalians attacked Valka, and all my wonderful island was laid in black ruins . . .? Would not the ravished land, the widows and orphans, all shriek aloud to Opaz for just vengeance upon me?

But — Rees was a friend and I had given my word.

Perhaps there was yet a way. Hamal might yet have her hand stayed by events. There might yet be time. So I tried to convince myself as I went to the room allotted to me in Rees’s villa. I donned my old scarlet breechclout. Over that I drew a dark blue shirt and a pair of dark blue trousers. I strapped on Delia’s rapier and dagger. I hung a quiver of terchicks over my right shoulder, the small and deadly throwing knives snugged to hand. On my right hip went the ever-faithful sailor’s knife. Then I swathed my gray cape about the whole and went out — and had to return to put on my Hamalese boots. I am accustomed when hunting to go barefoot.

Rashi sat by her husband’s bedside and I did not disturb her. I saw Roban. What could I say?

Contenting myself with all that could be said, bidding him lift up his chin and stop crying and remember he was now and for a time the head of the household, I gave him a fine left-hand dagger, which I had brought from my room with this in mind.

“Roban. Now you must become a man.” He was only twelve. I had seen young Pando, at ten, so I knew. Had I not myself served in the horrific conditions of a powder monkey? “Take this dagger. Protect your mother and your father. If all goes well I shall return before the suns rise.”

“Yes, Hamun,” he said. His words were like flat stones beneath a calsany cart. I turned, my cloak flaring, and left.

I knew where Vad Garnath lived.

I am no great believer in revenge. It saps the spirit of a man. But, equally, I am no believer in the slaying of seventeen-year-old young men and the kidnapping of their beautiful seventeen-year-old sisters. Garnath’s opulent villa lay in darkness save for one window, shuttered and bolted, through the chinks of which showed the harsh light of an oil lamp. I forced the bolt. I smashed the window. I leaped through. A gray-haired old crone met me, screaming, her wrinkled face working. She wore a night-robe, and she thought I brought her death.

“Listen to me, old woman. Where is the Vad?”

She could not speak for a moment. Then: “Gone, master, gone!”

“Aye, I know that. The villa is in darkness and there are no guards.”

“There are werstings in the grounds.”

“I saw none.” I glared at her. “But if I see them when I go they will be dead. Now, tell me. Where is the Vad?”

“I do not know, master! He is gone, gone!”

She was half paralyzed by fear. I said: “Have you seen anything of a Numim girl brought here?”

She shook her head, but by that gesture I saw she lied. I shook her, gently, for I feared that she would break to pieces.

“Where did they take the Numim girl?”

She hesitated, and then burst out: “The Vad took her with him. She was bound. She wept.”

“She wept,” I said. My anger was horrible, even to me.

But I saw this poor old crone knew no more. There were no guards left, which meant Garnath trusted to the werstings to protect his property. The watch would also keep an eye out, as they did under the laws. There was nothing more here. I went back. On the way I was forced to slay a wersting. I kicked the black-and-white-striped carcass out of the way and ran swiftly into the shadows. Above me floated She of the Veils, casting sharp and pink-rimmed shadows in the moonlight. The blood thumped through my body. By Zim-Zair! It had been too long since I had indulged in exercise of this kind. But there was a gorgeous Numim girl to be saved, and a foul Vad to be dealt with. I had no time to exult. The dismal truth was that I had no clue whatsoever. Saffi could have been taken anywhere, for a girl of her beauty would find a ready market anywhere in Havilfar. An acquaintance of Vad Garnath’s might know where the rast had taken himself off to. Even if he had had the girl sold by an agent, I would choke him until he told me the name. The streets of Ruathytu lay golden and pink under the moon. Soon the Maiden with the Many Smiles would lift above the horizon and pour her golden light down along the waters of the River Havilthytus. People glanced at me as I passed; they must have seen enough of my face not to offer to halt me. No sounds of beasts or howling slaves reached me as I pulled the ornate bronze bellpull at Elten Nath’s door. I hammered and banged, and drew my dagger and clanged and clattered the heavy steel wrap-over guard against the iron-headed nails studding the lenken door. A sleepy slave with a lamp opened the inspection grille.

“Open quickly, man of little sense! Open quickly that I may not tell Elten Nath of your mischief and your insolence!”

But he wasn’t going to open the door on that bluster.

“The master sleeps, Notor. Go away!”

There just was not time to argue. There was no time, either, to smash the door down. Every mur I delayed meant that Saffi was being taken farther and farther into degradation and slavery. I ran around the side of the building and a patrolling Rapa, attracted by the uproar, had the misfortune to appear and the greater misfortune to go to sleep standing up. I did not ease him to the ground, but ran on. The first feasible window I came across would have to do. It was narrow and barred. I took the bars in my fists and bunched my muscles, compressing all the blocky power of my back that had pulled an oar in a damned Magdaggian swifter, and I wrenched. The bars did not bend. They ripped shatteringly from their stone sockets. Into the window I went and through the room into the corridor where half a dozen lamps showed me doors and the layout. To find the bed chamber of Nath na Maharlad was the work of throwing open every door until I looked in on a naked girl half draped across a bed, her silver chains in the style called nohnam, her silks flowing upon the carpet. The Elten Nath lay asleep. In his night attire his pudginess was revealed by the swell of his stomach. His thin, lank hair lay untidily upon his skull, and his flabby lips were parted as he snored. I took him around the throat beneath the lowest of his chins and lifted him up and shook him.

His eyelids snapped up.

I let him see my face.

I loosened my grip and I said: “Tell me where Vad Garnath is or you are a dead man.”

“You maniac!” he started. But I squeezed and his eyes popped. I released him a little and he said, choking, “I do not know!”

A flutter of movement at my side caught the tail of my eye. I half turned. The Chail Sheom, her shoulders naked, her chains glittering in the samphron lamp’s gleam, was about to plunge a curved jeweled dagger into my side. With the old defender’s kick I let her have the side of my foot across the throat. She catapulted across the room and lay still. I looked back at the Elten.

“If you wish to die I will accommodate you, Nath. Tell me: where is Garnath?”

“You are crazed, mad, Hamun! Let me breathe, for the sake of Lem — for sweet Havil’s sake!”

So, given the opening, I said in a voice I forced into a solemn tone: “It is vitally important I find Garnath, in the name of he of the silver flanks.”

“Let my throat go, you onker! I will tell you all I know. For the sweet silver sake of Lem. Hamun! My throat!”

I let my constricting fingers loosen.

“May Ghoomshah the Lubricious moisten my throat, Hamun! You have a grip like a jiklo!” Unsteadily, Elten Nath reached across the bed for a silver goblet on a side table, poured himself wine. I let him. He drank, making wet slobbering sounds, swallowing convulsively. He eyed me. “If you have done Gilda a mischief” — he nodded at the girl, collapsed in her chains, her hair falling about her naked shoulders —

“I will charge you.”

“Send the bill, Nath, but, for the sake of the Silver Lem himself, where is Vad Garnath?”

He worked his throat muscles. “I do not know.” He winced back automatically. “I swear it! Is this Lem’s business?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You are not of our lodge, Hamun. Vad Garnath as Hyr-Majister has ingress and privileges over many of the lodges of Ruathytu.”

“Yes,” I said again. “But where is he now?”

The impression came over me, sinkingly, that this fat Elten was not lying. “I do not know, Hamun. He mentioned a business deal, he mentioned a trip into the country, yes, that is true. Also, he mentioned Rosil na Morcray. You know, Hamun, the Chuktar Strom—”

“Yes, yes, I know that Kataki. Tell me, Nath!”

“I do not know! They are gone — the Vad and the Chuktar Strom, together. They did not confide in me.”

As I decided that this fat lump had nothing to tell me my face lost all semblance of the inanity that had characterized it as Hamun ham Farthytu.

“By Lem!” whispered the Elten Nath of Maharlad. “You look a very devil! Do you seek the Vad to slay him?”

Common sense came back.

“No. It is on Lem’s business.” Then, thinking he might know more, I added: “I am not of your lodge, Nath, being from the Lodge of the Thoth. But it is important for you to tell me.”

He shook his head. I had to swallow my disappointment.

“I will let myself out of the front door, Nath.” He contented himself with a nod and a grunt and began to get out of the bed to see about his slave girl, Gilda. This house, like many built in the sacred quarter, was possessed of windows onto the street. Many, instead of having a blank outer wall, contained arcades of shops along the outer walls, which the wealthy occupants of the villas let out to guls. This system paid good dividends all around. Now I padded to the door. The doorman, unnerved, I think, by my apparently nervous habit of half-drawing the rapier and thunking it back into the scabbard, rapidly unbolted and unbarred the door. I walked out into the pink-lit night. I might as well have done nothing for all the good I had done in chasing after Saffi, the golden lion-maid. The truth of the matter was, I was a completely useless get-onker. As the Gdoinye, the golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords would shriek offensively down at me, I was a stupid onker of onkers, and deserved all the misery I laid up in store for myself. There can be no worse feeling, I imagine, than this sense of self-insignificance, in the world of ordinary emotions. Had hubris at last given me my death blow?

Who can say where the thought came from? I do not think the Savanti had anything to do with it. Perhaps the Star Lords sent the stray thought into my blockheaded skull, to save me from myself and so preserve my miserable carcass for their future requirements upon Kregen; in any case, the thought ghosted in.

On the instant I went haring through the alleyways, rushing headlong, not caring what the passersby might care to think.

Memories of that mad dash back to Rees’s house remain vague. A sense of urgency bloated me, the feeling that I would fail if I did not exert the last breath in my body. I recall a stocky, gorgeously clad noble, arrogant with self-importance, failing to get out of my way in time. Somehow the fool tumbled head over heels, amid the yells of his retainers, into one of the sunken cesspits whose cover, alas for the wretch, splintered under the impact of his gross body. I do not think any one of his party followed me. At least my rapier blade was not fouled with blood.

I entered Rees’s house in a whirl, and Rashi, the tears dried upon her cheeks, and Roban, manfully clutching the main-gauche I had given him, and the slaves, walking small, looked at me in alarm. Jiktar Horan, Rees’s guard commander, had just returned — to horror. He tried to get some sense out of me, and I began to put pieces together from what he told me. Jiktar Horan and a strong party of his men — lion-men all — had been decoyed away on a pretext, and the guard thus reduced had no chance against Vad Garnath’s stikitches (assassins). From Horan I learned something that redoubled, if that were possible, the anger consuming me. Rees’s own guards had gone on an errand similar to that when they had rescued me earlier, answering Nulty’s desperate plea. And Rees had said nothing! He had not reproached me! Clearly, he must have realized far too late it had been a trick. The anger that consumed me — how natural it must have been at the time, how human, and yet, looking back, how futile and shameful a thing it was.

I spoke rationally, as I thought, to Rashi. “Give me a small garment of Saffi’s.”

She thought a moment, then stammered, “A scarf, Hamun? One of Saffi’s scarves?”

“Excellent, Rashi. I will take it now.”

They all jumped as I said the word “now” — yet I thought I spoke most gently. The scarf slipped sensually into my hands, sensil, that superfine form of silk, and with golden threads artfully woven into it so that it glittered. I tucked it down into my old scarlet breechclout, under my shirt. They all clamored to know if I had found Saffi or a clue, and I said, again rationally, that I had not, but that I would find out before Far and Havil rose in the sky in the morning. Then, with my weapons about me, I raced into the moonshot darkness. I headed directly for the massive pile of the palace on its artificial island in its artificial lake in the River Havilthytus. Directly for the queen’s palace of Hammabi el Lamma I ran, and I felt no sorrow for any who sought to bar my way.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A golden scarf serves destiny

The moons of Kregen cast down their pink-gold light upon the uprearing many-pinnacled bulk of Hammabi el Lamma. A soft night wind whispered among the towers and eaves, and ruffled the ocher waters of the River Havilthytus. I stared with intemperate and yet, thankfully, still calculating eyes upon the night scene along the waterfront. Most of Ruathytu’s commerce is carried on at night, with the huge, overloaded quoffa carts bringing in the produce of the countryside and taking out the refuse. Gangs of slaves work by the light of the moons repairing roads and bridges, cleaning the streets, seeing to it that when Far and Havil rise and cast down that glorious opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio the city is sweet and clean for the day — as demanded by the laws of Hamal.

I gripped my rapier hilt. In that evil palace ruled by the iron hand of tyranny lay the answer to my quest. The evil was certain, for Queen Thyllis ruled here. The answer was not so certain, and I begged Zair for help in my search. Nothing was certain, save that I must break into the palace before anything else might be done.

You who have listened to these tapes will by now have a fair-to-middling grasp of the layout of Ruathytu, and will know that not a single bridge connected the artificial island of the palace of Hammabi el Lamma to either bank of the river.

The rulers of Ruathytu preferred this system. A riotous mob would be put to some pains to take boats and row to attack the palace, whereas they would easily stream, shouting and raving, across the stones of a bridge.

Gangs of slaves in the gray slave breechclouts worked here; but easy though it might have been for me to have exchanged my clothes for theirs, and disguised myself and joined them, I did not want to enter the palace unarmed and disadvantaged.

With a quick thought to Zair — and, to be truthful, to Opaz and Djan, too — I lowered myself noiselessly and without a ripple into the water. I swam gently across the Havilthytus out of observation, to land on the island at its westerly point. Water dribbled from me as I cautiously prowled along the rocky foreshore, half in water, half hopping from rock to rock, to make my way to the wicket gate from which King Doghamrei had had his lackey Derson Ob-Eye carry me, drugged, to what both thought would be my death.

The wicket was closed fast.

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I said viciously. “I’ll rouse some rast within, else sink me!”

The Hamalese boots slung about my neck for the swim and the clamber along the rocks thudded against the door. After a bit I pulled them on and then kicked the door, hard.

“Come on! Come on!” I bellowed.

The night scent of moon-blooms wafted down from dirt-filled crevices in the rocks. The water at my back gurgled and splashed as it ran past to the sea. The moons shed light enough to see the raised venous wood of the door, and the iron bolt-heads, lacquered against rust. I kicked again, shouting. The door groaned.

This postern was heavily defended by murdering holes let into the overhang of rock above. A crack of light shafted out past the edge of the door. I took the lenk into my hands and pulled. The cautiously pushing guard gasped as he was yanked forward by the door.

“Rast!” I bellowed, swirling my cape. “Must the Queen’s merker wait for offal like you?”

He cringed. The torch quivered in his hand, producing distorted shadows.

“I crave indulgence, Notor—” he began.

“You will hear more of this, onker,” I said, and I strode past. I made of my words and of my striding imperious gestures, for this was the way I planned to return and I must impress the guard. I brushed past him, seeing the thraxter naked in his right hand, the torch uplifted in his left. Over the slimy stones I strode where I had once waited, drugged and paralyzed, for King Doghamrei to give his last evil orders to Derson Ob-Eye. Up the flang-infested corridors, where streamers like Spanish moss caught and clung, I barged on with absolute confidence until I rounded a corner of the stairs. Then I paused to consider. I had only the vaguest idea of directions. A merker, as you know, is a Kregan messenger who travels swiftly through the air astride a fluttclepper or volclepper. It was not too outrageous for such a one to use this quiet postern gate. If the guard gave a thought to the absence of a saddle-bird and my wet clothes he would put two and two together and snigger at the thought I had fallen off into the river. As I mounted higher into the palace, more and more people became evident, going about their never-ending business of keeping the queen’s palace operating. Most were slaves, too busy with their work and their miseries to bother over me. I was not challenged by any of the slave-masters, and for this

— for their sakes — I was glad.

In a rock cavern I saw three Katakis prodding and lashing a group of slaves about some groaning contrivance, and I frowned. I had no time to ponder the significance of this new phenomenon of Katakis, those evil master-slavers from the Shrouded Sea, venturing afield, for they usually keep close to the lands bordering the Shrouded Sea, as you know. Vad Garnath was the man for whose blood I was engaged, and he had employed a Kataki, this Chuktar Strom, to do his dirty business for him. So I pressed on — my face set into a harsh and ugly mask of self-possessed fury, very proper for a high official of the queen’s — and came at last to a corridor where the floor had been laid with blue and white mosaics, and the walls hung with cheap tapestries from Hennardrin. Here I recognized a large and repulsive statue of a warrior mounted on a totrix represented in the act of slashing his thraxter through the neck of a Chulik mercenary. I had passed this statue in its niche on my way from my cell to the rooms of Queen Thyllis. Anyway, the statue represented pure wishful thinking. Any Chulik mercenary worth his salt would have slipped that thraxter blow and sunk his weapon into the underbelly of the totrix and cut the rider down as he tumbled off.

A few paces down a corridor where the thin oil lamps glowed stood a female slave, clad in the gray slave breech-clout, with a silver-tissue bodice, and a rope of gilt chains about her shoulders and waist. She carried a wooden tray on which stood a fat purple bottle, three silver goblets, and a silver dish partly filled with palines, their bright yellow rotundity very reassuring. I beckoned to her.

“Yes, Notor,” she whispered, her head bent.

