Copyright © 1979, 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 1979.

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

4EB, United Kingdom

www.mushroom-ebooks.com

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

ISBN 184319595X

A Fortune for Kregen

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

A Note on Dray Prescot

Dray Prescot is a man above middle height, with brown hair and level brown eyes, brooding and dominating, an enigmatic man with enormously broad shoulders and superbly powerful physique. There is about him an abrasive honesty and indomitable courage. He moves like a savage hunting cat, quiet and deadly. Reared in the inhumanly harsh conditions of Nelson’s Navy, he has been transported by the Scorpion agencies of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, and the Savanti of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, to the unforgiving yet rewarding world of Kregen, four hundred light years from Earth, under the Suns of Antares.

Here he has made his home and has struggled through triumph and disaster, acquiring titles and estates on the way, which he views with a cool irony. Determined to relinquish the burden of being Emperor of Vallia when that island empire is once more united and at peace, he plans to hand all over to his son, Drak. Now the Star Lords have set to his hands a task in the exotic southern continent of Havilfar, but, as usual, the meaning of the mission is veiled from him. To prevent a league headed by Vallia’s bitter foe, the Empire of Hamal, from succeeding, Prescot has played in the deadly game of Death Jikaida. He has been sorely wounded.

Prescot records his story for us on cassettes and each book is arranged to be read as complete in itself. Now the future lies before him as he determines to return home to Vallia, and to Delia and his family and friends. But Kregen is not like this Earth.

Hurled once more into headlong adventure, Prescot must battle for his life — and sanity — but, this time, his struggles do not take place in the streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio, nor even in the fuzzy pink and golden radiance of the Seven Moons of Kregen...

Chapter One

On a Roof in Jikaida City

There are more ways than one hundred and one of stealing an airboat and this was going to be way Number One. Just walk up to the craft, step aboard, and take off — first making sure she was not tethered down.

That was the theory.

The guard stepped from a shadowed doorway on the first landing and stuck a glittering great cleaver under my nose.

“Stand where you are, dom, or your head will go bouncing down those stairs you’ve just walked up.”

Light from the lamp held in the hand of a bronze cupid at the head of the stairs struck sparks from his eyes. All he could see of me must be a silhouette. The muffling mask of gray cloth over my face and head and the dull baggy clothes were unrecognizable.

“Why, dom,” I said. “You’re making a mistake—”

No doubt he understood me to be attempting exculpation. When I lowered him gently to the carpet with my left hand gripped in the fancy front of his uniform, and, my right hand tingling just a little, took away that murderous cleaver, he slumbered peacefully — but he’d wake up understanding the mistake I had pointed out to him well enough.

Stepping carefully over him I went on up the next flight of stairs. This hotel, a veritable palace in the Foreign Quarter of Jikaida City, was occupied by the great ones of the world who came here to play Jikaida without affiliation to the Blue or the Yellow. On the roof rested the only flying boat in the city. That airboat was my ticket out of here and, because it was owned by a man from Hamal, and Hamal was at war with my own country of Vallia, it was morally quite proper for me to steal the craft. Well — morals take the devil of a beating when there’s a war on. There are, to be sure, far too many wars and battles on the world of Kregen, four hundred light years from Earth, but I was sincerely doing what I could to lessen the number.

The time was just on halfway between midnight and dawn. The hotel remained quiet. The carpets muffled my tread. There must be a few more guards about and, sentry duty being what it is, there were bound to be one or two having a quiet yarn up on the roof, one eye on the airboat. The quicker I got out of Jikaida City and, if the Star Lords permitted, back to Vallia, the better. A caravan across the Desolate Waste to the east would be far too slow for me in my mood. Vallia was in good hands, that I knew; but I still felt the need to get home. Also, knowing the way fate — which is a poor second best in any confrontation with the Star Lords — has the nasty habit of hurling me headlong into adventures that are none of my seeking, I fancied I had a few sprightly moments in front of me before I reached home. Well, by Vox, that was true.

As I stole up the next flight of stairs sounds floated down from above. I frowned. There was laughter, and high shrieks, and a tinny banging. A small orchestra was playing and trying to make its music heard over the din. I went on and came out onto the top landing. In the corner the small door that led onto the roof was unguarded. I had only to cross the stretch of thick pile carpet, open the door, close it carefully after me, and creep up the stairs, my sword in my fist...

More confounded theories.

A door opened and a man staggered out. He wore only a blue shirt and he was highly excited, his arms draped over the shoulders of a couple of sylvies half-dressed in tinsels. He roared, his head thrown back, warbling out a song whose words were unintelligible and whose tune was unrecognizable. The wall at my back felt flat and hard. I pressed in as though trying to burrow through into the room beyond.

Beyond that suddenly opened door the lamplight glowed, spilling out and casting shadows over me. The noise in there racketed away and now the orchestra, no doubt having made up its mind to be heard, howled and shrilled and scraped. Men and women shrieked with laughter and shouted over the music, determined to be heard. The clink of bottles and the crash of overturning glasses added a genial blend of bibulous accompaniment. The man and the girls staggered past, screaming with laughter, to disappear into a darkened room along the corridor.

Lamplight fell across the carpet in a butter-yellow lozenge.

To reach the door leading onto the roof it was necessary to pass that lozenge of light. The orchestra and the people — all grimly determined to be heard — redoubled their efforts. The racket coruscated. The door remained open and people passed and repassed — or staggered and restaggered

— from side to side. Another man came out. He crawled on hands and knees. A slinky little Fristle fifi rode his back, alternately hitting him with a slipper and giving him sips of wine from a glass. Most of the wine — it was a light straw color — soaked into the carpet. They were both yelling their heads off. I shoved another inch or two into the wall.

Somebody else reeled out of the door, tripped over the man on his knees and the fifi, and collapsed, howling with laughter. His wine went all over them. He had been drinking a deep red wine, and the color blazed up in the lamplight.

A voice yelled over the din.

“Hey, Nath! C’mere, for the sake of Havandua — these Hamalese have me—” The rest was lost in a gurgle.

The fellow who was being ridden by the girl stood up. He reeled. The girl clung to him, her naked legs wrapped about him. Making no effort to throw her off he went barging back, and the chap who had fallen over him lurched up, shaking his head from side to side and chuckling foolishly. He looked at his empty glass, made a solemn clucking noise, and wandered off toward the open door. He hit the wall beside the door, bounced, shook his head, took a grip on himself and navigated back into the room.

Somebody shut the door.

Oh, yes, by Krun. They were all Somebodies in there...

Letting out my breath I eased from the shadows and started for the door. My hand was on the latch. I was pushing the door open — when the light sprang into being again at my back. A girl’s voice, all giggles and hiccoughs, said, “Leaving already? You Hamalese are too solemn! Come and have a drink.”

Without turning, I said in as light a voice as I could muster, “You should try telling that to a Bladesman in the Sacred Quarter of Ruathytu.”

A man’s voice, heavier than most, said, “Hamalese? I don’t—”

There was nothing else for it.

I went through the opened doorway, slammed the wood at my back, and shot the bolt across. No time to catch a breath. It was up the stairs hell for leather and out onto the roof under the stars of Kregen. The airboat was there — tethered down, of course! — and with a canvas cover thrown across her slim lines.

The first chain ripped free. The second chain was in my fingers. The scrape at my back sounded clearly. In an explosion of movement I dived sideways, recovered, hauled out my sword. The two guards were in nowise chagrined that they had failed to surprise me. She of the Veils floated free of cloud wrack then and showed them to me — as the moon showed me to them. A banging started below as the party-goers hammered on the door I had bolted. The guards bore in, their swords held in the professional fighting man’s grip. They wore the fancy uniform of employees of this establishment, a riot of ruffles and bronze-bound armor, the whole outlined in black and yellow checkers. They knew what they were about. They anticipated no real trouble from me. The gray cloth mask over my face would hearten them rather than not, for they would take this as a sign of one who wished to remain unknown in the shadows, and unwilling to face a fight. And, by Zair, they were right!

The wounds I had taken in that last fight on the Jikaida board were nowhere near properly healed. I was still weak. Yes, I could wield a blade and give some account of myself. But to engage in protracted swordplay, I knew, was beyond my present powers. This night’s doings had been intended as a quick and furtive entry, a fast snatch of the airboat, and a remarkably smart getaway. These two hulking guards had no intention of allowing me to carry on my plans for another moment. As I say — so much for theory.

With the nerve-tingling scrape of steel on steel, the blades crossed. Now — now these two were fair swordsmen. They earned their hire by standing guard. And, also, it was perfectly clear they would kill me as a mere part of earning that hire. That was their job. There was no great panache in it, not a sign of lip-licking enjoyment in their work. They just went about the business determined to prevent me, a masked thief, from stealing the airboat they were paid to protect. As I say, they were fair swordsmen. After a few passes I knew, weak as I was, that I had the mastering of them both.

The blades screeched and rang as I fended them off, and pressed, and retreated, luring them on to the final passage that would settle this thing. But — but they were just men earning their daily bread. They were doing what they did for purely economic reasons. Their morality encompassed my death as a thief so that they might earn their daily bread, in the same way that my morality encompassed stealing this airboat in order to fly back to Vallia.

I could have slain them both; run them through in a twinkling.

Many a superior swordsman of the darker persuasion would have done so and thought nothing of it. There is enough misery in two worlds without adding villainy to it and calling it heroism. These two guards went to sleep after a flurry of blades and a rapid double thump — one, two — from the hilt. The delay they had caused, slight though it was, had undone my plans and earned their hire. Men boiled out from the stairway onto the roof, so I knew they had broken down the lower door. Some of them wore shirts, some of them wore trousers or breechclouts, and although very few were possessed of all items of clothing, they all possessed swords. They set up a howl as they saw me, a dark, masked, mysterious figure just stepping back from two unconscious guards. They charged, screeching. I recognized the tone, the mood, the feeling of their yells.

Anger, of course — but, chiefly, a high delirious excitement, a sudden passion for the chase, the game, the feeling that in a spot of action would come the highlight of the evening’s entertainments. The chains tethering the flier remained fast locked.

Now there was no time to act as I have acted in other places and other times in circumstances not too dissimilar.

I ran.

The roofs of the hotel presented a bewildering jumble — a jungle of tiles and cornices and chimneys and spires.

Away we all went in a rout, and they were hallooing and yelling and prancing about back there, waving their swords, their naked legs flashing in the fuzzy golden and pinkish light of She of the Veils. Kregen’s largest moon, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, lifted over the edge of the world and shone pink and rose down through shredding clouds. There would be plenty of light. As I ran and skipped from roof to roof I reflected that, by Vox, there would be far too much light.

This quiet, cautious, carefully planned exercise had turned into a right old shambles. The fellows chasing me back there were not all apims, not all Homo sapiens like me. Among them the wonderful variety of diffs of Kregen was well represented. A loose slate which made me slither down a prickly roof almost did for me; with a convulsive lunge I hooked my fingers around the guttering and managed to hang on. Below me the gulf yawned. Far below, far and far below, light spilled across a cobbled courtyard as a door was opened. A voice bellowed up.

“What in the name of Vilaha’s Tripes is going on up there?”

The pack yelled and caroled and they were creeping out along the roof ridge toward the spot where I had slipped. They looked like a ghostly dance of death up there, silhouetted against the moon radiance, for some of them pranced out balancing as though they walked a tightrope. Others got down on their hands and knees and shuffled along. Only one had the hardihood — or foolhardiness — to slither down the tiles.

He came down rather too fast.

He started to scream as he picked up speed, sliding down the roof. His flailing hands sought for a grip, and scrabbled against the tiles, and slipped. He hit the guttering and it broke away with a groan, and dipped down. Only a bracket near me held the end of the guttering. It hung down like the snapped yardarm of a swifter, smashed in the shock of ramming.

The fellow was screaming now, clutching desperately to the angled guttering, and slowly — slowly and horribly — he was sliding down the guttering toward its splintered end. In a few moments he would slip off the end, make a desperate and unavailing snatch at the guttering, and fall to the cobbles beneath. He’d go splat.

His death meant nothing to me, of course.

I got my other hand up to the secured guttering and hooked a knee. I looked up. His comrades were still yelling up there and most of them did not even know he had fallen. They were running on to get to the end of the slate walkway along the ridge. There was not much time.

The leather belt around my waist was thick and supple; it came off in a trice and I gripped the end and threw the buckle end around in an arc. It swung like a pendulum.

“Grab the belt, dom!” I shouted.

His white face looked like the head of a moth, in the moon-dappled shadows. I could see his mouth open; but he was too far gone to scream. His eyes were like holes burned in linen. He made a grab for the belt on the next swing, and missed, and jerked back as the guttering groaned and inched down.

“This time, dom,” I shouted. “You will not miss.”

The brass belt buckle glittered once and then vanished into the shadows. He made an effort, the humping, thrusting strain of a too-heavy horse attempting to leap a too-high barrier. The brass belt buckle was grabbed; just how good a grip he had I did not know. My own pains were beginning to make me think I might not be able to hold him when his weight came on the line. There was only one way to find out.

The guttering screeched, rivets pinged away, and the guttering fell. The man swung, like a plumb-bob, dangling on the end of the belt.

Scarlet pain flowed over my body, from my arm and shoulder where Mefto’s sword had cut me again and again, and down into my very guts. I shut my eyes for a moment — and held on. With a clanging roar like fourteen hundred dustbins going over a cliff, the guttering hit the cobbles. The man swung and dangled.

Presently I started to haul him in. He came up, gasping, his face like the ashy contents of those fourteen hundred dustbins, his eyes black and bruised in the fleeting pink light.

“Get your knee — over — the damned guttering.”

He wore a gray shirt. His knee was skinned raw. But he got it over. Better a bloody knee than the squash on the cobbles.

With his weight half on the guttering alongside me I transferred my grip to his shoulder and half-pulled half-twisted him to safety. He lay there panting. His body heaved up and down with the violence of his breathing.

The yells of his friends receded. Only three were left up there on the slate walkway. I ignored them.

“You’re safe now,” I told him. I spoke sharply, to brace him up. “Brassud!” I said. “Get a grip on yourself.”

“You—” He gasped it out, shaking now, looking down at the gulf and that distant rectangle of light from the open door, and back to me. “You — why?”

“I’m not an assassin. Get your breath back.”

“By Krun!” he said, which told me he was Hamalese. “I’d never believe it — not even if—”

“Believe. And give me my belt back. Unlike you, I wish to retain my trousers.”

And he laughed.

The night breeze played along the roof. The man below yelled again, coming back out the door with a lantern. The men up on the roof answered him, shouting down. There was a deal of confused yelling.

“Can you make your own way along the guttering? You’ll be safe when you reach the gable end — the ornamentation there is profuse, if in bad taste.”

He stared at me. He was a young fellow, with dark hair cut long and curled, and with a nose rather shorter than longer, and with eyes — whose color was imponderable in that light — which, it seemed to me, stared out with forthright candor. He had a belt fashioned from silver links in the shape of leaping chavonths, and a small jeweled dagger; he had lost his sword. He regained control of his breathing.

“I think so.” He screwed his face up. “And you?”

“I—” I started to say.

“Stay here. I shall make my way to that zany lot and tell them nothing of your presence. Then, when we have gone, you may get away.”

“You would truly do this?”

“Yes. And I give you my thanks. Lahal and Lahal — I am called Lobur the Dagger.” He laughed again, and I saw he had recovered himself and was much taken with this night’s adventure, now that it had, miraculously, turned out all right and not with his untimely death. “I do not expect you to make the pappattu—”

“I think not. In the circumstances.”

“By Havil, no!”

The noise from his comrades had passed over and the three who had remained on the slate walkway above our heads had gone. The man and his lantern below were visible, just, at the far end of the building. The jut of a dormer window obscured him. We were alone under the Moons of Kregen, sitting on the gutter of a roof, talking as though we shared tea and miscils in some fashionable hostelry in the Sacred Quarter.

“There were three of your friends on the roof above — they are gone now — but I think they saw you did not fall.”

“Friends? Oh, yes, friends.”

He was clearly getting his wind back and setting himself for the scramble along the gutter. I am sure the thought stood in his mind, as it stood in mine, that there was every chance another section of guttering would give way under his weight.

There was no point in urging him to hurry. I fancied the hunt would bay along the next roof and courtyard. But, all the same, I had no desire to sit here all night. The opportunity to gather information ought not to be overlooked and he might well be in the frame of mind to say more than in other circumstances he would allow himself.

