Copyright © 1976, Kenneth Bulmer

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

First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1976.

This Edition published in 2006 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1

4EB, United Kingdom

www.mushroom-ebooks.com

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

ISBN 1843194201

The Tides of Kregen

Dray Prescot #12

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

A Note on the Krozair Cycle

With this volume of his saga, Dray Prescot is hurled afresh into brand-new adventures on the planet of Kregen, that grim and beautiful, marvelous and terrible world four hundred light-years away beneath the red and green fires of Antares, under the Suns of Scorpio.

Dray Prescot is a man of above medium height, with brown hair and brown eyes that are level and dominating. His shoulders are immensely wide and he carries himself with an abrasive honesty and a fearless courage. He moves like a great hunting cat, quiet and deadly. Born in 1775 and educated in the inhumanly harsh conditions of the late eighteenth century English navy, he presents a picture of himself that, the more we learn of him, grows no less enigmatic.

Through the machinations of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, mortal but superhuman men dedicated to the aid of humanity, and of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, he has been taken to Kregen many times. On that savage and exotic world he rose to become Zorcander of the clansmen of Segesthes, and Lord of Strombor in Zenicce.

Against all odds Prescot won his highest desire and in that immortal battle at The Dragon’s Bones claimed his Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. And Delia claimed him in the face of her father, the dread Emperor of Vallia. Amid the rolling thunder of the acclamations of "Hai Jikai!" Prescot became Prince Majister of Vallia and wed his Delia, the Princess Majestrix. One of their favorite homes is Esser Rarioch in Valkanium, capital of the island of Valka of which Prescot is Strom. Far to the west of Turismond, the western continent of this grouping of continents and islands called Paz, lies the inner sea, the Eye of the World. There Prescot as a swifter captain became a member of the mystic and martial Order of Krozairs of Zy. He says he values his membership of the Krzy more highly than any other of his honors.

After a series of adventures on the continent of Havilfar, during which he fought in the arena of the Jikhorkdun and became King of Djanduin, idolized by his ferocious four-armed Djangs, Prescot managed to stay alive to thwart the plans of the Empress Thyllis of Hamal. In the Battle of Jholaix, Hamal was defeated and an uneasy peace ensued. Prescot and Delia and the children returned to Esser Rarioch in Valka looking forward to a happy and contented life.

Thus ends the Havilfar cycle. This volume, Tides of Kregen, opens the Krozair Cycle. Kregen is a world too rich in passion and action to allow a fighting man like Dray Prescot to rest for long. Once more, then, Prescot is launched into fresh adventures, but this time there is a hiatus which, I believe, might easily break a man of lesser fire and spirit than Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy. Alan Burt Akers

Chapter One

The Star Lords’ warning

When two wizards begin quarreling it is time for sensible men to take cover.

"You young fambly, Khe-Hi!" Evold Scavander spluttered and fumed, his bewhiskered peppery features fairly glowing with baffled fury. "You lord of mumbo jumbo!" I fancied he would explode at any moment. He sneezed, powerfully, and Khe-Hi-Bjanching took a smart step backward, waving a hand before his young and handsome face.

"Now, old man, admit you have no powers to penetrate—"

"Powers! Powers! I’ve had more powers than you’ve had loloo’s eggs for breakfast!" Evold swiped away at his face with a huge square of silk, all bright orange and red and brown. "I tell you, you arrogant puffed-up wizard of Loh, I put no store by this tomfoolery of appearances—"

"I saw, Evold, you ninny! I saw !"

"You saw the remains of last night’s dopa, you young whippersnapper." He sneezed again, a veritable gusher of effort. The handkerchief swiped fretfully. "I’m the wizard to the Prince and don’t you forget it!"

"To the Prince you may be anything, old man, I do not doubt. But a wizard!" Here Khe-Hi-Bjanching, that young and superior Wizard of Loh, laughed most sardonically, cutting old San Evold to the quick. "I grant you do have a power, aye, a mighty fine power of drowning a man in your sneezes! But as a wizard you would do well sweeping out the zorcadrome."

"I’ll — I’ll—"

"What? Cast a spell and turn me into a toad? Well, go on. Try."

"That mumbo jumbo is for you young fools. I know what I know." They were really going at each other now, there on the terrace of my high fortress of Esser Rarioch in Valkanium. Only by chance had I come on them, being troubled in mind and going to find old Evold Scavander. When two wizards quarrel it behooves a mere man to be circumspect about taking himself off, but I stood for a short space in the shadow of a pillar watching them, the pressure on my spirits a little relieved by their antics.

Khe-Hi-Bjanching waxed more vociferous, his white gown with the crimson rope around his waist a blaze of radiance in the streaming light of the suns. "And I know we have had a visitation. If you do not instantly let me pass to report to the Prince he’ll have your head off and have you hanging by the heels from the highest battlements of Esser Rarioch."

"The Prince would not condone such barbarities. He’d as lief trim your height by a head." They went on like fighting cocks. With shrill squeals my younger twins, Segnik and Velia, scampered around the corner. They could run well now and were involved in some activity that made them oblivious to the quarrel. By the time they realized what was going on, a realization matched to their understanding of funny old San Evold and clever San Khe-Hi, Turko the Shield appeared, his face grim, to seize them up with two muscular heaves, one under each arm. He did not see me and he carried the twins off with a gentle concern that pleased me, despite all their squawking for Unca Turko to let them watch the fight. Turko the Shield, a mighty Khamorro whose superb body and muscles could break men and destroy armed and armored foemen, felt that altogether sensible desire to place as much distance as he could between himself and a couple of wizards about to do each other mischief. This quarrel appeared to me to be the outcome of the perfectly natural friction to be expected. Evold, who was the wisest of the wise men of my island Stromnate of Valka, shared the fears of the old when confronted by the eager zest of the young. But Evold had served me well and he ought to know he would never be cast off. Khe-Hi-Bjanching had yet to prove himself.

Turko’s rumble, carrying off the younger twins, faded, and I smiled. Oh, yes here in my wonderful island of Valka in my high fortress of Esser Rarioch I could smile because I was with my Delia and my children; I could smile even though I knew with a pang of misgiving just what the Wizard of Loh meant when he talked of an apparition, of an appearance. This, then, explained the trouble that lay on my spirit. Although I had not seen the apparition this time, I had felt it and its evil power, malefic and altogether horrible in that high palace of light and laughter.

The twin Suns of Scorpio flooded their jade and ruby lights onto the high terrace; the bees buzzed in the flowers; the whole scene in that clear limpid air was one to dizzy the senses with beauty. Young Yallan halted at the end of the terrace, the hefty jar of water on his shoulder shaking and slopping as he hesitated to dare to pass. Yallan worked in the kitchens — he was not a slave, for neither Delia nor I will allow slaves in our lands — and he was paid well. He was a man, an apim, for we did not consider the carrying of heavy jars of water up the flights of steps a girl’s work. He saw me and he slopped more water. The time for fun had gone.

"Sans, Sans," I said, stepping forward. I used a gentle voice, but they both switched around smartly, knowing just who it was who spoke to them, and instantly started in hurling their sides of the argument at me. I held up a hand. They fell at once to silence.

"For the sake of Sweet Merrilissa, let young Yallan past. He spills the water, and it is a heavy task to carry it up."

"Yes, my Prince," they said, together, looking at Yallan as though he had sprouted horns. Yallan swallowed, walked past and turned and said, "My thanks, my Prince. Shall I call the palace guard?

When two wizards . . ." He looked troubled.

"They merely riddle a puzzle, good Yallan. I thank you for your thought."

"Well, my Prince," he said, looking doubtfully at the two wizards, still standing on tiptoe and glowering at each other.

San Khe-Hi half turned his head, stared at Yallan and said with very much of a snake’s hiss in his voice:

"Be off, or I shall turn you into one of the little insects that crawl upon the floor!" Yallan let out a screech and fled. He spilled drops of water as he went, but he did not drop the jar. I said, "That was unkind, San. Unkind even if funny."

"There are important affairs of state, my Prince, that you must know—" San Evold choked and sneezed. "Important! He wakes with a sore head from dopa and sees visions!"

"Not so, Evold. I know whereof Khe-Hi speaks. I have had visitations before, apparitions." The Wizard of Loh nodded his head, the suns-light catching that blazing red hair and sheening brilliantly.

"I told you so, you old dodderer! Go back to your chemicals and your cayferm and your silver boxes!" But San Evold Scavander was not the wisest wise man in all Valka, just to be foisted off by a youngster, even if that young man was one of the famed and feared Wizards of Loh. He looked at me closely and he no longer sneezed.

"You speak sooth, my Prince. I know that. Then I would like to know more — all there is to tell. For there must be danger here." Then, unable to resist a last dig at Bjanching, he added: "For if danger threatens in Valka, I would not like to repose much confidence in this young fambly, for all he claims to be a Wizard of Loh."

"I’ll show you!" began Bjanching.

I silenced them.

"Tell me what you have seen, San. All of it. And quickly." He knew that tone of voice. As you know I had picked up this Wizard of Loh in the island of Ogra-gemush, when Delia and Merle and Bjanching and I had been put to the test of the two doors by that unhappy King Wazur of Ogra-gemush. He had heard me and he had seen me in very different circumstances from these wonderful surroundings of Esser Rarioch, so he answered up quickly and succinctly.

"I awoke with the sure knowledge that a Wizard of Loh in lupu had appeared here. I could sense the locus. I saw him, not a strong manifestation; but I know he was evil."

"Aye," I said. "Aye. Unless I am mistaken that is the manifestation of the Wizard of Loh called Phu-si-Yantong."

Bjanching drew in his breath with a hiss. I had spoken to him of Yantong, enough to acquaint him with that devil’s evil intentions toward not only me and my family here in Valka, but also of his insane ambition to rule the whole continent of Havilfar and the island Empire of Vallia also, of which my Delia’s father was Emperor.

"The malefic force was great," said Bjanching. He was a young man, the only young Wizard of Loh I had seen up to then. Sometimes his spells did not work. He was eager and willing to learn, and highly contemptuous of those who put no store by his powers. "He was in lupu at a great distance."

"The greater the distance the better," I said. Lupu is that trancelike state into which the Wizards of Loh can place themselves and so see and observe over distances. Phu-si-Yantong had given orders that I was not to be assassinated, for he planned to use me in his evil schemes. From time to time he kept an observation on me. Now that I had my own Wizard of Loh I wondered if I might use Bjanching in more practical ways.

I looked at him. He was well aware of his enormous good fortune in being still alive and, into the bargain, of having a standing at my court in Esser Rarioch.

"Tell me, San. Is it possible to counter these intrusions in some way?"

"Yes, Prince," he said quickly. Too quickly, for his face clouded and he thought, then said: "It depends on the strength of the wizard."

"He is very powerful. With no disrespect to you, I hazard the guess he is the most powerful Wizard of Loh outside Loh itself, at least as far as I can judge."

"Then I can set up a defense which will slow him down. I can fool him, for a space. After that . . ."

"He has purely physical ambitions. He wishes, quite insanely, to assume powers of overlordship in as many countries and nations as he can contrive. I think that weakens him." All this time San Evold had been spluttering and sneezing away in a minor key. Now he burst out: "Well, by Vox! Why do you not take a great armada and crush him, my Prince?" I smiled. "The question is, San, where is he? What are his powers? I do not forget he is in alliance with two evil men I know: Vad Garnath of Hamal, a man who would benefit the whole of Kregen by dying, and the Kataki Strom, the personification of devilment."

"Katakis." Khe-Hi-Bjanching pursed his lips. "They are bad business, by Hlo-Hli!"

"Then begin at once, San. Call on my chamberlain Panshi for whatever you require. I would have my house cleansed of these visitations. One day Phu-si-Yantong may appear with a greater desire than mere observation." I turned to Evold. "And, San Evold, you would greatly oblige me by rendering assistance to San Khe-Hi."

Evold’s old stained smock quivered. He sneezed. But he got out, "Right gladly, my Prince," well enough. I knew I could trust him, and he would provide a useful check on Bjanching until I was fully satisfied as to that young Wizard of Loh’s credentials.

As they went off, to go by way of the long hall of the images to that lofty room given over to San Evold as a laboratory, I was pleased to see they had forgotten their quarrel. Already they were talking as wizard to wizard, in their two very different disciplines, anxious to hatch out a likely scheme to foil this Opaz-forsaken Wizard of Loh who was trying to play dirty tricks on their ruler. I sighed. Truly, I had to be thankful to Zair for the quality of my friends and companions. That made me itch for Seg — for Seg Segutorio had taken his wife Thelda and their children and gone flying off to pay a call on his homeland of Erthyrdrin. That was a visit long overdue. As for Inch, he was up in his Black Mountains of Vallia working like a beaver on a new dam that would bring prosperity to one of his valleys and its people.

There was nothing I could do about Seg and Inch, for I never forgot they had their own lives to lead, both being Kovs of Vallia, and for the moment there was nothing more I could do about foiling that rast of a Phu-si-Yantong. So, throwing off these cares that were, after all, only dreamlike in quality, I went off to find Balass the Hawk and my eldest son Drak and see how they fared. I was most interested in Drak’s education. He was growing up now, he and his twin sister Lela, and while my Delia had indicated very firmly that she fully intended to take care of Lela’s education herself, it was my responsibility to see about that rapscallion Drak. I had not smothered him with titles and honors, as so many powerful men of the Empire suffocated their sons. Delia and I had created the rank and title of Amak in Valka. This was, in Hamal, the lowest rank of nobility. We possessed a tiny island just off the north coast of Valka, a place no more than a dwabur across and three dwaburs long. It was called Vellendur. So with a small and deliberately low-key ceremony we had created our son Drak the Amak of Vellendur. The people there were apims, a simple fisher and weaving folk, who had sent as many stalwart sons — aye, and daughters

— as they could when we had freed Valka from the evil grip of the slave-masters and the aragorn. An ample gift had seen to many of their wants and they were grateful for what had been done for them, for they had suffered when the aragorn had ridden in, powerful and haughty, to drag away their people into slavery. So now Drak was the Amak of Vellendur. I fancied he was pleased. But I’d told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t to begin to get puffed-up ideas of his own importance, and his allowance was kept very low. Delia handled that; I felt it was perhaps a trifle too low and so from time to time I would slip him a handful of valens, or buy him a zorca colt or a stavrer pup. When Delia found out she was angry, but I thought that Drak was learning the lessons he must learn for life not only on Kregen but on any world where men traffic together and there are lords and those who are not lords. Balass the Hawk, that fierce hyr-kaidur, was giving Drak all the benefits of the higher arts of swordsmanship as it affected Balass. He’d been a hyr-kaidur in the arena of Hyrklana with me and was a supreme secutor. This meant he understood the ways of sword and shield. For others of the arts of war we went to others of my friends and companions.

So, going down the stairs that led to the walled-in sandy enclosure where Balass sweated away, I paused, looking out under the steaming rays of the twin suns.

I felt shock.

It was quick — far too quick, by Zim-Zair!

Against that opaline radiance floated a dark shadow. I saw the widespread wings, the squat head, the raked-forward talons. This bird of prey was not large enough, or shaped correctly, to be a flutduin, the superb saddle bird we in Valka were adopting slowly. This was a bird I had seen many and many a time during my life on Kregen, this planet four hundred light-years from the world of my birth, this glorious world of Kregen under Antares which held all of life I held dear.

This marvelous world of Kregen held also the Gdoinye, the messenger and spy for the Everoinye, the Star Lords.

I stared up at the silhouette of the bird and the Gdoinye flicked his wings and so dived directly for me. My hand jerked spasmodically to the rapier scabbarded at my side. But, even then, I wondered of what use mortal steel would be against this gorgeous scarlet and gold raptor. The bird wheeled before me with a harsh and raucous cry. I knew that if anyone looked on this scene they would not see the bird, for the Star Lords, who had brought me across the interstellar gulfs, protected their servants, although they took scant heed for my hide.

"Dray Prescot! Idiot! Fool! Onker!"

"Aye!" I shouted back. "I am all of those things, for I do spit you through!" The bird screeched again, windblown laughter or a mere bird’s cry I knew not. "You are a high and mighty man, these latter days. You are a noble, a prince, a Prince Majister, no less."

"These things have come to me through no seeking of mine." I hurled the words at the Gdoinye but I know now that I spoke of my humility with pride, with foolish pride.

"Nonetheless you hold high position here in Valka, and in Vallia, no less than in Strombor or with your clansmen of Segesthes. And, Dray Prescot, are you not also the King of Djanduin?"

"You know it, you cramph of a bird."

"You are the cramph, onker, for you forget why you were brought to Kregen at all."

"I never knew, you get-onker!"

The bird screeched again, and this time, I swear, the mocking amusement at my own stupidity sounded clearly in the cry.

"You were never meant to know. And you think you may defy the Star Lords, you puny human mortal?" I made no reply. The Star Lords, who could hurl me away from Kregen and all I loved back to Earth four hundred light-years off through space, had never bothered themselves about my welfare, only calling on me to perform tasks for them. But they had not troubled me for a very long time now. Although it would be foolish to say I had forgotten them, their eternal menace had drifted into the back of my mind. Now I was being reminded of my true position.