I took a paline, and chewed it. Each goblet contained the lees of wine. The bottle was empty.

“I seek Que-si-Rening, slave,” I said. I made myself speak with the contemptuous air of absolute authority the despicable slave-owners use to their human chattel. The girl was apim; her dark hair was drawn back and tied with a single strand of dried grass. She lifted her face to me, and I saw she had been weeping. Her problems were remote to me then, and I sorrow for that now. But there are many slaves on Kregen, and my duty lay to Saffi first, at that juncture. I knew that one day slavery would be abolished on Kregen, for I had sworn it; but, to my shame, that day was not yet, there in the tawdry glamour of the palace of Queen Thyllis.

“He sleeps, Notor.”

“Show me his room.”

She bowed her head again, meekly, for she had seen my rapier and knew I was of the nobility of Hamal. We went along the corridor, then into an intersecting one, and I took another paline, chewing with great satisfaction. We came to a low door, arched and cut from the living rock of the old island on which the artificial island had been reared.

The girl said, “Notor, this is his door.”

“Be off with you, wench, about your business.”

I knocked upon the door.

I made the knock light and respectful.

All the pent-up anguish at the thought of what was happening to Rees’s daughter, Saffi, at this very moment boiled and bubbled in me, and yet I had to proceed with caution. I could understand why I felt so strongly about Saffi, whom I had met only so recently, for in her plight and in her beauty I was reminded of Delia and of what I had endured when I had for a space lost her. Truth to tell, during that dreadful time I might have been searching for the glorious Delia herself, my emotions engaged on her behalf for this golden lion-maid.

For all my prudence, however, after I had knocked thus respectfully, I did not wait for a summons to enter but pushed the door open and shouldered my way into the chamber. The rock walls showed here and there, angular and harsh, beneath the tapestries. Again, these were cheap drapes from Hennardrin, that country in the extreme northwest of Havilfar where, I supposed, some fugitives from Walfarg had settled and given the inhabitants the thirst for if not the skill to produce the marvelous tapestries of old Walfarg. Well-upholstered sturm-wood furniture, and a mass of fleecy ponsho-skins scattered upon the carpeted floor, showed that Que-si-Rening valued his bones and liked his comfort. He sat up now in a massive winged armchair, a musty book open before him, and I saw in his eyes that distant drugged look that overtakes one who is deeply engrossed in the pages of a hyr-lif. His vision cleared quickly enough when he saw me.

Ready for him to cry out or attempt to blast me with a blood-curdling curse, I had no need to leap forward to silence him.

He eyed me with no surprise beyond a faint quiver of his left eyebrow.

“You are unceremonious about your entrances, Bagor ti Hemlad.”

“Aye, San,” I said, “for I come upon a pressing business.”

This man had to be handled with care.

He gestured me to the chair facing his own. His long, mournful face with its betraying yellowish cast emphasized by two thin black moustaches curving down past his rat-trap of a mouth gave no impression of offense or of condemnation. His black boot-button eyes shone in the samphron-lamp’s glow, half concealed by his heavy, drooping eyelids. His presence was a tangible thing in the chamber, and his silk gown with its maze of arcane symbols and embroidered runes heightened the eerie effect that would have intimidated any slave bold enough to push in here.

The credulous of Kregen credit these Wizards of Loh with phenomenal powers, believing in their occult authority and in their capacity to blast with a curse or a spell. For myself, I own, by Zair, that there is a great deal more to be learned of the Wizards of Loh before the final verdict may safely be given.

“You did not expect to see me, San.” I made of this either a question or a statement, and sat back for him to pick up what end of the stick he cared. He might not know that I had been drugged and spirited away from here, to be tossed overboard from a skyship, drugged, chained, and in flames. If he did know, I fancied he itched to comprehend how the devil I had clawed my way back from the Ice Floes of Sicce!

“Does the Queen know you visit me, Bagor?”

“No,” I said. Bagor ti Hemlad was the name by which I was known to this Wizard of Loh. I went on before he could reply. “I once knew a famed Wizard, San, as I told you, and for a service I was able to render him he went into lupu for me, and was able to see at a distance.”

Rening nodded his head. “This is so.” The lamplight gleamed from his bright red Lohvian hair. “If you wish me to perform a similar service for you, what have you done to requite me?”

I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed.

“You know King Doghamrei. You understood the purpose of his questions when he had you sound me out. Well, I fancy my service to you will be handsomely rendered in the future, and not too far off, at that.”

We had set up a kind of mute alliance, this wizard and I, when that nurdling blunderer King Doghamrei had attempted to find out the queen’s intentions toward me. I was counting on that friendship now.

“You believe, then, Bagor, that a Wizard of Loh may look into the future?”

Careful! I had to tread warily here. I leaned forward.

“As to that, San, I do not profess to know. This famed wizard of whom I speak went into lupu and told me of the whereabouts and the fortunes of a woman at a distance.”

He nodded. “It can be done. But she was known to him, I daresay.”

“He knew of one close to her.”

“Do I know the person?”

I took out Saffi’s silk scarf. “If you do not, this is her scarf. I ask of you, San, tell me where she is!”

For a moment I thought he would refuse. But I think he caught something of my urgency, though I had myself well under control now. He stood up and stretched, and I swear his old bones creaked, and he looked down at me, pondering.

“Very well, Bagor ti Hemlad. For the future, then.”

This business of going into lupu both fascinated and repelled me. I had seen the wizard Lu-si-Yuong do this thing in the Hostile Territories of distant Turismond. Images of Lilah, a Queen of Pain of Loh, and Seg Segutorio, my good friend, ghosted up in my mind. Then I came back to the present as Que-si-Rening went through his ritual.

Squatting down on a ponsho-skin and covering his eyes with his hands, Que-si-Rening threw his head back and sat silent and unmoving. The samphron-oil lamp glistened its light across his red hair. This is the first stage of lupu, when the ib is rendered powerful and the cords binding the immaterial to the material attenuate.

Saffi’s golden scarf lay draped across his bent bony knees, a glittering gossamer wisp of beauty. Presently the wizard began to tremble. His thin body shuddered so that his ornate silken robes shook. Slowly he drew down his hands from before his face. His eyeballs were turned up, all but invisible, the whites twin crescents eating at an onlooker’s sanity. His clawlike hands fell to the scarf, began to stroke it, pulling through one fist and then the other.

An eerie, funereal cry broke chillingly from Rening.

Tottering, he stood up, his arms widespread, and he began to gyrate, faster and faster, like a whirling Dervish, spinning around and around. As he reeled Saffi’s scarf whirled about him, golden and streaming in the oil-lamp’s gleam.

Abruptly, Que-si-Rening sank to the ground, placed both hands flat against the ponsho-fleece, and, throwing back his head, stared at me with his eyes wide and drugged and knowing. The wise men who study the literature of Kregen often divide the sprawling confused mass of myth and legend into three distinct classes. One class consists of those great stories known all over that marvelous world: fables like The Quest of Tyr Nath and Canticles of the Rose City. Another brings together the local legends applicable to certain areas of the planet, song-cycles of tongues attributable to localities, of which The Triumph of the Gods from Djanduin is a fair example. But all classes of myth and legend possess a sub-classification: the legends in which a Wizard of Loh figures always command a special and respectful place in the tally of Kregan lore.

Despite my pragmatic adherence to known facts, I had to concede that this wizard, looking at me so shrewdly, knew.

“What do you see, San?”

If I spoke more roughly than a Wizard of Loh might expect, Que-si-Rening understood, for he himself had been subjected to indignity enough in this forced exile from his homeland to recognize another in the same straits. He must, I considered, know enough about this uncouth Bagor ti Hemlad to understand he was no ordinary slave, no ordinary Horter or noble. For a Wizard of Loh, these distinctions verged on the hazy line of indifference.

He handed me the scarf.

“I have seen the person who had worn this scarf. I recognized two of her companions.”

I did not speak.

“Vad Garnath. I saw him standing with the wind in his face, the stars above, the great wastes burning beneath. And with him stood that evil Kataki with the bladed tail.”

I waited.

“They fly north.”

I said nothing.

“They take the girl for their own purposes far to the northwest. There is more I cannot tell you of, for it lies between Phu-si-Yantong and me. The girl is of no importance, a cipher. She is being sold to the masters of the Manhounds of Faol as a mere bargaining piece.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Flutsmen guard the skies

The Manhounds of Antares!

Saffi would be callously driven through the jungles and the plains in a vain pathetic effort to outrun the jiklos and the hunters who sought their pleasure in this vicious sport. The Manhounds of Faol with their jagged fangs and sharp claws would rend her soft golden body, and the quarrels from the crossbows of the mighty hunters would plunge bloodily — No! I would not allow Saffi to be used as human quarry for the Manhounds of Antares.

I wrenched the door open not knowing how I had crossed the carpeted floor before Que-si-Rening spoke again.

“Bagor!” He stretched out his hand as I glanced back. “Take care. The Queen keeps me secret. If you betray me it will be the Heavenly Mines for us both.”

“What do you know of the Heavenly Mines?”

“Enough to know I would prefer to die torn to pieces in the Jikhorkdun than labor in the Heavenly Mines.”

“Then you are a wise man.”

There was no more time for talk. Much must be done, and at once. I did remember to thank the Wizard of Loh. When I prowled back down past the sleazy lower levels of the palace, which supported in the physical and laboring senses the sumptuous and decadent magnificence aloft, I had scarcely a care for whomever I might meet. I have no recollection of slaying a soul, and of sending only one overpompous and inquisitive slave overseer to sleep. I tapped him on the skull with great moderation, I believe. But my next coherent memory is of dragging myself up out of the water of the Havilthytus and, hitching up my rapier and pulling my boots on, of racing through the paling light toward Rees’s villa. They let me in as the twin suns fully cleared the city skyline.

The news must be told, no matter how cruel and bitter.

Rashi shrieked and fainted away into the arms of her maids.

Roban brandished the main-gauche and swore to accompany me.

I said to Jiktar Horan: “See that this imp remains safely indoors, Jiktar.”

“Aye, Notor.” This Horan, a ferociously maned Numim, pulled his golden ruff of hair. “But the manhounds are a bad business. We will need a larger voller than any here.”

“No time for that, Jiktar. I am leaving now. I will take provisions.” I bent my eye upon the slave who had been appointed overseer, and he ducked his head and caused a great scuffle among the others as they ran to provision Rees’s small flier. This voller would take me, and me alone. He travels fastest who travels alone. That is not always true, but, by Zim-Zair, it would be true now. I gave Jiktar Horan precise information on the island of Faol and of the whereabouts of the infamous manhounds. This so-called sport of hunting humans is kept veiled, half hinted at, not openly discussed in Havilfar. Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol, still remained a mystery to me, for I had never met him. I promised myself a much needed meeting one of these fine days. This Capela held a fanatical pride in his packs of bloodthirsty jiklos, and, as I well knew, the rich from all Havilfar patronized his devilishly planned hunting expeditions. I told Horan that if he ran into trouble he could do worse than seek assistance from the Trylon of South Faol, below the river, for this Trylon — and I did not know if he was truly aware of what went on in North Faol across the river — held himself and his people aloof from Encar Capela.

“I have heard whispers, sniggers, obscene hints about this hunt they call the Great Jikai,” said Jiktar Horan. “This nulsh of a Kov of North Faol requires to see his head jumping about on the floor, by Krun!”

‘Tm with you in that, Horan.”

Among the provisions piled into the little voller were crossbows, sheaves of quarrels, thraxters, shields, stuxes, so that when I took off and shouted down Remberee I felt I sailed into action with a veritable arsenal about me. This was no mere fad, no stupid overkill; every weapon might be essential. On that beautiful yet harsh and cruel world of Kregen a man’s weapons stand between him and ever-present death.

My course lay northwest across Hamal until I reached the southernmost limit of Skull Bay, where I would turn almost due west with just enough northing in my flight to take me over the jungles and past Hennardrin to the island of Faol. This route avoided the difficult passage of the Mountains of the West, where even now the armies of Hamal clashed with the wild men from the wastelands beyond. The voller would carry me to the north of Paline Valley.

Thrusting the speed lever fully forward I let the flier pelt ahead through the thin air. The magical power contained in the silver boxes hurtling me on was the secret that had brought me to Hamal. I had willfully neglected that duty. I do not think I spent a pleasant flight, but I managed to doze off from time to time, for I had not slept for many burs. By the time I reached Gilmoy and saw again that fantastic finger of scintillating white rock thrusting upward stark into the air I had regained some little grasp on sanity. The White Rock of Gilmoy, famed throughout Havilfar, passed away below and I headed directly for the foul dens of the Manhounds of Faol.

It took me a complete Kregan day and night to fly from Ruathytu to Faol, and I admit I pressed the voller harshly, the speed lever over to the full all the way.

It was a handful of burs into the morning when I slanted down over the river separating Urn Faol from Thoth Faol. I flew on more carefully now, on the lookout for fliers above and riders below. Below me were those places where I had run with screaming panic-stricken people about me, helpless quarry for the vicious fangs of the jiklos, sport for the rich hunters in their Great Jikai. But there was no time now to think of all those people, and what had become of them. Now I had to make my way into the barred cages and caves where the people to be used as quarry were kept, and seek out Saffi, and somehow bring her out safely.

Was that arrogant slave-master, Nalgre, still lording it over the miserable people he organized into parties to be hunted to death? Him and his jiklo pet, the lascivious female jiklo with the red bolero jacket and the blonde crusted hair — these two symbolized the horrific power of the Jikai that used manhounds to scent the prey, and that prey as human as the hunters, as human as the jiklos themselves!

Although, I truly believed then, the manhounds were rapidly losing the last vestiges of true humanity and were lapsing back into primordial savagery.

Up here only a few degrees south of the equator the weather was warm enough for me to throw off the blue shirt and trousers, to kick off the boots. Once more I was ready for action clad only in my old scarlet breechclout, my weapons about me, a few oddments of gear in a lesten-hide purse at my waist. Inquiries made some time ago had given me the name of the Kov of Faol’s capital city, Smerdislad, but I would avoid the place. The Kov’s lands were mainly untended, agriculture existed merely on a subsistence level, but the jungles rioted, for all his wealth came from the manhounds. In his evil hunts and in the breeding and selling of jiklos lay his fortunes. So Smerdislad existed to bolster Encar Capela’s grandiose dreams of power and wealth; the caves and cages of the poor devils who ran shrieking from his slavering jiklos were far removed from his glittering city.

Despite my frantic rush through the sky I had a neat and workmanlike plan arranged in my head. By Zair! If I couldn’t get my fingers around the throat of that arrogant nulsh Nalgre and choke a little sense into him, my name wasn’t Dray Prescot!

Well, man grows corn for Zair to sickle, which is another way of saying man sows and Opaz reaps. I saw the skein of fluttrells, high, as I came over the straggling edge of the jungle. I squinted up against the emerald and ruby fires. Black and ominous, the fluttrells hung there, stark against the radiance. In clear air a fast voller can outrun a saddle-bird with ease; Rees’s personal flier was very fast, as I had proved. When the fluttrells, their wings half folded to give them extra speed in the dive, slanted in for the attack head on, I thought in my pride at Delia’s masterly teaching of the ways of airboats that I could simply shoot ahead, passing either under them or through them, I didn’t much care which. The flutsmen up there were reiving mercenaries of the skies, hiring themselves out to anyone who cared to pay their exorbitant fees for dirty work. The weapon-glint brought a rick to my lips. By Krun! If they wanted a fight I’d not oblige them! I wanted simply to burst through and away, to Saffi; I did not wish to have to make a detour here.

The flutleader was clever, I will grant the cramph that.

He split his forces and sent a half-skein to box me in on either side. I bored for the gap. I could see the flutsmen now, astride the fluttrells, and as I neared them, crossbow bolts hissed through the air toward me. I swerved the flier. Another shower passed to starboard. Again I swerved. A third flight of bolts hissed away to larboard.

I felt I was through the gap. I half turned to stare up as the fluttrells opened their wings to plane up out of that mad downward dive; and I never knew, to this day, just what devil it was who chunked a crossbow quarrel through the light skinning of the flier and into the lenk and bronze orbs supporting the flier’s silver boxes.

The voller went mad.

It flipped end over end. I clung on for dear life. It pirouetted up for the sky, and fell on its beam ends, and smashed toward the trees. I gasped as wind buffeted me and tree branches lashed my body. Down through the branches crashed the flier, and the devils up there were still shooting at me, crossbow bolts hissing and thudding into the trunk as I went spinning and crashing down. All the stuffing was knocked out of me. I recall the impression of the jungle coming up like a gigantic green fist. Notor Zan, with whom I have had a nodding acquaintance in my spirited times on Kregen, came up with outstretched hand. He did not wish to shake hands with me, though; the final blow stretched me senseless across a branch a hundred feet up in the fetid air of the jungle.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Into the caverns of the manhounds

How are the mighty fallen! How ridiculous I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, must appear in this undignified descent to earth. With what furious oaths I had started out to rescue Saffi, the golden lion-maid, and with what painful shamefulness had I carried out that task!