“You are Hamalese. I hope you have enjoyed your Jikaida here. Do you return home soon?”

We were sitting side by side on the edge now, dangling our feet over emptiness. He laughed again.

“Jikaida! No — I have no head for the game. I wager on — on other things. As to going home, that rests on the decision of Prince Nedfar, and he is, with all due respect, besotted on Jikaida.”

“Most people are, here in Jikaida City.”

“And live well on it, too—” He cocked his head on one side, and added, “Gray Mask.” He laughed, delighted at the conceit. “That is what I shall call you, Gray Mask. And the people here know well how to take our money. The whole city is full of sharps and tricksters.”

“So, Lobur the Dagger, you believe I am not of the city?”

He looked surprised. “Of course not! Didn’t think it for a moment. Who, here, would know aught of the Sacred Quarter of Ruathytu?”

So either he had heard my quick remark to the unseen girl at my back, or had been told. So, he must think I was Hamalese like himself, perhaps a wandering paktun, a mercenary. This could be awkward or could be useful.

I spoke with more than a grain of truth as I said, “Ah, yes. What I would give to be able, at this very moment, to be sitting on the roof of that sweet tavern of Tempting Forgetfulness in Ruathytu instead of here, on The Montilla’s Head.” And then I thought to prove myself a very cunning, very clever fellow indeed. I added, most casually, “But the commands of the Empress Thyllis are not to be denied.”

He drew a quick breath. He cocked an eye at me. “Prince Nedfar — who is the Empress’s second cousin — is here on state business. This is known. But a second embassy?” He sucked in his cheeks. “I do not think the prince knows — or would be pleased if he did know.”

Well, that wouldn’t worry me. Any confusion I could sow in the minds of the nobles of Hamal I would do and glee in the doing. If this Prince Nedfar, who had come here to talk of alliance with Prince Mefto, grew angry at the thought he was being spied on at the commands of the empress then I would have struck a blow, a small and near-insignificant blow it is true, against mad Empress Thyllis. So, quickly, I said, “The Empress is to be obeyed in all things. That many of these things are such that an honorable man must recoil cannot affect their consummation. I have no grudge against the prince.”

“But you sought to steal his airboat.” He shifted at this and looked hard at me. “And by Krun, Gray Mask! That would have stranded me here in this dolorous city!”

“Mayhap, Lobur, you would have come to a delight in Jikaida.”

“Hah!”

The time had run out and I began to entertain a suspicion that he kept me here talking so as to detain me for his friends. They’d be back, soon, hunting over the back trail. Yet I fancied I might sow a little more discontent and, into the bargain, reap more information, for which I was starved. The risk was worth taking.

So I said, again in that casual way, “Many men murmur at the empress. You must have heard of plots against her. And, anyway, things go badly for Hamal in Vallia, do they not?”

He hitched around and as the guttering gave an ominous groan, stilled immediately. His pride would not allow him to take any notice of that menacing creak from the rivets and brackets.

“Aye, I have heard of plots.” This was good news — by Vox! Excellent news! He went on, “And we do not prosper in Vallia. They are devils up there — I have heard stories that are scarcely credible. They have a new emperor now, the great devil Dray Prescot, who was once paraded through Ruathytu at the tail of a calsany—”

“You saw that?”

“Yes. By Krun — the man is evil all through and yet, and yet, I felt a little—” He paused and hawked up and spat. We did not hear the splat on the cobbles far below. “Enough of that maudlin nonsense. If I could get my dagger into him I would become the most famous man in all Hamal.”

“Indubitably.”

“But the chance is hardly likely to come my way.”

“No. And I think it is time we moved off. Much as I am enjoying this conversation—”

“Yes, Gray Mask, you are right. I owe you my life. I shall not forget.” He looked at me. “You will not give me your name?”

“If you were to call me Drax, I would answer.”

“Drax?”

“Aye.”

“Hardly a Hamalese name—”

“What did you expect?”

“No. No, of course, Drax, Gray Mask, you are right.”

We had been sitting thus and talking companionably for a time, and he was sitting on the side nearest the broken guttering and farthest from the gable end that was our goal. He inched back and leaned against the tiles, making ready to pass behind me. I got myself two very secure grips. As he eased himself sideways he could easily give me a sudden and treacherous kick and so spin me out into the void. He saw that instinctive movement as I secured myself. When he reached the other side he stooped.

“You thought, perhaps, I might push you over?”

“The thought was in my mind.”

In the pinkish glow of the moons his face darkened. “You impugn my honor! D’you think I would—”

“No.”

“I owe you my life.” He suddenly trembled, and I saw the tremor pass through him as a rashoon shudders over the waters of the inner sea, the Eye of the World. “By Krun! When I was slipping down that damned gutter — sliding to the end to fall and squash — I tell you, Drax, Gray Mask, it was awful, awful. I thought — and then—”

“If we ever meet again we will drink a stoup or three together.”

“Aye! That we will.”

We spoke a few more parting words, and then we gave the remberees, and he edged his way cautiously along the gutter, making each step a careful probe for weak spots, until he reached the gable end. He vanished in the shadows of sculpted gargoyles and zhyans and mythical beasts. A macabre, a weird, little meeting, this conversation on a roof. But I had learned a little and I hoped I had sown a few seeds of doubt.

Damn the Hamalese! And double damn mad Empress Thyllis. But for her and her megalomaniacal schemes we’d have had Vallia back, smiling and happy, after the Time of Troubles by now. The moment Lobur the Dagger disappeared into the twisted shadows I started along after him. There was no point in waiting. If he intended to betray me then the quicker I got in among them the better. Hauling him in had taken its toll of my feeble strength. Yes, yes, I had been a stupid onker in thus chancing all when I was not physically ready; but I needed that airboat on the roof. The voller that belonged to Prince Nedfar.

Looking down over the next courtyard from the concealment of that garish profusion of sculpture I could see no sign of Lobur or his cronies. The shadows lay thickly. The moons shafted ghostly pink light down and painted a pale rose patina across the lower roofs and walls. Around me LionardDen, the city of Jikaida, lay sleeping.

Very well.

Despite my physical weakness, despite all that had happened — was not this the moment to strike?

On that I started to climb up the gable end, handing myself up from stone beast to stone beast, working my way back to the slate walkway along the ridge.

Once up there I would retrace my steps to the roof where the airboat lay. Maybe I would again be unsuccessful. Maybe there would be so many guards, so many obstacles, that I just would not be able to overcome them all. But that made no matter. I do not subscribe to the more stupidly florid of these notions of honor, particularly of rampantly displayed honor. But, here and now, there was a deal of that juvenile and exhibitionistic emotion mingled with the shrewdly practical idea that they’d be off guard up there. This was a chance.

Climbing along the roof back the way I had come, I knew the chance had to be taken.

Chapter Two

Gray Mask Vanishes

The kennel containing the two stavrers I had passed in something of a hurry showed up ahead in the moonlight as I leaped — not too nimbly — up onto the coping. The stavrers had been aroused by the uproar. They stretched out to the full extent of the chains fixed to collars about their necks. Chunky, are stavrers, fierce and loyal watchdogs, with savage wolf-heads and eight legs, the rear six articulated the same way, and they can charge with throat-ripping speed. After a distance they flag; but that stavrer charge, bolting all fangs ready to rip and rend, is quite enough to protect an honest man’s house. Now these two set up a fearful howling.

Two helmeted heads popped up over a nearby roof ridge among that jungle of roofs. Two arrows were loosed at me. They were not Bowmen of Loh shooting at me — chances are that I would not be here talking had they been — and I went flying down into a leaded gulley between tiled slopes and so scrabbled along like a fish in a stream trap.

This was all beginning to get out of hand. A guard jumped down from a chimney pot and tried to take my head off with his axe, and I ducked and got a boot into his midriff, and he went yowling away, holding his guts. The axe clattered down over blue slates and vanished into emptiness. Other men were shouting, there was the shrilling sound of whistles, and more barking, from stavrers and other kinds of domestic animals nicely designed to rip the seat out of your pants, or to rip off other more important parts of your anatomy. Feeling incredibly like a fool, and beginning, also, to feel the humor of the situation breaking down all the silly anger, I went charging down a roof slope, came around a chimney corner and saw the uplifted coping of the roof whereon rested the airboat. Any hope of stealing the voller vanished instantly.

She lay there bathed in the light of many lanterns. The men had turned out — some still without shirts or trousers, but all with swords. There was one young fellow there, with wide black moustaches, turned out as though for Chuktar’s Parade — fully accoutered in harness and with shield and thraxter at the ready. His helmet shone under the lights of the moons.

So I debated. The debate was very short.

The stavrers were baying at my heels, the guards were massed in front, the moons were casting down more and more light as they rose — the Twins, the two Moons of Kregen eternally orbiting each other

— had been early this night, and The Maiden with the Many Smiles and She of the Veils were late. The light would strengthen in rose and gold until the first shards of light from the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, illuminated the horizon. Then this exotic world of Kregen would be revealed in radiance of jade and ruby and the light would increase and burn and any fellows foolish enough to be hopping around on the roofs of high-class hotels would get all they deserved.

Home — rather, back to the tavern at which I was lodging for the moment — seemed to me the order of the day — or night, seeing that the day’s orders would be so uncomfortable. Mind you, if in retrospect I make it seem all light-hearted and if, truly, I did feel that light-headedness then, do not misunderstand me. I was raging with anger and frustration. Oh, yes, my island empire of Vallia, cruelly beset by predatory foemen, was in good and capable hands. I could go gallivanting about having adventures for as long as I wished; but I felt the deep tide drawing me back home. I had to get back to Vallia and make sure, make absolutely sure, that all was well. That I intended to hand it all over to my lad Drak as soon as possible was merely another reason for return. He was there, in Vallia, and I had not the slightest inkling what he was up to.

And, too, my half-healed wounds must have contributed to that feeling of light-headedness, as though this was all one gigantic jest.

So, bitterly angry, and stifling my laughter, I hopped off the roof down onto the next one and scuttled like an ancient crab along the ridge and slid down a drainpipe to the courtyard with its arbora trees. They are called this because their flowers look much like arbora feathers. If I thought I was on ground level I was seriously mistaken.

I remember I was thinking that I’d just let all this fuss blow over, and rest up a bit and get my strength back, and then I’d be back here to The Montilla’s Head and this time I’d really lay my avaricious paws on Prince Nedfar’s airboat. But really.

A door made from sturmwood and the bottoms of old bottles ahead looked promising, the roseate moonlight catching in the bottles and whirling hypnotically. I eased across with a quick glance aloft and then the door opened and disaster walked out — rather, disaster reeled out, shrieking and yelling. The girl — she was a kitchen maid — was not apim but one of those charming diffs with the faces of apim infants, all soft rounded curves and chuckles and dimples, permanent baby-faces, naive and simple and delightful. The men folk have harder faces, it is true, but they, too, carry that hint of undeveloped childishness about them. For all that, the men have tough, muscle-hard, brawny bodies. The womenfolk have been blessed with female bodies that are marvels of curve and symmetry, sensuous, fascinating, endlessly alluring, intoxicating to any man — whether apim or diff — who shares our common heritage. This race of diffs — I once used to miscall diffs beast-men or men-beasts, halflings, not understanding —

are often given the name Syblians; although the name they give themselves, not wishing to be confused with Sylvies, is Ennschafften.

The drunken lout chasing the girl was calling, in between hiccoughing and belching, yelling to her to stop.

“Mindy, miundy,” he called, staggering out of the door, his shirt tangled around his waist, his face enflamed with drink and passion, his eyes fairly starting out of his head. “Miundy, Mindy — wait for me, you little — come back — or I’ll—” And he staggered against the doorjamb, and bounced up, reaching out after the shrieking girl.

Now in these and similar situations a fellow had best keep out of the way until he knows exactly what is going on. Many an upright citizen stepping in to rescue a maiden in distress has been turned on by what seemed victim and attacker, both containing him with insults for coming between a family squabble of man and wife. So I waited quietly in the shade of the arbora tree. The scent was delicious, and I breathed in — thankful, I may add, for the rest.

The Sybli caught her foot in a gray old root of the tree and she stumbled forward three or four paces, off balance, her arms spread out to try to save herself. She wore a tattered old blue and yellow checkered dress, badly torn as to bodice and skirt, and her feet were bare. She almost saved herself, and then she lost her balance and fell.

The man laughed and staggered forward. He was apim, a big, husky, full-fleshed fellow who knew what he wanted — and took it.

The girl Mindy tried to rise and gave a gasp as her ankle twisted under her. Her face showed babyish terror. The man leaped forward and she kicked out. I felt like giving a cheer as he yelped and reeled back, cursing.

“Never, you beast, never!” she cried. Her body was shaking.

“You will or I’ll—”

She bit him as he came in again, sinking her sharp teeth into his hand. He let out a fearsome yell. It was quite clear that this secluded courtyard was soundproof and that with all the hullabaloo on the other side of the hotel this fellow was perfectly confident that the girl’s cries would not be heard. She bit hard. He managed to drag his hand back and he stuck it in his mouth. He did not look so drunk or so amorous now.

In the confusing lights of the moons reaching ghostly pink and gold fingers into the courtyard the girl tried again to draw away. Her baby-face glistened with terror.

“You leave off, Granoj, you hear! You keep away—”

Granoj shook his head, took his hand out of his mouth and leaped on her. She kicked and struggled and screamed and I slowly straightened up from leaning against the tree. He wore a sword, a thraxter, the straight cut and thruster of Havilfar, and he was probably a soldier off duty, judging by the belt and his boots.

And then, so swiftly I was almost too late, his mood changed. He saw, clearly, that the girl Mindy was not going to do as he wished, and he turned ugly. And, too, she had hurt him. She had kicked him shrewdly.

“I’ll show you, you stupid Sybli! You can’t make a fool out of me—”

He ripped his sword free and swung it up. That he was going to strike her with the blade was crystal clear.

I stepped out, with a sigh, and caught his arm.

“This has gone far enough,” I said, and I tried to put the old snap into my voice. But I felt that treacherous light-headedness, I felt the weakness, and with an oath he stepped back, having not the slightest difficulty in breaking my grip on his arm.

“You rast! You first — and then the girl!”

With that, he charged full at me, the sword upraised.

My own thraxter cleared the scabbard with what seemed to me agonizing slowness. He was bull-strong, enraged, the drink lending him a reckless passion. He swung and chopped and hacked, and I had to dance a right merry little jig evading his savage attacks. The girl stopped screaming. The swords rang and clashed. He forced me back, and I felt the tree at my back, and I could not retreat any farther. And he laughed and taunted me most vilely, and rushed in. His words boiled around, his sword flickered cleverly, and he used a swordsman’s trick that is well-known in fighting circles, and he would have had me had I not known the trick.

Without thought — for thought was too laggard now — my own sword arm did what a sword arm must do if it wishes to retain a body from which to hang, and this Granoj staggered back, suddenly, and as he staggered back so he pulled free of my blade. That steel glimmered darkly wet. He put a hand to his side, and he looked down, and lifted the hand, and the blood dripped, dripped... So Granoj fell.

Whether or not he was dead I did not know. I felt the weakness on me, and I staggered and the Sybli was at my side and I thought she would berate me, and attack me for the deed. She put her hand around my waist, and held me, and said, “You must hurry, Jikai! You must go away from here, quickly, and go with the thanks of Mindy the Ennschafftena. Hurry!”

The walls of the courtyard wavered like curtains in a breeze. The whirlicue stump ends of the bottles of the door gyrated at me. I choked up phlegm. I fancied my wounds had opened and were bleeding again.

“Yes — must go — you are — all right—”

All the frivolity of the night’s proceedings had turned nasty and ugly. Death beat his black wings — as the quondam poets say — and I was feeling like one of the warmed-over corpses served up fresh from the Ice Floes of Sicce. If I did not get away, and me with a gray cloth mask over my head, I’d be done for.

“I am all right, Jikai — hurry, hurry — there is a wicket and stairs — the Street of Candles — there will be no one there now — my thanks—”

Staggering, sword in fist, hardly seeing, I was steered toward the little wicket in the corner. She threw open the gate and the slimy stairs led down, little used. I started at the top and the next moment I was at the bottom and with a pain there, too. I clawed up to my hands and knees and looked back. I could just see her outline.

“Remberee, Jikai — again my thanks — hurry!”

The wicket shut with a flat slap, like curtailed applause.