"Have I failed you yet?" I spoke quickly as the Gdoinye swerved, all a shimmer of scarlet and gold beneath that streaming opaline radiance from the twin suns.

"You fail at your peril! There is work to your hand!"

"And if I refuse?"

"You may not refuse, Dray Prescot. You are not a pawn nor yet are you the master of your fate. Think on it, Dray Prescot, think on these things."

The Gdoinye said swod and not pawn, but I knew damn well what he meant. But I did not know what he meant by saying I was not a pawn. I had struggled against the Star Lords in the past and felt I had gained some advantage over them; I fancied there was a great deal more to learn before I could banish them from my scheme of things.

"You are a great man, Dray Prescot, with your string of titles and your lands and money and power. The Star Lords exact strict obedience from those they select to serve their ends."

"You nurdling great onker!" I bellowed. "What are these ends and what are the Star Lords trying to do here on Kregen?"

This time I was certain the damned bird laughed at me in a great cackling cry and a ruffling of feathers. He bore up and his pinions beat widely and he soared up and away. As I stared up after him his departing cry wafted down, hoarse and mocking.

"The Star Lords are most considerate of you, Dray Prescot. They send me to warn you, to give you time. Think how puissant are the Star Lords, and how generous!"

Then he was a mere dot against the radiance and then he was gone.

Feeling in a foul mood I went down to the sandy arena. Drak was thwacking away at Balass, making his shield gong. Every now and then Balass would reach out and touch Drak with his wooden sword, just to remind him and make him jump about a bit.

"Father!" said Drak, leaping back most agilely and turning to me. "Father! I saw a monstrous great bird, all red and gold, in the sky, making a most terrible noise."

I just stared at him.

"There was no bird, Drak," said Balass. "I saw nothing."

"No," I said, most heavily. "No, Drak. I saw nothing."

Chapter Two

Shanks against Valka

Delia was swimming when I walked into our private walled garden high on the flank of Esser Rarioch. Below the far wall the expanse of the Bay was visible, with a small portion of the city of Valkanium and ships sailing to and from the harbor with white sails burnished by the sun’s glow. I stood for a while on the flags watching as Delia lazed through the water.

Every time I look at my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond, I feel that thump of blood at my heart, that constriction of my throat. I may be accused of many things on two worlds, and if I am accused of saying the name of Delia more often than most, then I defend my right to that — no! I do not defend! I scorn anyone cloddish enough not to understand the glory and the magic and the love her name evokes — my Delia, my Delia of Strombor, my Delia of Vallia!

Thinking these savage and chauvinistic thoughts I walked down the wide shallow steps into the garden until the flower-covered wall concealed all the vista below so that Delia and I were completely alone in our own private garden.

She saw me and waved a bare arm and dived and swam under the water to the marble edge of the pool. I waited for her and bent to lift her out while she caught me cunningly and pulled, dropping back. With a mighty splash we both went in.

I spluttered and tried to catch her, but she was eel-like, flashing, glorious, and for a while we swam and played and I forgot the cares of government and high politics and the snares and entrapments of my enemies.

That gorgeous brown hair of Delia’s with those enraging chestnut highlights floated on the water as she lay on her back, kicking with her feet. She splashed me, so I splashed back, and we met, breast to breast, without struggling, and sank down into the blue water. When we came up for breath she said:

"And have you seen Segnik and Velia, Dray? They both deserve a spanking for what they did to poor Aunt Katri."

"They only hid her wool, dear—"

"They must learn to behave themselves."

"Yes."

We climbed out and sat on the grass to sun ourselves dry. The glory of the suns fell on the garden and on the fairest flower within that garden — well, I will not maunder on. All this made me feel the agony of what might befall if the Star Lords called on me again. I meant to speak to Delia. But how to explain to your wife that you had never been born on the world where she was born? How to explain that you came from a speck of light in the sky four hundred light-years away, a world that possessed only one sun? Only one moon?

How tell that on that world lived men, apims, Homo sapiens, and there were none of the other races of men that made Kregen so marvelous and horrible a place? How could she be expected to believe? One sun only? A solitary moon? Only apims? She would shake her head and laugh and push me in the pool. I said: "I may have to go away again."

It was brutal.

She turned to me.

"You mean it?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Dray! Can you tell me? Long ago I made up my mind never to ask. I remember the strangeness of our first meetings, the time I spent in the Opal Palace of Zenicce, and the time you said you had spent with our clansmen. Dray! I am frightened to know, and yet, and yet I must know . . ."

"I will tell you, Delia, my heart, one day. I promise."

"And how you made yourself the Strom of Valka, and yet there was no time, for we marched through the hostile territories of Turismond, with Seg and Thelda, and that awful Umgar Stro, and—"

"Hush, hush. It will not hurt you, save for the parting."

"That is like a death."

"I know."

Banal words. But then, banal words mean so much when the hearts of those saying them tremble so in agitation and unspoken apprehension.

We spoke then of the ordinary familiar things of our life, those items of consuming importance to us. Segnik and Velia must be spoken to. Lela was to visit friends in Quivir, where that rip Vangar Riurik, the Strom owing allegiance to me as the Kov of Zamra, was throwing a party. For Drak I had other plans, and as I spelled them out Delia nodded, her sweet face downturned and her hair spreading in a glowing brown and golden flood. She knew from our experiences together that what I suggested was not only sensible, it would give Drak the best of all possible chances on this terrible world of Kregen. We spoke of the new watercourses to be sculpted into the gardens, and I slowly suggested that we change the plans to a pump to bring water up higher still, a wind-driven pump, so the kitchen staff might be relieved of one burden. Delia agreed at once.

She lay back, glanced under the suns and rubbed her bare tanned stomach. "I am hungry."

"Yes, and I have a meeting with my Elders after the meal . . ."

"After! Why didn’t you invite them?"

"I wanted to be with you and the twins."

"Oh."

So we stood up and, our arms around each other, went slowly up out of that scented garden back into the high fortress of Esser Rarioch and, after one of the essential meals of Kregen, got to the business of running the country.

There was much to discuss but I will not weary you with a recounting of the measures we took, for although they were of consuming interest to me then — and still are, by Zair! — they were much of the stuff of government in many places and worlds, I dare say. Zamra was still giving us a little trouble over the question of slaves. I ruled — if that is not too strong a word to use — from my palace of Esser Rarioch in Valkanium, the capital of Valka, not only Valka herself, but Zamra and the other islands also. These included Can Thirda. So far no one had agreed on a new name for the island since it had been pacified after the troubles and then given to me as a gift by the Emperor. I had vetoed Prescotdrin and Dray-drin, regarding the latter as downright ugly. I thought then that I would never have a land named after me, in which I was wrong, as you shall hear. I wanted Deliadrin. My word carried much weight, of course, the chief opponent being Delia herself.

She rather fancied Can Drak, but then again perhaps Leladrin would be nice, or maybe . . . and she would pause and put her chin on her fist and gaze around the table, her laughing eyes sizing us up, one by one, until those solid, respectable — aye, and some ruffianly too! — men of mine would shuffle their feet and then, despite all, smile broadly in response. I think we had a good life then. I know it. I knew, very positively, that I did not wish to leave.

So we discussed and decided on the cares of statecraft until a messenger burst in, wild-eyed, disheveled, thrusting past the guards who had the sense to let him pass.

"My Prince!" he bellowed. Blood stained down his face, brown and cracked, oozing where the sweat ran across the bright wound. "Leem Lovers! They have razed Fossheim! The village burned —

burned—" He staggered and would have fallen but a guard caught him and quickly carried him to a seat. Delia brought wine herself. He swallowed painfully. "My Princess—"

"What of Fossana?" I said. I spoke more roughly than I intended, for the man braced up in the seat staring with wild eyes.

"The island—" He choked and swallowed and began again. "We fought. There were ten of us, ten and a Deldar — lookouts — we fought — Deldar Nath the Shiv — they were devils, devils! Fishheads! They cut us down!"

Tom Tomor ti Vulheim, an old blade comrade and a man with whom I had happily fought when we took Valka from those damned aragorn, was already running for the door, the sword on his hip banging. He was yelling. Tom, whom I had made take the name of Tomor from the battle we had fought under Tomor Peak, and who was the Elten of Avanar, was now the general of my armies of Valka. I could trust him to take what were the immediately necessary measures against these fishheads, these weirdly repellent diffs sailing around the curve of the world from the other grouping of continents and islands of Kregen to rape and plunder and burn.

The full significance of this latest assault was not lost on us. We were to the north of the equator, and the Leem Lovers sailed up generally from the south, to attack the continent of Havilfar and its associated islands down there. They had penetrated to the north of Havilfar and over to the west up the Hoboling Islands. For them to have come this far north could only mean they had stepped up their activity. Why they had done so still remained a mystery. Our immediate task was to drive them back and prevent their making a base on the sweet little island of Fossana.

Delia glanced at me and I saw that she was moved.

There was more than mere agony over the despoiling of one of the islands which looked to us for protection. For the island of Fossana, to the south and east of the island of Valka, had been marked out by me as so charming and delightful a spot that the title of Amakni of Fossana should be the proud title of our daughter Lela, to match her twin brother Drak. But Delia had put a slender finger to her lips and shaken her head and said, "Not yet, my great grizzly graint of a husband. You always rush into things headlong. Let Drak have the glory for a space, for he will . . ." And then she had paused and bit her lip. So I finished for her: "One day, if we were ordinary people, he would take my place." But, speaking thoughtlessly, she had forgotten that by virtue of a dip in the Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph of far Aphrasöe, she and I were assured of a thousand years of life. The fuller implications of that situation must wait their rightful place in this telling of my life on Kregen. For now Delia was indicating to me that, had we let Lela become the Amakni of Fossana, she might have been there now, when the shanks came in their swift strange craft. She might have . . . I said, "We must drive them out of Fossana rapidly. I believe they seek a secure base here." I looked down on the swod and his blood-caked face. "You have done well to reach here. Your name?"

"Barlanga, my Prince. I took our patrol flier. I ran from them — I flew away—" He choked and then got it out. "My comrades were dead. I was the last. I should have—"

"No, Barlanga. You did the right thing. Now we know and may fall on these devil shanks with great force."

Then I was out of the conference chamber and yelling.

Very few burs after that the fliers took to the air, all the airboats crammed with fighting men, raging to hurl these hated shanks, these evil Leem Lovers, these fishheads, back into the sea where they belonged.

"We were slow, by Vox!" Vangar ti Valkanium, my chief of fliers, grumbled away as he gripped the rail of the high deck, peering over the head of the timoneer at the controls. Men massed forward on the main deck of the flier, armed and armored men, raging to get at the shanks. This flier was one we had acquired in the old days and so far she had failed us less often than others. Those fliers I had taken from Hamal, built for the Hamalians themselves, formed an elite squadron and they were well ahead with Tom Tomor in command.

I fretted at the delay, but I said, "We must have sure knowledge before we attack, Vangar. The onslaught on Fossana could easily be a ruse. These devil fishheads are not fools."

"You are right, Majister. I meant we were slow assembling and forming and taking to the air." My ugly old face does not smile easily when I am not with Delia and the children. "We did well, Vangar, and you know it. Does the title of Elten then sit so heavily on you?"

"You have created me an Elten, my Prince; that is the least of my worries." The air streamed past, whirling the banners and pennons high, blowing the bright arbora feathers in helmets into riotous color. Up there on a gilded staff my flag flew, the yellow cross on the scarlet ground, that battle flag fighting men call Old Superb. It felt good to have that war banner flying there. Ahead the sky remained clear and blue and the sea below lapped deep and calm. Ahead lay horror and battle and sudden death.

The parting with Delia had been brief, for I had kissed her and then run to don my trappings of war. She had insisted I wear armor, and not only to please her but because it was a sensible precaution I wore a breast and back. The short scarlet cape flared in the wind of our passage. The old scarlet breechclout was wrapped securely and pulled in with a broad plain lesten-hide belt with a dull silver buckle. I do not, as you know, care to have straps around my chest or shoulders, and generally hang my varied collection of swords from whatever number of belts is necessary around my waist. I had a rapier and main-gauche of fine Vallian manufacture. That particular sword which Naghan the Gnat, a superb armorer, and I had made in imitation of a Krozair longsword hung scabbarded down my back under the cape. These were weapons enough, but in addition I had belted on a fine thraxter that had come into my possession after the Battle of Jholaix. As for headgear, I wore a plain steel cap with a rim of trimmed ling fur and with a rather more flaunting scarlet tuft of feathers than I would ordinarily relish. The thing had a most Tartar air about it, but Delia had insisted I wear some helmet, and the tall scarlet tufts of feathers would show my men where I was.

That made me glance at Turko, massive and muscled, where he stood with the enormous shield he would bear in action to protect me. Where Turko the Shield went, men knew, there went Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia, Strom of Valka.

As the aerial armada pressed on I had time to consider, somewhat ruefully, that Valka’s own fleet of great sailing fliers could not hurtle across the wind as we were doing. I had assigned them to defense of the island. One day I must return to Havilfar and go to Hamal, that puissant Empire under its evil ruler Thyllis, who was now crowned Empress, and discover the final secrets of the silver boxes that powered, uplifted and directed the fliers.

Our fleet of airboats pressed on. Now we flew over the scattering of islands called the Nairnairsh Islands, from the huge numbers of nairnair birds that made of every rocky headland a cawing, fluttering colony of white and brown feathers. I could see a few small ships sailing, fishermen, local traders, and I looked — thankfully in vain — for a sight of the tall, wing-like banded sails of the shanks.

"Not far now, my Prince."

Balass the Hawk stood at my side, fully armored, his visor thrown up, grim and yet splendid, with his hawklike black face a great comfort to me.

The wind bluster cracked Old Superb above our heads. The suns glittered from armor and weapons. I turned and, looking ahead, said, "Not long now, Balass."

In those days I felt no admiration for the true courage of the shanks, those fishheads who sailed in their superb craft around the curve of the world, sailing from their grouping of continents and islands to sack and destroy the fair cities of our continental grouping of Paz. These shanks, these Leem Lovers, were superb seamen. Yet I knew, as an old sailor, that after their immense voyage across the open sea they would need a secure base, a good anchorage, a place to careen and refurbish their ships, a place to get their breath back after the voyage. Fossana would be such a place. They must not be allowed to make a base so close to Valka . . .

"We must stop them here," I said, still looking across the sea, willing the voller to fly faster and bring us to the battle quickly. "They must not be allowed a chance to fester here." A voice spoke at my back, a voice that made me go cold from the very first syllables.

"We will fight them, Father, and we will win!"

Slowly I turned around.

Young Drak — my son — Drak — stood there in brave panoply, all scarlet and gold, staring up at me with a set and defiant expression across his face. He knew what he had done. He had no fear of the terrible shanks, but he was most uneasy about my reaction.

With him — Delia!

She smiled at me.

My heart leaped. She wore a scarlet breechclout, a breast and back, and a helmet very much like the one she had insisted I wear. She carried her rapier and main-gauche scabbarded to her slender waist, and I knew how well she could use them, the Jiktar and the Hikdar.

"Delia," I said. "You should not have allowed him."

"He is like you, Dray. A wild leem. And is this not to be his portion in life?"

"Aye."

Oby stood there also, accoutered, smiling away at me, relishing his part in the coming battle. As a young rip he had a most dubious effect on Drak. Young Oby had mended much of his wild ways when he had been my assistant in the arena; now his passion was all for vollers and the mysteries of aerial navigation, but it was clear he intended to get into the coming fight.

"And Naghan the Gnat?"

"I am here!" shouted Naghan and, in truth, there he was, loaded down with choice specimens from his own armory, smiling away like a loon. I shook my head.

"Mad, the lot of you . . ." I looked past Naghan. "And you, Tilly, you are here also."

"Yes, my Prince," said Tilly, her glorious golden fur glowing in the light of the Suns of Scorpio, for Tilly was a most delicious little Fristle fifi.

A mewling and harshly screeching roar told me that Melow the Supple had also come with us. I stared at Melow and the ferocious manhound stretched her neck up, then put out a fearsomely clawed hand to keep her son Kardo from beginning one of the interminable fights he was always into with Drak. Well, I welcomed Melow and Kardo, for the jiklos are terrible and ferocious, mighty in their strength. Although really human beings, they have been changed so that they run on all fours and possess the fighting ferocity of the leem.

"Melow, your son Kardo will be with Drak?"

"Yes, Dray Prescot. For that is where he wills he should be."

"And you will be with the Princess Majestrix."

Melow lolled her red tongue between those horrific jagged teeth, and I felt a little more easy. Mind you, once I had this circus home I would let them know just what my true thoughts were on this foolhardy rushing into danger. Didn’t they understand the sheerly awful power of the shanks? Didn’t they realize they could all be killed?

A lookout shouted from forward and I swung around to look ahead. A cloud hung in the sky athwart our passage, a cloud that must have grown with incredible swiftness, for only murs before the sky had been clear.

A dun shadow swept across the glittering sea below and in an instant we plunged into the cloud. Dank tendrils of vapor brushed us, clinging and unpleasant. Vision was reduced so that I could see only those faces near me; beyond the quarterdeck the ship vanished.