I knew where I was when I awoke — instantly.

Around me sounded the sob and moan of slaves. In my nostrils was the stale stench of naked and unwashed humanity. I opened my eyes and, yes, there were the crumbling and water-soaked cave walls, and the solid lenken logs used as bars to seal off the opening. Beyond was the jungle clearing, lined with the papishin-leaved huts of the heavily armed, patrolling guards.

My head ached, but that would clear. This time I had not been hurled into this situation by the Star Lords. Of late those aloof and unknowable beings had left me alone and had not called on me to hurl myself headlong into some desperate scrape to rescue a wight whose eventual destiny they could read and influence. But, all the same, I was in the same fix. I was naked and unarmed and pressed into a slave bagnio. From the masses of milling slaves about me, the guards would bring out a few at a time to be herded into the jungle or onto the open lands to be hunted. Were those treacherous guides still going out with the quarry, bolstering their courage with false stories of help and so making them run with good heart? Well, no doubt, in Zair’s good time I would find out.

Then the truth in all its awful humbling effect hit me. Saffi! I had come to rescue her, and was now myself merely another prisoner!

With that I lurched to my feet. The pains in my head and back must be ignored. All around me in the cave stood or sat or lay the other miserable occupants. I guessed that the horn soon would blow for mealtime; then there would be the usual mad stampede within the caves to get to the meal room first and so grab a portion of eatable food. The weak would find only dilse, a poor grain, and that would but meanly sustain them.

I selected the one I would question with some care, a young Brokelsh, still very strong, with his black body-hairs bristling. I spoke to him without arrogance, with, rather, a humble awareness of my task. But he knew nothing of any lion-maid. I did not lose my temper. I tried another young man, an apim, but he merely looked up at me stupidly and a trickle of spittle ran down his chin. Keeping a grip on myself I tried others, gradually working my way through the caves. While at first I asked young men, for they are very apt to notice beautiful young maidens, I extended my inquiries to girls, also, for they, too, have an eye for a rival, even in places as dolorous as these. No one had seen or heard of a golden lion-maid.

Had Que-si-Rening been wrong? Had his trance-state given him nothing? Had he lied to me? I sweated as I prowled like a leem through the caves searching for Saffi or anyone who might know of her and her whereabouts.

These miserable people were being held here ready to be taken out and used as human quarry. In their Jikai villas the great hunters would be sipping cool drinks and munching palines as their slaves cleaned and polished their crossbows, swords, and spears. The manhounds would be slavering at the bars of their cages, ready to run on the scent of these poor naked people. A beautiful girl was not wasted here, as I had once thought; she would bring particularly high bidding from those who wished to hunt her down. So I prowled on, searching, and feeling the match of my temper burning faster and faster. Among all these people there was not one young man, with a strong, well-muscled body and the alert look of a hunter about him; there was not a single guide. These guides were introduced to give the slaves the false idea that they might escape; and with hope to sustain them the poor devils would run the harder and thus provide more sport. There were no guides. And, as I noticed on my frantic search through cavern after cavern, there were fewer slaves penned here than I remembered. Either the Kov had not been replenishing stocks or the hunts had been exceptionally severe of late. At last the time for feeding arrived and like leaves driven by gales the slaves sped madly for the feeding cave. Here the fighting still went on to reach first into the piles of food; while there were fewer slaves there was also less food. I secured a hunk of vosk and a heel of bread, for I was sharp set. I stared about, for here, if nowhere else, would one expect to see everyone within the caves. Among all that congested rabble of miserable humanity I could see not a single Numim girl. At the shrill call of the stentor’s horn the slaves started up in their maddened exit. I went with them smartly enough, although angered, for that horn signaled the arrival of manhounds set to chase everyone out and back to the barred caves in the cliff-face.

Naked, I went with the rest.

Those flutsmen, reiving mercenaries of the skies, had been acting according to their natural lights when they’d attacked me. They were held on contract by the Kov of Faol. To their own accounts would have gone my belongings, all the weapons and the gear from the smashed flier, and my clothes. They had turned over my body to the slave-masters here, making a nice profit from the whole transaction. No one flew over Faol in security; that was obvious.

A chill foreboding, very painful to me in my state of heightened frustration, grew on me that not only had I landed back in Faol in circumstances different from those I expected but that I might have made a profound and stupid mistake. Well, that would not be the first mistake I had made in my life, nor was it to be the last, as, if these tapes last, you shall hear. Again and again I recalled to mind exactly what the Wizard of Loh, Que-si-Rening, had said.

A frantic search of my memory brought me back to those last fateful words: She is being sold to the masters of the Manhounds of Faol . . .

Then what did the last few words mean . . . as a mere bargaining piece . . .?

The chief concern was allayed in the answers given to me by a Brokelsh whose spirit had not been as much broken as the others of various races confined with us.

“No, dom,” said this Brokelsh, shaking his heavy head. “There have been no hunts for a sennight.”

“You are sure, dom?”

“If you doubt my word I will gladly break your back.”

Well, he might try.

“I do not doubt your word.” I eyed him. Like most of the members of his race, this Brokelsh was covered with a thick coarse mat of black bristly hair. His pugnacious face glowered on me. With an eye to the future, I said, “And would you break the backs of the guards if you were loosed?”

“Aye, dom, with great pleasure, as the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh is my witness.”

Beneath that coarse coat of bristle his muscles rippled his skin. He would be a useful man in a fight.

“What is your name, dom?”

“Men call me Bartak the Hyrshiv, for I am the twelfth son of Bartak the Ob.”

“Then when I break free, Bartak the Hyrshiv, I will welcome you at my side.”

He grunted and turned away. I gauged his feelings. He considered me a mere boaster, a bladder of wind. So be it. I felt little more than that, by Zair!

He did not ask my name, and that was convenient, for I had no time to waste thinking which one of my grandiose collection of names I would use. Prescot the Onker. That, as the scarlet and golden raptor of the Star Lords joyed in calling me, that was the right name for me now. Dray Prescot, Onker of Onkers. The thought occurred to me that I had outflown Vad Garnath and his Kataki slave-master, the Chuktar Strom. Perhaps Rees’s swift voller had brought me here before Saffi had had time to be sold. I did not think that, the more I mulled it over. The thoughts led me on. A bargaining piece? And Que-si-Rening had mentioned another Wizard of Loh, this Phu-si-Yantong. There had been in Rening’s face and manner when he mentioned San Yantong a hidden reserve of emotion, a feeling I had given scant attention at the time. But had Rening been cautious, apprehensive — frightened, even — of this unknown wizard, Phu-si-Yantong? Could he figure into this devilish equation?

One fact remained crystal clear. Saffi was not confined with these miserable folk, held as quarry for the Great Jikai. Therefore I had no business to remain here a mur longer. The words of the wizard recurred again and again: Sold to the masters of the Manhounds of Faol. So I had sped here like a credulous idiot, where I myself had been incarcerated once: here, where the victims of the manhounds and the mighty hunters were held.

But . . . the masters of the Manhounds of Faol . . .

The masters.

On the instant I swung to the thick logs of lenk barring the cave and hailed one of the patrolling guards. He was a Rapa, his fierce, beaked, vulturine face hard with the authority of his position, his weapons giving him all the confidence of the strong among the rabble of naked, defenseless slaves. I beckoned this Rapa.

He stalked across, thwacking a rattan against his gaitered legs, his forest-green tunic stretched tight upon his shoulders.

“Rapa,” I said, not too loudly. “I would like to talk with you.”

He sniffed through his beak. Like all Rapas, he exuded an odor that, I admit, grows less offensive with every season as I grow older. “If you call me over for no good reason, yetch, you will be striped. I shall like that.”

He came close to the bars and now his rattan licked up like a snake ready to slash at me between the wooden bars.

I said, “I have a good reason, Rapa. You stink.”

He gaped at me, his beak quivering, that vulturine face showing avian shock.

“Nulsh!” he screeched and jumped in, slashing the rattan down. I moved sideways to the next log, reached out so that my arms avoided the blow which whistled harmlessly past. I took his long gobbly neck between my hands and I gripped and I lifted him off his feet. I choked him enough so that without a sound he slumped. I opened my fists and let him fall.

The Brokelsh, Bartak the Hyrshiv, grunted with surprise.

“You are a dead man, dom.”

Another guard had seen, an Och. The Ochs are small and have six limbs. This one ran across and tried to spit me with his spear at the same time setting up a shrill yell of alarm. I choked him, too. It needed but the one hand.

Bartak said: “You have a plan?”

“Yes. Let’s go into the next cave. We may have sport ourselves, before long.” And I handed him the Och’s spear. He took it. Like any man who is dependent on his muscles and his weapons for his life upon Kregen, he handled the spear in a knowing way. I took the Rapa’s thraxter and we moved into the next cave. From its bars we could see a knot of guards running. They were angry. They shouted.

“I hope your plan works,” said Bartak. He was not a man to wear his emotions too lightly in anything save touching his honor.

“If it does not, we shall chill our rumps on the Ice Floes of Sicce.”

The Rapa’s sword was a cheap affair, with a black-painted wooden grip, a brass hilt, and the steel of the blade would probably snap across if used against armor. It was a perfectly satisfactory weapon to use on the naked bodies of slaves.

Behind the series of barred cave openings in the cliff lay the warren of slave quarters. Bartak and I moved through the various caves, not running but not dawdling. When I fancied we had gone far enough I stopped. Bartak stood, gripping the spear, looking at me. He seemed perfectly satisfied to follow my lead. “We will wait until they run past. I do not think any of the slaves will betray us.”

“In that you are right. They run like ponshos fleeing from leems.”

The slaves were screaming now, running pell-mell, colliding, fighting and struggling to get as far away as they could from the guards now pouring in through the cave where lay the unconscious bodies of their two comrades. We waited, the Brokelsh and I.

Presently I said, “Most of the guards have passed now. If we meet any latecomers—”

“I have used a spear before, dom.”

“I had noticed.”

We went back to the cave and from the depths of the warrens the uproar of the searching guards and the shrieking slaves reached us in echoing thunder. We saw only two more guards, and from these Bartak obtained a sword and I a stuxcal. The carrier with its eight stuxes was a most useful addition. We went on, and now Bartak’s spear and my thraxter were stained with blood. The first stux came free from its clips and I balanced the javelin as we approached the pushed-open gateway in the lenken bars. The guards had left only one of their number to prevent an escape, and he went down with the stux through his throat. Like any reiver of Kregen I retrieved the weapon as we passed. I also took his thraxter in its scabbard. We did not bother to take any clothes, but ran headlong into the clearing and made straight for the huts with the papishin-leaf roofs. We dodged into the shadows out of the opaline brilliance of the Suns of Scorpio and glared out cautiously.

Bartak said, “I think we are unobserved, dom.” Then, with a lift of his blunt and powerful face, he said,

“I would esteem it an honor to know your name.”

So, because it meant nothing, I said, “I am Dray Prescot.”

“Then, Dray Prescot, let us run into the jungle and be gone from this pest hole, for I think the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh smiles on us this day!”

“And on others, also.” I nodded back. From the opened gateway in the barred cave-mouth other slaves were running. They ran out, some shrieking in joy, others running with grim determination, others hobbling along with all the remnants of their strength. I could not aid them, but I wished them well.

“Do not tarry, Dray Prescot! Run, dom, run!”

About to follow his advice, I paused. The escaped prisoners were running with intent. A man with a shock of black hair led them in giant bounds, waving them on. They ran toward a corner of the clearing where leafy roofs rose beyond a thin screen of jungle. I frowned. Was that man a false guide, luring them on?

Bartak the Hyrshiv answered the question on my mind. “That is Nath Palton, a guard who was broken and condemned as slave.”

“Aye!” I said. “And he leads to the fliers or the fluttrells, I’ll wager!”

“Yes.”

I admit that I felt a great wave of relief. I had been torn between following the slaves, and my own task. I was certain the dread forms of the manhounds would soon sniff upon their trails. Now, I realized, the slaves would never have attempted to run, knowing the jiklos would destroy them, if they had not trusted Nath Palton. They did not need my help, then.

“Why do you not run with them, Bartak?”

“You said you had a plan, Dray Prescot.”

“I did not think the slaves would run out, with the jiklos—”

“You did not know Nath Palton.”

“True.”

With that I felt I could leave this ex-guard Palton to see to the escaped slaves. Without another word I ran on in the shadows of the huts.

As far as I had known from my previous experiences here no fliers or saddle-birds had been kept near the slave pens. Now that a whole mass of slaves bore down to steal aerial steeds the way was effectively barred. So I must pursue my original intention. We came out past the last of the huts, past the slave barracks where the quarries were prepared for the hunt. Beyond, at a short distance, lay the Jikai villas, where the mighty hunters lived in style pending their hunts. Bartak looked about. We were alone. He nodded to a substantial house halfway along, and he smiled that typical pugnacious Brokelsh smile.

“Nalgre the slave-master,” he said. He spoke with great satisfaction.

“Aye, Bartak. Nalgre.”

We began to walk carefully toward this fine house belonging to that same Nalgre who so enjoyed to torture the slaves he prepared for the hunt. The suns beat down and there was a sweet, sickly taint of rotting jungle in our nostrils.

“He has been sick of late,” said Bartak. “His belly troubles him.” Then he laughed. “Also his pet jiklo died. She was poisoned. It was said one of the tame slaves did it out of spite.”

“And was Nalgre’s revenge—?”

“Horrible.”

The house boasted a verandah, but the reclining chairs and hammocks were empty. We padded up the wooden steps and went into the coolness within. At once I sensed the oppressive atmosphere of the place. Solidly built, the house would have been a comfortable home. But the place looked dusty and unkempt, with corners of carpets turned up, a table on its side, glasses with crushed rims still clustering on a silver tray. We heard the yowls and shrieks from the back of the house as we went in by the front door. We saw no servants or slaves. Bartak held his spear at the ready as we pushed through a bead curtain into a long, low room at the back. The screaming intensified. I had not heard its like before —

save, perhaps, on those occasions I had slain a manhound.

We gazed at that scene. We stood silently, watching.

Long windows let angled patterns of emerald and ruby light splash upon a floor that, once polished, was now scuffed and marked everywhere by the scratch of taloned claws. No furniture cluttered that room. In the center stood Nalgre. He looked much as I remembered him, arrogant, hard, slashing his whip about, but his face had yellowed and grown gaunt, and there was a droop to the set of his shoulders. A real slave-master, this Nalgre, running the hunt for his master, the Kov of Faol; yet his sickness had taken a toll of him. Now he stood in boots and brown trousers, naked to the waist, his body yellowish and yet still full fleshed and thick with muscle. His whip snapped again and again, mercilessly. The manhound he flogged shrieked and hissed and tried to dodge, but she could not draw away for the thick iron chains that bound her by iron staples to the wooden floor.

“His new pet, Dray Prescot,” whispered Bartak. “He is training her.”

‘Torturing her, I think.”

“Yes. It is much the same to Nalgre. He whips and tortures her so that she will fawn on him and lick his boots, as his last pet did before she was poisoned.”

“I have come a long way to see this Nalgre.”

Bartak looked at me with some puzzlement. We stood for the space of a few heartbeats watching Nalgre as he abused the female jiklo. She was a fine well-grown specimen, savage, evil of eye, and pregnant. Whether Nalgre either noticed or cared I did not know. I fancied that if he did know he would not have cared.

His whip cracked against her side.

She yowled and jangled the chains in her desperation to get away from that cruel lash, and Nalgre laughed and swore at her and kicked her viciously.

“I’ll teach you manners, you four-legged shishi! I’ll show you your master, by Havil! You’ll scream for mercy, aye, and you’ll like it, and lick my boots!” The whip smashed full upon her back, beating down her crest of matted blonde hair. Red weals stood out vividly all over her body. Again Nalgre kicked her. She hissed and screeched. She saw us. Jiklos are apim — that is, they were apim before they were thus transmogrified into manhounds — and still have the power of speech, no matter that they speak with a breathiness very dreadful to hear.

The female jiklo saw us, she saw the weapons in our hands, she saw that we were naked and therefore slaves, but she did not cry out to her master that men had come to slay him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Have you turned weakling, Dray Prescot?”

Blood dripped upon the clawed wooden floor from the full-fleshed body of the jiklo, and blood spattered from the whip as Nalgre lashed and lashed. For the first time I saw an expression other than bestial ferocity upon the face of a Manhound of Antares. For this female jiklo’s face twisted now in a grimace of anticipatory relish.

Bartak may have seen that expression, too, for he stepped forward with a certain deadly intent. Nalgre the slave-master knew nothing of our presence, understood nothing of the sudden change in his pet, until he heard my voice.

“No, dom,” I said loudly. “Do not kill the rast, at least, do not kill him yet.”

Nalgre jumped around as though he trod upon a rattler. He saw us. He saw our weapons. He showed not the slightest fear. He had been long accustomed to taking prisoners and breaking slaves. His arrogance and self-importance grew long roots in his evil mind. He swore vilely and shouted and jumped forward.