An arched opening gave egress onto the Street of Candles. No one was about, as Mindy the Sybli had promised. The shuttered doorways and windows added a ghostly note of desolation. A stray gyp went whining along, his brown and white coat wavering through the shadows. First things first. I wiped the sword on the gray cloth mask and then carefully folded it, bloodstains inward, and thrust it into my shirt. Clues... clues...

Then, sword scabbarded, all of Jikaida City going up and down and corkscrewing around me, I lurched off. By the time I had reached an avenue I recognized and could take my bearings the city was coming alive and the thin radiance of Zim and Genodras pulsed warmly in the sky to the east.

Chapter Three

I Hear of Moderdrin

“Now you’ve done slallyfanting around, Jak,” said Pompino, crossly making his most cunning move in the Game of Moons, “perhaps we can get down to some serious thinking about getting out of Jikaida City.”

“Oh, aye,” I said. “I’ve done slallyfanting around for a time.”

The bed with its yellow sheets was cool and wide and the loomin flowers and the flick-flick on the windowsill splashed bright color into our room. Pompino’s move received my expected counter. He still disdained Jikaida and Jikalla, and was most wary of Vajikry, which, as people who play it thoughtlessly discover, is an unforgiving game. He would have indulged in King’s Hand, but we were one die short and you cannot play good games of King’s Hand with only four dice. As for Skull and Crossbones, you can enjoy so fearsome a mental bloodletting in that unholy game that I had cried off as being too weak. We were settled into a reasonably priced and comfortable tavern in the Foreign Quarter. At the lady Yasuri’s expense, I might add. I mended. She had pursed up her lips and told us that if we stayed at The Plume and Quill we would attract less attention than if we baited at her Star of Laybrites. As The Plume and Quill catered to the superior tradesmen of foreign parts who visited Jikaida City to do business, I didn’t quite follow her reasoning; but she was paying. The lady Yasuri was the reigning Champion, and the Mediary Games had begun, and day by day they played Blood Jikaida, and, every now and then, Death Jikaida.

Pompino, who was, like me, an agent of the Star Lords, had berated me silly for getting mixed up in the schemes of other people, when we should be bending all our energies to doing what the Star Lords wanted. I didn’t argue. I was as weak as a kitten, and the wounds had opened and the doctor, a shriveled little needleman with a brusque way with him, had cautioned me to stay in bed — or else. With a sniff he packed up his bag and his balass box of acupuncture needles and took himself off. His bill, too, would be paid by the lady Yasuri.

He had said, this Doctor Larghos the Needle, “I did not have the felicity of seeing the Death Jikaida in which you fought, young man. But I have heard of marvels.” He shook his head. “It was said no man in all the world could best Prince Mefto the Kazzur at swordplay.”

“I did not best him—”

“I know, I know. But he is minus his tail hand now, and there are only two places in Kregen that I know of where he may have a new hand graft. And he may not know of them.”

“I hope the cramph doesn’t!” said Pompino, most menacingly.

“Would you tell me of them?” I was thinking of Duhrra.

“No. Idle questions deserve sharp reprimands—”

“It was not an idle question.”

He glanced at me, still stuffing his medical kit away, a glance that said eloquently that, as I had not lost a hand I had no need of the information. He probably thought I was making conversation. “The nearest is in the Dawn Lands and is rumored to exist in the country of Florilzun.” He snorted. “But try to find that country on any map — try to find it. Hah!”

So I was left to look at the loomin flowers and get well.

Pompino was wearing a smart pale blue lounging robe and he took from a pocket a small brush and started to preen his Khibil whiskers. His sharp foxy face was engrossed. Because he was a Khibil, a member of that race of fox-faced diffs who are keen and smart and superb fighting men, he rather fancied himself. I did not mind. He was a good comrade although setting too much store by his understood duty to the damned Star Lords, the Everoinye, whom he thought of as gods. To me they were just a pain, superhuman entities who eddied me about Kregen on a whim, and who might, if I rebelled, hurl me back four hundred light years to Earth.

“Had you stolen the Hamalese airboat and taken off, Jak, do you think the Everoinye would have allowed you to depart?”

“I do not know.”

“But you had to try?”

“Yes.”

“And you will try again as soon as you are well?”

“If that cramph Prince Nedfar has not quitted the city by then.”

I had told him just enough about my escapade to answer the most obvious inquiries. I had not mentioned Lobur the Dagger. Pompino, who was a shrewd fellow, imagined I hailed from Hyrklana, a large island off the eastern coast of the enormous southern continent of Havilfar. I had been a kaidur in the arena in Huringa, the capital of Hyrklana, and could pass myself off as a member of that nation without trouble. But Pompino would wonder why a Hamalese — even one whose life I had just saved — had made no greater demurral about letting me away scot free.

Pompino himself, who came from South Pandahem, hated all Hamalese with the vigor of any man who has seen his country overrun and despoiled.

In the quiet backwater of The Plume and Quill I lay abed and mended. Being situated in the Foreign Quarter the tavern was outside the hurly-burly that continually bustled in the twin cities, Blue City and Yellow City. Jikaida dominated all. Jikaida, that greatest of board games of Kregen, was here played with fighting men, played in blood and death. To be of the Blue or to be of the Yellow, to win — and not to think of losing — these were the vital facts of life here.

“I,” said Pompino, who like Lobur the Dagger had no head for Jikaida, “am thoroughly sick and tired of this city and Jikaida! By Horato the Potent! What in all Kregen has that stupid woman Yasuri got that we must protect her at the orders of the Star Lords?”

Maliciously, I said, “You question orders from the Star Lords, Pompino?”

He jumped. His foxy face bristled. “No! Of course not. Who said so?” And I laughed. Slowly, I mended. Slowly, my strength came back. Truth to tell, I recovered full health and strength far more quickly than anyone could who had not bathed in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph of far Aphrasöe. All the time I lay there, uselessly, I fretted over Vallia, and over Delia, Delia, Empress of Vallia. Was our son Drak doing the right things? Was Delia well? Oh yes, I fretted. But I had had an assurance from the Star Lords, delivered by their spy and messenger, the gorgeous scarlet and gold raptor called the Gdoinye, that Vallia did not succumb to her enemies and that Delia thrived and was well. This, I had to believe.

To do anything else would not only make me go off my head, make a lesser man of me — it would destroy me.

One day when I had demolished a whole vosk steak, a heaping pile of momolams, an equally heaping pile of steamed cabbage, had wolfed down a handsome squish pie — with a mental genuflection to Inch standing on his head — and was popping palines into my mouth, Pompino bustled in. And, I may add, that was the third such meal of the day and the time only just gone the bur of mid. He started without preamble: “Jak, tell me what you know of Moderdrin, the Humped Land.”

“The Humped Land? Never heard of it — wait a minute.” I chewed a paline, savoring the flavor, feeling the goodness refreshing every part. “I heard a couple of rat-faced fellows — they were gauffrers —

arguing in a tavern about going to a place that might have been Moderdrin. I paid them no attention, minding my ale, for Dav was yelling for his stoup—”

“Yes, yes. But you know nothing of the Land of the Fifth Note? Moderdrin?”

“No. What of it?”

“Gold, Jak, that’s what of it.”

I sniffed, and popped another paline. The yellow berry tasted just as good as the last. Never satiated on palines, no one ever can be, an impossibility. Palines had sustained me on my very first visit to Kregen. They tasted just as good now.

“You may scoff. Gold, jewels, treasure — unimagined treasure—”

“Just lying around for you to stroll along and pick it up?”

His foxy face twisted up in fury at my obtuseness and his whiskers quivered.

‘There is more. More than gold and treasure — there are magic arts to be won — secrets that wizards would give their ibs for — sorceries that will transform your life—”

“So?”

His eagerness switched into a comical surprise.

“So — what?”

“So — when do you start?”

“Who says I am going? There is danger — well, there must be danger, else everyone here would be rolling in wealth and all be as clever sorcerers as any Wizard of Loh.”

“The point is, Pompino, my fine friend. You have two counts against you. One is you want me to go with you. And, two, you don’t know if those onkers of Everoinye will let you go.”

His concern was genuine.

“Jak! Jak! How many more times? I pray you, do not contume the Star Lords so! If they punish you—”

“Yes, you are right.”

His punishment would be of and on Kregen. My punishment would be off Kregen and back to Earth as quick as a gigantic blue Scorpion could whisk me across the interstellar gulf.

“So you had best tell me all about it.”

The telling was brief. All he really knew was that the Humped Land lay to the south and west of LionardDen, that brave men and bold might pluck its treasures, and he was meeting a man who would tell him more later that night at a tavern of ill repute on the edge of the Foreign Quarter. The tavern was called Nath Chavonthjid, after a mythical hero, and was situated very close to a poor quarter of the city where nightly riots brought out the watch with thwacking staves, and sharp swords, too, on many occasions.

“And are you fit enough to come with me?”

“Aye,” I said, giving a deep groan. “I suppose so.”

“It could make our fortunes and give us magical powers—”

“Or leave us rotting in a ditch with a dagger in our backs.”

“I think you scoff too much, Jak the Nameless!”

“You are right, Scauro Pompino the Iarvin!”

The long green tendrils of the flick-flick plant on the windowsill licked out and scooped up a couple of fat flies which had been buzzing about, and slipped them neatly into the waiting and open orange cones of the flowers. All Kregans are aware of the symbolism inherent in the flick-flick. Pompino laughed.

“Yes, I am right. And tonight you must not scoff. This fellow — he calls himself Nathjairn the Rorvard

— is mighty prickly and only lets us into his plans—”

“For red gold, Pompino?” At the Khibil’s abruptly upflung head, and the quick stab of his hand, I nodded. “Aye! He will take your gold for this great secret — and what will you get out of it?”

“I have asked questions—” He was mighty stiff about the imputations to his shrewd practicality. “Such a land exists. Expeditions do go there.”

“Do they return?”

“You have heard of this famous sorcerer of Jikaida City, Naghan Relfin the Eye? Where did his powers come from, seeing he was but a poor saddler five seasons ago?”

There was truth in the remark. This sorcerer, Naghan the Eye, lived sumptuously, performed magics for large sums of money, and did have real, if indefinable, powers.

“You suggest Naghan the Eye obtained his necromantic powers from somewhere in Moderdrin, the Humped Land?”

“And there is the rich merchant on Silk Street who was ready to enlist to play Death Jikaida when he vanished from the city. He returned with a caravan of wealth — from the south and not the east, over the Desolate Waste.”

“No doubt he went with a rascally gang of drikingers, common bandits who robbed honest men—”

“Not from the south and west.”

I looked at Pompino. Maybe he had another reason for this folderol about magics and treasures to be picked up. “You suggest, do you not, my Pompino, that instead of attempting to steal the airboat, instead of going with a caravan across the Desolate Lands to the East, we strike southwest in order to put this city behind us? Is this not so?”

“You are too clever for me, Jak. Yes and no. We cannot move if the Star Lords do not permit it. And there is magic and there is gold to be won in Moderdrin. I believe it. Yes, we could do far worse.”

If we went far enough to the southwest, got over the Blue Snowy River, and continued on we’d come eventually to Migladrin. I had friends in Migladrin. And, of course, if we turned west and carried on, we’d come to Djanduin. I never forget I am King of Djanduin, although, and deliberately with the troubles in Vallia, I had allowed the fragrant memory of Djanduin to attenuate and grow frail. There was no denying the warm feeling that shook me as I thought of Djanduin, and the rip-roaring welcome that awaited me there, the times we could have...

The superb four-armed fighting Djangs and the clever gerbil-faced Djangs of Djanduin would not forget me, their king, and this I knew with a humility that came fresh each time. Inch had passed on the messages. King of Djanduin I was, and I would be remiss in my duty if I did not visit that wonderful land very soon.

But, now, until the Star Lords discharged us from our duty to this tiresome lady Yasuri, I was going nowhere. And, truth to tell, Yasuri was not so tiresome, not after what she had been through and was now reigning Champion, Queen of the Kazz-Jikaida board of Jikaida City. I said, “We will see this Nathjairn the Rorvard tonight, Pompino, your new friend, and we will measure his words.”

The upshot was that all Pompino’s avaricious dreams of quick wealth and superhuman powers vanished like smoke in a gale.

Dressing ourselves with some thought — for we were going into a shadowy borderline where the Watch would venture in strength and not at all if they didn’t have to — we donned simple drab-colored clothes, of which we had a supply, and strapped up our brigandines, and hitched on our weapons. The feel of steel about me came with not so much a shock as a kind of surprise; I had skulked abed too long. The twin suns were just sinking as we walked quietly along the avenues and headed for the poor quarter where the inn was situated. Far and Havil, they call the red and the green suns in the continent of Havilfar. It is a point well worth remembering. The Jikaida players were packing up their boards in the sidewalk restaurants and taverns as we went by. The brightly painted and intricately carved pieces were being laid tenderly away in the velvet-lined balass boxes. Pompino looked at me, and his foxy face bristled brilliant and russet in the last of the light.

There was no need to ask him what he was thinking.

Perhaps, this night, we two would be laid to rest in the velvet-lined balass box. The inn called Nath Chavonthjid leaned against the evening, and the leaded windows spilled yellow light upon the rutted path. A miscellany of animals was tied to the hitching rail. We walked in. I know my hand rested on my thraxter hilt. The fumes of wine reached us and, mixed with them, the stink of dopa, that fiery liquor of Kregen guaranteed to drive a fellow fighting mad. Nobody with any sense has any truck with dopa, as nobody who values life touches kaff, the virulent Kregan drug that wafts to a heaven and a hell.

“Nathjairn?” said the portly Rapa behind the bar, his beak twisted askew from an old fight. He wiped a flagon on his apron and nodded to where men in leather aprons were hauling something toward the rear door. “There he goes, may Havil take him into his care.”

We walked across.

Nathjairn the Rovard was being carried out, sightless, his throat a single crimson wound from which the blood dripped thickly.

Chapter Four

I Refuse to Fight in Kazz-Jikaida

Pompino switched his wooden sword about and thunked me prettily on the shoulder. I nodded to him, saluted and disengaged. The flagon of ale invited from the table and I drained it all down thirstily. In these practice bouts I had hitherto always attempted the difficult task of fighting with the object of losing with superior skill, that is, of seeming to give of my utmost and yet contriving to let the other fellow win. This is, as I have remarked, difficult.

Pompino took a swingeing draught of his own ale, and wiping his reddish whiskers where the foam clung, said, “I don’t see how you lasted half a mur against Mefto the Kazzur, Jak. I really do not.”

“He is the best swordsman I have ever met, Pompino. But, I repeat, he is nowhere near the greatest.”

“You make the distinction?”

I threw the rudis onto the bed and pulled a chair forward into the space we had cleared for the practice bout. Fighting men must practice their art. If they do not, and grow slack, the fierce clangor of battle is no time to find out they are out of practice.

“Oh, yes. Swordplay is more a matter of the spirit.”

“Horato the Potent is my witness you speak the truth. But how may a man attain to greatness without this spiritual quality?”

“He cannot. Witness Prince Mefto—”

“I could wish it in my heart you had slain him.”

I did not wish to pursue a sore subject. “I shall make another attempt on Prince Nedfar’s airboat.”

He nodded. “I shall come with you—”

“And, my Pompino, you have heard no more of the Humped Land?”

He swore, a resounding oath that rattled the rafters.

“No. Men talk about it, slyly. But Nathjairn was prepared to take an expedition out. Now another one may be seasons—”

“We could always strike out southwestward ourselves.”

“All men warn against such foolishness.”

“The dangers are not so great as across the river and among the great lakes.”

“True. Unless we go with an expedition, it is foolish to think of it. We go by caravan across the Desolate Waste, or we take the voller — and that may be the best answer.”

LionardDen, called Jikaida City, was cut off from the rest of the continent of Havilfar. Vallia always called me, that beautiful island always would, and I missed Delia badly; but she had her own life to lead with the Sisters of the Rose. I confess Pompino’s wild talk of treasure and sorcery intrigued. And that brought up another question.

I gave him a look as he refilled his flagon.

“You were all for going home to Tuscursmot in South Pandahem. You had, you said, spent enough time parted from your wife—”

“True.” He drank and wiped his whiskers. “But the old girl will survive without me. We rub along. And while there is gold and wizardly powers — why, dom — just think of it—”

“Having heard of the Humped Land, now we must wait until someone puts an expedition together — is that it?”

“You mean — you’d go?”