Shouts and yells arose. That cloud — how could it have formed so quickly?

The voller jerked. I knew that feeling. The flier lurched and skidded sideways. Her nose went down. We were falling.

"Those Opaz-forsaken cramphs of Hamal!" yelled Vangar, incensed that once again his duty as chief of fliers was to preside over a crash.

"Silence!" I bellowed.

In the ensuing hush we heard the wind bluster and roar as we fell. Slowly the haze cleared and we dropped free of the cloud. I looked up. The rest of our fleet was winging swiftly on, arrow-straight for Fossana. Now it would all be up to Tom Tomor, and it would be to him the responsibility would fall. I looked down. An island below showed creamy surf breaking on a beach. Massive trees crowded close, and there were at least three village clearings visible. Men were running below. Men like myself, apims, and also weird forms with grotesque fish heads, scaled and armored, running with vicious tridents flashing in the suns, weapons stained with the blood of my people.

"Shanks!"

The voller hit the sand. Ahead the wooden palisade of a village offered shelter. Everyone leaped from the stranded voller, running fleetly for the village. Heads appeared over the stockade. A flight of arrows rose and I cursed. Then I realized the arrows curved away, falling into a body of fishheads who were trying to cut us off.

"Run!" I bellowed.

Straight for the village gate we raced. The valves were dragged open. We tumbled through the opened portal and the villagers slammed the heavy lenken logs back with a thunk. Iron bars dropped. The headman came running up, distraught, wringing his hands. Simple fisher folk these, used to landing fine fat fish in their nets, and now they faced man-sized fishheads raging at them, armed with tridents, swords and bows, their plunder from the sea revenging itself horribly on them.

He knew me.

"Majister! Majister! Monsters — they—"

"Man the walls! Keep your heads down!" I shook his shoulder. "It will be all right, Koter, all right."

"Yes, Majister, yes — but the fishheads—"

We could hold this place until my fliers returned. We must hold this place! Nothing else would do. Nothing.

The Leem Lovers were in force, roaring in to attack, hurling spears and tridents, shooting arrows. My men replied with the cool precise shooting Seg Segutorio had drilled into them. These men were Valkan Archers, but they used the great Lohvian longbow and they could outshoot the compound reflex bows of the shanks. Spare supplies of shafts had been brought from the flier, for Jiktar Orlon Llodar in command of the regiment was an officer in whom I reposed confidence. He did not have his full regiment with him, for half had been embarked on another flier, packed in like fish in a barrel. With three pastangs of sixty men each we must hold off an unknown number of fishheads.

I leaped up onto the parapet around the stockade. The village possessed a stockade because these islands were often the scene of raids from Pandahem, or from a dissident nation of Segesthes beyond Zenicce, or, in the old days, from the slavers and aragorn. Along the beach the voller lay stranded, and shanks were already clambering and running there. I cursed. From the trees other shanks were running. The devils must have beached their ships and marched overland. There had not been a sign of a shank ship as we crash-landed.

A circuit of the stockade brought me back to the parapet over the main gate. This faced along the beach, as I have said, and not out to sea or inland. Defensive considerations dictated that choice. A small protected harbor held a few fishing boats, little better than dories. The circuit of the walls had shown me we could hold. A stream trickled down from the forest so we would have water, if the Leem Lovers did not divert or dam the stream.

"Now, Jiktar," I said brusquely to Orion Llodar. "Now is the chance to show that the Second Regiment of Valkan Archers can do better than the First."

Before Llodar could answer, young Drak, who had followed me around most carefully, sniffed. "I would like very much to see that," he said. I glared at him. As you know, Drak is the Hyr-Jiktar — colonel in chief — of the First Regiment of Valkan Archers. Lela was Hyr-Jiktar of the Second. Orion Llodar smacked his buff-sleeved arm across his breastplate. He wore a bob there. "We shall, my Prince, and with due respect to Prince Drak, outshoot the finest the First could offer this day."

"I believe you. These yetches of fishheads will try to fool us. They will feint an attack on one flank and then drive in on another. All faces of the stockade must be kept under observation at all times. Have a party of swordsmen handy to rush to the threatened wall. And watch out for their Opaz-forsaken tridents. They are vicious."

"My Prince!" he bellowed, in the old soldierly way.

Barbaric and savage are my warriors of Valka and they love little better than a rousing fight, but we had been knocking drill and discipline into them. They would have full need of all their courage and skill now. But we could hold. With determined and skillful leadership we could defy the Leem Lovers. I was determined enough, Zair knows, and as to skill . . . well, this bore the appearance of a militarily simple defense of the fortified place. If they tried to burn us out . . . I bellowed for the headman, one Remush the Trident, for he was a noted fisherman, and got him to organize fire fighting parties of his people with all the buckets and containers they could find. This was the village of Panashti on the island of Lower Kairfowen. I fancied these names would be remembered henceforth, filling men’s mouths.

"I wish, my Prince, that my pastangs were at full strength." Jiktar Llodar stared with venom at the shanks as they massed at the forest edge.

"All the more glory, Jiktar, for those who are here."

That was cheap enough, Zair knows, but it fitted the occasion.

The gate looked sturdy in construction, with square towers and a walkway across the gap. "Here, Planath," I said, pointing. "Raise the standard here." Planath Pe-Na, my standard-bearer, was a Pachak and a man of exceptional virtues. He rammed the standard pole into a crevice in the wood and then lashed it upright. Dead or alive, Planath would stay by the standard. I turned to Kodar ti Vakkansmot, the chief of my corps of trumpeters. "Give a few good bracing calls, Kodar. Rouse the blood in ’em!"

"Aye, Majister."

The lilting peals of the trumpet sounded over the small stockaded village of Panashti on the island of Lower Kairfowen. I fancied the men would brace up at the sound, grip their weapons more firmly, glare the more murderously at their antagonists.

The blueness stole in quietly. It muffled the bright, brilliant sounds of the trumpet. It wrapped its baleful coils around me. I saw the blue radiance churning everywhere. The world was slipping away, I was falling, the whole world turning into the semblance of a giant Scorpion, come from the Star Lords to carry me far and far away.

Chapter Three

I defy the Star Lords

I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, knew what was happening to me. This obscenity had taken me before, many times, snatched me away from pleasant home life with those I loved and hurled me into fresh adventures in Kregen under Antares. Even more balefully still, it had thrust me contemptuously back to the world of my birth four hundred light-years off through the depths of interstellar space.

"No!" I shouted.

I was falling, in actuality. For the blueness lifted, the radiance dwindled a little and I felt myself falling and in the next instant the ground smashed up iron hard. I was winded. I tried to yell again, to shout my defiance of the Star Lords and their commands.

I heard voices — Delia’s voice, Drak’s, others — shouting; through the misty blueness I saw forms above me; hands grasped my arms and legs and I was carried, swaying and swinging above the packed earth. A shadow blotted my sight of the forms dimly visible through the blue mist. I thought I must have been carried into one of the huts. The blueness grew again. "No! I will not leave! It is unthinkable!" The blueness twirled about me, the Scorpion shape grew and grew and then, in very final truth, I was falling.

I was encompassed in a floating blueness. Everything turned blue, roaring and twisting in my skull.

"I will stay on Kregen!" I screamed it out, and I knew with a feeling close to despair that my scream gushed voicelessly from my mouth. I tried again. "I will not leave! More! I will not leave here!" The sensations of falling persisted now with dread finality. The blueness coiled in my eyes and head; I could not speak, could scarcely breathe; a weight oppressed my chest. All manner of thoughts flitted like black bats through my mind. I felt the ground again, dust and heat, and the abrupt hammer of conflict bursting painfully through into my skull.

All the sensations I had come to expect of a transition smashed at me. I was naked. I lay in the dust. And nearby a battle took place.

The Star Lords had contemptuously ignored my feeble yells of defiance. They had not banished me to Earth, for as I opened my eyes the glorious mingled lights of Antares fell about me, but I was no longer within the stockaded village of Panashti. I was no longer near Delia and Drak and all my other friends there.

On occasions before I had attempted to defy the Everoinye and instead of being banished to Earth had been dumped down, naked and unarmed, on some unknown spot on Kregen, there to sort out a problem for the Star Lords. Always before I had obeyed. I knew that the quickest way to rid myself of the immediate obligation to the Star Lords was to obey their injunctions and to settle the problem at hand. Then, always, before, I had been able to go about my own business. This time was different.

I sat up on the dusty ground and saw a sickeningly familiar sight.

A mass of crazed Relts ran and fell and were slaughtered as the shanks pursued them. I sat under the shadow of a voller parked beside two other vollers at the edge of a gulley in the dusty ground. I would have to stand up, all naked as I was, and run forward, into the fight, possess myself of a weapon and so defend these people against the Leem Lovers. This I could do. This was the way of it, the way of my life on Kregen. I was expected to take up arms at once and rush in to save the life of the one person —

perhaps two, if a mother and child were involved — in that melee whom the Star Lords wished preserved.

What they were planning with the people whose lives I thus perpetuated I did not then know. I didn’t care, didn’t give a damn.

This time I was Prince Majister. This time my wife and child were penned in a tiny rickety wooden village under savage attack from monsters from around the curve of the world. Against the skyline beyond the struggle I saw twin peaks, forested, shaped like sugar loaves. They bulked there against the blue. I knew them. I knew where I was. This was the island of Vilasca. Vilasca, barely twenty dwaburs from the Nairnairsh Islands, and south of them the island of Lower Kairfowen. And, on that island, the village of Panashti!

I leaped up.

Barely twenty dwaburs. A mere hundred miles! A fleet voller might take less than two burs — much less

— to cover that distance — a little over an hour. There are forty Earth minutes to a bur. If the flier was speedy . . .

Over there across the dusty earth where the Leem Lovers had swarmed ashore to catch these people all unprepared, a vicious and bloody struggle raged. This island of Vilasca did not owe allegiance to me; I was not its Strom or Kov or any other noble. I felt desperately sorry for those people, but there was no question, no hesitation in my mind. My duty lay elsewhere.

The voller controls felt warm under my hands. I thrust the levers hard over. Again I forced the speed lever all the way across, hard against the stop. The voller leaped into the air, screaming away, curving to the east and south. Twenty dwaburs to go . . .

As I shot over the beach and left that struggle I looked down.

What I saw shocked a fresh and awful knowledge into my brain. I saw the fighting down there, the wicked shapes of Leem Lovers as they went about their business of slaughtering the people of Vilasca. Among those shanks I saw the hideous forms of shtarkins. No one then knew the name these fishheads gave themselves; we called them by a variety of names of which shant, shank and shtarkin were only three. But the ones I called shtarkins were not fishheads. As I looked down I saw the reptilian heads, the snakelike features, the hard, unfishlike scales closely set, the wide eyes and the trap-mouths set flatly in wedge-shaped heads, a flicker of forked tongue darting through as they fought. Snakeheads!

The voller bore me up and away and I left those fearsome fighting shtarkins to slaughter the good people of Vilasca.

The shtarkins employed the tall asymmetric bow instead of the short compound reflex bow. I had no real knowledge of the asymmetric bow, but the thing shot an arrow fully as long as a great Lohvian longbow and was reputed accurate to prodigious ranges. Seg would have had his keen professional instincts immediately aroused. The arrows, cloth yard shafts, were tipped with long serrated heads. I saw one burst clean through a running woman, and as she fell my hands twisted the levers to bring me down. But a vision arose, a vision of another woman falling beneath the arrows of the Leem Lovers. And that woman was Delia. With agony, with remorse, but decisively and with bitter determination, I smashed the levers back and shot the voller up and away.

I had selected this airboat as the fastest of the three, and my faith in my own judgment was proved as I cleaved the air, heading east and south. Somewhere far over the northwestern horizon lay the main island of Vallia, that great and puissant Empire of Vallia of which Delia’s father, my children’s grandfather, was Emperor. They would have to buckle to, now that they were thus cruelly beset. As for the Star Lords — I would see them abandoned to the Ice Floes of Sicce before I would abandon Delia and Drak!

So I shot on. Looking back, I suppose the Star Lords, having always seen me operate in obedience to their commands before, held their hand. Once before I had taken a flier and left the scene of my labors to raise an army. That had been in Migladrin, when Turko and I had flown back to Valka to bring those fighting men of mine who had won the Battle of the Crimson Missals. But then I had not left a scene where immediate action had been necessary. Always before, when I had been hurled all naked into a strange part of Kregen, I had jumped up and obediently gone into action to save the lives of those the Star Lords wished preserved.

This time I had turned my back.

A bur ticked by, then a quarter of a bur.

Below me the sea clumped with the Nairnairsh Islands.

Not long to go now! My men must resist. They must hold out until I was once more back among them to lead them to victory.

So puffed up with pride are the princes of the two worlds.

A shadow fleeted across me. I looked up. The scarlet and gold messenger of the Star Lords swung up there, circling lazily, riding the air currents. He was watching me, I did not shake my fist. I ignored him. Frail hope!

He stooped, swooping down on the voller. He screeched.

"What is this thing you do, Dray Prescot?"

I said nothing.

"Onker! You destroy yourself!"

I flared back at him. "You great nurdling onker! Do you think I can leave my wife and my child in mortal danger for you?"

"Yes."

I hurled abuse at him, shaking my fist, screaming. The voller surged on. And there, below me the village of Panashti!

I slanted the voller down headlong through the air.

The shanks had put in an attack, for bodies sprawled before the stockade. Activity in the forest edge indicated a fresh attack at any moment. I had to be there, leading my men, fighting to protect my Delia and my son!

Even as the Gdoinye swooped in fast, I saw the scaled and fishy forms leaping forward with a shower of arrows to cover them. And, among the arrows, there blazed forth fire-arrows. Pots of fire were being hurled. Wisps of smoke lifted from the huts as the fire-arrows struck, as the pots of fire burst. Men and women ran with their water buckets to douse the flames.

Almost there! I was yelling and shouting and beating my fist against the speed lever. I scarcely heard the Gdoinye.

"Onker, Dray Prescot! This is not for you! This is not the way of the Everoinye!"

"Get away, rast!" I bellowed. "I am needed below!" Part of the stockade was burning. The shanks were making a determined attack there. They were running with ladders made from cut branches. I saw men struggling, the flash and wink of steel. Faintly through the wind’s rush I could hear the bestial screams and shrieks. My fist beat the lever, I shouted and the Gdoinye swerved in and alighted on the very gunwale of the voller. I had never seen him so close before. He was truly magnificent, full of throat where the golden feathers encircled him, his scarlet feathers ruffling in the slipstream. His predatory black talons fastened on the wood and canvas of the voller. His black eyes, lit with inhuman intelligence, regarded me implacably.

"You are to be given another chance! Dray Prescot, get-onker! You are to serve the Star Lords. They grant you a boon, a boon never granted to you before."

"Keep your boons, nulsh!"

The burning corner of the stockade was down. The shanks were smashing in with axes. Men were running. My Valkan Archers were running up to reinforce this threatened corner. The swordsmen were already in violent combat inside the palisade. More and more fishheads were clambering over the ruin of the walls. I screamed in baffled fury and swung the voller to alight directly on their heads. I would smash down from the sky clean on top of them. That should give my men a chance to rally. The moment was coming. I measured the drop and checked the speed of the flier. In a knot of struggling men I saw the glittering armored figure of Balass the Hawk, striking fishheads down. Turko the Shield appeared from a hut, struggling — struggling with Delia! She was trying to run after Drak — and Drak was racing headlong to hurl himself into the fray!

I shrieked — I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair Of Zy — I shrieked like an insane man. Melow the Supple and her son Kardo appeared, raging, striking down fishheads with the awful venom of the manhound. Their jagged teeth ran green with the spilled blood of the Leem Lovers. All the others were there, battling desperately to protect Delia. The voller slowed, for if I smashed headlong into the shanks I’d as likely kill myself as well as them. Any minute now. I perched up on the gunwale just abaft the windscreen, ready to leap into the fray.

Turko still held Delia and his great shield deflected two arrows that caromed away, spinning.

"Remember the great gift the Star Lords bestow on you, Dray Prescot, you onker!" And then the scarlet and gold bird shifted and changed and flowed and the blueness of the Scorpion enfolded me.

Falling . . . Falling . . . Dropping down and down . . .

I felt the dusty earth at my back. I heard the shrieks and cries of battle and I knew that this battle was not the one into which I wished to plunge but that other, strange, uninteresting, unwanted battle on the island of Vilasca.

I sprang up.

Then, instantly, I realized this great gift of the Star Lords.

For the very first time on Kregen I had been transported and had not arrived naked. I wore all my battle gear, the trappings in which I had flown off to fight the shanks.

"I curse you, Star Lords! This small thing is no great gift to me! I defy you! I defy you!" Without a thought, without a prayer, I sprang into the second voller. She went up at full lever, and I did not even bother to look back.

Again I set her toward the east and south and this time I did pray, pray that I could arrive in time to see my Delia and Drak alive, to hold my dear Delia in my arms once more.