“Get back to your stinking caves, you yetches! Back, slaves; crawl away before I have you punished!”

He leaped for us, whirling the whip in readiness to slash at our naked hides, as he was used to doing.

“Ho! Guards! Drag these nulshes away! To the flogging frames! Guards!”

Bartak, halted by my order not to kill Nalgre, turned to look with some astonishment at me, the spear still held ready for the lethal, stabbing thrust. Nalgre’s whip looped about his body, leaving a red line upon his black bristles and making him start and yelp.

“What do you mean, do not kill him? Have you turned weakling, Dray Prescot?”

“No, Bartak,” I said, taking the whip and jerking it in. “I have a few questions for the cramph; that is all.”

I reeled Nalgre in and, I admit with a shame I cannot defend, for all it appeared reasonable at the time, struck him upon the nose. He dropped the whip. He yelled again, but this time the yells were of a different caliber.

“That’ll teach you to whip a pregnant female,” I said.

He tried to hold his nose, but I had, as my contemporaries on the Downs would have said, tapped his claret. His hands dripped blood. This time it was his own.

The jiklo snarled and hissed.

“Well, Dray Prescot, ask him the questions and then I will thrust this spear into his guts.”

The jiklo snarled.

I looked at her.

“You are safe now, manhound. He will not hurt you again.” Half turning my head I said to Bartak, “Hold the rast.”

I approached the jiklo. She stood, trembling, suddenly still, those vicious jagged fangs revealed as her lips peeled back. I bent toward her.

“If I unchain you, so that you may escape from this Nalgre yetch, will you harm us?”

I could see the unreality of the situation. But I wanted to talk to Nalgre without a manhound chained to the floor between us, and a pregnant manhound, at that. Had she not possessed those short, enormously muscled, rear legs of the true jiklo, and had been standing up, I own she would have presented a very creditable picture of a woman, in body if not in face, for she was well formed. Now I stared directly into her blue eyes.

The manhounds usually speak in a thick rasp, an unholy howl driven by their ferocious natures. Some of that coarseness comes from the clumsy local Faol dialect these jiklos used. She spoke.

“I will not harm you.”

Simple words. But what words to issue from the horrific fanged mouth of a jiklo!

“Are you mad?” demanded Bartak. “Are you bereft of your senses? That thing — she will gut us as soon as look at us.”

I stared at the female jiklo. I saw her skin, lightly downed with a golden fuzz, very white in the mingled suns-glow, with the blood dripping and the whip-marks and the ugly blue-purple and yellow bruises. She sat back to look up at me, her head on one side, the massive crusted mane of yellow hair broken away where Nalgre’s whip had struck down. Above her wrinkled pug nose, her blue eyes were clear now, steady on my brown eyes, and her lips, drawn closed over those risslaca-sharp teeth, looked so touchingly human. I marveled at myself. A Manhound of Antares, touchingly human? But I was seeing a jiklo in a totally new light. And, too, I did not forget that Queen Thyllis had bought tame jiklos for her throne-step pets.

“Will you rip out our guts if I free you, jiklo?”

Slowly, she shook her head. Nalgre, held by Bartak’s spear pressing into his navel, groped for words, gargling, trying to regain his sense of proportion.

“This thing will not harm you further, jiklo,” I said.

“If you free me, apim who stands upright, I swear by Kaleba the Unknown I will not harm you.”

Just who Kaleba the Unknown might be I did not know, and I had no time to spare to marvel that these savage beasts still possessed either a culture or a religion that lifted their spirits from the ranks of true beasts.

I bent to the iron chains.

“Then you are free to go, jiklo.”

“I give you my thanks. And I am called Melow, Melow the Supple — although now I carry child.”

The situation was rapidly slipping away from me. To carry on a conversation with a manhound, when before now all my thoughts had centered on ways and means of killing them all off; the whole scene was borne in on me with a most sour suspicion that I was once again behaving like the onker of onkers I knew I really was.

Bartak finished it for me.

“Ask your questions of this nulsh, and then let us be off. And then free that devil — after!”

“I have given her my word,” I said. I spoke mildly. I reached for the chains. My hand passed close to her ferocious mouth. The lips remained drawn forward; the wickedly serrated teeth remained invisible.

“Is this your plan, then, Dray Prescot?”

“It is now,” I said.

I released the manhound.

She stood up on four feet — rather, on two hands and two feet — and padded a little way off. She sat down again and began to clean herself. After a moment, without another word, I turned back to Nalgre and looked at him.

“One question, Nalgre.”

His yellowish face now bore a tinge of green.

“Where is the Numim maiden? The golden lion-maid?”

Bartak gave his spear a prod.

“Mercy, mercy!” said Nalgre, the slave-master.

“Tell me where the Numim maid is, Nalgre — and quickly!”

“She was bought for the Kov! She is not here! The Kov has her in his fortress. I swear it!”

“Is his fortress in Smerdislad?”

“Yes, yes! His fortress is Smerdislad!”

Nalgre, despite the pressing spear in his stomach, slumped to the floor. Bartak stared at him as a leem stares at a ponsho. Nalgre put his hands together, over his heart.

“Spare me! I will promise you anything! I have much gold, much silver. I have Chail Sheom, jewels, zorcas, silks and furs, much gold, silver—”

“You repeat yourself, Nalgre. And you do not mention that you have many slaves also.”

Bartak sniggered.

“Had many slaves.”

“That is true,” I said.

“Let me live — anything — my life — all I have is yours.”

“What of yours you had is already ours, if we wished it,” said Bartak with that Brokelsh touch of brutality.

“Chain him down to the floor, Bartak, and let us go.”

Bartak took a delight in hauling the chains tightly. I did not wish the blood of this creature, and I was prepared to leave him to face the wrath of his master, the Kov of Faol, which is, to be sure, the coward’s way. I did not see the inevitable; Bartak had already done so.

Pretty soon now the guards must come to the slave-master’s fine house to tell him, in fear and trembling, that a number of slaves had escaped and guards had been slain.

We had not been molested for that reason: all the guards were out searching for runaway slaves. Before I left I turned back to Nalgre, who crouched, chained down to the floor, clearly bemused that he was still alive.

“Nalgre,” I said. “Thing of joy to kleeshes. Tell me. Where is your flier? Your fluttrells?”

He gabbled out they were parked separately from the others, half an ulm along the path at right angles to the main road. I nodded. I did not answer him, but gestured to Bartak and walked out of the room, going by the back doorway straight toward the cross-path. Bartak followed. We had not gone twenty paces when we heard the sounds from within the house.

I stopped.

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I said. “I am a fool. I should have thought—”

Bartak smiled his Brokelsh smile. “Does it matter?”

“Yes and no. It does matter, but it does not matter now.”

All the same, I felt guilty as I saw the jiklo called Melow the Supple trot from the rear door of the house and jump, lithely still despite her condition, onto the path. She followed us as we ran swiftly along the little path. Less than half an ulm away we came to a stockade. Bartak pushed the gate open and we stepped inside. There were three fluttrells vastly excited by the smell of blood, and a small voller.

“This, I think,” said Bartak the Hyrshiv, “was your plan, Dray Prescot.”

“A part.”

We climbed into the voller. It would be more suitable for what I desired. I turned to the controls at once and prepared to thrust the levers over. A soft thump sounded at my back, and Bartak let out a yelp. I swung about instantly, one of the thraxters in my fist, pointed, ready. The manhound sat up in the stern of the voller. Bartak drew toward me, visibly disconcerted. Melow the Supple said, “I cannot stay here now. There are certain signs by which it is known that a jiklo has killed.”

“I see.”

“We can’t take this beast with us!” said Bartak. He licked his lips and gripped his spear.

“This is Melow the Supple,” I said. And then I astonished myself. “And she is no beast. Rather, a beast has treated her as a beast. Very well. We will take you away from here, and then you may depart safely wherever you wish to go.”

Melow the Supple said nothing to that. Had she not previously thanked me I would have supposed manhounds incapable of gratitude.

How wrong I was, you shall hear . . .

The weather aloft was bright and hot, but I tossed back one of Nalgre’s flying furs; for such had been the vehemence of our escape none of us had stopped to snatch up clothes. The furs were superb, glossy and black, having at least twenty-four skins to each flying fur. The skins were from foburfs, the small four-legged mammals living in the taiga, those vast coniferous forests of South Havilfar. The skins were matched superbly, and sewn by mistresses of the needle. The pity of it is, of course, that twenty-four little foburfs apiece no longer lived in their sprawling coniferous domain. We took off with a savage upward acceleration and an equally violent downward swoop beyond the palisade. I guided the flier low above the treetops. As was becoming a habit — and a bad one — with me, I hammered the speed lever over to full. This voller was of the kind which do not move independently of the air currents, and so the slipstream battered back above the tiny forward screen. Bartak looked back and I looked back with him, amused by his studious avoidance of the female jiklo. We could see no sign of pursuit, although I fancied I detected little dots of flyers heading due south away from us.

Incidentally, a female jiklo should in all accuracy be called a jikla. I found the word odd on the tongue, and Melow, herself, often referred to herself as a female jiklo. They were not called, for whatever liberated reasoning I do not know, womanhounds. There were other creatures on Kregen I was yet to meet who merited that title of horror.

With the gorgeous black furs wrapped about us we were most comfortable. In truth, the weather system of Kregen differs much from this Earth’s. Here in the north of Havilfar the rising warm air of the equator takes up with it moisture from the oceans. When the air cools and sinks in the long meteorological rhythm it is not dry, like the air that scorches the Sahara on our Earth. Great Sahara-like deserts are found in Loh. Havilfar has wastelands, badlands, to the south of where we were but they are not true, ever-shifting, sand deserts.

The flier screamed through the air and I turned to look forward to keep a lookout for the first glimpse of the promised fortress-city of Smerdislad.

It is possible by fast flier to travel from the southern point of Faol to the northern in under three burs. This voller of Nalgre’s was nowise as fine or fast as Rees’s, as was natural, but we made good time. I kept a close lookout for flutsmen. If any of the reiving yetches crossed my path again I’d shoot first and ask questions later — or, rather, hurl a stux or three and yell derision after. As it turned out the flutsmen did not run across us. It was only too clear they were out chasing runaway slaves. I heartily wished the flutsmen bad luck, with a curse.

Bartak the Hyrshiv, a man who spoke when he felt words were necessary, said, “This Numim maid, Dray Prescot, is she of great value?”

“She is.” I felt it expedient to add: “But that is not why I seek her.”

That, evidently, did not call for a reply in Bartak’s view. He went back to contemplating the sky, his black foburf fur no blacker than his own bristles.

Over the bluster of the slipstream, Melow the Supple shouted, her hoarse voice harsh and muffled.

“I have been to Smerdislad, Dray Prescot. They will not treat you kindly there if you arrive naked in a voller.”

“My thanks, Melow the Supple.” I pointed down. “There are our clothes and our credentials.”

With that I slammed the levers over and sent the voller hurtling down toward the startled party of zorcamen riding out into the clearing below.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Melow the Supple

What followed, although it worked exactly as I had planned it to work, happened in what was to me such an extraordinary atmosphere of elation and inflated good humor I have ever after pondered the possibility that some subtle drug wafted from that Faolese jungle and addled our senses. The party of zorcamen must have flinched back at their very first sight of us. And, indeed, we must have made an alarming spectacle.

From a voller that swooped from the sky like a pouncing volleem sprang three black-furred creatures who suddenly threw off their glistening black furs and charged, naked and brandishing weapons. One of these apparitions was a Brokelsh with a singularly pugnacious way with him. The second was an uncouth, ugly-faced desperado of a fellow, the very sort to steer well clear of down a dark alleyway at night. And the third was a vicious manhound, her red lolling tongue and sharp jagged teeth calculated to strike terror into the hearts of these fine, fancy courtiers.

Incontinently they put spurs to their zorcas and tried to flee and as impetuously we were upon them and had thrown them to the ground. There were seven of them. While Bartak the Hyrshiv stood over two, describing in the most pungent tones what he intended to do to them if they so much as blinked, and while I glared at my two and let them listen, Melow merely walked around and around her three. The three wights huddled together, clinging to one another, their eyes huge and rolling as they watched the horrific form of the jikla as she paced around and around them, her claws glistening in the light of the suns.

Round about then, I think, I saw the funny side of all this. I started to laugh. Bartak cast a single frozen look at me, turned to glare at Melow, and then he too started to rumble like an earthquake in the Shrouded Sea.

Melow said in her raspy voice, “Why do you not slay them all?”

But I would have none of that. Dead men tell no tales, that is true, but I wanted them to tell me tales. Yes, Notor, they babbled, we will tell you all you wish to know. The Numim girl is why we are here and why all the other great crippled ones are gathered. We are Vad Quarnach’s men. Yes, Notor, he is Quarnach Algarond, the Vad of the Dudinter District of the great city of Ba-Marish. He is a most wealthy man and will pay much if you spare our miserable lives. Yes, Notor, his marvelous airboat is parked beside the stream. We will gladly tell you how many men he has and maidens also. I swear I saw the glimmer of a smile rick up the thin lips of the manhound. The whole episode passed off rather like a fever-dream.

We took their clothes. Fancy clothing, these young popinjays wore, parti-colored, so that I found myself wearing half orange and half yellow, and Bartak wore half blue and half silver. I had to slit the tunic up the back to get it over my shoulders, but I slung a jacket with the coloring reversed over my left shoulder and drew it up with dudinter cords.[6]Their weapons were those of the mighty hunters who go upon the Great Jikai with the Manhounds of Faol, hunting human beings.

As I say, everything proceeded as in a dream. We found the airboat and a marvel she was, too: massively decorated, lavish as to cabins and awnings and promenades, and yet with a fair arsenal of varters disposed advantageously. I think we laughed every time we tripped up a wight, or gently bashed a skull. We laid them out alongside each other, bound and gagged in their own clothing. The maidens took one look at Melow and, clanking their dudinter chains, collapsed in faints that were the genuine ground-thunking article. We laid out these poor Chail Sheom, too, but I did spare a fraction of a mur to strike off their pretty and vile chains.

I had the feeling these folk from Ba-Marish were not so much decadent as merely self-indulgent. Loving pretty things, scented and powdered, wearing fine silks and linens, overeating the finest foods and guzzling the best vintages of Havilfar, they clearly set the highest store by the good things of life — the good things in their view — and were determined to live and die hedonists.

“Ba-Marish, Bartak,” I said. We stood by the airboat looking at the last fellow who slumbered with a bruise on his skull, wrapped in brilliant blue silks. “I know of the city, of course, about a hundred and fifty dwaburs south of Ba-Fela, on the west coast, opposite Ng’groga. But I have not visited the place. Can you tell me of it?”

Bartak grunted and bit into a juicy chunk of beef so that the juices dribbled. He chewed mightily for a space. Then he said, “All those free port-cities consider themselves the saviors of Havilfar. From the old days. When they fought and resisted the Lohvians and their Bridzilkelsh-forsaken invasions.”

“They appear sadly fallen away from their old ways, then.”

“They live in the past. Their pastimes are gorging, drinking, and wenching — and making money.”

“Reasonable objectives in life, I’d say — if there were not others.”

Melow padded across. I had told her to take what clothing pleased her, and added that she need never wear the gray slave breechclout again, as far as I was concerned. Now she had decked her plump body in a gaudy array of sensils, silks, and linens of the brightest colors, a confusing glittering mass of jewels and dudinter about her. Her hair was cropped so that it fluffed about her head, the massive matting of crest-hair all shorn away. She looked different. I can safely say that. It is an old story.

“Why care about the past, Dray Prescot? What is this Ba-Marish to you?”

“A great deal, Melow. You have your freedom. Take whatever you desire from these possessions. These evil people who hunt humans for sport will seek protection at my hands in vain. They forfeit their pretty things as they have already forfeited their rights of humanity.”

For a moment I thought I had been clumsy in my speech, exposing a subject on which the jikla would be sore; but she gave again that yowling hiss and that ricking grimace to her lips, from which I surmised she laughed and smiled.

“These people told us the hunt will begin on tomorrow, Dray Prescot, so your precious Numim maiden is safe for one more night.”

‘True. And we use that night to our advantage.”

Then I paused.

I had been instrumental in rescuing both Bartak and Melow, but there was no reason on Kregen why either should go with me to Smerdislad. And — did I want them with me?

“I shall go into the city,” I said. “I would wish you, Bartak, and you, Melow, to do as you desire. There is much wealth here. You could be rich.”

Melow said, her voice as harsh as ever, “I shall go with you, Dray Prescot.”

I sighed. I had heard that before, in other places. Bartak hesitated. He had finished the beef and now he took up a dudinter bowl of gregarians and began to munch. I did not press him. The two of them would present problems the next day. But they had been of the utmost use so far. But this brief interlude of solemnity, in a situation that remained both dreamlike and hilarious could not last. We prodded the Vad into consciousness again and sat him in his great ivory chair, with the sensil cushions stuffed with down from the breasts of baby zhyans, and the dudinter supports and canopy, and we stood before him, glaring. Quarnach Algarond, the Vad of the Dudinter District, could not walk. He must be transported everywhere by slaves carrying his luxurious palanquin. He sat nervously, for he was a cowed man. Naturally, he was fat, with a silly, fat vosk face, dripping with sweat, and a fuzz of blond hair slicked back beneath his dudinter coronet. We glared at him, and he sat back, and his pudgy hands, ringed on every finger, plucked at his thick purple lips.