I twirled the rudis. The heavy wood was dented and splintered from the force of our blows. The flick-flick plant satisfied another small segment of its appetite, and a fly vanished from the ken of men. “I may — I do not know. I am in more than two minds. But all is mere conjecture while we must care for the lady Yasuri, under the orders of the Star Lords.”

“True. Damned true.”

If a weathervane may be blown by the winds of heaven in any direction, then I was a weathervane, right enough.

“Y’know, Jak,” said Pompino, carrying on a thread of thought begun by our remarks. “It is strange the Everoinye, if they are so tender for the welfare of the lady Yasuri, allow us to stay here, instead of at her hotel, the Star of Laybrites.”

“The Star Lords are a bunch of onkers, of get onkers, and deserve to be stewed in their own juices.” At his stricken face, I added, hurriedly, “Yes, yes, my Pompino, I know. But they have understood me, over the seasons. They know what I think of them. Until they prove themselves as being as good as humans, I cannot take them seriously as gods.”

“You—” His reddish whiskers bristled, his dark eyes stood out, he looked as though he would choke.

“Jak, Jak! They’ll strike you down.”

“Not them. That’s not their damned way.”

“Their ways pass the understanding of mortal men.”

“If a being, an entity, cannot show the same decent qualities one expects of a fellow human being, why should any man be expected to worship and give praise to such a being?”

“I do not know. No one knows.”

A knock at the door heralded the chambermaid, a little Fristle fifi with brown fur and a delightful smile, who told us the landlord had a visitor for us.

“Show him up,” said Pompino, and we laid aside the wooden swords and took into our fists steel thraxters.

But it was only Onron, the lady Yasuri’s Rapa coachman and chamberlain, decked out in a fine new livery, who told us with some condescension that the lady wished us to accompany her to the play this evening.

“The play?” said Pompino, laying aside his thraxter. “Since when has the lady ever wanted us to go with her to Jikaida?”

“The play, I said, you imbecilic Khibil!” The Rapa fluffed up his red tribal feathers, his beak polished and shining.

Pompino started up, bristling, but we sorted it out.

Between some members of some races of diffs there does exist an immediate, top of the head, instinctive antipathy, varying in intensity from diff to diff, that has over the seasons become formularized and lacking any intensity of conviction. The slanging becomes mawkish or merry, not taken seriously, a peg to hang a mental hat on, a way of release from other tensions, a little banter to lighten up the day. In that spirit the Rapa Onron could say with a spit, “They should send you both to Execution Jikaida. That would make you skip about, believe me.”

“I,” said Pompino, “have no wish to hear another word about Execution Jikaida. We don’t admit foul smells in here.”

Before he could add the obvious and, perhaps, liken Onron to some particular stink, I butted in and got the details, as Pompino would have done after a little more enjoyable wrangling. As popular entertainment, the theatre lagged a long way after Jikaida in Jikaida City. But there were playgoers in the city who demanded and obtained the best plays, and tonight’s offering at Dottles Playhouse was to be given by a traveling company who had just come in with a caravan across the Desolate Waste. Pompino and I prepared for the evening, at the lady Yasuri’s instructions wearing brigandines under our lounging robes, and with thraxters belted to our waists — well, they went outside the robes, for no sensible Kregan willingly parts with his sword unless he knows that the company he will keep and the haunts he will frequent will prove friendly.

The play was to be a great and famous old favorite of all those Kregans who love true theater and not the mindless singsong baubles dished up on the popular stage. We were to see Jögen , Part One, which comes from the fifth book of The Vicissitudes of Panadian the Ibreiver , the sublime cycle of plays by Nalgre ti Liancesmot. I was looking forward to it, and even Pompino, whose tastes were attuned more to the mass media — to use that oft-abused much later descriptive — gave his opinion that Jögen was always worth seeing and that he hoped this newly arrived company were of some quality. There was the obvious aphorism to quote him — from Panadian, to be sure, “The empty grave proves the armor’s worth.” To which, it is interesting to remember, a later playwright, En Prado, adds the rider:

“The gallows dangle proves the armor’s faults.”

There is debate over the latter, and as we went with the jostle of the crowd toward the theatre, Pompino was attempting to sway me to the school of thought which says that En Prado really wrote armorer’s faults and not armor’s faults. Either way, as we went in under the mineral-oil lamps’ flare to find the lady Yasuri, either way makes sense. It is a pretty point of a particularly fascinating and useless kind of academic lore.

The fellow who tried to slip a dagger into my ribs so that he might more easily steal my purse was jabbed away with a fist in his mouth and then a boot in his guts. The crowd parted around him, and only two women squealed. Pompino wanted to put a knife between his ribs.

“Leave him be, good Pompino. He but practices his trade — and poor pickings he will get tonight, with a broken tooth and a bruised mouth marking him for a brawler.”

The would-be thief picked himself up. His clothes were neat as they must be for his trade here. “By Diproo the Nimble-fingered,” he spat out, spraying blood. “You are damned quick.”

“Schtump!” shouted Pompino angrily. “Clear off!”

He went away, then, as the theater’s hired guards stalked across to sort out the disturbance. I noticed the thief walked with a limp, and felt sorry for him, and then we pressed on into the lighted area where people waited and we saw the lady Yasuri.

She saw us too, and her little body drew itself up. Her lined old nutcracker face had mellowed wonderfully of late; but her nose and her tongue were as long and sharp as ever.

“You are late, you famblys.”

She wore a deep-maroon cloak over a severe black bombazine dress, as we had first seen her. Her small body was decked with gems so that she glittered like a stalagmite. She was continually being looked at and pointed out as the reigning Jikaida champion, and she lapped up the fame and the applause. I shook my head. She had cared for me wonderfully after the final game in which she had taken the championship; but it had only been because I’d fought a crazy man’s fight that she had won. It was clear that she owed me. It was also clear to me that she was now more wealthy than ever. And, with equal clarity, it was borne in on me that I could no longer tolerate the acceptance of charity in lieu of payment.

Pompino started to bumble about being held up on the way.

I said, “We are not late, lady, for the play has not yet begun.” Then, as she flinched back, I added, “I am pleased you are keeping so well. What business do you have with us?”

But she was not a great lady for nothing. She was a Vadni, which is very high up the rank tables of Kregan nobility, and after that first surprised flinch, she flared up. Her tiny face screwed up wrathfully. Her sharp nose stuck up toward us like the beak of a swifter. Blood suffused her thin cheeks.

“I should have you whipped jikaider! Insolence — who is paying for you to lie abed in idle luxury?”

“If it is gold you want, lady, gold you may have.”

She sneered at this. “And where would you two brave buckos put your hands on gold enough.”

“Mod—” began Pompino. I trod on his foot and said, “We can hire out to someone else, lady. Do not forget, you discharged us, turned us off in the city, and when I fought I did not fight for you.”

That had rattled her. She waited until a chattering pack of empty-headed girls fluttered past, all silks and draperies, and then she said: “No. No, Jak, you told me that. Who, then, were you fighting for?”

“Better ask the Witch of Loh, Ling-li-Lwingling.”

She gave a petty gesture, annoyed. “She has left the city.”

“To be truthful with you, lady, I do not know what she knows. But she hinted that she knew much—”

“Oh, that is the way of a Witch of Loh. If they do not know they will always pretend they do.”

“So you summoned us here tonight. Here we are. Again — what is the business you have with us? If it is to demand we pay you back for your—”

“No, no, you great lumop! Only your last fight with Prince Mefto — it was wonderful and awful and frightening — only that — but I am champion and, indeed, I never expected it, did not dare to dream—”

She pulled a scrap of lace, so that the threads snapped. “But I am champion and must play again, soon, in the Mediary Games. Will you—?”

“No.”

“But—”

“I will not fight again in Death Jikaida.”

“Jak—”

Pompino was breathing extraordinarily hard at my ear. He’d refused to act as a piece on the board when they played Kazz-Jikaida, Blood Jikaida, and had cogent reasons for that. The plan in which I had become embroiled had succeeded, against all expectations. I wanted nothing more of stepping out onto the blue and yellow checkered sand and of fighting at the whim of a player, fighting for my life for nothing.

“As the reigning Champion you cannot have any difficulty in finding men anxious to act as your pieces.”

“True. But I want you as my Princess’s Swordsman—”

“No.”

A brazen gong note signaled that the play was due to begin. A few late-comers hurried past, heads down. We went toward the curtains which slaves held open for us.

“I have not finished with you, Jak!”

Through the curtains the waiting tiers of seats, the stage in its magic semicircle below, the lamps, the smell of theater, the muted hum and sway — we entered the magic world and, for those moments, could forget the world of Kregen as it was now and revel in the spiritual thoughts and the acts of passion and foolishness, of cowardice and heroism, springing from the mind of a man long dead. This traveling company of players turned out to be top quality, and the audience sat enthralled. Jögen was given a splendid performance. As for the eponymous hero of the piece, Jögen himself, well, what can one say? Yes, he should have known better. He should not have trusted the woman. But human nature is human nature, and we are supposed to progress through life and learn by our mistakes. Poor Jögen! We all laughed at the right places, and the women cried — some of them, not including the lady Yasuri — at the appropriate moments. At the first interval the wide stone-flagged taverna area, softly lit by shaded lights, filled with the talk of playgoers discussing the play. I saw Lobur the Dagger, laughing, brilliant in evening dress, talking animatedly to a lovely girl with dark hair, all in shimmering green, and they were oblivious to anything else. In that group of Hamalese stood a man with a shock of dark hair much like the girl’s in color, with a craggy and yet noble face which was the male counterpart to her vivid femaleness, so I guessed they were father and daughter. By this man’s dress, impeccable and with a minimum of jewelry, by the deference shown him by his compatriots, and by his own superb poise and sense of being, I took him to be Prince Nedfar. He wore a rapier and main gauche, whereat my brows drew down. A scheme that was not as foolish as it appeared at first sight occurred to me; but I pushed it away. It was audacious, and that was a merit; it was also chancy, and while I have taken some pretty long chances in my time, here and now it seemed to me was not the time or place. I’d steal the fellow’s flier, and curse him for a Hamalese as I flew away.

In many playhouses of Kregen the slaves beat three gongs at the end of the intervals. The first is to tell you to order your last drink; the second is to tell you to sup up and put your glass down; and the last is to say that you have only a few murs to reach your seat and if you are not there in time, then, by Beng Lomier the Blessed, patron saint of every strolling player, the slaves will bar the curtains on you. The first gong note clashed out over the taverna.

“A Stuvan for me,” quoth Pompino.

“A light yellow, Jak,” said the lady Yasuri.

I fetched the drinks. The flagged area emptied as the people returned to their seats, anxious to be settled in time and miss nothing, and the second gong had not struck. The Hamalese were arguing about just who had ordered what, as tiresome people do in bars.

The curtains over the doorless opening to the entrance parted and four men walked in. They did not look, even at a cursory glance, like devotees of the stage. They wore dark clothes, dust-stained, and furry caps under which, I was prepared to wager, they had iron skulls. Their faces were grainy, hard, with lips thinned with purpose. Pompino looked, and said: “Hai!” and eased himself back from the little table at which he and Yasuri sat.

Do not forget, Pompino the Iarvin was a Khibil. What is more important — he had been chosen by the Star Lords to be a kregoinye and act in moments of emergency for them. The newcomers looked around, orienting themselves. They saw the Hamalese, who were still squabbling about the drink order. A group of locals went out, and the place looked very empty, and the four men turned their slate-gray eyes on us.

One said something to his companions. He was bigger than the others, bulky with power, and his gloved hands made quick, hard gestures. He advanced toward us.

He bowed. His words were perfectly civil: but he did not smile as he spoke. Nor did he remove his hat, which is a mark of respect not quite as common on Kregen as on Earth, but which would have been perfectly proper in the circumstances.

“You are the lady Yasuri, Yasuri Lucrina, Vadni of Cremorra?”

Yasuri put her hand to her lips. “Yes...”

“Then I have to tell you that the king is dead, that the kingdom is overrun, that your vadvarate is gone—”

Yasuri let out a high shriek at the words. She fell back against the chair. Her face was stricken. Pompino looked at her in alarm.

The hard-faced man went on speaking, and as he spoke he moved like a scuttling tiklo of the desert.

“The king is dead, and King Ortyg the Splendid reigns in glory. He commands instant obedience, lady

— and he commands your death!”

The messenger of this ill news sprang even as he spoke.

His sword cleared scabbard and, twinkling like a bar of light, slashed down at Yasuri’s unprotected head.

My own thraxter was there, the two blades clashed, and thrummed with the vibration of the blow. My blade turned and his slid along and so I turned with the coming thrust and he leaped away, yelling in anger, and the point fell short.

There was no time to give him room to get set. His three comrades were rushing upon us, bared steel aflame. I leaped the table that had impeded my thrust, and crossed swords with the fellow, forcing him back, angling him away from Yasuri.

He fought viciously and well, shocked to find opposition preventing him from carrying out a mission that had seemed so easy of accomplishment. He shouted insults as he fought, and I saw the first of his bully-blade comrades hurling on, and so I was quick.

They both went down, skewered, and the third was engaged even as Pompino roared in at my side to take the fourth.

We were rather sharp with them. Pompino stepped back, his blade held up. With his left hand he smoothed his whiskers.

“What rubbish they choose to send,” he said.

“They nearly did it.” I bent to wipe the thraxter on the clothes of the first. “Had they just done the deed instead of parlaying around...”

Yasuri put her hand on my arm. She was shaking. “King Ortyg,” she whispered. “I am lost, lost — he hates my family dreadfully. They but gloated on my misery—”

“And they paid the price,” Pompino said, and snicked his blade away.

“You wish to continue with Jögen ?” I said as the gong sounded. She shook her head. “No — no, I cannot—”

Then Prince Nedfar and the other Hamalese with him was there. He was smiling. He held out his hand.

“Let me shake the hands of two brave men who know how to protect a lady. Cramphs like this deserve to die a thousand deaths.” He bent his stare upon Yasuri. “You are well, lady?”

“Yes — yes, thank you.”

He introduced himself, and the chief personages of his retinue. In that number he included his daughter, the Princess Thefi, but not, I was intrigued to notice, Lobur the Dagger.

“I am a connoisseur of swordplay. I have seldom seen two Bladesmen do their work so finely. You must visit me—”

Pompino’s face began to stain red and his foxy features bristled up uglily. He was going to burst out with shatteringly rude and impolitic remarks about rasts of Hamal and stinking Hamalese — and so I stepped in quickly and said all the right things, and thanked this damned condescending prince for his kind words on our swordplay, and smirked and smiled, and so got us out of it with the promise to visit him on the following day at The Montilla’s Head.

Yasuri was almost overcome.

“Now you see, Jak,” Pompino whispered as we escorted her back to The Star of Laybrites. “Now we can see the hand of the Star Lords clearly!”

“Oh, aye. We were sent here tonight to save Yasuri’s life. And it is useless to question why the Star Lords want her hide saved. She isn’t a bad old biddy; just the result of bad breeding. Let us hope we can retire gracefully now.”

We saw her safely home and then went back to our inn.

“And, Jak, if you think I’m going to see that rast of a Hamalese tomorrow, then you can think again.”

“I have no love for the folk of Hamal while they continue to obey mad Empress Thyllis. But they are not evil of themselves.” I yawned. “Anyway, think of the chance! Now we can get into the hotel without skulking there at night. Now we can smile and act graciously, and get up on the roof, and then—”

Pompino looked up. He nodded.

“To steal their voller I will act like a craven. One must dare all things in service to the Everoinye.”

I did not confide to him my feelings on that score.

Chapter Five

We Meet Drogo the Kildoi in the Jolly Vosk

“We are off to see Execution Jikaida this afternoon, Jak, Pompino. You will join us?”

Lobur the Dagger spoke cheerfully, because Kov Thrangulf stood with the group smiling and nodding. No one cared much for Kov Thrangulf; but he performed some mysterious function in Prince Nedfar’s entourage. Also he was a kov, which is by way of being a terrestrial duke, and so was a man of power of himself.

“I think not, Lobur; but thank you all the same.”

Lobur had not recognized me as Drax, Gray Mask — well, by Zair! had he done so I would have been mortally chagrined.

We had taken to visiting the group around the prince and we sensed that they were glad of company, being isolated in this city where, although LionardDen was neutral in the wars Hamal was waging within the Dawn Lands, there were many who hated Hamal and all things Hamalian with blind hostility. We spent time here, and joked and laughed around; but we had not had a single chance to get up on the roof and steal the voller. The airboat was kept under heavy guard, and we had not, so far, been able to get away from our new-found friends. Of course, the slightest suspicion that we were interested in the voller with the view to her purloining would bring disaster. We had to take it easy, tsleetha-tsleethi, and await our opportunity.