A ripping sound brought me around, the rapier instantly in my fist. The long barbed serrated head of an arrow thrust up through the floor of the voller. I cursed the thing and thrust the rapier back. Bending to pick up the arrow, dragging it through, I thought to assuage the pangs of agony tearing at my mind by learning what I might of the shtarkins.

The hateful voice croaked by my ear as I straightened up.

"The Star Lords are most wroth. You have sinned mightily." The Gdoinye perched on the rim of the voller. His feathers glittered in the light of the suns, glittering golden and scarlet in that streaming opaline radiance.

I said nothing. I whipped the longsword from my back, hefted it in that cunning Krozair grip, swung it full-force horizontally.

Had the Gdoinye been a mortal bird he would have been sheared in two. He skipped lightly away and the great blade hissed through thin air.

"You have made a mistake, Dray Prescot, and now you must pay. No man defies the Everoinye!"

"I do! I, Dray Prescot, onker of onkers, defy any man who seeks to destroy my Delia!"

"Then are you a doomed man!"

The Gdoinye vanished. The blueness swelled. The enormous form of the Scorpion swooped upon me, radiant blueness washed all around me, washed me away, washed my senses away so that as I fell I fell soundlessly and hopelessly, for the very last words of that inhuman bird were: "Back to Earth, Dray Prescot, get-onker of onkers, back to Earth — to stay!"

Chapter Four

Soldiering, science and secrets

Back to Earth — to stay!

What a fool! What a fool!

Yet I could not have done other than I had.

I should have helped those poor devils of Vilasca. The island owed allegiance to Trylon Werfed, a man I knew only moderately well, a man against whom I had heard no whispers of plots against the Emperor. I should have jumped in and helped them beat off those damned Leem Lovers and then I could have taken voller for Delia.

But I am me, Dray Prescot, as thick-skulled a man as ever lived on two worlds. As I made my way back to civilization I reflected that I could not have done other than I had, and to pretend otherwise was folly. Dangerous folly. I admitted that I must have grown mighty proud and aloof in all these ridiculous titles and ranks I had amassed through no fault of my own. Well, leave out that I had deliberately made myself King of Djanduin. That is true. But the reasons for that decision were rooted in Khokkak the Meddler at first, and then in a sober understanding of a duty laid upon me. No, I had grown fat and comfortable and supine, and now I must pay the price of arrogance and pride. But to stay on Earth — to stay!

I reflected on that. The Star Lords had dumped me down all naked and miserable in Morocco, which was in a fine old state of unrest. The locals were standing up for their rights, and the French from Algeria, which they had taken in the 1830’s, were trying to take over there. By virtue of my tutor Maspero and the genetically coded language pill he had given me in Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, I could understand and speak the languages of people with whom I came into contact. The Moors — although that is hardly the correct term for the Sharifs, for the Moors were a light-skinned people — would no doubt have cut up a European dumped among them naked and defenseless. But I was enraged, and I used fury as a weapon to drown my maniacal despondency. I simply treated them as I would a people among whom I found myself on Kregen.

It has to be said that if a man can survive on Kregen he can find survival much easier on this Earth. I exclude from that the refined life of cities which in its artificiality can destroy more surely than sword thrust or ax bite.

With language no barrier it was easier, of course. Even as I talked with these dark-bearded, hawk-faced warriors of the desert, after I had shown them I was not a man to be lightly killed, I could still hear the hissing shrills of the shanks as they swarmed to the attack. "Ishtish! Ishtish!" they shrieked as they charged forward. And as my men shot them down or struggled hand-to-hand with them, so my archers shouted: "Vallia! Vallia!" Or: "Valka! Valka! Prince Dray!" Well, I was a prince no longer. I was a foolish European among the Arabs and I had to fend for myself. I made my way to Fez and from there to the sea where I took passage for Marseilles. Once there I arranged with London for funds. I do not reveal the name of the bankers who looked after me. I had saved the founder of the bank from a nasty experience on the field of Waterloo; now his sons merely took me for my own son. But they were a closed-mouth lot. I do not think a great deal can discompose a tight-fisted, crafty, elegant banker of the City of London.

Through canny investment by these same people I was now a wealthy man. Of course, it meant nothing. Every day those dread words echoed in my obstinate skull: "Stay on Earth — stay!" I had to take it for granted that Delia and Drak and the others were safe, that they had repelled the attack from the village, and that Tom had come sweeping back to look for his prince and so brought my fighting men down in their regiments to save the day. I had to assume that. Any other course would leave me more of a madman than I already was.

The bankers, cool, assured men though they were, looked at me askance as I did business with them. I took myself off to become a solitary. A year passed, then another. Despair clawed at me. But I did not know how long that damned bird meant by his infernal "Stay!" It could be forever. One foggy day as I stared out from my narrow leaded windows at the hurrying people passing in the London street, the carriages burning their lamps in spectral glimmers, each a little circular glow isolated from the others, with the moisture hanging on the trees and the railings, I made up my mind. One day, I said to myself, one day I would return to Kregen. I would take up the broken threads of my life. Why, then wouldn’t it be a fine thing to learn all I could, here on this Earth, against the time of my return to all that I held dear? I needed a purpose in life, here on Earth. I would make that purpose a conscious effort to learn all I could. I would return a master of statecraft, of science, of engineering, of war. I would seek the answers to the questions on Kregen that had plagued me, and I would seek what I could here. Foolish, pathetic, ludicrous even. Oh, yes, all of those. But it gave me back a semblance of sanity, for by studying I assured myself that I did have a future on Kregen to which to return one day. So rousing myself from my lethargy, I left London. On Magdalen Bridge in Oxford I stood and gazed up at the stars.

That upflung tail of the Scorpion was barely visible, but even if it was not, I could visualize it clearly. The red star that was Antares, the huge red star and the smaller green companion — I imagined I could see the constellation of Scorpio, and I would stand gazing up into the star-speckled night. I know the look on my face must have been one of infinite longing and infinite regret.

I am sure you can see that the idea of secrets on Kregen plaguing me was a fallacy, for I had long since felt that my life with Delia and my family far outweighed anything else on Kregen. But to bolster my resolve and to give a neat scientific and logical approach, I set down in tabular form the questions to which I would like answers.

The very first name was, of course, the Everoinye, the Star Lords.

Next the Savanti, those mortal but superhuman people of Aphrasöe.

Then the Todalpheme, the meteorologists and tide-watchers.

Then followed a list of various strange peoples, of whom I have introduced you so far to only a fraction. These included the volroks, the flying men of Havilfar.

Then the Wizards of Loh.

The secrets of the silver boxes of the fliers, of course, had to figure, for we in Valka were still only able to produce flying craft which could merely lift and must find their propulsion from the breeze like sailing ships.

As to unfinished business, well, there was indeed a formidable list of that, as you who have listened to these tapes must be aware.

Various religious cults were written down, and chief of these was the abominable practice of Lem the Silver Leem.

If I fail to mention anything in connection with the inner sea of the continent of Turismond, the Eye of the World, it was because I ached for that locale and for the Krozairs of Zy. All the titles I had won on Kregen could be stripped from me and I would not care a jot. But I was a Krozair Brother, a Krozair of Zy, and that did mean something.

How often I had planned to revisit Zy, that magnificent island fortress of the Brotherhood, or Sanurkazz, the chief city of the Zairians of the red southern shore of the Eye of the World. Well, something or other had always cropped up to prevent me. Now, back on Earth, that something had turned out to be the biggest obstacle of all.

The list did not satisfy me. Nothing satisfied me. Oxford at this time appeared to me to be an intellectual desert, its ancient halls given over to mindless pursuits after false doctrines. The studies pursued here seemed to me to offer no help or guidance to the things a man needed to know in the real world, for all its products strutted the preeminent stages of this world here on Earth. Through my accrued wealth and the machinations of powerful friends on my bankers, doors were opened to me that would, had I remained simply Dray Prescot, lieutenant in the Royal Navy, have remained firmly closed in my face. I tried Cambridge with a similar result. The best hope of education in these times lay with the Dissenting Academies, although my knowledge of the Greek Heroes was furbished up, for although, as I have said, I have always considered Achilles to be a poor show beside Hector, the sheer rage and panache and barbarity and honor of those times bears some pale reflection of times on Kregen that go on to this present hour.

The Star Lords had dumped me down on Earth after what has since come to be called the Year of Revolutions. For a time I was too nearly a madman to bother with the world and its doings. There had been a king come and gone on the throne of England and now we had a queen. I knew about queens. The one at this time, though, bore no possible connection with any of the queens I had known, and I thought longingly of the fabled Queens of Pain of Loh. Queen Lilah, Queen Fahia and Queen Thyllis, she who was now the Empress Thyllis. By Vox! What a spectacular collection they were, and all up there on Kregen waiting, waiting . . .

As for the kings, because of my connection with the July days in Paris in 1830 and the dismissal of Charles X and the installation of Louis Phillipe, I sought as a change from universities and academies, and as an anodyne to my agony, some light action, as Prince Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic for three years, overturned that Republic and obtained election as President for ten years. I did not then think that I would still be on Earth when his term came up for renewal; I saw him made Emperor, Napoleon III, and I cursed the day I still remained on Earth. The attempt of Russia to dismember the Sick Man of Europe and the involvement of France and England are well known. As they affected me, however, I let events take their course. The Crimean War, it seemed to me, a fighting man, might give me fresh opportunities to bash a few skulls and so in my sinful way find a trifle of surcease from the despair and anguish consuming me. My part led me to action earlier than the Light Brigade on that fateful day of October 25. As a participant in the Heavy Brigade charge I believe we did a more thorough job than the more highly publicized Charge of the Lights. Three hundred British heavy cavalrymen charging uphill against three thousand Russian cavalrymen. It sounds as maniacal as events on Kregen. The Grays were in the thick of it. General Scarlett’s second line came on, piecemeal, driving through and through the thick gray ranks. The Russians, incredible though it sounds, had enough and broke and scattered and fled. The Light Brigade fiasco — however glorious — followed later. I fancied that even on Kregen soldiers would look askance at generals who had last fought forty years ago, or who had never fought, or who were often so old and doddery, without any clear understanding of what they were about, that they were as much a menace to their own men as to the enemy.

After that came the Indian Mutiny and I went to take a part. I have said that I do not intend to dwell on those portions of my life spent on this Earth. But on this occasion the years ticked by and I grew ever more morose and savage, bitter with the bitterness that eats the spirit, and it is right that you who listen to my story should understand.

My studies progressed by fits and starts. The marvels of steam and engineering and iron ships and the industrial changes that shook and transformed England were absorbed. I followed closely all the developments of science and philosophy and the arts of war I could. Agriculture also repaid study. But through all this I was aware that I was like a man asleep, merely walking through a part on a dimly lit stage.

As for the war in America — the American Civil War or the War between the States — I was there. I shall not say now what side I fought on, although that may appear more obvious than it truly was, and I did not enjoy it. By the end of May on that last dreadful year of war I was sailing back to England. A gentleman I had met and talked with in odd circumstances, a gentleman from Virginia, struck me as a man who would go to far places and, perhaps, hunger for a life akin to mine on Kregen. I wished him well as we parted.

Whenever the opportunity had offered I had made fresh inquiries about Alex Hunter. He had been a Savapim, an agent of the Savanti, recruited from Earth. I had seen him die on a beach in Valka and had buried him and said two prayers over his grave. As a shavetail in the old U.S. Army he had been subject to influences I fancied I could duplicate during my period in the U.S., but the armies of the war were very different from the armies both before and after. There was nothing, I thought, to be gained from the trail of Alex Hunter.

The idea that the Savanti — who labored to bring dignity to Kregen, they had told me — recruited people from this Earth to work for them led me on to a consideration that perhaps they maintained agents here. I had seen the Savapim Wolfgang fight to protect apims against diffs in the Scented Sylvie , a notorious drinking den of the Sacred Quarter of Ruathytu, the capital of Hamal, the Empire on the continent of Havilfar, which is on Kregen, Kregen! I do not think a single day of my life on Earth passed without a longing thought of Kregen under Antares. No, I am wrong. I do not think — I know. In working out a scheme whereby I might put myself in contact with a terrestrial agent of the Savanti I had to discount the Everoinye completely from the calculations. The idea began to obsess me. Where hitherto, after that first destructive fit of lethargy, I had flung myself into violent action to blot cruel thoughts from my brain, I now positively dwelt on all I knew of Kregen as it affected the Savanti, the mortal but non-human people of Aphrasöe.

If newspaper advertisements would help I would deluge the daily sheets with advertisements. This was the time I became involved with some of the more dubious aspects of Victorian science. As a trapped rat will turn and struggle against whatever opposes it so I struggled against invisible bonds. In the process I ran across weird people, ordinary human beings, and yet people possessed of some quirk of nature that led them to gather to themselves superior powers. Most of the time they were mere quacks, charlatans, impostors. Of Doctor Quinney, I had my doubts.

A thin, snuffly individual, blessed with a quantity of lank brown hair — hair that grew, it seemed, from every part of his face except his eyes — Doctor Quinney dressed in shiny black clothes, much worn, and a stovepipe hat elegantly blocked out after whoever it was had sat on it. His snuff blew everywhere. His eyes watered and gleamed with fanaticism; he claimed to know the Secrets of the Spheres.

"And I assure you, my dear sir" — his steel-rimmed pince-nez flashed in time to the pendulum motion of his head, the dramatic gestures of his gleaming-knuckled hands — "inthe Spheres like mystic gossamer balls lie the ultimate Secrets!"

I had taken chambers in a quiet London side street and the landlady, Mrs. Benton, was slowly growing accustomed to the procession of odd characters daily pulling the doorbell. As for my own clothes, they were unremarkable, simple English town clothes of sober cut and style. Doctor Quinney regarded me as a man who, also anxious to unravel the Secrets of the Spheres, happened most fortunately to be blessed with the wherewithal to satisfy that craving.

I tolerated him for what he might bring me, rather as a ponsho might be staked out for a leem.

"Listen to me, Doctor Quinney, and mark me well. I expect results from you. It might go very ill for you else." He started back and dropped his handkerchief. I know that he had seen in my face that awful mad glare marking a clansman of Segesthes, marking me, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor.

Chapter Five Madam Ivanovna

Now began a different period of my life on Earth. More and more I mixed with the learned men, the savants, the scientists and chemists, the philosophers and engineers. To speak the truth, many of the new discoveries daily amazing this Victorian world had been spoken of in Aphrasöe. Because of this I was able to hold my own in argument and debate.

When Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace read their paper before the Linnean Society, I had been in India charging about with a saber and uselessly trying either to blot out all thought of Kregen or to imagine myself there as we battled. Many of the ideas expressed in The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Darwin’s book that appeared in the November of the following year, made me realize that people on Earth were capable of great things, despite their flaws, and that Aphrasöe was a place of logical human development.

One day, it seems to me, our selfish brawling Earth may turn into the paradise I still — despite all! —

believe the Swinging City to be. As you must be aware, since I speak to you in the seventies of the twentieth century and much has transpired over the past one hundred years on Kregen, I know much more now than I knew then. At the time of which I speak, though, I knew practically nothing. Nothing. The Savanti had their purposes, and I had surmised these were for the good of Kregen and for the dignity of humanity. As to the purposes of the Star Lords, I held hazy ideas, nebulous theories, but all was embittered by their ’treatment of me and my resentment against them for their aloof high-handedness.

When the Savapim who called himself Wolfgang had talked in Ruathytu of the problem of evolution changing the many different races set down on Kregen I had been able to talk with him and understand. Now Darwin, of Earth, was opening terrestrial eyes to this mutable genetic structure. My advertisements in search of a Savapim, an agent of the Savanti, here on Earth, proved fruitless. Doctor Quinney, filled with an excitable eagerness and blowing snuff everywhere, told me he had found a "wonderful and incredible new source of psychic powers."

Arrangements were made. I canceled a trip planned to take me to Vienna, for I found I had grown inordinately fond of the music of Johann Strauss, and thus thankfully missed the Seven Weeks War in which Prussia dealt with Austria and set herself on the course of German unification. There was another new emperor on Earth now, Kaiser Wilhelm I. The agonizing thought that my son was the grandson of an emperor, you may readily conceive, touched me with renewed longing. Every day, every single day, I longed for my Delia and for Kregen.

Before this meeting with the "new source of psychic powers" discovered by Doctor Quinney, I finally parted with Victorian scientists over many questions. They were working on the right lines, in many cases, for what they required. I had worked with chemists in stinking laboratories attempting to duplicate the gas used in the paol silver box, and had got nowhere. As to the minerals in the vaol box, simple nomenclature defeated even the first stumbling attempts. I made mental notes on rare earths and scarce minerals, trace elements as known at that time — a time of great expansion and, equally, a time of ludicrous conservatism among the ignorant — and came to the conclusion that Earth science held no help at all. I went ballooning and enjoyed it enormously, but a Kregen voller was out of any balloon’s league. And, into the bargain, my own experience as a sailor meant I already knew enough to sail my driveless fliers by means of the wind alone, as I have told you.