“You may take all you see, if you do not slay me.”

Bartak, being a Brokelsh and therefore somewhat coarse of manner and mind, said, “We may slay you and take all we will.”

The Vad couldn’t answer that. He sat, plucking his thick, shining lips, and his obese body shook.

“Vad Quarnach,” I said, putting the old devilish bite into my words, “are you known in Smerdislad?”

“No. No one there knows me. You may rely on that. I would not betray you if you release me.”

He had mistaken the reason for my inquiry. I pressed him further, and learned all I wished to know. The Kov of Faol occasionally arranged extra special hunts for extra special guests. One such hunt began the next day and was designed for those would-be mighty hunters who could no longer stalk through the jungles on foot after their quarry, or who were too fragile to bestride fluttrell or mirvol, or to shoot from a speeding airboat. Truly, this was the cripples’ Jikai.

The carrying poles for Vad Quarnach’s palanquin, much decorated with spiral carvings and embossed plaques of this dudinter of which he was so proud, were so arranged that sixteen slaves or four preysanys might convey him. This fanciful airboat of his, something of the style of a pagoda of the air, contained stables with half-doors along its lower sides. Here his men’s zorcas were kept, and half a dozen preysanys for the palanquin. I eyed the gorgeous finery of the palanquin with a lively interest. The men we had surprised in the jungle had gone riding off after a slave who had thrown herself overboard. She had been observed to strike the heavily foliaged branches of the trees, and because the airboat was flying at a low altitude, escape serious injury. When I asked why she had not been brought back, my face hardened at the answer. She had sought to escape, knowing the fate in store for her, and the brilliant courtiers had soon found her, naked and running, and tripped her by her dudinter chains. But, in subduing her and bringing her back to her master, she had forced them to overcome her struggles, and, as they said, shrugging, she had died of it.

This girl had been intended as Vad Quarnach’s offering for the Jikai. Each member of the hunt brought a beautiful girl for the pool. Now Quarnach had lost his.

Bartak the Hyrshiv spat.

“I say take off his head now, Dray Prescot, and have done.”

This Bartak the Brokelsh came from a rural community in Hyrzibar’s Finger, that long promontory dividing the sea from the Gulf of Wracks in southeast Havilfar. He had gone wandering, as so many young men did, and after various adventures, including a spell as a flutsman, had been captured by the aragorn. The mercenaries had sold him to the Kov of Faol for sport in the Great Jikai of the manhounds. I shook my head. Bartak would be a useful man in a fight, as he had proved; I could not accept his advice on more cerebral matters, such as the decision that needed to be taken now.

“I have never been to Hyrzibar’s Finger, Bartak. Are they all like you, there?”

“Aye. And what of it?”

That Drig-driven breeze must have wafted from the Faolese jungle then, for I laughed. Hyrzibar, as a shishi exclusively serving the minor godlings of mythology, had a long and vivid series of poems and stories clustered about her name. Her Finger was notorious, and I gathered that not only geography had fastened the name upon the southeastern promontory of Havilfar above Quennohch.

“It is no matter. Bartak, I think you would be well pleased to take all these wonderful possessions for your own, and fly this airboat back to Hyrzibar’s Finger with them.”

“I admit it is a fair prospect.” He stroked a thick thumb down his bristles, regarding me. “Would you then, take nothing for yourself?”

“Weapons and a zorca only, I fancy.”

“You never cease to amaze me.”

Melow the jikla let out a hissing screech at this, from which I gathered she sniffed that subtle breeze too.

“And, Melow the Supple,” I said. “What am I to do with you?”

“Nothing, Dray Prescot. For I have said I will go with you.”

“Into Smerdislad? Then how can I accomplish my errand?”

The sudden viciousness of manhounds and their ferocious tempers are things spoken of with awe on the parts of Kregen where the jiklos are known. I stood calmly, looking at Melow, prepared for that feral outburst of fury to launch straight at me. I could feel the warmth of the late afternoon suns upon my neck, and the smell of the jungle reached me as I waited for Melow the Supple to make up her mind. Melow had no tail to twitch. But her gaudy new clothes rustled about her, and the dudinter chains clanked as she moved with stiff arms and legs, clanked in mockery of the iron chains she had always worn before.

“Very well, Dray Prescot. When your errand is done I will be waiting for you outside the dark walls of Smerdislad.”

“You would be known in Smerdislad, Melow. You would be taken and punished. Is that not true?” I said.

“This is so, Dray Prescot.”

“Then if you wait for me, I will come back for you.” I wanted to burst out into roaring laughter as I spoke, and yet I felt only a deadliness upon me, there in that devil-haunted jungle. “Although, what I am to do with you after, Opaz alone knows. And,” I added with an acerbity fully justified, “he isn’t telling me.”

The Brokelsh was eating again and I joined him despite his distressing habit of hurling half-eaten chicken legs, bones from chops, stones from fruit — everything with which he had finished — over his shoulders in what appeared a never-ending fusillade. I ducked a sizable vosk bone from which Bartak had sucked the marrow and picked up a nice-looking piece of cold glacéd vosk, and sank my teeth into it and set to with a will. Bartak had routed out bowls filled with masses of the most delicious fruit. I do not think it necessary to have to tell you of what metal Quarnach had had his bowls fashioned. Melow dragged down a whole cooked half-ponsho and settled down to devour the succulent meat. Well, we feasted after our various fashions.

Presently I freed two of the slave girls. I half drew my thraxter and slammed it back into the scabbard so that the poor creatures jumped. “Feed the people and the animals.” I glowered on them. “If you try to run away the jiklo is still hungry. She will chomp on your bones.” They shrieked and shuddered at this, and hurried about their tasks, very nervous and with constant apprehensive glances toward Melow, who sat breaking up juicy bones and sucking out the marrow.

Why, then, did all this make my mouth twitch and threaten to send me into convulsions of laughter? I am still not sure, but I fancy there must have been some potent mirth-producing perfume wafting from the jungle.

Even this bubbling if concealed hilarity could not blind me to the evil intentions harbored by Vad Quarnach for the hunt the next day. He would cheerfully shoot his arbalest at Saffi, the golden lion-maid, and at other beautiful girls, all in the name of sport. I would talk to Bartak, and caution him; I could do no more.

My preparations were made most carefully and in different fashion from those I had intended. The first thing was to turn Quarnach Algarond, Vad of the Dudinter District of Ba-Marish, out of his palanquin. His fat body quivered like one of these modern plastic sacks filled with oil. He spent no time in pleading, but I did see that he was settled into a lesser chair with carrying poles handy. Then I inspected the palanquin.

As I have said, it was a gorgeous affair, and the dudinter, being noncorrosive, and of a greater hardness than gold by reason of the silver mixed with it, gave the whole affair a weight and a dignity most becoming to the stature of a Vad, which is a rank very high in the listing of nobles, being merely one step below a Kov. The cushions were soft, the embroidery excellent, the backrest solid, so that an arrow or knife would not bite through. With that as a starting point I felt confident of success. Throwing off the parti-colored clothes taken from the courtiers I ransacked Quarnach’s private lenken chest. He had an amazing quantity of fine clothes, and I dressed myself so that I almost resembled a whistling faerling, or myself as I had been dressed by Queen Thyllis, although with much greater taste and style. From all the weapons available I selected the two best thraxters. Two of the sportsmen’s crossbows with their close-grained herm-wood stocks went into the capacious flapped pockets outside the palanquin. Inside there were shelves, and these I stocked with a considerable plunder of jewels and money. Bartak looked on, not exactly glowing, but with an expression that said: “Have a care, my impetuous friend, for you take what is mine.”

I retained the stuxcal, for it might prove useful. In addition I fastened one of the guard’s shields upon the roof. The guards were nearly as effeminate as their masters, and they had given us no trouble. Quite the contrary, for they had seemed glad to surrender. Their uniforms were foppish, with too much flashy show and not enough hard soldierly leather. The men were Tryfants, diffs not much larger than Ochs, and if well led the Tryfants may carry out a wild enough charge, full of panache; I will not speak of them in retreat. There are many strange and different diffs upon Kregen of which I have not spoken yet, as there are many races of apims. I have no great feelings one way or the other for Tryfants. A sack of provisions completed all I required of the Vad’s possessions apart from the two preysanys and the zorca. The preysany, that superior form of calsany, is a much more even-tempered animal than the calsany, and harnessing up two fore and two aft in the carrying poles presented no difficulties. I led the zorca to the rear and knotted a long leading string to the palanquin. Then I turned to my companions, Bartak and Melow.

“You will reach the city after the suns have gone, Dray Prescot,” said Melow in her hoarse voice. “I will await you by the tomb of Imbis Frolhan the Ship Merchant three ulms from the gate. You cannot miss the tomb, for it bears a ship upon the marble, a marble argenter, and that is rare among the nations of Havilfar.”

“True, Melow. So be it.”

The jikla was right, for most of the Havilfarese are not seafaring people. Vessels from other nations come to trade with them. Much of their own merchandise flies. I fancied I would have little trouble picking out a marble-carved argenter among the lines of tombs along the road to Smerdislad. A great deal of money was spent, season by season, by honor-conscious families to keep back the encroaching jungle from the tombs.

Having satisfied myself that my projected mode of conveyance was satisfactory, I untied the zorca and mounted up. Bartak laid a squat black-bristled hand upon the bridle. “I bid you Remberee, Dray Prescot.” He stared up at me. “I have told you I come from Hyrzibar’s Finger, near to a town called Brodensmot. You have not told me where you come from.”

I sighed. Where to tell him. Strombor? Valka? Vallia? Djanduin? Would Paline Valley suffice? Could I say I came from Hemlad, as Bagor, that instantly invented fellow who had rescued Queen Thyllis, had claimed? Where?

I could always point upward into the air and say I came from Earth. With that Drig-driven perfumed air about my head that word might be worth a giggle. Then I checked myself. I looked down on Bartak the Hyrshiv, the Brokelsh, and although I did not smile I think my face did not make him flinch back.

“I am Dray Prescot, of Strombor,” I said.

“Strombor. I do not know it, dom.” He took a breath. “But, wherever upon Kregen it may lie, it breeds men!”

With that, and a last Remberee to Melow the Supple, I nudged the zorca and began my solitary march to Smerdislad and the cripples’ Jikai, to find Saffi, the golden lion-maid.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

My first encounter with the Wizard Phu-si-Yantong

“As to Garnath, he will be here in good time, Quarnach. You need not fret so. He will fail to bring the lion-maid at his peril, for he has promised Phu-si-Yantong much.”

“I admit I am anxious to see the Numim wench myself, Kov Numrais.” I slouched in the upholstered chair provided for the members of the hunt, and I simpered. “I hear the Numims provide capital sport.”

“You are right, Quarnach.” This Kov Numrais pulled his black beard with a ringed hand. Thin and crafty and with a spine shattered in a fall so that his lower limbs were useless, he sat stiffly, his black eyes aglitter with the promise of rediscovering some of his vanished manhood in the Jikai. There were to be six cripples in the hunt. “Oh, yes, Quarnach,” said Kov Numrais, who owned a Kovnate called Neagron north of the Shrouded Sea. “There are too few spirited wenches to run, by Yskaroth! And the Numims are not a plentiful race of diffs, more’s the pity. We shall see a Great Jikai this day!”

I did not rise and hit him. For one thing, I was now acting the part of Vad Quarnach, and was therefore chained to my chair. They had accepted my story without a question. I had begun with the truth, saying that the girl for the hunt had cast herself over the side of my airboat. We had landed to claim her. I embroidered here on what I thought these creatures would like to hear of the inflicted punishment. Then, I had said, we attracted the attention of reiving flutsmen and were set upon. Only the speed of my preysanys in running me into the trees saved me. All the rest of my suite and my airboat had been captured. Not a one of them commented on my thus fleeing and saving my own skin, while my people stayed and died or were taken up for slavery. That was what they would have done. They understood that.

As for the missing girl, the Trylon of Thurkin had brought three, not being able to choose the fairest or more spirited, and so that was all right. All right! Had I not had my plan all neatly worked out in my head I do not think I could have sat still under this evil effrontery.

That made three of us in the hunt. The fourth was Vad Garnath and I guessed he would be faking as was I, pretending to be a cripple and thus confined to his chair. The fifth was the famous Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong. The sixth was a woman, a Chulik woman from the Chulik islands off the east coast of Balintol. She called herself Chimula the Sumptuous, and although we took her to be a Kovneva, for she was carried in much state and with evident display of great riches, we did not believe she had given us her real name. It was of no consequence then, although after— Well, that is for a later place in these tapes.

Sitting confined in a chair all day is a miserable way of life although most of those forced to do so manage to contrive the best out of it with great courage. I admit I fretted. To pass the time until the expected arrival of Garnath we played Jikaida. We played a large variant, with a hundred squares to a drin and with twelve drins to the board. There had been nothing else I could do but hire slaves with the money I had brought, for a man in a chair demands attentions. The slaves moved the bright pieces upon the board as we played. Kov Numrais na Neagron proved a cunning and devious player. In Jikaida the object is, as in most games of a like nature, to capture the opposing king, or check him. I marched my lines of swods up in fine style, using the vaulting technique to push on boldly, bringing up a powerful second division of zorcas and totrixes, for this was a cavalry game. There were also flyers, and these I flung in, in fine style. Numrais sucked me in, and then struck, surrounding a major force and making me commit my powerful pieces to my disadvantage. I fought hard, but my mind was not on the game.[7]

Afterwards, we drank superb chilled spiced wine, and ate light pastries. The odd reflection crossed my mind that very soon I could as easily be thrusting a thraxter blade into this fellow and his companions as eating and drinking with them.

I had left the brown bristling growth on my chin, and had further enhanced its shadow with a brown berry stain. Quarnach had his own selection of masks and dominoes, like any noble, for many of them choose to mingle in places where they do not wish their faces to be seen. Almost all were fashioned from dudinter. I wore one with diamond-rimmed eye-sockets; a scarron chain of those marvelous scarlet jewels outlined the whole domino. No one was curious, but I let slip that my accident had marked my face.

We sat in a chamber high in the city of Smerdislad with extensive views across the jungles. The greenery out there with the mingled rays of the Suns of Scorpio lighting up the whole scene and picking out the blazing colors of flowers blooming lavishly in the upper terraces could not fail to move me. To be chained to a chair, unable to stride out, expanding the chest, filling it with Zair’s good air! Well, a surrogate had been found by these people. What Nalgre the slave-master had said was correct. Smerdislad was the Kov’s fortress. From those lofting dark walls that kept the jungle at bay, the place rose through tiered levels, circular, arcaded, terraced, rising until at the very pinnacle a scintillating tower of white rock crowned the edifice. This was done, I surmised, in imitation of the natural wonder of the White Rock of Gilmoy. In the chambers and warrens below crowded the slaves. The Horters had their lodgings higher up. The nobles lived at the topmost levels, and the visiting hunters who could pay the enormous fees demanded for these special services of Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol. Most hunts took place from the caves, as I well knew.

The whole pile was built upon a dome of rock. It broke from the jungle like a boil. Clothed with buildings, the rock possessed a hollow heart, lit by many cunning light and ventilation slots. In the very heart of the fortress of Smerdislad were held the extra special hunts. As to sustenance for the city, that came from the unceasing toil of slaves in cleared areas, from much trade by vollers which landed and took off from flying platforms, and all this activity was paid for by hunters’ fees. Truly, Encar Capela must fancy himself a fine rich noble, living high on the vosk, I said to myself, sipping my wine, my mind evil with plans to change the ways of Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol. Capela entered then, swearing, slashing a thin rattan against his armored legs. He was a febrile, energetic man, with dark hair cropped short, a fierce black moustache, and a body hard and fit from much exercise. His nose had been broken and badly reset, and his lips were that paradox often seen in hard men of action who yet love the hedonistic life: they were thick and sensual and yet could tighten into a cruel thin line when the man’s passions were aroused to maim and kill.

“By the Foul Fernal himself!” he bellowed. “Where is the yetch Garnath?” He saw us looking at him, and he banged his rattan onto the table, making the Jikaida men jump with a rattle. “I owe you an apology, sirs and lady. But we shall make this Garnath pay — oh, yes!”