As for Prince Nedfar, after the debacle of the alliance with Prince Mefto, he had remained here to indulge himself in Jikaida. So he said. I began to entertain uneasy suspicions that he had ulterior motives. The treaty that was supposed to have released many powerful armies to fight against Vallia might still be concluded — with some pawn other than Prince Mefto.

This business of going to witness Execution Jikaida was a nuisance. The so-called game was ordinary Jikaida, played to the rules, and with living men and women as pieces — just as they do in Kazz-Jikaida. But these pieces were condemned criminals. The moves were made and the piece being taken would be cut down, there and then, on the spot, and the game proceed. This was not my idea of fun. It was not Lobur’s, either, as I could see, and the prince himself had made an excuse. This fat, hard-breathing, smelly Kov Thrangulf was the one panting to go. And Lobur, perforce, as a mere aide to the prince, had to acquiesce.

The oldest families of Hamal hold especial pride in their lineal descent from the ancients, and mark this by including the name ham in their own names. Thus I was, as you know, in all honor Hamun ham Farthytu in Hamal. Paline Valley and Nulty and those skirling times seemed long and long ago now; but such is the accumulation of tradition and the weight of incumbence, that I knew if I turned up at Paline Valley now I would be received as the rightful Amak. Unless, of course, a usurper had managed to arrange the bokkertu and through legal means taken the title and the estates. Then, the cramph, he’d have another fight on his hands.

Lobur the Dagger was a mere Horter of Hamal, a simple gentleman. He was in the prince’s service and joyed in that. But I discovered his name. This was Lobur ham Hufadet, and his family were honored citizens of Trefimlad. He was madly, overwhelmingly, besottedly in love with the prince’s daughter, the Princess Thefi. A match did not seem in their stars, by reason of their station. But on Kregen all things are possible as, by Zair, had I not shown? This fat and unpleasant Kov Thrangulf did not have the honor of placing the ham in his name. He was a kov, a powerful and wealthy man; but he did not own to the ham. Yes, you will say — a common, a conventional, situation. Agreed. From it all manner of devilments and schemes might spring. And — they did. But, as is my wont, I will hew to the path of chronology and relate to you what happened between Lobur the Dagger and the Princess Thefi and Kov Thrangulf, when what happened impinged upon this my own story. Suffice it for the moment, there in Jikaida City, I had my heart set on that voller. Failing the voller, then I might have to walk out. Either way, I had no wish to linger in LionardDen.

Pompino said, “I trust you enjoy yourselves this afternoon. I am for the merezo where they are racing for high stakes.”

As we walked off, shouting the remberees, I knew Pompino lied. He was serious, deadly serious, on a sudden.

“I have had no chance to tell you before, Jak — we are altogether too chummy with these yetches of Hamalese. But — I have had a communication from the Star Lords.”

“The Gdoinye spoke to you?”

“Yes. We are quits of our work with Yasuri—”

“We are!”

“Aye. If that assassination attempt was all it was about, well and good. What matters now is we will not be prevented from leaving.”

Whatever the situation might appear to be on the surface, I knew well enough that the Star Lords planned long and darkly into the future. What they did they did with fell purpose. Yasuri was important in ways we could not comprehend. But, we were quit of her. I joyed in that, and spared a thought for Yasuri and wondered what she would do now. But that was her business — aye, hers and the Star Lords’, no doubt.

“Most of that lot from Hamal are watching Execution Jikaida,” I said. I spoke lightly as we walked along in the streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio. “We are known in the hotel now. Why should we not—?”

“Capital. I am with you.”

So we turned around and retraced our steps.

Well, now... If the old blood thumps a little faster around the body, and the sweat starts out on the brow, and the palms grow damp and the throat dry — at memory, mere memory? We were not working for the Everoinye now, we were working for ourselves and for all the help we had ever had from the Star Lords that made not the slightest difference, or so I thought. I recall as we walked along in the suns shine that I contemplated hiring out as a caravan guard and trekking back over the Desolate Waste, as we had planned. But the idea of the voller obsessed us. The speed of a flier is phenomenal compared to a saddle animal.

The caravans continued to ply, one had only just arrived today, and the last had brought in the company of strolling players and the four stikitches who had so signally failed to earn their hire. Pompino hitched his sword belt.

“Let us have a wet first — in honor of Dav Olmes, for example, or Konec, or—”

“Let us take a drink, anyway, you procrastinating fambly!”

I wanted to give the Hamalese time to get to the Jikaida deren, those massive central blocks where the bloody games of Jikaida were played, before we raided the hotel.

Any hostelry would do, provided it was of the better sort, and not a mere dopa den. The jade and ruby brilliance fell about us. The sweet scents of Kregen intoxicated us with life. Ah, Kregen, Kregen — well, we found a tavern and were about to enter when a man came flying through air and almost brought us both down. And, as far as I know, they don’t play exactly that kind of Rugby on Kregen. The fellow hauled himself up. He was a Brokelsh, squat and hairy and gibbering with rage. He shook his fist at the tavern and then lurched off, rumbling and cursing, swearing about a Havil-forsaken Kildoi. I chilled.

We went in. I am well aware how foolish, how superficial, it is to say, “I chilled.” But, by Vox, that is exactly right. I felt the cold clamp around me. I did chill, and you may cavil all you wish at the expression. It is apt and it is right...

The Kildoi was instantly visible, surrounded by a gang of roughs. They were not attacking him, but they were not friendly. Now Prince Mefto the Kazzur was a Kildoi. He had bested me in swordplay — oh, yes, I had cut off his tail hand at the last — but he had proved the superior swordsman. Kildoi have four arms and a powerful tail with a hand. Korero, my comrade who carried his shields at my back in battle, was a Kildoi. They are marvels — and this specimen, although sporting a beard darker than the golden blaze of Korero or Mefto, was just such a one, bronzed, powerful, superb in physique, cunning and most proficient with his five hands.

“We don’t want your sort in here,” shouted one of the roughs, a cloth around his neck stained greasily with sweat.

“Prince Mefto was a great man!” declared another, a runt of an Och slopping ale.

“Aye,” said another. “Prince Mefto may have lost our wagers, because his side thought he would be chopped. But you can’t say things about him here. He’ll be back to win again—”

Sweat rag chimed in. “You’d better clear off, schtump, five hands or no, before we blatter you.”

“You misunderstand me, my friends—” began the Kildoi.

“No we don’t. You’re asking questions about Mefto the Kazzur and we’re all his friends here, and you bear him no good will.”

A flung dagger streaked from the gloom of the counter. The Kildoi put up a hand and deflected the dagger. The action was instinctive and unthinking, and I recognized the superb Disciplines that gave Korero such wonderful command of his shields.

“I see you are not friendly,” said the Kildoi. “So I will retire—”

A blackjack swung for his head, and he leaned and moved and the blackjack spun away, harmlessly. The very contempt of his actions, innate in their display of consummate skill, incensed these fellows. Mefto had always been a favorite, and these people did not know the full story. In the next instant, summoning their courage, they leaped upon the Kildoi.

I started in to help, intrigued by all this, and, after a pause, Pompino joined me. There was a deal of shoving and banging, and swearing, and a collection of black eyes and bloody noses before the three of us burst from the door of the tavern. On a wooden bracket the inflated skin of a vosk swung in the wind, and the inn was called The Jolly Vosk.

“Whoever you are,” said the Kildoi, with a jerk of the thumb of his upper right hand, “my thanks. The sign over the tavern proclaims the denizens within.”

We walked off along the sidewalk, and we began to laugh. Snatches of the bizarre flying acrobatics of the fellows in there as the Kildoi threw them hither and yon recurred to us, and we laughed.

“Lahal, I am Drogo, and a Kildoi, as you see.”

We made the pappattu, me as Jak and Pompino with his full name. Then Pompino burst out with: “And, Drogo, this is the same Jak who cut off the tail hand of that bastard Mefto.”

Drogo stopped dead. He turned that magnificent head to study me more closely. I looked back. His eyes carried that peculiar green-flecked grayness of uneasy seas, of light shining through rain-slashed window panes — the images are easy but they convey only a little of the sense of inner strength and compulsion, of dedication and awareness, the eyes of this Kildoi, Drogo, revealed. Presently he took a breath. His arms hung limply at his sides. I noticed that one end of his moustaches was shorter than the other. His teeth were white, even, and showed top and bottom when he smiled. He smiled now, a bleak smile like snow on the moors.

“I am surprised you are still alive.”

“That’s what we all say,” burbled on Pompino.

“Mefto was foolish,” I said, deliberately turning along the flagstones and walking on, forcing them to keep pace.

“Any man who faces Mefto in swordplay is foolish.”

“Aye,” I said, and with feeling. “Aye, by Zair!”

As is generally the case on Kregen no one pays much attention to the strange gods and spirits by whom a man swears; it is only when they give away your country of origin when you do not want that information revealed that they attract attention.

Pompino laughed, a little too high.

“We never did get that wet.”

“I see I was the unwitting cause of your thirst—”

“No, no, horter, not so.” Pompino, I felt sure, was now uneasy, had come to a slower appreciation of smoldering passions in this man. He kept walking on, a little too swaggeringly, and laughing. “Oh, no—”

I said, “You were not the cause of the thirst. You merely prevented our quenching it.”

He gave me another expressionless look that, with those eyes and that face, could never be truly expressionless. I thought he was trying to sum me up, and running into difficulty.

“I am remiss,” he said, and the note of ritual was strong in his voice. “Let me buy you both a drink. I insist. It is all I can do, at the least, to express my thanks.”

So we went into the next inn, a jolly place where they served a capital ale, and we hoisted stoups. We went to a window seat and sat down just as though we were old comrades. I fretted. I was shilly-shallying over this business of the voller.

Now, in other times I would have gone raging up to the roof, a scarlet breechclout wrapped about me and a sword flaming in my fist, and down to the Ice Floes of Sicce for any damned Hamalese who got in the way. But, now, I was taking my time, making excuses, seizing every opportunity to prevaricate. Many times on Kregen I have noticed that when I shilly-shally for no apparent reason, when things do not work out with the old peremptory promptness, there is usually an underlying cause. Often to have rushed on headlong would have been to rush headlong into disaster. And, Zair knows, that has happened, often and often...

But the voller beckoned, and I hesitated and did not know why.

The Star Lords had discharged us from our immediate duty, the Gdoinye had so informed Pompino. Then why hesitate?

But it was pleasant to sit in the window seat of a comfortable inn in the grateful afternoon radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, with a cool flagon of best ale on the clean-scrubbed table... And, believe me, doing just that is just as important a part of life on Kregen as dashing about with flashing swords. My thoughts had taken me away a trifle from the conversation. I heard Pompino talking and the words:

“...a capital voller...” leaped out at me.

I listened. This Drogo was clearly seeking Mefto — and it was no great guess that he was seeking with no good will. He could be a bounty hunter. He could be a wronged husband. He could be a stikitche. But Pompino must have told him that Prince Mefto had returned to Shanodrin, the land the Kazzur had won for himself in blood and death. Now Drogo wished to get out of Jikaida City as fast as he could —

and a caravan, besides being slow, was also not on the schedule for departure for some time.

“An airboat? Aye,” said Drogo, and drank.

“It is a great chance—” Pompino was not such a fool, after all.

To have this Kildoi with us when we essayed the airboat would make success much more certain. I pushed aside the startled inner reflection that this was not how I would have thought and acted only a few years ago. There were wheels within wheels here, and I was canny enough by now to let the wheels run themselves for a space.

Drogo said, “If you will have me, I will join you—”

“Agreed!” said Pompino, and he sat back and quaffed his ale.

I sat back, also, but I did not drink.

Drogo did not look at me. He made rings with his flagon on the scrubbed wood.

“And you, Jak?”

“Why, Horter Drogo, is it that you Kildoi always seem to have only one name?”

His smile was again like those damned ice floes of the far north.

“But we do not. We do not parade our names, that is all.”

“Point taken — and, as for your joining us, why, yes, and right heartily.” I put warmth into my voice. Foolish, I felt, to antagonize him for no reason.

“Then no harm is done.”

What he meant by that I was not sure. I did know that the old intemperate Dray Prescot might well have challenged him to speak plain, blast his eyes.

He went on, “We are of Balintol, as you know, and we keep ourselves to ourselves. There are not many of us. All the first families know one another. The use of family names is felt to be — to be—”

“Drink up, Horter Drogo,” I said, “and let me get you the other half.”

That, at the time, seemed as good a way as any of ending that conversation. Once again I promised myself I’d have a good long talk with Korero when I got back to Vallia. My comrade who carried his enormous shields at my back was a man of a mysterious people, that was for sure.

It was, naturally, left to Pompino, when I returned with the drinks, to say, “And you are chasing this rast Mefto to—”

“One of us will kill the other.” Drogo took his flagon into his lower left hand. The other three hands visible clenched into fists. “I shall not face him with swords. So he may die. I devoutly hope so.”

Like Korero, this Drogo did not habitually swear by gods and demons as do most folk of Kregen.

“You are no swordsman yourself?”

He glanced across at me, and his fists unclenched, and he took a pull of ale.

“Oh, yes, I own to some skill. But my masters suggested I would be better served by taking up some other weapon—”

“And?” interrupted Pompino.

Drogo made himself laugh. His teeth were white and even, and his tongue was very red.

“I manage with an axe, polearms, the bow, a knife—”

I said, “All at once, no doubt.” As I spoke I heard the sour note of envy in my voice.

“When necessary.”

By Vox! But I had walked into that one with my chin!

“You have met Katakis?”

Offhandedly, he answered obliquely. “The little streams run into the great river.”

I nodded. “And Djangs?”

He frowned. “No — I do not know of them.”

“Oh,” I said. “I just wondered.”

I stood up.

“If we intend to take this confounded voller, then let us be about our business.”

Chapter Six

Concerning a Shortcut

Most men are not mere walking bundles of reflexes. Most men have deeper layers of thought and emotions below the superficialities of life. Among the many people a man bumps into on his way through life there must be some, a few, for whom he feels enough interest to be fascinated by those deeper levels. And this really has little to do with friendship, which is by way of being an altogether different idea. As we walked along in the radiance from the twin suns of Antares, I pondered the enigma of this Drogo the Kildoi.

Pompino was prattling on about Jikaida and his own honest conviction that he did not have a head for the game, and Drogo was nodding civilly and saying that, yes, he quite enjoyed the Game of Moons, if he was in the mood, and that he found Vajikry surprisingly challenging for what appeared so simple a game although the version they played in Balintol, his homeland, was markedly different from that played here in the continent of Havilfar. I wondered how he had got here and his adventures on the way. Korero never spoke of himself. Balintol is a shrouded land and a fit birthplace for the men it breeds. Onron, the lady Yasuri’s coachman, caught up with us as we passed through the colonnades surrounding the Kyro of the Gambits. His bright yellow favor glistened. We were about to cross into the Foreign Quarter, where the Blue and the Yellow held no favor one above the other.

“I’ve been looking for you all over, you pair of hulus,” he puffed out. He was riding a freymul, the poor man’s zorca, with a chocolate-colored back and streaks of yellow beneath, and Onron had ridden the animal hard. Clots of foam fluffed back from his patient mouth. Sweat stained all down his neck, matting the fine brown hairs.

“Hai, Beaky!” greeted Pompino, jovially.

“May your whiskers shrivel, you—” Onron threw the reins over the freymul’s head and stood to face us.

“My lady demands your presence — at once. The word she used was Bratch.”

“Why should we jump for her any more?”

The Kildoi, Drogo, had disappeared into the shadows. Onron scratched his beak. He was not used to this kind of address respecting his lady.

“You had better go at once,” he warned.

Pompino glanced at me, and his bright eye told me that the Star Lords had relieved him of a burden. The case appeared to me, suddenly, and I confess somewhat startlingly, as being different. A tug at his sleeve pulled him a little apart.

“The Everoinye have discharged you of the obligation to Yasuri, Pompino. The Gdoinye spoke to you. But not to me...”

His foxy face took on a shrewd, calculating expression, and yet, I was grateful to see, a sympathetic look also.

“You could be right. The Gdoinye did not speak to you.”

“Hurry, you famblys!” called Onron.