The date of the meeting was set. Doctor Quinney, canny old Quinney, kept his new protégé secret. I could not blame him, for I knew of the intense professional jealousy animating the people of the mystic circles and their adherents. And then, out of nowhere, came a situation which presented me with a problem I felt a sense of humanity compelled me to solve.

In our little group, among a Grub Street scribbler, a civil servant connected with the sewers, I believe, and a prosperous leather merchant who had recently lost his wife, a certain lordling attended our meetings. This young lord — I do not give his name — seemed to me a revolting example of that chinless pop-eyed, insufferable scion of an ancient noble family gone to seed. He owed his title to the dubious bedtime antics of an ancestor who had been rewarded for her exertions by being created a countess, in the name of her complaisant husband, the first earl. The young lord possessed wealth, a vicious temper and a good eye with a gun. I spoke only the necessary civil words to him. For his part, it was quite clear that plain Mr. Prescot was mere dirt beneath his feet, like all the others who did not overshadow him in nobility. Without breeding, without a lineage, a man could never enter his world. I did not wish to. There were far more important things to be accomplished than spending idle days, vapidly admiring oneself among cronies, a parasite upon the nation.

One day my landlady’s daughter, young Mary Benton, wore a red and tear-swollen face as she tidied my chambers. I chided her and soon the whole story came out. It was sickeningly familiar. As I looked at Mary, a sweet, innocent creature who worked hard from crack of dawn until well into the night, and heard her broken words, her shame, and contrasted her life with the elegant, luxurious, feckless life of this lord and his cronies, I fancied I might assist her. Money, of course, was immediately forthcoming. Probably I would have left it at that. Mrs. Benton was grateful; I shushed her and Mary was packed off to reappear subsequently with a new sister or brother, niece or nephew. I would have done what I could and left it, but this young lord could not leave well alone. On a night before the meeting that, however much I considered Doctor Quinney to be a fraud, yet excited me with its possibilities, the young lord was boasting and laughing, elegantly waving his hand, his blue pop-eyes very bright, his pink tongue tip licking the spittle on his lips.

My chambers were filled with Victorian shadows, the oil lamps casting their separated pools of light, the old furniture highly polished to mirror-gleams, the smell of cigar smoke and distant cooking in the air; through the curtained windows the clip-clop of passing horses and the grind of iron-rimmed wheels reminded me I was in London and not in Valkanium.

The hot words were spoken, words that might have been: "Damned impertinence! D’you forget who I am?" And: "I know what you are, and no gentleman would tolerate your presence." And: I’ll horsewhip you, you guttersnipe!" And: "You are perfectly at liberty to try." And the blows and the bleeding nose and the challenge, the hostility, brittle and bitter, and the hushed-up scandal. It would have to be in Boulogne.

"I shall meet you at the place and time you choose."

"My seconds will call."

Well, as I recall it all went as the copybook said it should.

The sobering aspect of this struck me as we waited for Doctor Quinney. Something had happened to stir the sluggish blood. I didn’t give a damn if this puppy spitted me or shot me through the heart. I’d do it for him, if I could. He had brought his own downfall on his head, through his folly and his damned superior ways and his unthinking selfishness. Had he eyes in his head he could read — and see! — information on the state of the poor. There was no excuse for the rich to plead ignorance. Pure selfishness, allied to a grotesque assumption of superiority led the people of his class to act the way they did. I looked forward to Boulogne with grim and unpleasant relish, Zair forgive me. For wasn’t I, Dray Prescot, acting in just such a selfish way?

Well, for those of you who have followed my story so far, perhaps you will understand what I only vaguely grasped of my character.

Of all the incidents of my stay on Earth, that evening in the oil lamps’ glow, with the sounds of London muted through the windows and the circle sitting around the polished mahogany table, remains most vividly with me. Doctor Quinney arrived, his snuffbox under firm control, ushering in a tall cloaked figure. When the cloak’s hood was thrown back everyone in the room sat up. We all felt the magnetic presence, the consciousness of power allied with understanding, the sheer authority of this lady.

"Madam Ivanovna!" cried Quinney, his voice near to cracking with pride and emotion. The woman seated herself after a slight inclination of her head that embraced the company and seemed to take us all into her confidence. I saw a mass of gleaming dark hair and a face, white and unlined, of a purity of outline quite remarkable. Her eyes were brown, large, finely set, dominating. Her mouth puzzled me, being firm and yet softly full, suggesting a complex character. She wore long loose garments of somber black. This was quite usual, yet she wore the garments in a way suggesting mystery and excitement and great peril — quite alarming and yet amusing, charming, and I sat forward, ready to take part in the evening’s charade.

As I moved I observed that Quinney still stood there, an idiotic grin on his face, his hand outstretched. The others of the circle sat perfectly still. Sounds stretched and became muted. The ticking of the ormolu clock sounded like lead weights dropped slowly into a bottomless pool. I stared at Madam Ivanovna, feeling the tensions, the excitements, feeling that, perhaps, my staked ponsho had brought a leem . . .

"Mr. Prescot," said this enigmatic Madam Ivanovna. "You will disregard the people here, even Doctor Quinney. You have been causing trouble and I am here because it seems meet to us that you should work again."

I remained mute. There was no doubt about it. The other people in the room remained silent, static, unmoving — frozen.

"Mr. Prescot, you do not appear surprised."

I had to speak. "I have been trying—"

"You have been successful."

I swallowed. Now that it had happened I could not believe it. I licked my lips. "Perhaps, then, I should not say, ’Good evening’ to you, Madam Ivanovna. "Perhaps I should say ’Happy Swinging.’"

"You may say ’Happy Swinging’ and you may say ’Lahal.’ Neither would be correct." Through the roar of blood in my head — for she had said "Lahal," which is the Kregish form for greeting new acquaintances — I wondered what on Kregen she could mean by saying neither would be correct.

"You are from the Savanti?"

"No."

"The Everoinye?"

"No."

If this was madness, a phantom conjured from my own sick longings, then I would press on. I recall every minute, every second, as we two sat and talked in a Victorian room stuffed with mummified people who saw and heard nothing.

"You know me, Madam Ivanovna. You know who I am. Why have you sought me out?"

"First, I use the name Ivanovna because it is exotic, foreign. It will soon be fashionable to have a Russian name in psychic matters. It helps belief when you found a society. But you may know my use-name. It is Zena Iztar."

I knew about use-names. My comrade Inch from Ng’groga was called Inch; his real name was different, secret, something, I then thought, he would share with no one.

"You are from Kregen?"

"Well, yes and no."

The blood in my head pained. I thumped the table. "Damn it!" I burst out. "You’ll pardon my manner, Madam Ivanovna, or Madam Zena Iztar, but, by Zair! I wish you’d—" She smiled.

That smile could have launched a million ships.

"Yes, Pur Dray."

I felt numb.

"You call me Pur Dray," I whispered. I swallowed. "You must know I hold only being a Krozair of Zy as of importance. Tell me, Madam Zena Iztar, tell me, for the sweet sake of Zair!" She placed both white hands on the table. Her fingers were long and slender and white, as they should be, and she wore no rings. She wore no jewelry of any kind that I could see.

"Now," she said, and her voice in its hard practicality made me sit up. "The Savanti have set their hands to the work they consider proper for Kregen, for they are of that world and are a last faint remnant of a once mighty race. You have heard of them as the Sunset People or the Sunrise People. The Savanti have at heart the well-being of apims, Homo sapiens like yourself. As for the Star Lords, their plans are different, wider and more universe-embracing, and I shall tell you only that you will have to make a choice one day, and the choice will be the hardest thing you have ever done."

"Put me back on Kregen and I will choose!"

"Oh, yes, Pur Dray! You would promise anything now, just to return. I know."

"Can you—?"

Her look made me hold my foolish tongue.

"Am I not here? Do you require any other proof?"

"No, I meant only—"

"You have always been reckless, foolhardy, as that brash bird the Gdoinye says, an onker of onkers." How it warmed my heart to hear the brave Kregish words, here in London, even if they were insults!

"Now," she went on, in that firm mellow voice. "If you will cast your mind back to your arrival in the inner sea at the Akhram, when you struggled to remain on Kregen?"

"Yes. They were going to banish me back to Earth, but I fought them and so returned—"

"That was a compromise. The Star Lords and the Savanti had different purposes, as the Gdoinye and the white dove of the Savanti showed. So you went to Magdag, along the Grodnim green northern shore. You became a Krozair of Zy, a fanatical believer in Zair, the red sun deity of Zim, and an opponent of Grodno, the green sun deity of Genodras; that was our doing."

"Your doing? Who—?"

Again she smiled and lifted one slender finger. I stopped.

"All in good time. The Star Lords have other instruments, as have the Savanti. They were not pleased. But there are checks and balances, and you lived. Mortal men may see only so far. It is a wearisome burden to see further. One day, I believe, you will be called on to see and to make your choice, and you will feel an outcast, a pariah, a traitor. Yet think back to this day and remember." I could bottle up my screaming fears and questions no longer. This talk of the mysterious destiny of Kregen and the shadowy desires of powerful superhuman beings was all very fine. But I was Dray Prescot, and there were torments tearing at me far and away more important than the fate of worlds. I said: "You are from Kregen. You have great powers. Tell me, Madam Zena Iztar, what of—?" Her smile would have melted the blasphemous heart of a silver statue of Lem the Silver Leem.

"Fear not, Pur Dray. Your Chuktar Tom returned in good time. Your Delia and your son, Drak, live."

"Thank Zair!" I could say no more for a while, just put a hand to my face, and so we sat in silence. Then, quietly, she said, "Yes. Yes, you should thank Zair." Slowly I looked up at her.

"Your son is a great man now. And your daughter has already refused five offers of marriage."

"Good God!" I said, dumbfounded.

"Time passes on Kregen as on this Earth, although not necessarily at the same rates, as you know. Reckoning in Earthly years, you left—" As she said "left" I know my fierce old lips twisted up, for the word more appropriate was "banished." She put a hand to her cloak and felt some object beneath, under the curve of her shoulder. "In Earthly years your son Drak was near fourteen and he is nigh on thirty-two now."

At this I groaned. Aye, I, Dray Prescot, groaned. Thirty-two! Incredible and impossible and yet true. What years I had missed! As for Lela, in a life span of two hundred years or so, a maiden of thirty-two had no fears of the future or of being left on the shelf. I also knew this would make Segnik and Velia both twenty-one. My Delia had been twenty-one when we had first met, although it is a curious fact that on Kregen people appear to put little store by their ages or their birthdays. As to the latter, that is easily understood, I suppose, given the forty-year cycle, the absence of definite terrestrial years and the confusing mass of temporal measurements by the different moons. I became aware of Madam Zena Iztar looking at me with a quizzical gaze, almost a look of mockery.

"And you will send me back, Madam Iztar, now?"

"I stand here in a merely consultative capacity. You have been causing trouble and there is work for you to do. When the time comes you will know what the work is. To tell you now would invalidate your integrity." I guessed she spoke in these terms to conceal a blunter meaning.

"Eighteen years!" I said. If the words came out of my mouth as a plea, I do not think I can be blamed.

"The Savanti are a mere rump of a once proud people. They may well find a use for you yet, despite your flouting of their principles. As for the Star Lords, certain events on Kregen have not turned out as they expected—"

"So they cannot see the future?"

"Oh, they can riddle a future or two, but the trick is guessing which one will eventuate. They will use you again, Pur Dray, I am quite sure."

"And can I resist them?"

"You must try, if that is your wish. Your will may then receive help from . . ." Here she paused and smoothed her cloak reflectively so the black material shone in the lamps’ gleam. "I can say that the Star Lords are only partially to blame for some of your misfortunes; they are not omnipotent on Kregen —

who is? — and intense effort of the will may deflect their hold."

"And you will tell me nothing more of their purposes?"

"There are many clues if you open your eyes." She spoke with an edge of testiness, very bracing. "But I will tell you no more. For one thing, even the Star Lords are divided among themselves. For another, to tell you what they think they plan to do will quite evidently, given their nature, cause them to do something else."

"Out of spite? The Star Lords . . . out of spite?"

"Not out of spite, you onker!"

Then it was my turn to smile. How familiar that was!

She looked around my room at the few belongings I had collected. "I must wake these poor famblys. Your Doctor Quinney proved a fine ponsho, Pur Dray."

I had the grace to nod my head without speaking.

"Now you have this tiresome business over the duel. After that — who knows? Even Grodno may play a part; stranger things than that have happened."

Chancing a venture that might prove disastrous, for I saw she was arranging her cloak and gown and preparing to wake up my guests, I said, "And Lem the Silver Leem? Do you . . .?" She flashed those large brown eyes at me, very fierce and commanding. "If you obliterate Lem completely," and she said it with a fair old temper, I can tell you, "Then you would do well in the eyes of the people of Kregen — and of Earth."

Before I could ask what she meant by that last alarming statement Doctor Quinney was starting forward, grinning, and the others were moving about and buzzing with the arrival of this formidable Madam Ivanovna in our midst. The meeting which followed meant nothing, of course. What ideas, what concepts, what conjectures flashed through my aching head!

Eventually things were brought to a conclusion and an astral voice came from Madam Ivanovna in her part as a psychic; the voice chilled the company and satisfactorily ensured a fat check would pass from me to Doctor Quinney. Then we were saying our farewells. No one cared to partake of the refreshment Mrs. Benton had provided. I shook hands and ushered them out. As she passed me Zena Iztar smiled, a quick flash that was gone as soon as formed.

"Good night, Mr. Prescot." She was very close and she bent a little forward, her words for me alone.

"Remberee, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy. Remberee."

I caught a flash from the black of her gown where the cloak lapped open. A tiny gem gleamed there, hidden before. I saw a jeweled representation of a cogwheel, a gearwheel, and I found myself thinking that this was a strange device, so mechanical, for one so psychic. Then she had gone and I was alone with Doctor Quinney. The check was written, dried and handed over. Quinney took it as a man accepts a flask of water in the burning deserts far south of Sanurkazz.

"A pity," he said, folding the check, "that we were not honored with our lordship tonight."

"A pity," I agreed two-facedly.

"I hear he has taken a trip to Boulogne."

"Has he? No doubt he has business there."

As Doctor Quinney took himself off I determined that no one should know of my intention to catch the packet to Boulogne the next day.

If you imagine I slept that night you could be right, for everything passed in a daze until I realized I was in Boulogne and must meet this lecherous, dandified earl the following morning at first light, when the air was cool and limpid and no curious observers would be around. My second, a courageous, empty-headed army officer with whom I had had a few skirmishes in India, was already in France. He met me on the appointed day, a polished mahogany box under his arm, with the information that all was ready, a doctor was in attendance and the carriage waited. With blinds pulled down we wheeled out along the seashore.

Well, as with all my fights, this duel could mark the end of me. The weapons were to be pistols. I account myself a fine shot. I’d had plenty of experience in America. A pair of very fine London-made dueling pistols had come into my possession and I knew how they shot. The lordling would have his own, no doubt. I well remember a remarkable man in the Royal Navy who was the finest shot I have ever known. As he used to say, in his own tarpaulin way, "If I can see it I can hit it — if I know the gun." He had been a captain when I knew him and we had got along, for he was a man who, like myself, had come up onto the quarterdeck through the hawse hole. I would have liked him at my side on Kregen. His middle name was Abe, but only his family called him that, of course. I missed him. He was ten years older than myself, so if he still lived he’d be one hundred and two years old. With a pang I recollected myself. He lived on Earth, not Kregen.

The petty formalities of the duel wended through their paces: the apology was asked for and refused, we took up our positions, the signal was given, we walked, turned, fired. Two flat smacks of evil hatred in the cool morning air. Two puffs of smoke. He hit me in the right shoulder, high. I shot the kleesh clean through the guts.

Turmoil followed and the doctor scurried. The seconds tried to hurry me away, but I had been keyed up. I acted as I might have acted on Kregen and not on Earth. I walked over to the lordling as he lay writhing, screaming in pain, choking. I bent over him. His second tried to drag me away and I pushed him and he staggered and fell. The doctor wadded a handful of white cloth that turned red in an instant. The lecher would most likely die. I did not think Earthly medical science at that time could save him. I bent over him and he glared up at me, choking, screaming.

"You are going to die, you bastard," I said, quite calmly. "In your agony, think. Think if your pain was worth what you did to Mary Benton."

I did not spit in his face. I remembered I was on Earth and, anyway, that would give him greater importance than the rast deserved.

My second said in his gruff army way; "My God, Prescot! You’re a devil!" And then, brushing his stiff mustache, "You won’t be able to go back to England now."

"There will be other things to do. Thank you for your assistance." We parted then, and I suppose he is buried somewhere on Earth, his gravestone moldering away over a corrupting coffin. Time has no mercy.

So it happened that, waiting for the summons of the Scorpion, I was in France for the pathetic business of the Franco-Prussian War, a most unhappy affair. I admired the brisk efficiency of the German Army and felt great sorrow for the shambles that overtook the French Army. I’d fought them at Waterloo, and fought with them in the Crimea, and I’d fought with the Germans in that old war and was to fight against them unhappily in wars to come. The nonsense of national identities when they destroy happiness had been laid plainly open to me in the disputes between Vallia and Pandahem and between Vallia and Hamal. I was learning all the time.