And then, following the Kov of Faol, entered a man of whom I shall have much to say when the time is ripe. For now I mention merely that I looked at him with some attention. For this was the notorious Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong. His litter swayed rhythmically from side to side, and tiny golden bells about it tingled and tinkled in a way that should have been most cheerful, but that, instead, sent out a most dread alarm. His bearers were Womoxes, those huge, shaggy horned men from an island off the west coast of my own Vallia — and that gave me to think, I can tell you. Each massive hunk of Womox muscle was clothed in a shining black tabard-like garment, cinctured at the waist by an equally shining belt of green lizard-skin. Each massive Womox carried slung from his belt the Womox shortsword, that pattern of blade somewhat thicker and heavier than a thraxter. They padded barefoot. Their heads thrust down, bulky like a ram between the shoulder blades, and their ferocious horns were all gilded, every one. Phu-si-Yantong had brought with him a large and glittering retinue, of Relt stylors, of Chail Sheom, of guards and slaves and free servants. I will not detail them all here, for I own I looked most at his Womoxes.

The cloth-of-gold curtains were half drawn in his palanquin so that he appeared as a mere black shadow propped upon cushions of cloth-of-gold. Their dark gleam, all sliding red-gold and purple-black, repelled me, in a flash, so that I drew back. I think my splendid diamond-and-scarron-dudinter domino must have caught the light of the suns and flashed, for I saw the dark shadow within the palanquin turn, as though an old weak neck swiveled creakily. I looked away, deliberately, at the Chulika, who was sitting up eagerly in her chair, staring out brazenly upon the new arrivals.

A voice spoke. “Where is Vad Garnath ham Hestan?” The tone of that voice! I felt a prickle of unease shiver up my spine, at that thin, ghostly, harshly echoing voice, as though this Phu-si-Yantong spoke softly in a cavern of vampire bats.

Without question the other occupants of the high room in the fortress-city of Smerdislad were powerfully affected by that whispering breathy voice speaking in the accents of doom. Well, Phu-si-Yantong was an evil man, as everyone who knew him said. Looking back on that bright colorful scene of greenery and garden blossoms, jewels and gold and silver, feathers and silks, how little I understood what dark dramas and stark terrors this wizard was to bring me in the seasons yet unborn!

A Rapa guard, heavily armed, wearing a black and green harness, dragged forward a young girl, a Fristle fifi, half swooning with fear. The Rapa uncoiled the lash with evident satisfaction, for his crest engorged and grew brilliant. That lash was much like a Russian knout, or a sjambok, a long tapering vileness of thick animal-skin. If he hit the girl with that she would be dead or maimed; at the very least, if he hit her gently she would be severely pained.

“What do you do, San?” said the Kov of Faol.

“I wish to show my girls the True Path of Obedience.”

The Rapa lifted the whip and as it snapped forward, obscenely black in the brilliant rays of the suns, I saw he struck in the pain-ways. The fifi screamed. Her soft fur leaped under the blow. Three times the Rapa struck, and three times I, Dray Prescot, forced myself to remain in that damned seat. I sat, and the girl was struck three blows, and she fell unconscious. Slaves carried her away.

“The True Path is Obedience to the Master,” said Yantong in that eerie double-echoing voice, so soft and slurred and yet so penetrating that all in the room heard without difficulty. Encar Capela laughed.

“You have the right of it, San. And Vad Garnath has been sighted. See!” And Capela pointed through the arcaded opening out into the brilliant sky. We all peered to look. A merker spun toward the fortress, and in his hand a lighted torch streamed a long trailing spume of black smoke. “See, the signal! The lion-maid will soon be with us.”

“That is good,” said Kov Numrais na Neagron. “Had the Rapa attempted to strike her pain-ways she would have had his manhood off or his eyes out. Hai! I look forward to this Jikai, by Yskaroth!”

I have told you of this scene and now I must say that my thoughts, as we waited for Vad Garnath to arrive, cannot possibly be repeated. I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, had sat on my backside in a chair and watched a Rapa lash a girl! So impossible did this thing seem to me, so much at variance with the tenor of my life upon this cruel world of Kregen, that I dare not repeat my thoughts to anyone — least of all to Delia, my Delia of Delphond.

A baby neemu, all soft and cuddly, let out a meow from where it wriggled on the knees of the Trylon Thurkin. He was an insignificant fellow, this Trylon, with a lopsided look to his face and a large squashy nose. He had been born with useless legs. At least, by his efforts to retain his father’s Trylonate, he proved both that he was much more than he looked and that it was possible for a crippled man to make his way upon Kregen, which is a task to daunt the most stouthearted. Attended to by the slaves, eating and drinking and talking, we waited until, with something of an entrance, Garnath ham Hestan, Vad of Middle Nalem, was carried into the room followed by his retinue, among whom strutted the Kataki, Rosil na Morcray.

I looked intently among his people for that glorious golden form of Saffi the lion-maid. She was not there. She had not been brought here into this upper chamber. Like all the other girls to be used in the hunt, she was under close guard below, being readied for this Great Jikai. I tightly gripped the arms of the chair and took my necessary part in the pappattu. This Kataki looked an interesting rast. Someone had made a passing reference to my palanquin, for as I have said Quarnach had had much of it overlaid with ivory. This was real true ivory from Chem, as I could see, for it possessed that creamy color and soft smooth texture, unlike the ivory from Northern Havilfar, which is altogether a sharper white, chalky, and coarse textured.

“Very pretty,” said the Kataki, Strom Rosil. He carried a true rank in the Hamalese army as a Chuktar. He passed his dark hand over the ivory. “My men would imperil their ibs to prize this loose after a battle.”

He stood there, blocky, dark, and forbidding like any damned Kataki. His low brow above the flaring nostrils and gape-jawed mouth, his wide-spaced eyes, narrow, and brilliant, and cold, his cocky attitude, his arrogantly upflung bladed tail, all vividly brought back to me my first meeting with diffs of his race, down in the south in the village of Podia on a forgotten island of the Shrouded Sea. These Katakis, aragorn and slave-masters by profession and nature, were truly evil. With that whiplike tail with a glittering curved blade strapped to its tip, the Kataki presented a stark and brutal figure of sheer power. The vultures were gathering, and of them all I calculated that this Kataki, this Chuktar Strom, would be the most formidable. Well, in that I made a profound mistake, for then I did not know the Wizard Phu-si-Yantong. But in all else, I think, I was right.

Strom Rosil wore a smart Hamalese uniform. But his helmet was pure Kataki: small, round, close-fitting, without crest or feather. That was so he might lash his tail about freely, giving full play to that terrible weapon. As a paktun, that is, a notorious mercenary, he had risen in the service of Hamal, commanding brigades of the army. Now, with the urgings of Vad Garnath hardly necessary, he had reverted to his ancestral way of life and masterminded the capture of Saffi, so as to further the plans of Garnath. I did not know what the plans were, or how they were affected by Yantong; all I knew now was that Saffi was here, in this place, and so was I. I could shilly-shally no longer.

These people were here on a hunting holiday. It was all to be fun and games, drinking, singing, and hunting beautiful young girls to the death.

“You do not speak, Vad Quarnach.” The Chuktar Strom tried to see into my palanquin. “Have you a shishi there with you occupying your tongue?” And he gave a dark self-satisfied chuckle and put his hands on the curtains by my face.

I said, “If you draw the curtains, Kataki, your tail will rot and fall off.”

He jerked back, outraged. Oh, yes, I could almost hear his thoughts churning away: This fellow is a Vad, and therefore important. But I am a Kataki and a Strom and a Chuktar! So he put his hand on the curtain to draw it back; Zair knows what would have happened next if Vad Garnath had not called across.

“It seems we are late, Rosil. Bear me witness it was no fault of ours.”

As the Kataki turned back, letting the curtain fall, Garnath went on, his voice rising: “And, anyway, Kov Encar, we are here, the lion-maid is here; so what harm is there?”

What answer the Kov of Faol might have made was chopped off by the soft, whispery voice of the wizard.

“You have kept us waiting, Vad Garnath. For that we forgive you. But our forgiveness is not bought cheaply.”

The Kataki stood by Garnath’s litter now, facing the wizard’s palanquin, and I saw clearly in them both the fear and the sick terror. I marveled. For I did not know this Phu-si-Yantong then, did not know him at all.

They had a good excuse for their lateness (true or not I did not know), and if flutsmen had attacked them it gave color to my own story. I was concerned over Saffi only. Toilet facilities, of course, were provided within the palanquin and it was the unenviable task of a little slave girl to empty the basins. I leaned a little sideways and said to this poor creature, one hired from the Kov of Faol, “It is necessary for me to retire for a moment. Tell the bearers to take me out.”

The bearers were Fristles; at the slave girl’s words they began to carry me away.

“What, Quarnach! We are about to begin!”

“You must excuse me, Kov. I will join you presently.”

Encar Capela nodded, not ill pleased. If one of his customers, and moreover one who had not brought a girl for quarry, chose to miss the beginning of the Jikai, then all the more sport for his other guests. But Kov Numrais, thin and crafty though he was, must have found a liking for Vad Quarnach in him after the victory at Jikaida, for he sang out: “Oh, come now, Encar! Let us wait a few murs. It is little enough, Yskaroth knows!”

Sometimes well-meaning people, even people who go on hunts to shoot young girls can be well-meaning, create the most devilish problems. I had thought it would be simple: Just slide out of the chair, take up my weapons, and dealing with any nurdling rasts who got in the way, seek out Saffi, free her, and take a voller out to the tomb of Imbis Frolhan the Ship Merchant. Now, it was clear, I was fated to accompany these rasts to the huge cavern within the rock-dome. I did not want to be with them in the arched gallery running all around the dome. Nor did I wish to be in the artificial jungle — we had been told Capela had arranged a crystal jungle, this time, for our special benefit

— at the center. I wanted to get in among the passageways and readying rooms, where the slaves and guards and animal-handlers and manhounds were kept or stabled. There, I knew, I would find Saffi.

“Schtump!” came the whispering eerie voice of the wizard. “Schtump, Vad Quarnach.”

Now schtump means hurry up, but it means it in a way that can be as offensive as one cares to make it, as I have indicated. One seldom hears just that cutting malevolent tone addressed to a noble — except, as here, when that noble is being told to get a move on by someone of a higher rank. What factual rank Yantong possessed I did not know. As a Wizard of Loh he very naturally considered himself superior to any other creature of Kregen apart from another wizard, and it was now clear to me that Yantong would acknowledge no peers. I remembered the feeling of apprehension I had received from Que-si-Rening when he had gone into lupu and had, only briefly, contacted the aura of this Phu-si-Yantong.

None of the others expressed surprise or shock at the wizard’s tone. The Kov of Faol, indeed, added his own urgent demand that I make speed. Kov Numrais, fingering his beard, looked across at my palanquin with not a little uncertainty at what he had conjured up by his suggestion. As my Fristles bore me away to a small toilet chamber with the little slave girl trotting alongside, I reflected that insults should roll from me as water rolls from a duck’s back. One thing now remained important. The hunt would have to begin without me.

Filled with the light from the Suns of Scorpio, the high room broke into a babblement of sound as fresh wine was brought and the mighty crippled hunters and their retainers prepared to wait the few murs I had been granted. I left them and the bronze doors clashed shut, the guards in the forest-green of the Kov of Faol slamming their spear-butts against the ground and resuming their static poses of alertness. If I say there now seemed to me one thing only I could do, you will understand that all my plans had tumbled into ruin.

In the small toilet chamber I bade the Fristles set me down. I sent them away and told them to keep out of my sight until I sent the slave girl for them. As for this young lady, I said to her in a voice that made her flinch back: “Go outside, shif.” She looked terrified. I leaned forward and pointed at the door through which we had come. “Shif! Outside!”[8]

“Yes, master.” She bowed herself in half and then scuttled out.

I sat back, took three deep breaths, and set to work.

By the diseased, odoriferous, and dripping tripes of Makki-Grodno! I had to break the chains of mischance snarling me up.

The fancy clothes of Vad Quarnach came off in the palanquin so that I might leave clad only in the old scarlet breechclout. If secret eyes watched they would not see a cripple jump out and strip off his clothes; they would see a broad-shouldered desperado abruptly appear from the palanquin, and that should confuse them, by Zair!

The noise of my movements almost betrayed me.

Only in the last second, as I reached for the scabbarded thraxter, did I hear the slither of naked feet on stone.

I jerked around on the seat.

An oiled, naked man reared between the curtains, a long curved dagger in his fist striking down with savage force to plunge into my body and finish me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Saffi the golden lion-maid

The dagger bit into my left shoulder, high. I thumped the fellow on the nose, but the blow lost most of its force, for I was entangled with the clothes around my legs and had not the space to lean into the punch. He snarled at me and slashed again and I managed to get my left hand around his right wrist. I could get no real grip, for the dagger-cut stung. We wrestled for a moment, he trying to tear free and sink his blade into my belly, I trying to untangle myself and sprawl out and so get at him. I recognized him, for he had come in the retinue with Vad Garnath, and I guessed he was one of the Kataki, the Chuktar Strom’s men. My remarks about a rotting tail falling off had occasioned this clumsy attempt at reprisal. As a stikitche, this fellow left much to be desired.

With something of an effort I thrust him back, so that he staggered and half fell upon the stones. The damned fancy clothes would not come free, despite my frenzied kicks. The thraxter scabbard jammed itself up in some infuriating way against the window and the seat, and I couldn’t get the sword free. The assassin leaped in again, silently. I, too, had not cried out, for this fellow might yet do me a service if I could only get myself untangled and to rights.

The dagger hissed past my face and I slogged a fist into his jaw, and he staggered back again. Clumsy he might be, true; but courage and determination he had, for he gathered himself for another attempt. His oiled body glistened in the crude oil-lamp’s flame. He came in with more caution this time, but with a very deadly intent. He feinted the dagger left, than artfully sliced it down right. He would have had me, too, but I slapped his wrist away, gave up trying to free my feet and legs from the entangling clothes, and concentrated on the thraxter. The pommel suddenly leaped free from its wedging and the hilt snugged into my hand. The blade hissed as it cleared the scabbard.

The assassin drove in again, dagger high, ready to plunge down and past what he must consider my enfeebled guard. I let him move in. His broad sweaty face bore down — and then the sword-blade slashed and he was falling back, unable to scream, half his face chopped off. I leaned over to prod him again; it was unnecessary. He lay there, his arms wide, the dagger with my blood upon it still clutched in his fist.

The damned clothes fell free at last and I could step out. I didn’t give a damn now for what secret eyes might spy on me. If there were observers, then the damage was done.

The work of only a moment saw the dead man lifted and draped facedown over the window. His blood now gushed into the palanquin. Working swiftly I dressed him in my abandoned clothes. I bundled him into the chair, set him up and fastened the dudinter mask with the emerald eye-sockets and scarron-chain edging above the wreck of his face. He might be mistaken for the Vad Quarnach for long enough for it to be of help.

Among Quarnach’s collection of masks was a steel domino without ornamentation, very much like the upper half of the face-masks used by kaidurs in the Arenas of the Dawn Lands. I fastened it on my face, covering my forehead, eyes, and nose, the cheek-pieces deeply curved. There was no beaver to cover the chin. I guessed it had been Quarnach’s fad to have such a mask among his collection. For weapons, two thraxters, a dagger, a knife, and a loaded crossbow would do. I took a quiver of quarrels, though I fancied there would be no time to reload and the arbalest was strictly a single-shot weapon in my schemes.

The door through which the Fristles had brought me into the toilet room was closed. Opposite it a stone of the wall, revolving upon its longitudinal axis, exposed a dark opening. From this had crept the stikitche. I stepped toward the opening and a thump on the door and a shout sounded.

“Vad Quarnach! We wait!”

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I said softly. “Wait, you rasts!”

The revolving stone closed again easily enough. I guessed the Kataki knew of it through Phu-si-Yantong (in which I was right), and a fleeting moment of interest in what schemes these three, Garnath, the Chuktar Strom, and the wizard, might have crossed my mind. Then I padded down a dark corridor toward a slit of light at the far end.

The would-be assassin had had no part in my plans until he had appeared; now I hoped he would give a little pause to the proceedings, for however long it took them to discover just who he was. Even then, Strom Rosil would scarcely wish to acknowledge the fellow as one of his men. He was a little sauce added to the dish I was concocting, here in the fortress-city of Smerdislad. What with the Star Lords and the Savanti and my concerns over Vallia and Djanduin there had been absolutely no time for me to honor a private pledge I had made when I’d first made contact with the Manhounds of Antares. I had determined one day to return here to Faol and sort the jiklos out, once and for all. The manner of my returning had been completely unforeseen by me, envisaging something after the style of an avenging host of fliers and warriors, and my primary concern must remain the rescue of Saffi, the lion-maid. That went without question.

The thought that these so-called mighty hunters should revel in terrifying and shooting young girls, beautiful or not, revolted me. The wanton slaying of anyone is anathema to me, as you know. I do not think I am alone in this feeling.

The slit of light turned out to be the gap between door and jamb of the exit from the secret passageway. The blood from my wounded left shoulder was leaving a betraying trail. The wound would have to be bound up as soon as I could contrive it. Apart from a diabolically infuriating weakness of that left arm, I felt as yet no ill effects. Once outside that door and into the first of the maze of corridors and chambers and alleyways tunneled beneath the city’s upper levels, above the huge empty space at the center, I could set about the first of the tasks confronting me.

The guard went to sleep quite peacefully.