“Yet, the voller—”

“Drogo will turn up when Onron is gone. I shall go to the lady Yasuri and see what she requires. If you and Drogo can manage the flier, you will command the air. You can pick me up later at the inn.”

“Yes.” He stroked his whiskers. “Yes, Jak. You have my word as a kregoinye. I will return for you.”

“Good — then we must both hurry.”

He turned away at once and started off along the colonnade, his lithe form flickering in light and shade past the columns. He heard Onron’s indignant yells right enough; he just ignored them. I turned to the Rapa.

“I will come, Onron — so stop your caterwauling.”

He stuck his beak into the air, offended, and climbed back on the freymul. There was no question of my riding, so, perforce, I walked smartly off for the Star of Laybrites. The thought crossed my mind that more stikitches, assassins, had come in with the caravan that had brought Drogo, and Yasuri’s life was again in peril. But that did not make sense. For one thing, this King Ortyg would not know his men had failed. And, for another, had there been assassins there would have been no time for Yasuri to dispatch Onron in this fashion.

One objection to the first point could be that the new King Ortyg of Yasuri’s country employed a Wizard of Loh to go into lupu and spy out for him what was happening here. That was possible. I quickened my steps, although recognizing the validity of the second point. The Rapa coachman took off on the freymul, yelling back that he would tell the lady that I was obeying her and convey to her the news of Pompino’s ingratitude and treachery. Onron shot off along the avenue among the crowds, and I took a shortcut.

There are shortcuts in life and there are shortcuts. This one took me through a poor quarter where they spent their time in tiny workshops making tawdry souvenirs of Jikaida for the visitors to pay through the nose for in the souks. And, this shortcut was a shortcut to disaster. The Watch was out, backed up by soldiers in their armor and hard black and white checkered cloaks, helmets shining. A yelling mob rushed through the narrow alleyway, sweeping away stalls and awnings in their panic. I could see the soldiers riding them down, laying about them with the flats of their swords. Two men almost knocked me flying. I ducked into a doorway with the stink of days-old vegetables wafting out. The rout rushed past. Then — well, I suppose I should not have done what I did — but, being me, I did. A woman carrying a baby fell onto the slimy cobbles.

The pursuing totrixes hammered their six hooves into the ground, prancing on, and the woman would be run down.

Darting out, with only the most cursory of looks, I scooped her up, baby and all, and started back for my doorway.

A totrix, rearing up, shouldered me away. I spun about, staggering, clutching the woman. A Watchman hit me over the head with his bludgeon. He was shouting, excited, frantic.

“Here’s one of the rasts—” And he hit me again.

That was it, for a space.

The blackness remained, the blackness of Notor Zan, and I did not open my eyes. The place where they had thrown me stank. A dismal moaning and groaning filled the air. And, in my aching head the famous old Bells of Beng Kishi clashed and clanged. I winced. Cautiously, I opened one eye. The place was arched with ribbed brick, slimy and malodorous, and a few smoky torches sputtered along the walls. The place was a dungeon, a chundrog, and the prison would extend about us with iron bars and stone walls and many guards.

Water dripped from that arched ceiling and splashed upon us, green and slimy, stinking. Rivulets of the water trickled down to open drains along the center. The people were crammed in. They were poor. They were tattered and half of them were starving. They moaned in long dismal monotones. And the air stifled with fear.

Gradually I pulled myself together and sorted out what had happened. Criminals had been sought, and the Watch had scooped up a ripe bunch, and anyone who got in the way was taken up also. It is a dreadfully familiar story. The Nine Masked Guardians who ran LionardDen were fanatical about the order of the city. Many visitors stayed here, and the reputation of the city rested on reports of conditions. Who would journey to a city of thieves, or a city of revolution —

even to play Death Jikaida?

There was no sign in this tangled company of the woman and her baby and I just hoped they were all right. The people looked like a field of old rags ready for the incinerators. I have said that the Star Lords never lifted a finger to help me, and although this is not strictly accurate, for they once enabled me to overhear a conversation to my advantage in the island of Faol of North Havilfar, it was precisely in the kind of situation in which I found myself now that no help could be expected from the Everoinye. I expected none.

A group of ruffians near me, all gleaming eye and broken teeth and rags, were discussing future possibilities.

“It is Death Jikaida, you may be sure.”

“No — they want fighting men for that.”

“We can fight — aye, and will fight, if they put spears into our hands.”

“Kazz-Jikaida,” said another, shaking. “Blood Jikaida. My brother was cut down in that, two seasons ago.”

A man with lop ears and a broken nose, very villainous, stilled them all as he spoke. “It will not be that.”

He spoke heavily, with a wheeze. “It is Execution Jikaida—”

“No! No!” The shouts of horror were as much protestations as outbursts of terror. “Why, Nath, why?”

“They had a blood-letting yesterday, did they not? And the great ones demand another game — I know, may they all rot in the Ice Floes of Sicce forever and ever.”

The uproar told me that these ill-used people put store by the words of this Nath. It seemed he possessed enough of the yrium, that mysterious force that demands from other men respect and obedience, to command them.

Lop-eared Nath, he was called, and he looked a right villain.

We were fed a thin gruel and most of it was dilse, that profuse plant that pretends to nourish, and fills a man’s belly for a time and then leaves him more hungry than before. We drank abominable water. This chundrog was Spartan, a dungeon from which it would be well-nigh impossible to escape except in death. I began to think along those lines. A feigned death...

Engaging in conversation with the nearest group, I soon discovered that plan was a bubble-dream.

“Anyone who pretends death is stuck through with a spear, to make sure.” Lop-eared Nath appeared to relish his words. “Listen, dom, we only get out of here one way. We go to act as pieces in Execution Jikaida.”

“But there is a chance in that. All the pieces will not be taken, not all killed.”

“Aye. A chance.”

A man with a snaggle of black teeth and one eye chuckled. He was half off his head already.

“It depends who we get to act as player.”

“May Havil shine his mercy upon us,” said a woman, and she made the secret sign of Havil the Green. We spent three days and nights in the hell-hole. At one point a man in resplendent clothes and a blue and yellow checkered mask over his face appeared. Lanterns illuminated his figure as he stood upon a dais beside the lenken door. The people babbled to a stupefied silence.

“You are all given a trial, and the evidence is against you and you are all condemned.” This man, the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians, spoke in a booming, confident voice. He lifted a ring-clustered hand. “The trial was fair and just, according to the laws of the republic. You are all appointed to act as pieces in Execution Jikaida—”

He got no further. The yells and shrieks, the imploring screams, all smashed and racketed to that slimed brick roof. He turned away, disgusted with the animal-like behavior of the mob beneath him, and walked out with a measured, pompous, confident tread. We were left to face our fate. What the devil had happened to Pompino and Drogo? Had they taken the voller? What ailed Yasuri?

These questions flew up in my head, and I saw them as the petty concerns they were. On the morrow I faced Execution Jikaida, and, by Krun, that was a concern that shook a fellow right down to his boots.

Execution Jikaida may be conducted in a number of different ways, and I guessed we’d get the stickiest. Guards shepherded us along the next afternoon — we could judge the time because the afternoon was the time for this particularly nasty form of the game — and we shuffled out, loaded with chains manacled and fettered to our hands and legs. Screams and sobs echoed about that dolorous procession. At a wooden door we were each given a large drink of raw dopa.

I drank the dopa.

Some of the people calmed down, others slobbered, some fell faulting. The guards dealt with them all faithfully.

At last we were marched down a long stone corridor. At the far end double doors arched, and these, we guessed, led out onto the board. A Jiktar, smart in his soldier’s uniform, stood by the door, backed by a squad of men. His face, although grim, betrayed a feeling that in my heightened state I hardly recognized as pity.

“Take heart!” he bellowed. “Not all of you will die. It depends on the game. Some will live. Pray to your gods that you will be among the fortunate.”

Lop-eared Nath shouted up, truculent, fierce. “And who is to act as our player?”

“You?”

Nath shrank back. “Not me!”

I said, “Jiktar, how can the player be harmed?”

He looked hard at me.

“You are a foreigner? Yes, I see. Then you were foolish to commit a crime in our city. The object of the game is to take the Princess, is this not so? To place her in hyrkaida? Well, then, her Pallan is the player in Execution Jikaida.”

I saw it all.

The Pallan is the most powerful piece on the board, and, also, as a consequence, the piece the opposing player most wishes to dispose of.

The smells of this dismal place rose about me. The water dripped. And the people with their bellies afire with dopa moaned softly, given over to their own destruction.

“Thank you, Jiktar,” I said, and shuffled off back into the amorphous mass of people.

“Wait!”

The word hit me like a leaden bullet slung by a slinger. “Yes.”

“You, dom, will be the player.”

The eyes of the people about me showed white. Some started to caterwaul their fears, others cried out, some shrieked.

“But—”

“Shastum!” The Jiktar roared out, instantly halting the growing noise. “Silence. Move out!”

I did not move.

Into that cowed silence I said, “And who acts as player when I am slain?”

“The next in line. There is no interruption in play. Move out! Grak !”

It all made sense. Any fumble-wit might make the moves. The poorer the player — the more the deaths. The double doors were thrown open. Mingled streaming light poured in, the glorious radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, illuminating a stairway of brilliance out to horror.

Chapter Seven Execution Jikaida

We played black.

Each one of us wore a grimy black breechclout and a tattered favor marking the rank of the piece we represented — and that was all.

Almost all the black breechclouts carried rusted stains — dark and dreadful mementoes of past games. The brilliance of the day outside smote in with pain. We walked out, for we hardly marched, and so were shepherded willy-nilly to our places on the yellow and blue sanded squares. The terraces were packed. The spectators craned forward. The rituals with their incantations and sacrifices and prayers were all passed. We marched out to a hush, a long hollow waiting silence. Up there against the brightness of the day the ranks of Bowmen of Loh brooded down, tall and spare; but they were there on this day to perform a slightly different function from their usual task of shafting any wight foolish enough to run. Now they were insurance, in case the men in black were too slow. One young lad — his face was so contorted with fear it took a moment to realize he was apim — when he was positioned by the marshals upon his square in the front rank, simply ran. He did not know where he was running. Head down, screaming, he fled from horror — and ran into the arms of the men in black, into the arms of horror upon horror.

What the men in black and their instruments did to the young man rooted every other piece wearing the black to the square on which he stood. Rooted him there as though he had grown into the solid ground beneath.

The trumpets blew. The banners waved. The crowd craned forward as the white pieces emerged. So we understood what kind of Execution Jikaida we played. I stood on my square, feeling — well, feeling that I had had some ups and downs in my life upon Kregen, sudden and dizzy swoops from greatness to disaster. And I had clawed my way back, only once more to be thrust down. The situation was no novelty in that respect; but this was like to be the last time I was so cast down. This time was the casting down and out.

The white pieces were not men condemned to execution. They were soldiers, in garish fancy-dress uniforms, with white favors everywhere. They carried weapons. They were off duty, performing a part of their agreement entered into when they signed on, and earning themselves a tidy bonus apiece. When they took a piece from the black side they would kill him, chop him — or her — down without thought. When a black piece took one of them, he would simply walk quietly off the board, most probably to sit on the substitutes bench to watch the remainder of the game. As the Pallan I stood next to the Princess.

She stood there, drooping, pale, and I saw she was the woman I had so uselessly attempted to rescue from the trampling hooves of the totrixes. She wore a black breechclout and, because she was the Princess, a forlorn black crown of drooping feathers.

I looked again. In her arms she cradled the baby.

The bastards had even wrapped a scrap of black cloth about the baby’s skeletal ribs. I felt sick. If I lost the game, then hyrkaida would not be a mere civilized checkmate — it would be the swift and lethal swordblow finishing this woman — and her child.

“What is your name, doma?”

She jerked as though I had assaulted her. Her eyes shifted sideways. She colored. She shook her head.

“They don’t mind if we talk a little, quietly.”

“Yes... I am Liana whom men once called the Sprite.”

“Lahal, Liana the Sprite. I am Jak.”

“Lahal, Jak — will it be very — very terrible?”

“For some of the swods and Deldars, and some of the superior pieces, yes, it will be terrible. But you will be safe—”

“Unless you lose!”

“Yes.”

Up there lolling on the terraces, ensconced on their comfortable seats, the audience stared down avidly. It seemed to me outrageous that anyone could take pleasure from all this. Although I detested Kazz-Jikaida, where the pieces fought for the squares on which they stood, at least then there was some chance. But here, just to stand and wait to be butchered! And it was useless running. The men in black and their ghastly instruments hovered.

The throng murmured with excitement. They were sick, all of them, sick to their twisted minds. And perhaps the sickest of all was the white player.

He — or she — would have paid an enormous sum for the privilege of playing Execution Jikaida. I looked at the white throne, at the far end, and the tiny glittering figure there. An immediate advantage was conferred by that position, the usual one that overlooked the board. From my level place it was going to be difficult to see all the board and appreciate what pieces stood on what squares.

But, then, that was all a part of the fun of the game to these sickening blood-batteners watching. These wealthy people whose obsession with Jikaida led them to make the difficult journey here and play in Blood and Death Jikaida employed a Jikaidast to advise them in their games. A Jikaidast, a professional who played the game for a living as well as for the absorbed joy of it, would sit at their side and the moves would be seriously discussed. The massive clepsydra would drip its water, drop by drop, as the move was pondered, and a brazen gong would signal that time had run out. What normally happened then would happen here as a matter of course — just another poor devil would be chopped. The marshals were finishing pushing and prodding the black pieces. The whites were set and ready. The chief marshal, perspiring, rosy of face, a trifle flummoxed, came up to me.

“You ready, lad?”

“Tell me, who is the player yonder? Who the Jikaidast?”

“Why bother your head over—”

“Who?”

He blinked and wiped the sweat away. He was in a hurry to get back to his quarters and a stoup of ale.

“Kov Loriman the Hunter. The Jikaidast is Master Scatulo.”

I smiled.

The grimace must have had some effect on the marshal, for he took himself off very smartly. Master Scatulo! Well, Bevon the Brukaj, who had been Scatulo’s slave, had told me pertinent things of Scatulo’s play. Here was the first ray of sunshine through the clouds.

“Jak...” Liana’s quavering voice brought my attention back to the immediate proceedings. “I think they begin...”

“Trust in Havil the Green,” I said. How incongruous that remark would have been only a few seasons ago!

“Rather in Havandua the Green Wonder.”

“If you will.”

Quite naturally white took first move. This was not from any similar tradition to that in the chess of our Earth; simply that we blacks were here to be chopped.

Now — many a Pallan playing for black, I gathered, had desperately sought never to put himself in a position where he might be taken. After all, the object of the game from white’s point of view was to win and enhance his prestige in the league tables. Just because black’s pieces were slain did not affect the play. This was real Jikaida, not Death Jikaida.

The proper rules were observed and play would have to be skilled. So a Pallan might seek to screen himself. I fancied, with a quick stab of gratitude to Bevon, that Master Scatulo might be in for a surprise. So the game began, the call of “Rank your Deldars” rang out, and we set to. It was very far from pretty.

The lines began to form, cunning diagonals of swods propped by Deldars, reaching out to the far drins.

[1]

Scatulo chose the Princess’s Kapt’s swod’s opening. I replied cautiously, opening up just one line. I zeunted — that is, vaulted over a line of pieces — fairly early so as to retain a better grip on the center. The zeunt was to enable the board to be clearer in my mind, as well as to place me in a good position. The first swod was taken by the whites. I could not prevent that.

The soldier with his white favors gleaming lifted his sword, the wretch with the scrap of black cloth around him threw up his arms and screamed, and the blade sliced down. The men in red ran onto the board and carted him away.

The game proceeded.

The orders for the moves were carried by beautiful girls wearing black or white favors, and with their red-velvet-covered wands of office. Their draperies swirled. We lost more men. Gradually I gleaned an understanding of just what Scatulo was up to. I do not pretend to be a master player; but I have some skill. And, by Zair, I needed it then!

The disadvantage of standing on the board, with the disorienting perspectives reaching out and the pieces all on a level, was greatly offset by the ability to hold the positions in my head. Blindfold Jikaida and multi-game Jikaida are capital teaching methods.

Pointless to go through the game move by move — or blow by blow. Every time white took a black piece, a man or woman died. It was necessary, it was vital, that I concentrate on the game and not allow the horror of the situation to unnerve me.

Those words to Liana the Sprite had been hollow. I did not think I had much chance of winning, and when I lost she would die.

The shaming thought drilled into my brain — suppose, just suppose, it was my Delia who stood there!