Although I now have a much clearer idea of what must have gone on in the three years between Zena Iztar’s visit and the day I found myself helping in a bloody hospital in Paris as the guns thundered about our ears, I will refrain from a guess, for that would destroy the appreciation of many of my actions. Hindsight can destroy logic and truth. I am making the attempt, painful though it is, to be as truthful as I can possibly be in this record. If that record makes me out to be the prize fool I am, then I stand guilty of being an onker.

A balloon had just been inflated and sent off and the Prussians were firing at it. I stood a little apart, my hands and arms smothered in blood, looking. I looked up. The blueness stole in, or so it seemed to me, on the clouds of gun smoke. The noise of the cannon and rifles blended away and away and I was falling

— heavenly, wonderful, superb, sublime! — falling, and the Scorpion enfolded me in its arms and bore me away. Never did man more thankfully quit this Earth.

Chapter Six

Of slings and knives

Twenty-one years!

Twenty-one whole terrestrial years had now passed since I had set foot on Kregen. What might have happened in that long span of time? I admit to a tremulous feeling as I stood up and looked around, wonderfully conscious of the streaming mingled radiance of Zim and Genodras falling all about me and lighting up with glory all my new hopes for the future. I felt weak, like a newly born ponsho. I felt lightheaded. My heart wanted to burst from my breast. I stamped my naked foot on the ground, on the short tufted grass, and deeply breathed in that indescribably bracing air of Kregen, air like wine, air that no man of Earth can possibly imagine. I was home!

And yet Kregen is a large world with a greater landmass than Earth. Home, for me, was Valka or Zenicce or Djanduin. I might be anywhere. I didn’t give a damn where I was. Just so that I trod once more the same earth as my Delia, that when I had cleared up whatever mischief lay to my hand I could fly or sail or ride — walk or crawl — back to my Delia, that was all I craved. I would return to my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.

Many and many a time have I returned to Kregen, and few times ever created in me more sheer joyful feelings of thankfulness as that occasion. I had thought myself abandoned and cast off. Now I was back. These thoughts sped through my mind with the speed of a Lohvian longbow shaft. As I stood up the reason for my arrival and the problem confronting me revealed itself plainly and, as always, unpleasantly. Naked as usual — for it had been a unique exception when the Star Lords had taken me back to Vilasca for the second time and given me my weapons — I would have to be the same old hasty, reckless, intemperate Dray Prescot. Maybe the Star Lords had gone down in my estimation for having provided me with weapons. I do not know.

A flung stone whistled past my ear.

The slinger, a small and agile fellow almost as naked as I was, had come springing out of the thick-leaved bushes. The sounds of combat beyond him told me where the action lay; those sounds combined in the light of Antares with the scream of frightened people and the shrill, shocking yells of vicious killers. I started toward the slinger.

He was apim. The next stone missed also, but only because I dodged sideways. This fellow might be one of the people I had been sent here to assist; he might be one of those I must fight. I did not know. This problem confronted me as of old, the difference on this occasion being that I had no guidelines at all. A second man now followed the first, swirling a sling about his head. His stone barely missed the first slinger, who turned, reloaded and swung. By the time I had reached him he had sent his missile full into his pursuer’s face. The second man pitched to the ground, minus an eye and with blood flowing. I grabbed the slinger as he swung back. I had run noiselessly and his face contorted with terror, shattered at thus being taken without warning.

"Now, dom," I said. "You can tell me all about it."

"The slavers!" he cried, wincing from my grip, trying to kick me, trying to bite, struggling to get his knife out. He wore a breechclout of decent fawn cloth, with a bag for his slingshots, a leather belt, the knife and dusty sandals.

"Slavers," I said.

"They are taking away the girls! I must save them, and yet . . ." Here he stopped struggling. He was very young. His voice fell. "And yet I ran away."

"Then we must run back and see what we can do."

If the Star Lords looked down on this comedy and were displeased with what they saw, I might find myself back on Earth for another twenty-one years. Even as I took a grip on the lad’s arm and ran him back to the bushes, I considered that from what had happened to me on Earth it could well be that the Star Lords had had no hand in this return to Kregen. It could be the Savanti who had called on me. We ran into the bushes.

At my back the ground trended dustily away to mountains with no sign of human habitation. Beyond the bushes lay a well-trodden path. Further bushes and then a few scattered cultivated fields extended ahead. A house burned. Well, as I have said, sounds of strife and sights of burning houses are often my lot when I return to Kregen.

Along the path the girls in their fetters struggled, shrieking and wailing, terrified. The difficulty was in judging who was attempting to abduct the girls and who was trying to rescue them. At first glance there seemed very little difference between the two sides. Both wore the fawn-colored breechclouts, both used slings and knives. They were all apims, with a mixture of hair ranging from light to dark brown, so I must discard that as an identification. A stone almost took my eye out, and I moved away smartly, marking the man who had flung.

"Him," I said to my captive. "Is he friend or enemy?"

"That is Noki and he was always an onker! He couldn’t hit the mark at twenty paces!" A trifle local friction here, I decided. Noki saw what was going on and tried again, whereat my captive bellowed, "Hold, you get-onker! This man will help us!"

"I thought you were slain, Mako!" yelped this Noki. "Hurry! They are dragging the girls to their ship." I perked up at this. So far this appeared to me to be a parody of the times I had fought for the Star Lords. The time was slipping away, for already most of the girls had vanished around a bend in the trail. They were all shackled to one another, stumbling on. While it was clear enough to see which of the men were trying to release them, it was not as easy to see who was slinging at the locals and bringing them down.

I made up my mind.

"Follow, Mako and you, Noki! You must fight!"

Then I was off, haring along the trail, dodging flung stones until, passing the struggling, shrieking girls, I reached the head of the column around the bend. The sea blazed before me, rippled with a breeze, glittering with the twin fires of the Suns of Scorpio. A large open pulling boat was drawn up on the sand. There was going to be no mistake now.

I went straight in at the three fellows hauling on the shackles at the head of the procession, dragging the girls along. They all dropped the ropes and slung at me. I dodged. Three blows took care of them. Against knives a fist is a useful weapon, lacking anything better. The unarmed combat disciplines hammered into me by the Krozairs of Zy also ensured I could take out a man armed only with a knife. As for the slung stones, they could break an arm or crack a skull. Two more slavers went down, their faces abruptly bloody, as they tried to jump me. And all the time I was leaping around like a frenzied fire-dancer, trying to present so shifting and erratic a target that the slingers would be bound to miss. It all struck me as remarkably fatuous, not real, as though I was being run through a slow-motion reprise of what had gone on long ago in much more gory detail. But the truth was there in the blood and the screams and the agony. This was real enough. The missing factor was twenty-one years away from scenes of Kregen, I was the one at fault.

What I had left, only moments before, still seemed more real to me. The Parisian hospital, the Prussian guns, the balloon, the blood there. Already, because one of the slavers twisted his knife as I struck him down and spitted himself, I had blood on my hands. Blood. Is blood, then, so inseparable from life?

"They climb into the boat!" screeched Mako.

"Don’t just stand there shouting about it!" I bellowed at him, running down the beach. "Stop them!" I did not have the heart to use the great word Jikai, and I think I was right. An older man ran across as I started. A knife slash had brought blood in a line across his side. He was panting. "Let them go," he said, his chest heaving. "They may kill more of us." I ignored him. His was the word of wisdom, of course, for the girls had been saved and the last of the slavers were evidently only too anxious to push off and row away. But I had other ideas. It was through no bloodthirsty madness that I acted as I did; I simply needed that boat. I did not know where I was but, by Vox, it was a long way off the beaten track.

The younger element was anxious to follow my lead. In a last affray in the surf, where, I admit, I stood back at the end and let them get on with it, the last of the slavers were seen to. Up on the beach the people on whose side I had fought were going around carefully slitting every living slaver’s throat. The girls, their shackles torn off, played a lustful part in that butchery too. Presently I was able to go back to the older man who was being seen to, his wound stanched by a pad of leaves. No one produced a kit of acupuncture needles. Truly, I was out in the boondocks. Something about the light at last demanded my full attention, and I looked up. Yes. Yes, up there the huge red sun preceded the smaller green sun across the sky. In the forty-year cycle, which is never really an exact forty years by virtue of Kregen’s Keplerian orbit about Antares, the suns had met and eclipsed and parted again. I thought of Magdag. What did they get up to on that occasion in that infamous city, when the green sun passed in front of the red? Could the smaller sun even be seen against that massive somber red glow?

"We owe you our thanks," said the older man, who said his name was Mogo the Wise. I still remained on Kregen so I must have done the right thing.

Looking at the people here, the girls hysterical in their relief, the men comforting them, and now a stream of other people, old men and women, youngsters, coming running along the path from the village, I wondered which of them the Star Lords had wanted preserved. They did not seem a likely lot of prospects for a great destiny on Kregen. That was not my concern. Exchanging polite greetings with the headman was not my concern. I wrapped a fawn breechclout around my nakedness and possessed myself of a knife, a poor thing with a bone handle and a bronze blade, indifferently made. These people were poor. I cut through all the chatter.

"Tell me where this place is," I said, then, quelling their inquiries, I added, "for I have been shipwrecked and am lost out of the sea."

The head-shaking at this, the lip-pursing, made me wonder what they ordinarily did to shipwrecked mariners.

"Why," said Mogo the Wise, screwing up his eyes. "This is Inama. Everyone knows that." In my screaming desire to know, to return to Delia, I wondered what fool had ever called this fool wise.

"And where is Inama? What is the next island called? The nearest mainland?"

"The next island is where those devils of Yanimas come from. As to any other large island, there cannot be any as large as Inama or Yanima, although there are smaller. And, as for what you call mainland . . ." Here he turned to his people and lifted his hands to his temples. Whereat everyone laughed. I kept my temper — just.

"Do any ships call here?"

"Of course. But they come to kill us or take us prisoner. They sail from the Ice Floes of Sicce. We run and hide. Sometimes they leave things behind." He held out his knife. It was of iron, with an ivory handle.

"This is a great knife, left by a ship."

Of one fact I felt relief in my dangerous impatience: these poor people talked of the Ice Floes of Sicce. That particular version of a Kregan hell, perhaps the most famous, was not the only one. I took heart from this talk of hell.

I said: "I will take this boat."

The headman looked dubious at this, with much pulling of his lower lip. One or two of the young bloods fingered their knives. I said, "I have saved your girls. I would like you to place water and food in the boat." More head scratching and eyes turned to the sky. "By Vox!" I said. "And would you wish the Yanimas to find a boat of theirs here when next they call?"

That was a two-pronged argument, but Mogo the Wise took the point as I had intended.

"That would make them very angry."

"And they would kill many of you. Put food and water into the boat and I will leave you." So it was settled.

The hideous anticlimax, the dread truth, the damnable situation in which I had been placed screamed at me, screeching with impending madness in my skull. Here I was, back on Kregen, and I had absolutely no idea where. I was lost. And all I had for transport was a mere rowing boat. Truly the Star Lords — if they had pitched me back here — took their revenge harshly.

But lost or not, rowing boat or not, I would set off to find Valka and my Delia. To the Ice Floes of Sicce with the Everoinye!

Chapter Seven

Lost on Kregen

Some experiences in one’s life one would wish to forget. Certainly I rate that little boating excursion as among that group of experiences I would do a very great deal never to repeat. By the position and altitude of the suns I could make a fair stab at latitude; longitude remained as much a mystery as it used to be on Earth before John Harrison gave the deep-water mariner a chronometer that would keep time with incredible accuracy. I had two alternatives and neither appeared over-appealing. Despite the fact that Kregen possesses a much greater land area than Earth, there is still a vast amount of water. Here I was, in a cranky, stubborn rowing boat, adrift somewhere on the waters of Kregen and with every direction on the compass to choose for my direction.

The other alternative, simply allowing the winds and currents to push me where they willed, in the anticipation that I would be cast up on a frequented shore, I dismissed. By more bargaining as the food and water were brought down I obtained a sheet of cloth — that fawn material the women made up from the fibers of a cottony plant — and cut down a tree to make a mast and spar. Fashioning a crude dipping lug and stepping the mast as well as I could, I determined to sail where I was going under my own power.

The little dipping lug reminded me of the muldavy of the Eye of the World. This boat was a rough and ready affair, split logs being bent to shape, secured with treenails and with quantities of hair packed in with clay. It was more of a raft than a boat, but it would serve. It would have to serve. With clumsy pottery crocks filled with water, a supply of cooked chickens and strips of bosk, dried in salt, and piles of various fruits of which palines formed a sizable proportion, I set off. No doubt the islanders thought me mad. This island of Inama was clearly situated dwaburs off the shipping lanes, and my task was to find either a ship or land as speedily as possible. It would not be easy. I could go east or west and be sure of striking land eventually. But if I was to the east of Havilfar and sailed east I’d be voyaging into an empty sea until I struck the lands of the other continental grouping from which came the shanks. And if I was to the west of Turismond and sailed the boat west, the same thing would result. The problem was a knotty one.

If I sailed north I fancied I’d stand the best chance. Southward would take me toward the equator and therefore away from Vallia.

In a similar situation on Earth there would be a strong possibility that a sailor would feel the ocean he sailed: the blue of the Pacific, the raw gray of the Atlantic, the sense of the Mediterranean. I had had no experience of these far outer oceans of Kregen, so I sailed north. The breeze veered toward the east and, accepting this as the kind of fate that had dogged me, bore away toward the northwest. The lug sail pouted, the boat more forced its way through the water than glided along, and I maintained a most strict rationing of the meager supplies.

The day came when I could not prolong the supplies by any artifice whatsoever; I had none. I do not intend to labor overlong on the rigors of that voyage; suffice it to say I caught fish and slit them open for their small quantities of fresh water. I drank a few handfuls of seawater per day for the moisture, knowing I could tolerate that small amount of salt, and I ate fish, which I detest, not only because of the damned fishheads from around the curve of the horizon.

Whether or not I could have survived without that immersion in the Pool of Baptism in Aphrasöe I do not know. But the day came when, almost out of my head and scarcely believing what I saw to be true, an argenter appeared, backed her maintopsail and so picked me up.

The hands that lifted me from the boat, the faces that stared down on me, were all a shining lustrous black. I knew I had fallen into the hands of apims from Xuntal, people of the same race as Balass. I had always found the Xuntalese to be firm, thoughtful, generous, fierce when they had to be. It seemed wise to appear in worse case than I was. So they carried me below decks and I flopped in a peculiar bunk built into the side of the ship and went to sleep. Water, food, everything I needed of bodily comfort was provided when I awoke.

There is little else to say about the argenter. She was Scepter of Xurrhuk, much after the style of those broad argenters of Pandahem, although, I fancied, not quite so wide and stubby and with another knot of speed in a fair breeze. She was painted in brilliant colors of many tones and shades and her sails were all of purest white, which delighted and amazed me, an old salt accustomed to the drab tawny sails long exposed to the elements of my own vessels.

Her master, a tall, imposing man wearing dyed blue garments of the finest ponsho wool, invited me to his cabin. The sweep of the aft windows brought back memories. I sat and drank a very fair Maxanian, straw-colored, light on the palate, and the master introduced himself as Captain Swixonon.

"You are a lucky man, dom."

"Aye, Captain. Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword smiled."

His craggy face regarded me gravely. "You are not of Xuntal."

"No. But I count at least one Xuntalese as a good friend. Tell me, Captain, where are we bound?"

"We sail from Mehzta to Xuntal."

"I know a good friend from Mehzta also."

"You are a much traveled man?"

I did not laugh but I said, "No. I met them far from their homes. I cannot pay you now for a passage, but I know ships. I can work. Later, when I am home, I will remit payment through the Lamnias."

"Very well." He was a captain, a man who made his mind up rapidly.

"Thank you."

"And your name? And your country?"

"I am Dray Prescot, of Vallia."

He raised his eyebrows. I did not think he had heard of me. After all, Kregen is a large place and my doings, although making a stir in the countries I had been, would mean little elsewhere.

"I am pleased to make a connection with Vallia. Maybe we can arrange something later." He was shrewd. Trading over the oceans is a chancy business. There are fliers on Kregen, as you know, but most of that marvelous world’s commerce is carried on by ship or canal or animal transport. Fliers —

as I well knew — are often rare and precious objects, completely unknown over many and many a highly civilized land. Havilfar holds her secrets well.

With that in mind, I said, "I would like to hire or charter a flier in Xuntal. The Vallian embassy is still open?"

He looked puzzled. "Why should it not be, dom?"

"I have been away . . . politics. I shall be glad to be back, by Vox!" In his shrewdness I fancy he read more into me than I intended to give away. He asked no questions about my arrival in a small boat, but he must have seen her and noted her lines. The rest of the journey I acted as a simple seaman and, I swear by Zair, despite the pressing urgency forcing me on, I recognized that the argenter could go no faster so I took some pleasure from the tasks of shipboard life again. To pass very rapidly over the next few weeks is to bring me to the Vallian ambassador in Xuntal, that island off the southern promontory of Balintol, the large subcontinent of Segesthes. Mehzta, from which came my good comrade Gloag, lay off the northeast coast of Segesthes. Here in Xuntal I was about the same distance southeast of Valka as I was of Zenicce, where Gloag ran my House of Strombor. Yet, because of Delia, it was to the Vallian ambassador I went and not the Stromborian. Between Xuntal and Mehzta lie the Chulik Islands. Between Xuntal and Vallia lie the islands of Undurkor. At least I knew where I was on Kregen.