I put on his forest-green tunic and wrapped his gaiters about my legs. He wore a white undertunic and with this I contrived to make a pad for my shoulder, to try to staunch the flow of blood. I put the steel domino into the pouch at my waist where it was a confoundedly awkward shaped bundle, to be sure. The guard had no shield, and I’d not brought the one I’d taken from Quarnach’s Tryfant guard, for I did not fancy the weight on my injured left arm, and considered I would be quicker as a fighter without that encumbrance. I kept the crossbow at the ready and set off down the nearest corridor leading below, curving gently around the massive inner bubble within the city of Smerdislad. No one paid me any attention, for there were numerous slaves and retainers and guards moving about their business. It is often thus in a large household where slaves are employed, and guards to keep them in order.

Lack of insignia of rank on the tunic proclaimed me a swod. When I spoke to the ob-Deldar I addressed him as “Deldar,” which pleased him, for the swods love to put heavy emphasis on that “ob”

before the officer’s rank, thus letting him know how far beneath contempt is an ob-Deldar.

“The jiklos’ quarters, dom?” said this Deldar, very friendly. “You’ve drawn a right leem’s nest there.”

“I have been ordered, Deldar,” I said, sounding as meekly humble as ever Hamun ham Farthytu had sounded in far Ruathytu. “They are somewhere near the quarters used by the girls for the hunt, I believe.”

He looked at me. “I do not know you, I think.”

“That is true, Deldar, for I am newly arrived in Smerdislad and reported for duty this morning. That is why I ask.”

Foreign mercenaries were no new thing on Kregen.

He gave me the necessary directions, adding that the girls’ quarters were nowhere near the jiklos’, being directly opposite on the other side of the interior city.

After I had walked on through the curving passageways I went past the entrances to the jiklos’ quarters. I kept to the great outer circle around the inner areas, moving on always with a steady pacing as though about my master’s business, until I came to the quarters of the quarries. Here guards would no doubt seek to stop me.

The oppressive, unhealthy atmosphere of the place sickened me. I had passed the animals’ quarters, and the variegated smells had told me that many ferocious beasts were kept penned within. Now the musky scents and delicate perfumes of women told me I had arrived.

There was no particular ill feeling in my shoulder and the swod’s short uniform cape, artfully draped, concealed the lump of wadding. I just hoped I’d still be able to use the arm when the time came.

“What do you want, dom?”

The guard who spoke was a swod like myself, a heavyset, thickly muscled fellow, an apim. His companion on the other side of the entrance door glanced across and then went back to leaning on his spear. These were real spears, not stuxes.

“Is Jiktar Nath inside, dom?” I spoke offhandedly.

“Jiktar Nath who? I know no Jiktar Nath.”

Well, Zair knows, you can’t guess right every time.

“Jiktar Nath ti Coyton,” I said, using a name that brought back memories. “You must know him. A real right Jik, he is.”

“Aren’t they all? No, dom. And you may not enter here where the maidens are kept.”

I glanced casually along the broad corridor, both left and right, and saw only an old slave in a tattered gray breechclout staggering along under a load of firewood.

“I agree with you,” I said. “But I think I shall enter.”

I struck him most cleanly along the jaw, where his helmet strap curved away from my fist, and whirled back to catch his companion’s spear on my left arm and so strike him, too. I felt my left arm, then, a jolt of pain tearing down from the injured shoulder. “By Vox!” I said, annoyed. I bashed the doors open, dragged the two guards inside and dumped them and peered out. The slave with the firewood had gone. No one else had seen, although two slave girls carrying baskets of eggs came into view. I popped back inside and closed the doors.

Just how much time I would have I did not know. Probably not much, if the Kov of Faol ran a properly regulated household.

This place appeared to me to be a curious mixture. Hollowed from the rock and patchily slapped over with whitewash, it was hung with a few shabby tapestries. It was at once stark and unpleasant, as befitted slave quarters. But it was also enlivened with a few touches of comfort, like ponsho-skin rugs, and upholstered divans, and the cooling tinkle of water sounded from a side room where a stream spouted into a stone basin. A few naked girls were bathing there. After a single look I passed by them and pushed on. Saffi was not of their number. They did not see me; at least, not one cried out. A couple of outraged, fluttering Xaffers trotted up to me. A strange and remote race of diffs, the Xaffers, often used in harems and Chail Sheom quarters when slave. I showed them a grim face and bellowed: “In the name of the Kov! Jump to it, onkers!”

Their protestations could not stop me, but I would not deal harshly with them. I pushed in, going through heavy ornate drapes of embroidered linen past other rooms where girls of many different races sat or reclined listlessly. Clearly, these slave-women’s quarters held no happy lighthearted chatter; these girls were only too well aware of their fate in the Kovnate of Faol. I did not see Saffi. There could not be much time left. I tried to think. The Xaffers had fluttered after me, declaiming indignantly at the intrusion. No man, especially a common swod in a green tunic, had any right of entry here.

In the oil-lamp’s gleam I poked about, upending divans in case Saffi had been rolled up in a carpet and hidden there, a favorite trick. Deeper and deeper I prowled. Now there was only one Xaffer shrilling outrage at me. That meant the other had gone for help.

In a wall devoid of ornamentation or covering a heavy lenken door stood fast shut, with a bar on this side. Just beyond, a door with a strange green-and-blue-curlicue design stood half open, and I heard a girl singing. I would not be surprised if that was Saffi singing, for Numim maidens are not easily frightened.

Between the two doors stood two guards. It was clear they kept this inner portal under close watch. The Xaffer at my back, stumbling along in his foofray satin slippers was shrilling something about: “If you wished to join the inner guard you should have come through the proper door!” I ignored him and halted, looking at these two guards.

If you wonder why I halted, it was for the simple reason that these two were Pachaks. As you know, Pachaks, besides being excellent fighters, are renowned for their loyalty. It makes good sense to station them where positions of trust are to be held. These two were remarkably tall for their race, their snug round bronze helmets coming fully up to my chin. They were both extremely broad across the chest, also, and they had in the clear blue light of their eyes, in the competent way they handled their weapons, and in the alert and ready fashion in which they held their bladed tails cocked over their shoulders, a very potent message. That message was, starkly: “No one unauthorized shall pass this door alive.”

I said, “I seek the Jiktar Nath ti Coyton, Deldars.”

For both were waso-Deldars, and therefore important men in the lower hierarchy of Capela’s guards.

“We know no Jiktar Nath ti Coyton,” one of them said. “You had best wait quietly here and we will call the Hikdar.”

That would be standing orders.

I did not wish to slay them. Pachaks are good fighters, as you know, and men of integrity. Their straw-yellow hair, almost white, has flared over many a battlefield, for they have more than a touch of the berserker about them, and tend to strip off their helmets when in action. But, being good soldiers, they keep their armor on. (I sometimes think their berserker rages, which occur only when they are fighting, are a carefully controlled part of their image.) I eyed them with some caution. As you know, apart from the whiplike, ferociously effective tail with its glittering steel blade gripped in the hand at its tip, the other curious fact about a Pachak is his possession of two left arms. These two arms are not, I will allow, either as strong or as vicious as the two left arms of a Djang, but nonetheless they give a Pachak a most effective defense with a shield. Both these waso-Deldars carried shields. More and more at this time I was coming to the conclusion that the ecological balances and racial distributions of Kregen had been planned aeons ago — and planned most probably by the Star Lords. Little else, I felt then, would account for the amazing variety and spread of cultures and races upon this always fresh and marvelous world.

“Wait, swod!” growled the one who had spoken. He flicked his right hand and — lo! — it held his thraxter. He gestured. “Pragan, go and ask the Hikdar of this swod. I will detain him here until you return.”

“At once, Apgarl.” The second Pachak easily lifted the log barring the lenken door and went out. These two had a chain of command, then, that was clear. That would be like the Pachaks. That glittering blade, a foot long, glittered in the lamp’s gleam as it circled above the guard’s head. Within the deadly circle of that bladed tail it behooved any fighting-man to beware.

“Look, Deldar,” I said in a most reasonable tone of voice. “I have my duty to do. You are making an unnecessary fuss.”

“Stand still!”

“But—”

“Guards do not come here through the wenches’ quarters, nor do they stride with thraxters in their hands. Be still.”

I sighed. There was nothing else for it.

Saffi must be beyond that blue-and-green-curlicued door. Singing or not, she must be there. It would take time to get her out, and the other Pachak would be back with his Hikdar soon. I did not kill the Pachak. As I say, and I believe you understand, I have a regard for that short stout race of halflings. I leaped, got in under his tail, elbowed his thraxter away, reached for his throat — and his two left arms jerked out like pistons and his shield smashed into my ribs and sent me sprawling back. I landed on my injured left shoulder. I felt the jab of scarlet pain, but there was no time to do anything else but roll frantically aside as his bladed tail came down thwacking onto the stones. He had struck with a flat blade so as to knock me out. I forced myself up and this time my thraxter met his in a jingle of steel. The tail whipped back ready for another blow. I nicked his sword down and prepared to sway aside from the next blow, and had barely time to gasp.

“Onker!” said the Pachak. His tail, instead of curling over his shoulder and around and down for a blow, abruptly disappeared. In the next second I saw a betraying glitter between his legs. The foot-long blade, horizontal and lethal, darted like a javelin straight for me, impelled by the stiffened, muscular tail. If you have seen a flexible rammer used to thrust home a thirty-two pounder roundshot you will know how a flexible rope can become in a twinkling a hard bar. Even as I leaped I caught an expression on his face of pity, his blue eyes very bright. Then I was jumping up and the sword gripped in his tail hand hissed between my legs as it had hissed between his. I came down hard, got his tail between my knees, jerked upright. He looked his surprise. I straightened my legs, my knees snapped back perhaps four inches, enough to drag him forward, my thraxter bashed away his, and then, without stopping, I brought the hilt around and thunked it solidly against his chin. He gave a gasp; he did not fall down. I had to hit him three times before he sagged to his knees.

He rolled over onto his side, his tail now limp, that deadly steel scraping uselessly across the stones. I stepped back and saluted him with the sword.

Suddenly a low musical voice at my back said, “You give him the Jikai, then, Amak Hamun?”

I whirled.

Saffi stood in the doorway, her superb body bare, her glorious golden hair a dazzlement about her golden shoulders.

“We are leaving now, Saffi.”

“I am glad it is you who have come for me, Hamun. Is my father alive?”

“He lives.”

She let out a little sigh. She walked toward the fallen Pachak and took up his thraxter. I knew she would be skilled in its use. Also, she snapped off the cords of his green cape and flung it about herself. Then, together, we made for the open lenken door.

I thought about the Pachak’s green cape as I picked up the crossbow from where I had dropped it. Pachaks, like Katakis, do not like billowy, tangling clothing at their backs, and it is clear to see why, for a cape might easily interfere with that smooth sweeping looping of their bladed tails. So, having to wear the Kov’s regulation uniform cape, perhaps this Pachak, whose name I knew was Apgarl, had fought at a disadvantage. Perhaps his cape equaled my abandoned crossbow. I had not wished to slay him, as I might easily have done. Maybe I had been lucky.

Saffi, the daughter of Rees, the Trylon of the Golden Wind, must have observed the encounter; she had given a backhanded Jikai, so she must have observed the byplay with cape and crossbow. We went swiftly along the curving corridor. If anyone asked, we were merely a guard taking a captive along according to orders; and if that did not satisfy the interlocutor, then six inches of sharp steel would. The lion-girl walked with a free loping swing, and her face showed the burning passion of her nature. I said, “Look downcast, like a slave, Saffi. If you do not I shall spank you.”

“You might try!” she flared.

I glared at her. She lowered her eyes. She held the thraxter beneath the green cape, hidden, and I saw the way her right fist clenched. But she made her face assume a hangdog expression, and she hung her head in proper slave style.

We spent some time finding our way down the passageways. Now if I relate what next befell us in a straightforward and matter-of-fact way, it will sound the merest flight of fancy. Yet that is my way, as these tapes prove. Quite clearly and without doubt, at least to my mind, the Star Lords or the Savanti had taken a most direct hand in events. What their motives were, I did not know; of their results I can speak with absolute authority. For as we turned from a small corridor into a wide paved cavern, ablaze with light and filled with people moving on their errands, I saw a small half-closed doorway. I stopped. Ahead across the paved area a marching body of troops approached. They were Pachaks, all of them, and they meant business. I grabbed Saffi’s arm and bundled her through the narrow doorway.

“Hamun!”

“Be silent, Saffi. I might battle them all — aye, and slay them all, if Zair smiled — but that is not the way of wisdom.”

She pouted at me in the gloom. The place hung with dust we had disturbed, and if we sneezed we might betray ourselves. I moved farther down the narrow slot. Saffi inched along after. I felt a slight warm breeze on my cheek. There was practically no light now, and I could barely make out a bronze grille from which the warm perfumed air wafted.

I put my finger to my lips. “Not a sound.” My words just reached her golden ears. Then — I must tell this just as it occurred. Then from the bronze grille and borne on the scented breeze came the sound of voices, talking in grim and purposeful fashion, three voices not so much arguing as discussing a knotty problem. I listened. In a moment we must back out of the slot and seek to escape. But I listened.

The words bit through the dark air, hissing, sibilant, cold with a passionless dedication to an overweening ambition.

There, deep in the depths of the fortress-city of Smerdislad, away on the island of Faol, close to the continent of Havilfar, many and many a dwabur from home, I heard those chillingly shocking words. There in the darkness I heard and I could not believe I heard right. For that thin and evil whisper said: “We must first win him to our views. For in all Vallia the man to be most feared is this same Dray Prescot.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Savanti and the Star Lords ordain fate

Saffi tugged my arm. I felt the wound in my shoulder. But I could not move. I think my mouth hung open in a foolish loose-lipped idiot’s grin. The voice of Phu-si-Yantong wafted through the bronze grille, there in the fortress of Smerdislad lost in the jungles of Faol.

“We must bring every artifice to bear on this Dray Prescot.”

The voice of Strom Rosil, the Kataki Chuktar: “Why not have him killed, and end it? A stikitche—”

“Like your man sent to slay the fool Quarnach, Rosil?” said the voice of Vad Garnath, sharp with goading malice.

Phu-si-Yantong quelled them. “He must not be slain. Through him we can rule all Vallia — aye, and the Vallian empire!”

Strom Rosil would not easily be quelled, although he spoke in a lowered, malevolent tone. “My man was no professional stikitche. The hunt is delayed. I care nothing for the hunt, and the onker Quarnach may crawl about the corridors bleeding to death for all I care. My Katakis and I need slaves! When we have Pandahem and then Vallia—”

Vad Garnath laughed. Saffi, who tried to listen, shivered.

“Much will depend on Queen Thyllis. For she believes her power to be absolute.”

“Remember,” came the ghost-whisper of Yantong. “Today her power in Hamal is absolute. We plan for the day after tomorrow.”

“And I grow impatient, by the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable!”

“Then I caution you to learn wisdom, Rosil, or you may suffer from a visit from your own Chezra-gon-Kranak for your sins.”

“By my tail!” The voice of the Chuktar Strom growled with malefic force through the bronzed grille. “I know well how to deal with those who cross my path.”

Still I was unable to move. Saffi tugged again; I barely felt her fingers on my arm, although pain struck from my shoulder. These three had been talking and I had stumbled into the middle of their talk, so that much of what they said meant nothing, overheard as it was out of context. But I felt I was on the verge of great discoveries. Yantong was talking about Strom Rosil’s twin, the Stromich Ranjal who was, I gathered, about some evil business for this unholy trio. I could not tear myself away. I listened, fascinated.

Saffi cautiously edged up close to me and I felt her golden hair tickling my neck. She put her lips close to my ear and whispered: “Amak Hamun! We must go before they search us out!”

I did not reply.

She was right. That paralysis dropped away. I began to move, and heard Phu-si-Yantong saying: “So the problem of Dray Prescot will find its own solution when the emperor is gone. Very well. I am concerned over this attempt by the king of Menahem to steal the secrets of voller manufacture.”

Vad Garnath laughed again. “The spy Dopitka ti Appanshad was taken and put to the question and sent to Queen Thyllis’ syatra. The spines pierced him through and—”

“Yes, Garnath, I can well imagine what happened to the spy from Menahem. But there may well be others. I am of Loh. I owe the cities of Havilfar — and Hamal and Hyrklana — much enmity from the old times and the ancient days. Without vollers the Empire of Loh was as a broken reed. Now the position has swung as the weathercock swings. Pandahem must not gain vollers, and none must be allowed to go to the Vallian rasts.” His whispering voice cut through the darkness. I found I was gripping the hilt of my thraxter with a grip that pained. “The vaol boxes and the paol boxes contain the seeds of a power greater than any you have imagined. They must never be broken.”

“What if they are?” Vad Garnath sounded impatient. “Even I do not know the nobles of Hamal charged with these secrets. They are not spoken of. Until the Nine Faceless Ones approach a noble and summon him to voller-duty he — or anyone — must remain ignorant of the secrets. All a meddler will find is dirt and air.”

Dirt and air!