Suppose it was Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, who stood there, straight and supple, wearing that stained black breechclout? Or, just suppose it was my wayward daughter Dayra, who was called Ros the Claw? Or that other daughter of mine, Lela, whom I had not seen for long and long? Why should my reactions then be any different? Were they not all women, like Liana the Sprite? Was not my duty to them all?

As the game progressed and I sniffed out Scatulo’s play I think some near sublime passion overcame me, so that Liana and Delia and all the beautiful and helpless women of two worlds were represented by that single shrinking form.

But why only the beautiful? Why exclude those women who have not been favored of the gods with divine faces and forms? Were not they all women? Some women are very devils, as I know; but they are not the helpless of two worlds. And, would it be right to exclude them, just because of that?

Scatulo essayed a clever move down the right-hand side and I countered with the correct answer, as I had played with Master Hork in Vondium. The tiered stands buzzed afresh with appreciation. To the Ice Floes of Sicce with you all, I felt like shouting up at them and their smug knowingness. Now Scatulo knew he was in a game. I think this Kov Loriman the Hunter, who had engaged Scatulo for the game, must have fancied himself and overridden the Jikaidast, for some odd moves were made from time to time. Trying to be quick I seized the opportunity of one such move and zeunted a Kapt over with a good chance of reaching the Princess in two moves.

The Kapt could not, for the moment, be taken. Scatulo moved a piece across which, although blocking his nearest Kapt, threatened on the next move but one to take my Kapt. I looked at the situation in my head, for it was down at the far end of the board. The blue and yellows zigzagged their way across the board, the black pieces stood, apathetic, frenzied, shaking — but all standing faithfully on their ordered squares through fear of the instruments of the men in black. The white pieces were lounging there, earning a bonus. The stands were quiet, sensing a stroke. Master Hork had discussed many famous old games with me. I remembered one in particular. In my head I looked at the situation and made the necessary move. If Scatulo did not respond with the single correct move available to him — I had him.

This, I may add, came as a surprise.

As I stood, waiting for Scatulo — or his employer — to make his move, the strangest sensation swept over me. Scatulo had seen the danger, for it had raced in with speed, and his own developing attack was abandoned. I felt — I realized that I had become engrossed in the game. This was needful — by Zair!

but it was needful. It had given me this chance. The strange sensation was like coming up out of a deep cave into the light, and remembering that an outside world existed, that daylight smiled over the land, that the whole world was not confined by walls and darkness.

And this burgeoning feeling was not because we blacks might win. It was a realization that my first thought that I had been callous to become engrossed in a game where men died was not the truth. That absorption in the game, despite the blood and the screams, had been necessary. I had to believe that. Now, facing me, was the final enormity.

Had I not realized my absorption, had I been still engrossed in the game as a contest of skills, divorced from the blood and death, there would have been no problem until the aftermath. For, you see, my move, the winning move, demanded that the Pallan vault the line of pieces and alight at the end on the one square that would place the white Princess in hyrkaida. That single crucial square was occupied by a black piece, who did not have the Pallan’s powers and could not attack the Princess and end the game.

And a Pallan may capture a piece of his own color.

As we waited and the water dripped in the clepsydra and the time passed I found I hoped, almost hoped, that Scatulo would see the danger, and make the only move that would save him. And then, angrily, I pushed the betraying thought away.

If I did not do what had to be done, the game would go on and many more of the black pieces would die.

Many more.

For my attack had borne the hallmarks of frenzy, which was a part of the gambit which had already sacrificed a Hikdar — who was a man, shaking and trembling, cut down in blood — and to abandon it now would be worse, far worse.

The clepsydra was nearly on its time, the lenken arm of the hammer lifted to crash down resoundingly on the gong — Scatulo made his move and the lissom girl dashed off. The moment I saw the direction in which she sped, I knew the game was in my hand. Scatulo’s move was good, exceeding good; but, then, so had been the move of Queen Hathshi of Murn-Chem in that long ago game against the Jikaidast Master Chuan-lui-Hong.

Without hesitation, my moment of doubt passed, I started to walk up the long line of pieces. As I went I lifted up my voice in that old foretop hailing bellow.

“Do you bare the throat?”

That was pure panache, pure exhibitionism, pure self-indulgence.

But, by the Black Chunkrah! Didn’t we condemned criminals wearing the black deserve a trifle of flamboyance now — now that we had won?

And then — by Zair; but it hit me shrewdly. It rocked me back. There was I, strutting, marching up along the line of pieces, black and white mingled, simulating that vaulting move unique to Jikaida of Kregen, zeunting in to place the white Princess in hyrkaida. There I was, stupidly proud, scarcely crediting I had pulled it off, puffed up with self-pride — knowing what I had to do to win. So I halted at the end of the line and looked on the square containing the black piece, and it was Lop-eared Nath.

He stared at me, quite clearly imagining I was zeunting over him to a good attacking position beyond. His lop-ears, his broken nose, the hairs on his chest, the shadowed cage of his ribs, his thin arms and legs, the piece of black cloth hitched around him, his hair all wild and disarranged and jumping alive-oh, too — there he stood, this Lop-eared Nath.

I could see the way his stomach sagged and tautened as he breathed under the jut of his ribs. He was sweating. But, then, so were we all.

He cracked his lips open as I marched up. He was a stringy old bird, as tough as they come.

“How’s it going then, dom? By the Green Entrails of Beng Teaubu! We’re up the sharp end here.”

“Lop-eared Nath.”

I was still staring in a stricken fashion at him and the black and white pieces leading up to him were all staring at me. The soldiers in their fancy white favors and stupidly garish holiday uniforms were interested. The black pieces looked sick with fear.

“Go on, then, dom — get onto the square!”

I shook my head. It was an effort.

In only heartbeats the move must be declared, for I had started off without the usual declamation and I was fearful I would be penalized.

“You being the Pallan and all, and up here right near the Princess — that has to be good, don’t it?” He shivered and looked around warily. “Are we going to win? I don’t care if we win or lose, so long’s I come out alive — course, I feel sorry for Liana and her baby and all. But a fellow’s got to live — and I have a quarter to run—”

“D’you play Jikaida, Nath?”

“Me? No — the Game of Moons. What’re you waiting for?”

A buzzing and a murmuring began in the tiers and the marshals began to stir themselves.

“A Pallan, Lop-eared Nath, may capture a piece of his own color — not the Princess, not the Aeilssa, of course.”

“Yeah? You’d better get onto your square, dom, else those bastards in black’ll have your guts out with their pinchers.”

“Lop-eared Nath — you are on my square.”

He didn’t understand, not at first.

“Can’t be — I’m on it, aren’t I?”

“Yes. But I am acting the Pallan.”

Then he saw.

“You wouldn’t — me! You bastard! You’re not one of us — you’re a damned foreigner! By the Slimy Eyeball of Beng Teaubu! If I was in the quarter—”

“A lot of other people will die, Nath, if you live, here — and there is nothing to say you will not die anyway.”

The marshals approached ready to sort out what this little contretemps might be, and the men in black hefted their instruments with a sharp and pungent professional interest. The world is made up of people like Lop-eared Nath — oh, not in his profession or appearance or interests or way of speech — but in his inherent inwardness. Or so it is comforting to believe. He saw it. He saw the whole picture, and his part in it. I thought, for a stupid instant, that he would leap on me. A drop of sweat dripped off the end of his nose. He squinted up in the streaming mingled radiance of Zim and Genodras, and I knew he was partaking of the sunshine for the last time.

“Yeh, I slit the old fool’s throat, and took his money — and I spent it, too. So I suppose it all adds up in the end... And — I’m glad for Liana. Use to call her the Sprite, afore her man ran off.”

Suddenly, Lop-eared Nath lifted up his arms and laughed.

“Ended up here, most like. But I’m glad for her, and the baby — now, stranger — tell them to get on with it.”

So it was done, and Lop-eared Nath paid his dues, and I called “Hyrkaida” and whites conceded and it was over.

Slaves ran out with rakes and buckets of fresh sand, blue and yellow, to cover the bloodstains. The next game would start after an interval for refreshments.

We condemned marched back into the cells.

Liana the Sprite, holding her baby carefully, contrived to walk at my side. So we went back into the place of imprisonment, leaving the place of horror. I was under the impression that we would be called out again; but Liana said, “No, Jak. We won — thanks to Havandua the Green Wonder. We will be spared. We will not be driven out to another Execution Jikaida.” Her thin face turned to me, and she looked relaxed and at ease, the terror gone.

“Oh, no, they are harsh but just. We will not be killed. They will sell us as slaves.”

Chapter Eight

Hunch, Nodgen and I Are Auctioned Off

Hunch, the Tryfant slave who with Nodgen the Brokelsh and me cared for our master’s animals, was a very devil for roast chicken. Now he came flying back over the prostrate forms of the exhausted slaves in the retinue, stepping on outflung arms and legs, thumping on narrow stomachs, almost tripping, yet miraculously keeping his balance, the roast chicken clasped fiercely in his fist.

“Come back here! By Llunyush the Juice! I’ll have you!”

Fat Ringo, the master’s chief cook, pursued Hunch with a carving knife in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. Fat Ringo was uttering the most blood-curdling threats as he ran, fat and purple and perspiring.

The first moon of the night, She of the Veils, was just lifting over the flat grazing land to the east, and lighting in gold and rose the faces of the mountains ahead. The night blazed with the stars of Kregen. Nodgen pulled his tattered rags out of the way of the hunt. His chains clanked. I rolled over and sat up and, seeing what was toward, gave a groan and started to jostle a calsany or two in the way. Everybody on Kregen knows what calsanys do when they are upset or frightened. Hunch saw that swaying movement. He darted for the herd, shoving the animals this way and that, hurtling past with a quickly whispered, “My thanks, Jak!”

The calsanys started up.

Everywhere on the ground the slaves rolled over and sat up and a chorus of protestations and curses began — then the slaves were hauling their tattered rags around themselves and moving off as fast as they could.

“I’ll fritter your tripes and season with garlic and serve ’em up, you hulu!” shrieked Fat Ringo. He danced around, purple, gasping, shaking the knife and the cleaver. But he made no attempt to push in among the calsanys.

With another groan — for I had been beaten mercilessly twice the day before — I lifted my aching bones and shuffled off out of the way.

The iron chains festooning my emaciated body hampered my movements. I dragged along like a half-crushed beetle. But no one was going to sleep near a bunch of calsanys in that condition. This whole ludicrous scene was hilarious in a kind of skull and crossbones way. Once Hunch was off by himself he’d wolf the chicken down and scatter the bones, and then no one could say, for sure, that a chicken had ever existed. Fat Ringo knew that. He backed off from the calsanys, shaking his kitchen implements and foaming.

“I’ll have you — so help me Llunyush the Juice! — I’ll have you!”

Hunch was too sly to answer. He was beyond the calsanys and no doubt was well started on the first leg. He wouldn’t save any for me, and I did not fault him for that. The evidence had to be annihilated utterly — as Hunch would say.

The slaves were rolling up again and cursing rasts who disturbed their sleep. Sleep, to a slave, is the most precious of balms. Fat Ringo shook his cleaver, and breathed deeply, and started back to his fire. He was an apim — almost all superior cooks are apim — and when he saw me he aimed a kick at my backside as he lumbered past.

“I know who it was!” he brayed.

I rolled away and found a comfortable depression in the ground and hauled my rags about me. “Yeah?

Well, try to prove it then.” And I closed my eyes and sought sleep.

On the morrow the caravan would start off again early and march most of the day, with a suitable pause for refreshment. In our case that would be a heel of bread and an onion, if we were lucky. In the evening we would each receive our bowl of porridge and four palines — three if Fat Ringo was in a bad mood. Our lord and master would sit grandly in his tent, with all the appurtenances of gracious living brought with him on the expedition — folding table and chairs, folding washstand, chests and storage jars filled with the goodies that made his rich life the richer. Fat Ringo’s choicest delicacies would be brought on golden platters to the great man.

Strom Phrutius was his name, a damned strom from one of the mingled kingdoms of the Dawn Lands, immensely wealthy and yet only a strom, which is equivalent to an Earthly count, and covetously desirous of making himself a kov — or, at the least, a vad. I guessed the old buzzard would make himself a king if he had half a chance.

So that was why he was on the expedition.

He’d bought me and a gaggle of slaves to make his journey comfortable, and so here I was. Four separate attempts at escape I’d made, and four separate times I’d been caught and dragged back by the heels. They had been desperate, frenzied, chaotic bursts of ill planning and stupid execution. I’d reverted, in many ways, to the Dray Prescot who had first been brought to Kregen. But the lash and the chains had made me realize that I must retain my hold on the deeper — if only by a hairsbreadth deeper —

realization that there are other ways of gaining one’s end than by thumping a few skulls. The caravan consisted of a vast quantity of animals, many wagons and coaches, lines of folk trudging on foot, and our aim was to be through the passes of the mountains before the snow choked them. Once over that massif, we would be fair set for our goal. Well, the goal of the masters, not of the slaves. Their goal was food and sleep.

Being chained up and confined to the animals with Strom Phrutius, I was totally unaware of the names and quality of the other great ones who undertook this expedition. Every now and then a gaily attired party would ride past, their zorcas pretty and cavorting in the suns’ light, their every action indicating the joy of the hunt and of life.

I’d go back to the curry comb, and ponder — had Pompino and Drogo seized the airboat and were they safe? Was Yasuri still alive? And — was Vallia still afloat?

All that had to wait — all that was part of another life. I was slave. I ministered to the animals. I was slave.

Day by day as we marched the mountains neared. We trudged across the high pass before the snow trapped us. On we went over a barren land where men thirsted. The dust powdered us and the grit beneath our feet lacerated our flesh.

Hunch was not fettered. Many of the slaves were not chained. Nodgen the Brokelsh, surly, marched in nik-fetters.

I was chained.

Me they regarded as a wild leem, a monstrous beast of savagery and malice. And I worked. The animals looked sleek and cared for and I knew every one in the remuda, every one who hauled a cart. The six krahniks who pulled Strom Phrutius’s coach were strong, dedicated animals, and I knew each one, and called it by its name.

And my chains remained, and I was slave.

Five-handed Eos Bakchi, the Vallian spirit of good luck, had turned away from me. Equally, his counterpart in Havilfar, Himindur the Three-eyed, had closed each and every eyeball against me. Those mountains were a relatively small and local grouping and the passes led onto a land that, while it was not true desert, was, all the same, highly unpleasant to travelers short of water and food. We were supplied with ample quantities of both. By the time we reached streams and fields of green grass and pretty stands of trees we had traveled a goodly distance and we had passed no habitations, seen no people, had appeared to travel through an empty land.

A slave, unless he particularly cares, does not see much of the way or know a great deal of what is going on. In order to save my skin I had buckled down to the task of caring for the animals. One calculation —

the distance we had traveled — was either easy to make or impossible, depending on whose estimates of speeds, progress made and time spent the slaves accepted.

We measured time by the passage of the suns, by the water dole and by the time of sleeping. If I say the desert was not real desert and we had plenty of water, and yet say also that men thirsted — these statements are not incompatible.

Everyone, including the animals, drank before us slaves.

So that when we reached the first stream, tinkling away between crumbly banks under letha trees, we slaves broke in ragged stumbling runs, tripped by our chains, our mouths furnaces of fire, fell full length to gulp the water. Oh, yes, we were whipped back by the slave masters. But we drank, by Krun!

Hunch licked his lips. “That cramph Fat Ringo taunted me, said we are to be sold off in the city. Us expendables.”

“An expensive way of utilizing manpower—”

“No. Phrutius needed insurance across the mountains and desert. If I wasn’t so scared...” He was a Tryfant, and you know I am neutral concerning them. But he was usually a cheerful sort, not much over four foot six tall, and with a lopsided expression that conveyed all the guile of a six-year old scenting ice cream in the offing. “I escaped once — and when I was caught—” He did not go on. There was no need to go on. He told me he came from the little kovnate of Covinglee in the Dawn Lands and his father had been a brass founder but had fallen on evil times. “He was overly fond of playing Vajikry and spent all his time and money on the game. We were turned out penniless and I ended up slave.”

Next to Jikaida, the supreme board game of Kregen, stand Jikalla and Vajikry. Hunch had turned to the Game of Moons out of desperate resentment.

The next day when a city came into sight along a straight ride between trees we knew our fate loomed close. We all wore dirty gray breechclouts, were filthy and covered with sores and wounds, and our hair swirled like bargain-priced Medusae. We were refuse of humanity.