There was a little trouble in my seeing the Vallian ambassador. The embassy, a splendid and imposing building as befitted the Empire, lay along a shady avenue of other magnificent buildings housing various embassies and consulates. I barged right in and told the flunky I wanted to see the ambassador and to jump. I realize now that I was at fault. But I’d been away for twenty-one miserable years and I was in a hurry. They offered to throw me out.

Eventually, carrying one guard under an arm, four or five others holding aching heads in a trail on the floor in my wake and the last and most gorgeous of them, in golden robes, thrust along ahead with my hand around his neck, I presented myself before the Vallian ambassador. The room was ornate, filled with light, expensive. I heeded none of it. The ambassador rose to his feet from the chair behind his desk. He had been talking to a shifty-looking Rapa who still sat, lifting his vulturine head to observe the proceedings.

"What do you want? Get out! Rast, out!"

I pitched the golden-robed flunky to one side.

This ambassador was one of your red-cheeked, pouchy-eyed individuals, all choler and bile. He wore decent Vallian buff-leathers, but a fancy decoration of black and white looped around his collar. I knew those colors in Vallia. He was a member of the Racter party, the most powerful political party of Vallia, and a gang who had given me trouble before and were to give me trouble again — aye, so much trouble I wonder any of them are still alive, by Vox!

I said; "Cramph! Your name! Instantly!"

He saw my face. I did not know him. I do not think he had ever seen me in Vallia before. But he saw my face and some of the color fled from his cheeks.

"Guards!" he screamed, waving his arms.

I picked up one of the flunkies’ rapiers. I swished it around. I said, "I shall not ask you your name again."

Maybe there is something in me, in that stupid, thickheaded Dray Prescot, which guarantees that the yrium — the charismatic power that I detest and yet cold-bloodedly use when I have to — can shine through despite my lumpen ways.

"I am Vektor Ulanor, the Trylon of Frant! You rast, you will rue the day you—"

"I am Dray Prescot, the Prince Majister. You need not abuse yourself or show fear, for you could not know me. I need a flier at once. Let there be no delay. Jump!" He gaped at me. I said: "I shall not ask you again. A Trylon? As ambassador to Xuntal? Very proper, for we value the Xuntalese. But you may well not be a Trylon for very much longer, Ulanor. You might not even be a noble at all, not even a Koter. You might be allowed to sweep the road of zorca and totrix droppings, in the great Kyro of Drak the Victorious in Vondium — if I am minded to be merciful." Well, it was all most unpleasant and distasteful; in the end I secured the flier and supplies and bid a much shaken Trylon Vektor remberee.

Even then, as I sped through the clean air of Kregen, I wondered what this ambassador Ulanor had been up to with a Rapa in Xuntal. The Rapas, those diffs with the strong vulture-heads and fiercely curved beaks, are not often found in the guise of merchants. If plots were being hatched I would have to attend to them the moment I had assured myself everything was shipshape at home. Trylon Vektor had given me a brief rundown on the situation in Vallia. I gathered little had changed in my absence: the Emperor still ruled with his iron, despotic sway partially tempered by his Presidio, the Racters were still in strong opposition to his plans — this I had gathered by what Vektor Ulanor did not say and by his facial tic — and Valka, as far as he knew, had not sunk into the sea.

He conveyed the impression that he would be particularly pleased had my island done so. After that first heated exchange he would have done as I commanded him; only afterward would he doubt his sanity and believe me an impostor. Luckily for him — I didn’t care — one of the grooms in the embassy had been in Vondium with another employer and had seen me there. He was able to assuage the Trylon’s fears as to my identity.

I gave them no explanation whatsoever of my presence in Xuntal or of my absence, about which they were well informed. I did give instructions that a fair passage money with a bonus should be paid in broad golden talens to Captain Swixonon, with my thanks. I also advised him, privately, to go for business to the Stromborian embassy and to say the Lord of Strombor had sent him. I added I did not think the Vallian ambassador would be of any use to a friend of mine. Now I sent the little airboat racing over the surface of Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio. She was an unhandy little craft and not overly fast, being capable of little more than eight dbs.[1]So as I urged her on and we passed over the sea dropping Xuntal astern, I settled down to the long haul ahead

— if the flier did not break down. The flying furs wrapped me against the slipstream. At last the dim and faraway blue and brown flicker of islands to starboard told me I was passing the Undurkers. Northwest I went, over the suns-glittering sea, northwest as the suns sank and Kregen’s primary moon, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, shone forth in pink and golden glory. A few clouds wafted against that glowing orb, for the moon was almost full, and I expectantly looked back to the east to see a sight I had never seen on Earth. Soon the fourth moon, She of the Veils, rose and the two moons rolled along above me, casting down their fuzzy pinkish light, most wonderful, most gorgeous, most comforting. Two of the lesser moons hurtled across, as though in welcome to see me again.

I am an Earthman, a terrestrial, and yet on Earth I had found having only one moon in the sky a most unsettling experience. How quickly we adapt and change, how quickly we grow accustomed to the bizarre . . . and yet isn’t just one moon as bizarre as seven? My Delia would have thought so. At this speed it would take me over a day and a half to reach Valka. That journey proceeded with nightmare slowness. As I journeyed nearer and nearer to Valka and all the place meant to me, I grew more and more irritable, more agitated, more apprehensive. The closer I came the more I feared. All manner of phantasms rose to torture me. Anything could have happened, anything could have gone wrong. Twenty-one years! The idea of invisible, near-omnipotent Star Lords directing me and controlling my destiny sickened me. My own estimation of myself, my own foolish achievements, all meant nothing beside the enormity of their power.

My Delia! She must be there, waiting for me, smiling, running to greet me with outstretched arms!

Close to dawn I knew I must be entering the areas of my former life on Kregen. Below me, as the first ruby fires flickered over the eastern horizon, must lie the dark outlines of islands I knew. First rose Zim, that great crimson sun that is called Far in Havilfar, and has many and many a name over other parts of Kregen. I roused myself and stared ahead in that rosy dawn. The sea sparkled empty before me. I cursed. When the vivid emerald fires of Genodras, the smaller green sun that in Havilfar is called Havil and likewise has many other names, rose to drench the bloodlit sky, I saw a faint smear on the northwestern horizon. I was gripping the wooden rail of the flier like a drowning man. My head jutted above the little windshield and the breeze roared in my face, streaming my shaggy mop of brown hair, bringing water to my eyes.

I wore an old red-and-white checked shirt and a pair of breeches that barely fitted. Around my waist in a cheap leather scabbard and belt hung a rapier and main-gauche I had borrowed from Trylon Vektor. I stared ahead and I could feel my heart thumping. This — this homecoming was what I had craved for twenty-one unendurable years on Earth.

Islands flashed past below. I saw the cream of surf, the windblown trees, here and there the orderly signs of cultivation. Villages and towns flashed past and then more open sea. Ships sailed down there, toy models with swelling sails. I looked ahead. Valka! Yes — there rose the high battlements of the Heart Heights, those inner mountains where the freedom-fighters had rallied to oppose oppression. Now I could see the coastline, the whole fantastic sweep of the Bay, with Valkanium dotting the bright slopes with white and multicolored buildings. The high fortress of Esser Rarioch atop its hill, the banners and streamers, the brave red and white of Valka, the suns streaming their glorious mingled rays upon all that vivid scene; it was a fusion of color and movement and brightness as the voller swept in a lancing curve to land on that high terraced platform.

I stepped out.

I looked around.

By Zair!

Home — home after twenty-one years and four hundred light-years. I felt dizzy, dizzied with the sheer ache of longings fulfilled.

People came running.

Many I knew. Many I did not know. There rose a babblement of voices. I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed. Up above my head a patrol of flutduins curved, those famous saddle birds of Djanduin with my riders of Valka perched on them. A voller swung away, assured by the people below that all was well. Panshi came forward, smiling, holding his great staff of office, full well understanding the importance of this occasion.

"Master!" he said. He looked at me and I saw the expression on his face and I clasped him by the hand, mightily shocking him and yet perfectly conveying the impression of welcome and homecoming we both experienced.

"The Princess Majestrix! Prince Drak and Princess Lela! Prince Segnik and Princess Velia! Where are they?"

"My Prince!" he said.

And I chilled.

"Prince Drak is in Vondium with his grandfather, the Emperor. Princess Lela and Princess Velia stay with the sisters of the Rose. Prince Zeg is gone to a far-off place that must exist, for he has been there and returned, but it is beyond all men’s knowledge."

My hands were gripped together. I was aware of the throng pressing, the shouts as the word passed:

"The old Strom is back!"

I hardly understood what they said. The old Strom.

"And the Princess Majestrix?"

I did not like the look on old Panshi’s face. But he was a good and loyal man. He straightened up.

"She too is gone, my Prince."

"Gone!" I was shouting. "Gone where?"

He waved his hand before his face. The great staff of office shook against the flagstones.

"I do not know, my Prince, I do not know. But she is gone."

Chapter Eight

"And so the Princess Majestrix went alone?"

My private rooms, my inner sanctum, were smothered in dust. Dust and decay harbored here. I smashed the rapier flat against a chair and the dust flew. Sitting, I stared at Panshi, who had followed me here. All others I had waved away.

"Fetch me food and drink, Panshi. Send for it. You must tell me all that has passed."

"Yes, master."

A Fristle fifi I did not know scurried in with refreshment, looking frightened. When she had gone I said:

"You said Prince Zeg?"

"Yes, Prince. He is no longer Prince Segnik." Then Panshi revealed he was still the same old retainer, for he added in a more sprightly voice: "He said he would not have the nik added to his name any longer, and he fought Prince Vanden, whose father visited here, and gave the brat — I beg your pardon, my Prince

— gave the young lord a bloody nose."

That sounded likely. This young Prince Vanden’s father was that same Varden Wanek, Prince of the House of Eward of Zenicce, a good comrade to Dray Prescot, so something at least of the old alliances continued.

"Go on, Panshi." I spoke more calmly now. This was not the homecoming I had expected, hungered for. The emptiness in me rang hollow with mockery of my hope. But, after so long, how could I expect everyone to be home waiting for me?

"Prince Segnik went away — to a place — and when he returned he called himself Prince Zeg." I fancied I knew where Segnik had been, and you who listen to these tapes will have no difficulty in understanding just where he had been and what he had been about.

"And the Princess Majestrix has gone there too?"

"I believe so, my Prince. But I cannot be sure."

"Tell me."

"Men came. Strange men. They were closeted privately with the Princess, and Turko the Shield had to be told by me most stringently that she was not to be disturbed. We waited and fretted and when the Princess bade the men remberee she looked — I crave your indulgence, master — she looked sad and tired. We wanted to help; but she would not confide in us."

"Didn’t Prince Drak have anything to say?"

"He was in Vandayha over a matter of a silversmith who had adulterated his metal. There was a scandal and Prince Drak—"

"Yes, yes." I saw then that young Drak had been carrying on my government while I had been away. Well, wasn’t that the proper function for a dutiful son?

"The young Prince and Princess—" began Panshi, but in my impatience I interrupted.

"And Turko and Balass and Naghan, Melow the Supple — they are all with the Princess?" He looked thoughtful and adjusted the upper hem of his robe, for he had somehow managed to find the time to dress himself in his full regalia so that he looked at once imposing and faintly ridiculous, an eminently practical appearance for the Chief Chamberlain. "I do not know for sure, my Prince. They were called away with the Elten of Avanar to — ah — attend to the disturbances of the Strom of Vilandeul. He conceived the idea that he was entitled to the lands west of the Varamin Mountains and led an expedition—"

I felt not so much the shock of that as the annoyance. The Elten of Avanar was my old blade comrade Tom Tomor ti Vulheim. He was my Chuktar in command of the army of Valka. If the Strom of Vilandeul, a Strom governing his Stromnate on the mainland of Vallia, conceived that land in my island of Can Thirda belonged to him, there was going to be trouble. The shock, when I thought about it, was the wonder that the trouble should occur at all in the Empire of Vallia. Surely the Emperor was not so decayed as to be unable to maintain law and order? This was a matter that must be looked into. But not now; now I only desired to find my Delia. The children were quite clearly making their own lives. It was my Delia I must concern myself with.

"In this trouble, the young Prince would have been—" started Panshi.

"And so the Princess Majestrix went alone?"

He did not like my tone. He lifted his thin shoulders. "She would not listen, my Prince. We tried — she left when the Strom of Vilandeul played a false tune. I think, if I may be permitted to say this, my Prince, that when the Princess went the Strom fancied his chances."

"But Tom will fix him," I said. With Vangar and the air fleet, the cavalry and aerial cavalry and the superb Archers of Valka, my Stromnate should be able to resist this upstart Strom’s plans for conquest and occupation.

"Master, men did go with the Princess, a small bodyguard she agreed to take, and Melow the Supple—"

"Ah!" I said. At once I felt more reassured.

Staring about the dusty room with the furnishings so carefully chosen, I wondered. As Panshi poured a fresh cup of tea — that superb Kregen tea on which I dote — I prowled around the familiar room, seeing that the weapons adorning the walls had all been most carefully greased, noting the books in their serried ranks, the pictures, the banners, marking all the old items, domestic and flamboyant, that made this room and these chambers a place to feel at home, to relax, to laugh and enjoy life.

"Why is the room dusty, Panshi?"

"The Princess would not allow anyone here after you — ah — went away, my Prince. There were some who whispered you were dead. But we who know you knew better. The young Prince, of course, did not—"

"Was a message entrusted to you?"

"Only that when you returned you were to be told what I have told you. I think, Majister, another message may have been left."

I thought so too. So I prowled, going to the writing desks and the bookshelves and all those peculiarly Kregan furnishings that make a Kregan home a place of color as well as comfort. I did not find a message from Delia. Well, I knew enough. There remained one item to learn, one remaining fact I hesitated to ask, dreading the answer. But one must accept the needle, as they say on Kregen.

"When did the Princess leave?"

"Seven months of the Maiden with the Many Smiles."

Over a year ago, in terrestrial reckoning! The Kregans’ measurements of time are a vastly complicated affair, with their seasons and their months calculated to the phases of the three major sets of moons and the passages of the suns. I felt again that heaviness at my heart, that hollowness within me.

"You will have messages sent to Prince Drak and the Princesses, Panshi," I said, with as firm a voice as I could muster. "I have no time to write. Say I am returned and gone to seek their mother." I began to strip off the old red-and-white checked shirt. "And I will have a fleet voller readied, well provisioned and weaponed. I will select the weapons myself."

"I will do all you command, master. And the young Prince?"

"Since he is probably where I am now going I shall be able to speak with him myself." I saw Panshi’s eyebrows lift a tiny fraction, then he nodded and bustled off to prepare what was necessary.

There was no time to take the Baths of the Nine, for though Delia might have left over a year ago, I did not wish to waste a mur. As for weapons, I plundered the armory and took a fine selection. For clothes I had a whole wardrobe in a wicker basket placed in the chosen flier and made sure a quantity of scarlet cloth was included. I was traveling where men fought in different fashion from men in Vallia and Zenicce and Pandahem. And, to be truthful, in a way that was both advantageous and disadvantageous. The state of Valka and my other lands was sketched by Panshi: the army as I had seen was in fine fettle; the shipyards prospered; we were recovering from a poor samphron-oil crop; the Princess Majestrix had trouble in Delphond, but the leader of the high assembly of Valka, grim old Tharu ti Valkanium, continued to shoulder the burdens of office. I remembered him with affection.

As always my mind turned towards my comrades, men and women of Kregen I counted as friends. Seg Segutorio, for whom young Segnik had been named — and how had he taken this changing of his given name, I wondered — knew where I would be going. I felt I could count on him to assist me. And Inch too would assuredly come. I must make time to write them. The pen squealed over the paper, for there was no time for the fine Kregan brushwork, and I stated to them both very simply that I was back and needed their help; I added that Inch should first contact Seg and they should journey together. Then I crossed out the Kregish word for should and substituted a euphemistic expression that conveyed the idea of a request and a gracious permission on their part. After this lapse of time they would be deeply immersed in their own affairs. How could I expect them to drop everything and go flying across Kregen after a harebrained onker like me, rushing headlong into adventures again, as we had in the old days?

For I knew as surely as Zim and Genodras ruled the daytime sky that fearsome adventures loomed ahead. This was no picnic on which I embarked. And my Delia had gone — alone!

Well, not quite alone. I was marvelously cheered at the thought of a ferocious jikla, a Manhound of Faol, pacing at her side with slavering fangs ready to rend any who would harm her. When I saw the flier Panshi had provided I could not prevent a tiny droop to my lips. She was not one of the best. He saw my face and hurriedly said, "Master, all the fliers save a very few have been taken, as I have told you. Even the sailers. San Evold and San Khe-Hi are with Prince Drak." I knew what he meant. Nothing more had been done about deciphering the secrets of the silver boxes that powered vollers.