Now I felt absolutely certain that the Savanti or the Star Lords had brought me to just this spot and just this time. I stopped moving back and strained to listen, and Saffi fretfully tugged again, anxious to be gone.

She dared not speak, and neither of us dared make a sound. So I listened as these three talked. They did not mention the word cayferm once, but I felt an uplifting sense that I had taken a measurable stride closer to the heart of the secret.

Now I could leave here. Now I could see a course of action ahead of me that would bring the secrets tumbling into my lap like shonages from a full-grown tree. Marvelous!

My first wriggling movement backward started Saffi agilely back down the slot. The last words I heard were from that Phu-si-Yantong upon whose face I had not yet gazed. He was giving Garnath orders about the volgendrins. Garnath was answering with the laughter entirely fled from his voice, and Rosil, too, sounded surly and vicious.

The Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, said, “Extra Gerawin and other efficient guards must be used. It does not matter from which country they come, for my plans call for all of Havilfar to yield to me the One True Way. Use Gerawin, Pachaks, anyone who can fight well and is loyal to his hire to defend the volgendrins.”

Going back down the slot of darkness I mulled that over. We had to escape from this hellhole, but, equally, I had to know what secret information it was I had gained. I knew Gerawin only too well. They were squat, bandy-legged diffs with damned sharp tridents who so efficiently flew astride their tyryvols and guarded the Heavenly Mines where I had slaved in such horror. As for volgendrins, well, I had heard men speak of them and had passed it by, being busy about other pursuits. But the word conjured up certain possibilities . . .

At the little half-hidden door leading out Saffi turned to me. In the lamplight splashing in, she looked furious clean through.

“Father said you were a strange one, Amak Hamun! By Krun! He was right! Do you want to spend forever in here?”

“What those men had to say interested me, Saffi.”

“A fine time you pick to eavesdrop!”

Well, that was true. I reflected, not without joy, that if I had not decided to try to rescue this glorious lion-maid, if I had selfishly gone about the much more important business of Vallia in Hamal, I would never have heard of this wizard, Phu-si-Yantong, would never have come here, to this hidden fortress, never have squeezed down a slot of blackness and so overheard evil plans concerning Vallia. The chances that seemed miraculous were no chances. I had chosen to try to rescue Saffi, and the Savanti had used that to their own ends. I felt convinced this must be the work of the Savanti, those mortal but superhuman men of the Swinging City, Aphrasöe, the more I thought on the question. They had the welfare of men at heart on Kregen, that I knew. Just what the Star Lords’ plans might be, I, a mortal, had no way of knowing.

We could no longer mingle freely with the guards and slaves within the inner fortress. The alarm had been given. A lion-maid, as had been proven so conclusively, is a rare and precious object in vile dens where beautiful girls are hunted; Saffi needed a hooded cloak. The slave from whom we obtained the gray slave garment was probably very pleased indeed to be afforded the opportunity of a quiet sleep. Together, Saffi in her cloak, I as a forest-green-clad guardsman, we prowled on. Presently she said: “You go up, Hamun!”

“Aye.”

She sniffed and pulled the hood closer about her golden hair.

Up we went, through passageways and caverns. We had to dodge away out of sight two or three times as bodies of guards marched past; among slaves we pressed on boldly. All feeling had left my shoulder now. I tucked my arm into the side of the tunic and it hung like a lump of meat on a butcher’s hook. I kept the crossbow. Saffi might take the one shot; I discarded the quiver. At last we saw doors ahead that, I trusted to Zair, must take us out to a landing platform on the roof. Only three guards stood their posts here, and all were Rapas. Saffi shot one. I spitted the second, and Saffi, not without a splendid example of swordplay, dispatched the third. We pushed through the open doors onto a flat roof and saw vollers lined up, quietly waiting for us.

It was not quite as easy as that.

To our right reared the tall glitteringly white column of the central tower. Up there no doubt the Kov of Faol had his own amusements. Certainly, he had guards. They began to shoot down as we ran for the nearest suitable voller, a four-place craft with rakish lines indicating speed. Other guards sprang to bar our path. We had a right merry set-to then, but in all honesty I recall little of it. I do remember Saffi, most glorious, blazing golden, striking shrewd blows, and myself shouting the Jikai to her, saying, “A true daughter of a noble father,” and other silly words besides. Then Saffi was pushing me into the voller. I flopped down. Saffi straddled above me. I recalled that I was supposed to be rescuing her, and levered myself up past her. I was able to smash the thraxter down on a couple of Rapas and an apim who would have dragged us out. The voller moved, lurched, sprang into the air. We soared away over the jungle.

Zair must have been with us for it was some time before the pursuing airboats took off. The preparations for the hunt had begun early; the day was barely half gone. We could expect no grateful concealment as the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, sank below the horizon.

Saffi set a course due south. Well, that would do for now. We must outrun our pursuers, or fox them in some way, and then we might begin the long flight back to Ruathytu. Saffi must have thought along the same lines, for she looked back, and her long golden hair blew out splendidly past her face. She laughed with an exultation that is reserved for the battle-mad or the gloriously adventurous of two worlds. I could not feel my shoulder; all I could feel was a damned gray wave roaring over my thick skull, blotting out reasonable thought.

“We will outfly them, Hamun, and then hide in the jungle. They will never find us once we find a safe place!”

“The — manhounds—” I croaked.

“With a weapon in my fist, I do not think I would fear even a manhound, with you at my side!”

Well, Numim girls are notorious for their ardor. I shivered. I was a damned sick apim, that was certain. After the dip in the sacred Pool of Baptism that had ensured me a full thousand years of life, I was also strongly able to recover from wounds and sickness. But it would take time; that fellow’s dagger had bitten deeply, more deeply than I realized. I was running a temperature, and I felt as bad as ever I had, apart from certain more scarlet moments of my life — as when I crossed the path of the Phokaym along the Klackadrin.

Thoughts of Numim girls brought up certain memories. I now felt confident Numim girls were as tough as was said; and I fancied Numim men were also as tough and would keep a promise.

“Straight on, Saffi,” I croaked out. “Keep going.” I managed to sprawl forward and stick my head up enough to see where we were going. Saffi looked back.

“They keep close, Hamun. We should dive into the jungle and hide.”

“No! Keep straight on.”

She pouted at me, and her golden eyes regarded me with calculation.

“I am not delirious, Saffi. I will get over this rast-given wound directly.” It was an effort to think and speak. “Keep on. Look for a clearing; caves, huts — and villas.”

I closed my eyes. If I had gambled wrong, then it was all over. Going down to hide in the jungle was a meaningless gesture, when the Manhounds of Antares sniffed at our trail . . . The airboat sliced through the air, warm at our low altitude, and once in a while Saffi turned and looked back. Then she would stare ahead again, and the creases on her forehead indented deeper, so I knew our pursuers stayed doggedly with us.

We had chosen a fast voller, but we had not picked the fastest in Smerdislad. Saffi said, “Two vollers gain on us, Hamun.”

“They have purer minerals in their silver boxes,” I said, mumbling. Then I realized what I was saying. But I could do nothing about that. Saffi took no notice, and I believe she thought I was delirious. Well, I was rambling in my speech, and must not talk again until the time came.

As Zair is my witness, I have at all times attempted to tell the truth in these tapes as I saw it. I own to many failings, and I am a great rogue when necessity presses, and yet I believe I have not willingly deceived you. So I must now confess that I do not recall what happened from the time Saffi reported the two pursuing vollers were lunging for our airboat to the time when I awoke festooned with acupuncture needles — and many of them moxybustion examples, aromatically smoldering — to stare up into the concerned face of Doctor Larghos the Needle. What I tell is what Saffi told me. It was a most hairy time, she said, her golden face alight with the passions of the fight still strong upon her. Saffi swerved the voller about, avoiding the lancing hail of bolts fleeting from our pursuers. The voller was stocked with many of the familiar weapons of aerial fighting. Although I had thrown away the quiver of bolts, there was another to hand. Somehow, with one hand and the crossbow thrust against a rib of the voller’s frame, I succeeded in loading. Saffi shouted, and I loosed and the pilot of the leading pursuer hurled backward, his hands clawing skyward, a crossbow quarrel through his throat. But their vehement onslaught could not be halted by slowly placed, single shots. The first voller surged up on our larboard and Saffi jinked away to the starboard and dropping, and the second let her come and rode with her, and the cruel iron grappling hooks sailed toward us. My thraxter bit ineffectually at the wire-wound ropes. I ripped out two of the grapnels and with them chunks of the voller’s skin, and the air rushed through the gaps. But the airboats grappled us. Saffi set the controls and we plunged on and down toward the jungle. The two vollers plummeted with us. They were packed with armed men. I fought. I do not remember, but I fought. Sometimes, in the small hours of the night when my brain releases my mind to wander freely over the lurid paths of memory I think I recall scarlet fractions of that fight.

There are painful memories of a glorious golden form at my side, with a bloodied sword. There are hazy recollections of pain that was beyond pain gouging all along my left side. Saffi and I fight well as a team, and we fought well on that long-gone day. A crossbow quarrel sprouted from my left shoulder, and I am told I yelled: “Waste your shots, you kleeshes!” For there was little they could do to that left arm of mine now save chop it off entire.

“Your back, Hamun!”

Whirling, I ducked clumsily and the thraxter, with a life of its own sought and took the life of the Rapa chopping at my head. Thraxters clanged and hammered, lunged and withdrew. How many men died I do not know. Saffi was wounded, the blood drenching down her golden skin. I must have fought as a berserker. But we were surely done for. The airboats were down low now, our voller penned between the other two. The green jungle tops fleeted past below. When an uprearing tree lashed our keel and scraped and tore away below, the whole flier shuddered.

“Fight to the end, Hamun!” yelled Saffi. Her golden hair waved wildly in the wind of our passage.

“We will fight, Saffi!” I shouted back. “But it is not the end! Look!”

I had not misjudged the quality of the Numims.

A clearing appeared below, past the last of the jungle trees. To one side reared a rock-face honeycombed with the black openings of caves. Huts burned. Villas burned. Down there the corpses of many manhounds lay sprawled, feathered with crossbow bolts. And up into the sky rose the vollers bearing the golden colors of the Trylon of the Golden Wind.

Jiktar Horan, Rees’s guard commander, had kept his word.

There is little left to tell, for Saffi, her glorious golden eyes wide with the wonder of it all, finished by saying:

“And dear Horan and our men simply took those foul vollermen of Faol apart, Amak Hamun!”

I managed to say, from where I lay flat on my back with the needles smoldering and Doctor Larghos fussing, “You called me Hamun when we fought together, Saffi.”

She smiled. “If you wish it, Hamun.”

“It is you who do me the honor, Saffi. And your wound?”

At this Larghos the Needle piped up with: “The Lady Saffi must rest, Amak! But she would hear nothing but how you were and if you were likely to die! I told her—”

“And I ask her, Larghos the Needle.” I smiled at Saffi. The smile did not pain. “You have proved everything true, Saffi. Now for the sake of your father, the Trylon Rees, you must rest.”

“If you say so, Hamun.”

There could be no rest for me.

Doctor Larghos strapped up my arm. I knew but did not tell him that a few burs of rest and recuperation would see the wound healed. But he persisted in his fussing, and my tiredness made me tolerate his mollycoddling.

There was one thing more left to do before I could fly for home.

I did not tell Saffi or Horan or Larghos the Needle what I intended, for they would not have understood. It was taken for granted by all of them that I would be going with them back to Ruathytu. Jiktar Horan, a true professional, and his lion-men had followed my directions and had found this place and had worked it over. There were no Manhounds of Faol left alive. The slaves, those who had not run off, would be taken away, some to a slavery more kind than the horrors to be found in Faol, others to freedom. The faithless guides either had been killed or had escaped. Their work was done. The lion-men had cleansed this place of horror in their search for their Trylon’s daughter. So my vow had come to be honored, in a strange fashion, truly: for the time being the foul practices of the Kov of Faol and his manhounds had been stamped out here.

I knew there were other places in Havilfar where the Manhounds of Antares would still be used for horrific sport.

Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol, still lived.

The final consummation of this cleansing process remained.

That would have to wait. The Savanti had placed in my hands information I dared not waste. Before I could return to Hamal and seek to know the truth of the Nine Faceless Ones, and through them the secrets of the silver boxes, I must return home. I craved to see my Delia once again, and my twins, Drak and Lela. But, also, I had to know how far the wise men of Vallia had progressed in their unraveling of the information I had already sent them.

When the last streaming light of Zim and Genodras had faded from the sky and the Maiden with the Many Smiles hung barely above the horizon, I cast off in the battered voller and set a course back to Smerdislad. The Numims did not see me go. I have some facility at stealing airboats, as you know. Three ulms from the gate of Smerdislad, along the road of the tombs, Melow the Supple had said. An ulm is about 1,500 yards, so I would have to fly very low indeed and touch down within easy sight of watchful guards upon the ramparts.

The Maiden with the Many Smiles did not smile down on me, for which I was most grateful, thanking Zair. The fuzzy pink and golden orb shone fitfully through a high drift of cloud. Shadows lay inky dark, but I picked out the impressive marble argenter, the ship with all sails spread, above the tomb of Imbis Frolhan the Ship Merchant. I touched down in shadows and prepared to spring out. Fatigue had been beaten back a little by my enforced rest after that unremembered fight with Saffi aboard the voller, but pressed back only a little. I needed rest.

A hoarse hissing voice reached me from the shadows of the tomb.

“I have waited, Dray Prescot of Strombor. You come hard upon my time.”

I knew.

If I do not recount in full what then happened it is because again I have but hazy and fragmentary memories. I know I tore off the bandages so carefully placed upon my arm by Doctor Larghos the Needle. I needed two hands for this work. Melow the Supple lay quietly as I carried her to the voller. I sent the airboat up and set the course northward. Then I turned to the jikla. The birth was easy by a human reckoning, but hard in the nature of things, and I sweated by the fuzzy pink moonlight, easing the two baby jiklos into the world of Kregen. Melow the Supple bore twins, a boy and a girl manhound. When it was done and everything was cleaned up and tidied away and a fold of cloth enclosed the two tiny forms, one on each side of her, I slumped back, exhausted. Melow lay looking at her twins, and I swear that motherhood made of her face that was normally of so ferocious an aspect a kindly and concerned benediction as she gazed at her babies. She looked up at me.

“I did not think you would return. Truly, Dray Prescot, you are not as other men.”

“So I have been told, Melow. And usually in anger.”

“I do not bear you anger, Dray Prescot.” She fussed with the cloth about the girl jikla. “And where do we fly now?”

We were out over the sea, heading north with just a touch of east in our course, so that we would pass safely far east of the Koroles, the islands off the east coast of Pandahem.

“We fly to Valka.”

“Valka? Do I know it?” The hazy golden moonlight struck twin shadows as She of the Veils rose from the sea rim. “No matter. For in all Kregen I have nowhere to go now, Dray Prescot, save by your side.”

How strange, by Vox, were the fates that sought to link me with a deadly and vicious Manhound of Antares!

“You will always be a welcome comrade, Melow the Supple.”

After all my adventures I had achieved much in Havilfar; and if war was to come with Hamal, then my home of Vallia would not fight defenseless in the air. Much remained to be done, but I would deal with that when the time came. I, Dray Prescot, smiled at the jikla, Melow the Supple, and at her baby twins.

“We fly for Valka, Melow, and for home.”

How marvelous it was to be flying back to Delia! Often and often in my life on Kregen I have flown, sailed, ridden, or walked on my own two feet back home to Delia. I own it to be the more perfect experience of travel in all of Kregen or of Earth.

Many a time I had returned to Delia, and if Zair and all the other gods of Kregen grant the boon to me, then always will I return many and many a time yet to come.

Home! Back to Valka and my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains!

That can never tire. That, for me, is always the perfect ending to every adventure. I would have it no other way.

About the author

Alan Burt Akers is a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer. Bulmer has published over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

Transit to Scorpio

The Suns of Scorpio

Warrior of Scorpio

Swordships of Scorpio

Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

Manhounds of Antares

Arena of Antares

Fliers of Antares

Bladesman of Antares

Avenger of Antares

Armada of Antares

Notes

[1] Waso: five.

[2] Dwabur: five miles.

[3] Jen: Prescot has often used this word and I have changed it to its English equivalent, “Lord.” It compares with the Hamalese “Notor.” “Jen” is pure Vallian, I believe. [A.B.A.]

[4] Shiv: six. Shebov: seven. Ord: eight So: three.

[5] Kyro: square or piazza.

[6] Dudinter: electrum. The Districts of the Ba-cities are named for their chief products; the nobles take their titles from the Districts for which they are responsible and from which come their wealth. [A.B.A.]

[7]Here Prescot goes into an analysis of the game, which he lost, clearly annoyed with himself. As he says, his mind was on matters of more weight at the time. [A.B.A.]

[8] Shif: serving girl or slave wench. A word not often used by Prescot since it appears to signify a degree of arrogant contempt by its user. Here, of course, that was the intention in Prescot’s use, and why I retain it in transposition. [A.B.A.]