It was necessary for me to observe the fantamyrrh with great care as I stepped aboard the voller. This I did.

A young Hikdar of the Valkan Archers looked up at me. He bashed his red-and-white banded sleeve across his chest.

"My Prince! I would like to go with you. I and a choice band from my pastang." I looked at him. Yes, I knew him. He had been a waso-Deldar when last I’d been in Valka. Now he wore the insignia of a shebov-Hikdar of the Fourth Regiment of Valkan Archers. In twenty years he had gone from the fifth rank in the Deldar structure to the seventh rank in the Hikdar. Even when men live for two hundred years there is still promotion when there is fighting to be done.

"I am sure your pastang is a credit to the Fourth, and to the Valkan Army, Hikdar Naghan ti Ovoinach. But your duty lies here, to protect Valka, as you have been detailed." His face lit up at my remembrance of him, and showed sadness at my words. But he bashed me another salute and stepped back to where his pastang, a full eighty superb bowmen, lined up. I saw that a strong hand had been running the army, at least, while I had been away. As the voller soared up into the limpid light of the suns I guessed that strong and guiding hand to belong to my son Drak. How odd to think that, even though I was chronologically over ninety years of age, my son at thirty-two was an older man than I. I had been thirty when I’d taken that dip in the Pool of Baptism.

Although no one had mentioned it, I knew well enough that he was regarded as the Strom of Valka, that when I was mentioned it would be as the old Strom of Valka, Oh, yes, I knew. I set the controls at due west and thrust the speed lever hard over. The persistent habit of driving vollers at their top speed had been growing on me. This was no time to make an exception. Rising into the air, the voller swung west. I looked down over the rim where the lacing of leather to the wooden rib had frayed and threatened to rip apart in the slipstream. This was an example of the more common form of voller which, while being able to move of its own volition by reason of the two silver boxes, was yet susceptible to wind pressure. If this craft failed me somewhere over the sea . . . Well, that would be an end to Dray Prescot, onker of onkers.

Unless, of course, the Star Lords still needed me for their inscrutable purposes. The veil that had been partially lifted on the Everoinye, allowing me a dim glimpse of secrets to be discovered, had shown me potentialities for conflict that staggered me, courses of disaster I did not wish to steer. Below me Valkanium vanished aft, with the peak of Esser Rarioch lofting, its pinnacles and towers ablaze with flags and banners, the wink and gleam of weapons very comforting as Hikdar Naghan ti Ovoinach and his pastang saluted my departure.

The voller whisked into the clouds and I was alone.

Once more I was set full on a fresh course for adventure and headlong action, hurtling across the surface of Kregen. The thought came to plague me that perhaps I was no longer the Dray Prescot who had first been transported here by the Savanti. Maybe I had lost my cutting edge. Well, as Zair was my witness, I would do all that I could for my Delia, and not reckon the consequences. No matter what perils I might encounter I would not surrender the fight until they shipped me out to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

Chapter Nine

Into the Eye of the World

I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, flew for the inner sea of Kregen, the Eye of the World.

Since I had left the enclosed world of the inner sea with Delia, Seg and Thelda, much had happened to me and much time had passed. I had become all manner of fine fancy nobility, Strom of Valka, Prince Majister of Vallia, King of Djanduin and other titles in addition. I had become a father. I had been to Earth and back to Kregen. How could I, who still took real and genuine pride in belonging to the mystic Order of Krozairs of Zy, expect to recapture the sensations and excitements of my life on the inner sea?

As I flew through the clear and bracing air of Kregen I felt no doubts about what must be done. For I flew to find my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond. For her sake I would dare anything, anyone. I do not boast. I state a plain fact. I know too that she would dare all for me, and it is at that thought that I tremble.

At an average speed of approximately ten dbs the flier would take roughly two and three-quarter days to cover the distance from Valka to Sanurkazz. Despite all the urgency I felt, and the maddening impatience that tore at me, there was nothing I could do but wait for the time to pass as the voller soared across Kregen. Vondium, the capital of Vallia, passed away over the southern horizon. The ocean that is called the Sunset Sea all the way from Vallia to Segesthes flowed beneath the petal-shape of the voller. By the time the shoreline of the continent of Turismond appeared ahead I was almost sunk in an apathy induced by frustration, fretting and concern.

My Delia had passed this way over a year before. What had happened to her? Then, as Port Tavetus, one of Vallia’s colonial cities of the eastern Turismond coast, passed astern, I found a few remnants of sanity returning. Now I was headed for the Klackadrin. The earth had moved here at some time in the past, opening up a long narrow lift from which noxious gases poured, vapors carrying with them hallucinogenic substances that ripped away a man’s sanity. I had traveled here on foot. The experience is one I seldom dwell on. The Phokaym, those coldly hostile risslaca men, riding risslaca steeds, gripped the land on the western edge of the Klackadrin in a fist of iron. The experiences through which I had been dragged there must have left deep scars, for I know I held on to the voller and prayed it would not break down over that hellish place.

The enormous rent in the earth’s surface stretched for dwabur after dwabur north and south. I could see steam and vapors lifting and I drove the voller higher. The ground stank with barrenness. Remnants of the proud roads once driven across from east to west by the imperial powers of the old Empire of Loh glittered in the dying light of the suns. Now the Klackadrin on the east and the stupendous mountain bulk of the Stratemsk on the west effectively closed off the land between, land men called the hostile territories.

Believe me when I say that however inimical the hostile territories are, I heaved a sigh of relief when I passed safely over the Klackadrin.

As for the hostile territories, somewhere down there Delia, Seg, Thelda and I had marched and sang as we fought our way on foot from the Stratemsk eastward. Looking back, I could be thankful about what happened, that my friends were spared the horrors of the Phokaym and the Klackadrin.[2]

At the time, mind you, I was a very angry man.

Down there Queen Lilah might still be lording it over Hiclantung, aping the ancient ways of the Queens of Pain of Loh. Without any feeling that the emotion was grotesque, I found myself wishing her well. She was merely what she was. At the least and for all its faults, Hiclantung was an oasis of culture in a sea of barbarism.

The changing face of the land below as it sped past gave no real indication of what was going on down there. One day, when safe means of crossing the Klackadrin had been found, the onward-pressing frontier forces of Vallia and the various nations of Pandahem would spill out into the hostile territories. The use of vollers alone would not be enough. I consigned these interesting prospects for the future to the Black Spider Caves of Gratz as before me rose the impossible bulk of the Stratemsk. I have already spoken of the Stratemsk, the ranges of mountains extending north and south, defying reason, sprawling into the sky, cloaked eternally in ice and snow, cleft by deep humid jungle valleys, demanding everything of spirit and valor to dare. They shut off the eastern portions of the lands of the inner sea. I must cross them. My Delia had done so — three times. I had crossed them only once, and then we had crashed.

This was where I had first encountered flying animals and birds on Kregen of a size large enough to carry a passenger. Out in the hostile territories I had seen a few distant dots in the air and the speed of the voller had taken me past. Now I faced gigantic birds and animals in their natural state, untamed, ferocious, vicious, forever seeking food.

I fancied they’d find Dray Prescot a tough and sinewy mouthful; still, it behooved me to keep my old carcass out of their fangs and jaws.

The voller took me through the first of the foothills. Ahead the high peaks waited. Wending a way through the passes and gradually flying higher and higher, I skirted those ice-bound precipices, sped beneath the pinnacles of glistening rock and drove hard through whatever open spaces valleys offered. The air cut to the quick. Flying silks and furs were heaped over me.

I crouched in the voller with only my eyes and nose showing and my fist gripped around the hilt of a longsword. If a flight of impiters caught me, those coal-black demons of the air would rip the voller to pieces. I could not hope to be saved once again by a gorgeous myriad of tiny pink and yellow birds. Straight on past two mountain flanks that seemed ready to topple inward and grind together, I sent the voller hurtling down over the saddle. The long valley ahead swarmed with birds swooping from the rocks. I held to the center. Mists coiled below. The farther end of the valley showed its V-notch and chill white-blue sky beyond. Due west, always due west . . .

The voller fluttered and dived.

Useless to bash the controls, to rave and curse. Down swooped the voller, down and down, plunging into the mists. I ripped open the panel which in this small craft covered the two silver boxes in their sturm-wood orbits. A single glance told me the mechanism was functioning correctly, the orbits moving one with the other on their bronze and balass gearing. So the trouble lay within the vaol box. If there was trouble with the paol box there was nothing I could do. To open that would release the cayferm and that box would never function again.

The idea that this voller’s power source had reached the end of its useful life, when the silver boxes dulled, had given me a nasty turn; now I must land and dismantle the vaol box. The mists coiled more thinly. Huge bloated tree trunks passed. I had the speed down now and felt confident of making a respectable landing. The muggy heat rose. Here in these deep valleys the air hung heavy and humid, ground heat and the greenhouse effect combining to make jungle miniatures within the mountain mass.

A confused jumble of orange-speckled yellow, of leprous growths with medusa-arms, of black and glistening trunks, swished away. The voller roared past a lichened rock outcrop, clipped yellow powder from hanging clusters of puffballs, making me sneeze, and came to a shaky stop amid tendrilous yellow ferns. All about me the spectral trees rose like a wall. Bloated, whiplike, fern-fanned, the variety of forms displayed a massive and frenzied struggle for life. Lianas draped everywhere. The smells were fetid and yet not overly unpleasant and I guessed the busy scavengers were at work breaking down every last fragment of refuse.

A bulky something moved ponderously among the trees. A glimmering white outline, immense, inhuman, something like a giant slug with orange horns, slid past between the trees. The longsword lifted, but the monster glided on, tearing at the branches.

Putting the longsword down close by, I ripped out the vaol box and carefully opened it. How often I had done this! Inside the box the minerals were clumped, packed mostly at one end with only a scattering of powder moving freely. I used a dagger to stir the powder free, to break up the clumps, to return the mix to its original loose condition. By the time the lid was back on the sweat poured from me; the humidity was murderous.

The vaol box was slicked with moisture and I knew that enough had been trapped inside to make the box unusable again before too long. It would have to get me through the Stratemsk. I reseated it within its orbit and reconnected the gearing train.

It was at that moment, straightening up, ready to hit the controls, that the xi lunged. There was barely time to scoop up the sword and parry that first vicious thrust. The xi whirred its diaphanous wings and backed off, chirring in frenzy. Its iridescent scales glimmered in the diffused light. The xi was something like a dragonfly, with four glistening wings behind a head that was a nightmare cross between a bird’s beak and a snake’s wedge. But all likeness to a dragonfly was lost when the xi whipped its sinuous snakelike body from side to side and coiled it for a stinging blow from beneath. Besides, the xi was ten feet long — a flying monster, aiming to skewer me and then devour me at leisure for lunch.

A single dominant thought obsessed me: I must dispose of this fellow before the rest of the swarm found me.

It darted in again and I ducked the lethal lunge of the tail, the longsword slashing down at his forward antennae. The keen blade sheared through the black furry feelers, surged on to gouge into the bright and staring eye on the left of that wedge-shaped head. The xi’s wings fluttered madly. It whirred away, spinning, flying clumsily. From the longsword a green ichor dropped.

The voller went up cleanly. Up and up, past the tumbling, pathetic shape of the xi, up to burst through the mist and so bring me into the chill upper air.

"By Vox!" I said explosively. "I was lucky there!" In those last few murs before the mist enfolded me I had seen the glittering swarm approaching, flying fast, a blurring mass of shining wings and iridescent scales, the lizards of the air, swarming to devour me!

There is a considerable variety of xi, and I had just met a type whose body had nearly evolved into a whiplike snake form, away from the original, bulkier lizard form. Whatever family they belong to, the xi are bad news.

And my Delia had flown this way!

Straight on I forced the voller. Like the end of a nightmare the last valley opened out and all before me stretched the downward trending slopes of the westward face of the Stratemsk. Here fresh dangers lurked. The flying furies of the mountains might all be behind me, the impiters and corths, the zizils and bisbis, the yellow eagles of Wyndhai and the iridescent-scaled xi; now I must fly over the lands of the crofermen.

Savage, untamed, cruel and suspicious, the crofermen inhabit the outer reaches of the Stratemsk. They live an arduous life filled with peril, defending their ponsho flocks against the demons of the air, continually fighting among themselves, man-beasts of lowering aspect and formidable ferocity. I, Dray Prescot, say this with all truth: I was lucky to be able to fly over them and not have to come to ground.

As you know I had been well informed that it was against policy to take an airboat into the lands of the inner sea. Delia had landed her flier some way off the eastern edge of the sea and had taken local transport when she had come searching for me before. The people of the Eye of the World had little if any knowledge that it was possible for a man to fly through the air.

Now I knew that interdiction must have come from the Empire of Hamal, which made and sold vollers, and the law had been implemented by the Presidio of Vallia because they did not wish to lose their franchise. Hamal would not sell vollers to Pandahem or Loh, and their lack had proved disastrous in the past.

I consigned Hamal and Empress Thyllis, with whom I had an outstanding debt, to the Ice Floesof Sicce as I bored on through the bright air of Kregen, angling to fetch up in Sanurkazz itself. How often I had promised myself I would return to the Eye of the World! And how often fate had destroyed my intentions, one way or another, every time. I had planned to return on a joyous holiday, to take my Delia and the family, to revisit the haunts of my existence there as a Krozair captain and see my friends once again. Now I came in urgency and haste, desperate that Delia might be in peril. My plans were very simple. I would go first to Sanurkazz, the chief city of the Zairians, and seek information. If I found nothing I would fly on to Zy, the island fortress of the Krozair Brotherhood, that order of which I was proud to account myself a member and which, I truly think, meant more to me, for all the tiny scope of its activities on Kregen, than anything else except Delia and my family. The journey had taken the best part of three days. I had flown in as straight a line by the compass as I could contrive, a great-circle route that wasted not a dwabur of distance. The distance would have taken months to travel by land and sea. It had taken me month after weary month to travel in the opposite direction. As the land opened out below and signs of cultivation appeared, I felt those irritable, apprehensive, fearful sensations attack me once more as I neared my goal. It seemed to me that Delia had come here because she had had bad news of Segnik — he who was now Zeg. I had pushed all that from my mind. But what other explanation could there be? I had discussed with Delia the education of our children many times. She knew that I intended Drak and, in his time, Segnik to go to the Krozairs of Zy. I believe the most profound education was possible with them. I had intended to take a hand to soften the teachings that emphasized the hatred for the Grodnims of the green northern shore. Oh, yes, as you know, I hated the overlords of Magdag and all the other Grodnims of the northern shore. But I felt mature enough to hold that feeling in its proper perspective. I had worn green clothes of late and I had met in friendship those to whom green and religions associated with the color were good and fine. It was the inner strength the Krozairs of Zy give, the spiritual teachings, the skill at arms, the knowledge of self, all those mystic disciplines that make a Krozair a man among men that I wanted for my sons.

Dealing with the religious beliefs of Kregen, it was in the pure and life-enhancing teachings of Opaz, the embodiment of the Invisible Twins, that I wished my family to be brought up. But nowhere else could the skill, the powers, the self-control, the mystic self-knowledge of the Krozairs be found than here, in the Eye of the World. To be a Krzy is a great and precious gift.

Then a twitch afflicted my grim old lips. Among all this high-level occupation of my brain the tickling thought emerged that I would see friends here who would bring me down to earth — or Kregen — with a bump.

I would again see Nath and Zolta, my two favorite rascals, my two oar comrades. By Zair! We’d roister all night in Sanurkazz! We’d have the fat and jolly mobiles falling over their feet as they tried to arrest us, dancing through the streets, a flagon of drink in one hand and a pretty tavern wench in the other! What a fool I had been not to return here sooner!

And there would be Pur Zenkiren to see, that upright, grim, but scrupulously fair Krozair who had been a good friend to me and who must by now be the Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy, for Pur Zazz, who had then held that exalted post, had clearly almost run his long life on Kregen when I had last spoken with him.

Then, too, there was Mayfwy. All my pleasant thoughts of anticipation clouded as I remembered with great affection and pride my oar comrade Zorg of Felteraz. He had died under the lashes of the whip-deldars of Magdag. His widow Mayfwy, her son Zorg and daughter Fwymay had made Nath and Zolta and myself very welcome at the estate of Felteraz. Yes, I would like to see Mayfwy again. So there were many places and people I must visit. But first I must assure myself that Delia was safe. To look back was agony. Twenty-one infernal years!

Because people of Kregen live to two hundred years or so, once they reach maturity they change only slowly. I held a vision of my Delia in my brain that could not have altered in any great particular. Our thousand-year promise of life meant a great deal to me, quite apart from the obvious, for twenty-one years’ separation on Earth would destroy in time’s remorseless flow the joys we knew. How I hated the Star Lords when I allowed myself to brood on their high-handed usage of me!

That, along with all the rest of the unprofitable pining, had to be thrust aside. I would go on in my old way. I knew what I was about. If Zair was with me — and Opaz and Djan too, to be sure — I must succeed.