“Perhaps here is where we make a run for it, Hunch.”

“As Tryflor is my witness! My legs are too tired to run, dom.”

The city, whose name none of us knew, possessed a number of fine bagnios, all stone walls and iron bars and whipping posts, and in one of these we were quartered for the night. We were given no food or water and we all had a whipping, gratis and for nothing. Guards in jerkins of leather and brass patrolled with barbed spears, their whiskered faces sullen, and the watch fires burned in the towers. Toward morning we were roused by kicks and blows and we shuffled out to stand in dazed lines. Fires burned in open hearths. We were all male slaves, and of many races. We waited as patient slaves always wait, forcing themselves to be incurious about what is going on for fear of the knowledge and the horror it will bring too early, before the horror arrives. Buckets of water were produced and we were instructed to get to work sluicing the water over ourselves and cleaning the muck off. Guards in jerkins produced sharp knives.

Some of us started to yell, then, at the horror here; but—

“Quiet down, you onkers! Quiet!” The slave masters bellowed. They shoved and pushed keeping us in line; they did not hit us with their whips or bludgeons.

And the sharp knives were used to slice off great handfuls of our hair, to trim our beards, to make us look less like fearsome monsters of the jungle.

Then we ate. We ate mergem — which is one of the marvels of Kregen, being a leguminous plant which, dried, will last for years and may then be reconstituted and is fortifying and nourishing — and it was mixed with milk and not water, and spiced with orange honey. We ate to stupefaction. Our bodies were smeared with oil. Some of us were corked. Our sores were treated and many were painted over, although that practice should not fool even a purblind slave buyer. Then we were herded out to be auctioned off.

If I do not go into the business it is because I find it degrading — degrading to the sellers and the buyers, not to the slaves. In this they stand apart as mere things, and this does not demean them but removes them from the orbit of creatures who buy and sell slaves.

The slave block built of dusty brick rose head high over the wide courtyard where trees drooped in the heat. Men and women filled this space, most with attendants to minister to their wants. The auctioneers took it turn by turn to shout the wares and display the good points of the merchandise before they sloped off to slake their thirsts. We waited in line. We were all numbered and the personal ownership of Strom Phrutius was attested on the chip of painted wood we carried. Lose that, slave, and you have an ear off!

Other groups with their chips of wood bearing their owners’ titles waited in line. Hunch said, “We are not all here.”

“No. The masters are bound to keep some slaves — those they had before they bought us. You told me, we were bought for the journey. Expendable. How many of us died on the way?”

“A lot, by Tryflor, a lot!”

Those slaves who had survived Execution Jikaida with me formed a small grouping of our own. But we would all be sold off.

Looking back at the pathetic and brutal scene, I suppose I should not wonder that there was trouble. After all, although I was slave, I was also Dray Prescot.

And he, as you know, is an onker of onkers, thick skulled as a vosk. Nodgen, surly and red-eyed, Hunch, apprehensive, and I stood together. We had struck up a companionship in our sufferings.

To speed sales up we were being sold in lots. The auctioneer waiting for us, rivulets of sweat running over his fat cheeks, the brilliance of his clothes stained with dust, bellowed out: “Grak! Grak! You bunch of useless rasts.”

He snatched Hunch’s wood chip and read off the details.

“Zorcahandlers. Experts at the management of animals. What am I bid for this prime purchase of skilled men?” He lifted Hunch’s arm and half-turned him. “Not a mark on him, in his prime—” He looked at me.

“C’mere, slave!” He grabbed.

The slave handlers started to run onto the auction block from the sides. People in the cleared area began to yell. The auctioneer lay on the dusty ground with a bloody nose. I looked about, dazed — it had been quick, by Vox!

What would have happened then is anybody’s guess. I do not think they would have killed me straight away. Rather, they would have netted me, chained me up, and then wreaked their vengeance. A voice, a penetrating, bull voice smashed from the crowd.

“Hold!”

A man stepped front and center. I saw him clearly and yet he meant nothing. He wore black clothes and he did not sweat. His weapons glittered. He stood, tall, straight-backed, dominating. He bellowed again, and he made a bid. It was a good bid. The auctioneer, holding his streaming nose, scuttled back to the block and, business as ever sustaining him, started to raise the price by those famous auctioneers’ tricks. He took two bids off the wall before the tall fellow in black shouted menacingly, and then he knocked us down to him.

I will not tell you the price. The gold was paid. The man in the black armor took up the end of the chain binding us.

When he had dragged our little coffle out of the press and got us beyond the wall into a kyro where animals lolloped along and the trees drooped and the white-painted walls glowed in the lights of the suns, he halted us.

He frowned. The black bar of his eyebrows met over his nose.

“If you,” he said to me, “or any of you, try to treat me or my people as you served that fat auctioneer—”

He drew his sword. It glittered. “Your heads will be off so fast you’ll still be licking your lips when they hit the ground!”

Chapter Nine

Into the Humped Land

“Better for us if we were still owned by that rast Phrutius,” said Hunch, and he shivered. The other slaves in the tiny mud-walled compound agreed, with many and varicolored oaths. Our new master in his black armor was Tarkshur — known as Tarkshur the Lash. His face lowered in pride and power, a fierce face with a gape-jawed mouth over snaggly teeth, with wide-spaced eyes that gazed in contempt upon the world, narrow and cold, with thick black hair carefully oiled and curled over a low brow. His nostrils flared that contempt. He was accustomed to command. And as he spoke to us so his long whiplike tail flicked back and forth over one shoulder or the other, and to the tip of that sinuous tail was strapped six inches of daggered steel. This stinking little compound with its crumbling mud walls wouldn’t hold an agile man for long. But our chains had been fastened to stout wooden posts driven deep into the earth. We were effectively hobbled. Escape was just not on — at least, not for the moment.

When you are slave to a Kataki slavemaster, escape is usually not on — not forever, for most folk. Katakis — they are loathed and detested by those unfortunates who fall into their clutches. A little Och, a small representative of that race of diffs who usually stand six inches shorter than a Tryfant, was clearly ill. He had been corked. His face screwed up with inward pain, and his thick dun-colored hair was gray rather than black at the tips. His master, the Kataki Tarkshur the Lash gave the Och a cursory glance and then jerked his tail at the overseer of his small group of retainers. This man, another Kataki, stepped in and with a single thrust dispatched the little Och. The body was dragged away.

Tarkshur surveyed us.

“We are going on an expedition where you will earn your keep. Any man who fails will die. There will be much bread and mergem for you, and palines. If you—” Katakis rarely smile. They do know how to, for I have seen that phenomenon. He finished, “But then, if you fail you know your reward.”

When he had gone we were too tired and dispirited to discuss his words. But Nodgen, a Brokelsh with some spirit left, growled out, “Expedition? By the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh! I’d like to have his throat between my fists.”

“Aye,” said Hunch. “And his tail slicing around to rip out your guts.”

“Katakis!” spat the Brokelsh, and he shivered up all his coarse bristle of hair. “I hate ’em!”

Over the next few days animals were brought into the small encampment set up just outside the city walls. The Kataki had flown here with his private retinue of just six mercenaries and was preparing his expedition. His voller had been placed in the city-maintained park, with others, and was to all intents and purposes to us slaves as far off as though it were on the Maiden with the Many Smiles. He had much gold, and he spent it procuring supplies. He came, so the slaves whispered, from Klardimoin, and where away that was no one had the slightest idea.

Hunch and I were given the task of caring for the beasts. There were other encampments outside the city walls and it was clear they all prepared themselves as we were doing. The city, all white walls and rounded domes and shadowed kyros within the blaze of the suns, was Astrashum, and we learned here and there that it was the city from which men ventured into the Humped Land. When I learned this I instantly thought of Pompino and his dreams of wealth and magic, and much was made clear to me.

It seemed that, willy-nilly, I was to be taken into the mysterious land of Moderdrin, the Land of the Fifth Note. What might befall me there, I thought, could hardly be worse than what was happening now... Well, illusions beget illusions.

The expedition as a whole was well-planned and the animals and slaves formed a long winding procession as we set off. We slaves had simply been given our orders that morning and off we went without any fanfare. What the great ones had been doing in the matter of eve-of-departure parties was best summed up by the way they kept to their coaches as the long procession wended through the cultivated land to the wastes beyond.

And then I stared.

Each chief member of the expedition moved surrounded by his or her people, so that we formed separate clumps like beads on a string. There, visible as the long lines turned to parallel a river before the last ford, I saw a preysany walking sedately along, with a loaded calsany following, and a little Och walking beside the pack animal. And, flopping about on the preysany’s back, a figure in a respectable although shabby dark-blue gown, besprinkled with arcane symbols in silver thread, a figure with a massive lopsided turban garlanded with strings of pearls and diamonds — all of them phoney, I knew —

a figure of a man with red Lohvian hair, and with a short sword girded to his plump middle.

“Deb-Lu-Quienyin!” I said, aloud, astonished.

He was a Wizard of Loh who had lost his powers and, fallen on hard times, had journeyed to Jikaida City to recoup both his fortunes and his wizardry. Why should he, of all people, hazard the expedition on which we now entered?

His little Och slave was Ionno the Ladle, walking now on two legs, now on four as he brought his two middle appendages into action to help him keep up. Once I had treated Ochs as fearsome monsters; now they had lessened in frightfulness as other and more hideous monsters of Kregen had been encountered. And a little Och crone had once ministered to me in the foul clutches of the Phokaym.

“You know him?”

“Aye, Hunch. He is—” I hesitated. I had been about to say he was a Wizard of Loh. But all men share the awe of those famous sorcerers, and so, knowing Deb-Lu-Quienyin was touchy on the subject of his lost powers although carrying it off very well, I said, “He traveled with me to Jikaida City.”

“There is that rast Phrutius,” said Hunch, nodding to another part of the caravan.

“Aye,” I said, looking carefully as we turned again to ford the river. “And there is a bunch of Hamalese

— and I am not mistaken.” The carriages and wagons and saddle animals splashed across and I saw, quite clearly, the upright form of Prince Nedfar, with his close retinue, crossing over. With him rode Lobur the Dagger and the Prince’s daughter, Princess Thefi.

“Sink me!” I burst out. “If I can but get to speak with any of them—”

But the chance was not offered. Katakis are man managers. We slaves were chained close. The caravan continued and the way became hard and the land thin and attenuated. We still ate well, as Tarkshur had promised. He wanted us fit and strong, and it was easy to surmise that the reasons for that would not make pleasant hearing.

The days and nights passed over, as they must do, and we worked on our chains with bits of rock. But stone takes a long long time to wear away iron, and the Katakis were up to the tricks of chained slaves. We plodded on and, I own, I was intrigued. The ample food sustained us. There was the opportunity to think of other things than merely the best way to find something to eat. The city of Astrashum, it seemed to me, catered for expeditions out into the Humped Lands. Perhaps the inhabitants knew better than to go themselves? Perhaps some had gone, and never returned?

Gold and magic, was it, awaiting us out here?

In the streaming mingled lights of Antares as we trudged on over that hostile land where the ground cracked in the heat and noisome vapors gushed forth, and in the roseate radiance of the seven moons of Kregen as they passed in procession night by night among the stars, there was opportunity for me to observe the other components of the expedition. I could not call any of them friends, in the real sense, although the old Wizard of Loh and I had warmed, one to the other, in our days in another caravan. One night I crawled in my chains, carrying them silently, and hit a Kataki guard over the head, and dumped his unconscious body outside the ring of chain slaves. But that was as far as I reached, for the Jiktar of the retinue, Galid the Krevarr, chose that moment to rumble a deep-throated question in the shadows and then to stroll across, annoyed that the guard had not replied. With Jiktar Galid came the ominous form of Tarkshur.

Now, I paused. Again and again I ponder — did I do right?

There was a slender chance. I could have dealt with these two, I believe. My chains would rip their throats out before their tail-blades ripped mine. But the noise would be unavoidable, and the others would come running, and other guards would join in. Slave owners band together when slaves break out. And — those miserable wights with whom I passed the days would all suffer — that was as true as Zim and Genodras rise each morning.

So I melted back into the shadows, and lay among the coffle, and we were all asleep when the commotion began. In the end, because the Katakis found it impossible to believe we cowed slaves could have performed that deed, the mischief was put down to a light-fingered rogue from an adjoining camp, and we escaped punishment.

I breathed easier.

Hunch said, “Would that I had hit the rast. He would not have got up again.”

I said nothing. The sentiments he expressed were valiant enough. But he was a Tryfant and the rest of the slaves were cowed to near-imbecility. All, that is, excepting the Brokelsh, Nodgen. Just supposing I had won free. Would Deb-Lu-Quienyin have helped me? Could he help? There was no point in approaching Phrutius. And the Hamalese — I was just an acquaintance, and, to be honest, they might not even recognize or remember me. And any debt, such as it was, outstanding from Lobur the Dagger was owed to Drax, Gray Mask — dare I own to being one and the same?

The other components of the expedition gradually became known, more or less. A Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis traveled in style, and everyone said the milk-white zorcas were enchanted beasts. Certainly, they were fine animals with their well-groomed close-coupled bodies and tall spindly legs. Each one’s single spiral horn gleamed with polish and gold. They were almost as splendid animals as those found on the plains of the Blue Mountains. Whether or not they were real zorcas or animals of illusion no one knew or cared to find out.

This sorcerer traveled in a majestic palanquin borne by garnished krahniks, a swaying structure fabricated from silks of peach and orange and lemon, pastel colors soothing in all ordinary seeming, and yet eerily eye-watering.

His retinue of hired guards contained a dozen stout-bodied Chuliks, indomitable, fierce, inhuman, and their tusks were banded in gold.

These Chuliks were probably real — although they might well be apparitions, like the milk-white zorcas they rode. I wondered what Quienyin would have to say about this Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis, and his bodyguard.

There was a flying man from down south by the Shrouded Sea. His expedition was in nowise as magnificent as some of the others, and he and his friends spent most of the day winging freely ahead of the expedition. They proved of great use in spying out the way and of seeking water holes and routes that were the best way to go through the wilderness.

To an observer who was not a slave we must have made a splendid spectacle. The barbaric trappings of the warriors and the colors of the carriages and palanquins, the high-stepping saddle animals, the flying men, the glint and glitter of armor and weapons, the flicker of spoked wheels, the trailing waft of multicolored scarves — all must have presented a blaze of brilliance under the Suns of Scorpio. Heads thrust forward, choking dry dust from the trample of hooves and the churning of wheels, we slaves in our chains blundered on. There was no high and heady sense of excitement for us. We passed a night beside a dry gulley and the next day, early, we started on the last stretch across the badlands.

Truth to tell, all that mattered little to me. I was now determined that, with the aid of Nodgen the Brokelsh and, I hoped, of Hunch the Tryfant, I would break free the moment we hit decent water and trees to give us a chance. We’d smash our way out, and to the Ice Floes of Sicce anyone who tried to stop us.

As I had said when making my ludicrous attempt on the airboat: that was the theory. This was the day when, toiling on and trying to make ourselves believe we could, indeed, see trees ahead through the haze, we became aware of riders pacing our progress. Men in the long column pointed, and heads craned to look.

Off along the low ridges paralleling our course the riders swung along easily. They rode swarths, those fearsome saddle dinosaurs with four legs and snouting wedge-shaped heads, and their lances all raked into the sky, like skeletal fingers threatening our lives.

Stumbling along in my chains I tried to estimate the numbers of riders. The vakkas lined along in single file, and their looming presence, ominous and brooding, struck a chill into us all. There must have been upwards of five hundred of them.

Occasional winks of glitter smote back from armor or weapons; but the general impression was one of dark menace, somber and foreboding, biding the time to strike.

Then someone raised a shout: “Trees! There are trees — and a river!” And we all struggled to look eagerly ahead, and when we thought once more to gaze upon those dark lines of swarth-mounted warriors — they had vanished, every one.

“I was a mercenary, once,” said Nodgen. “Almost got to be a real paktun, and to wear the silver pakmort at my throat.” He shook his bullet-bristle head. “Never did like fighting swarthmen. Big and clumsy; but strong. Knock you over in a twinkling, by Belzid’s Belly.”

Those long lines of iron riders reminded me in their frieze-like ghostly effect of some of the famous passages from Ulbereth the Dark Reiver . Whatever they portended, no one in the caravan could pretend it did not bode ill for us.

“A paktun?” Hunch was interested as we hurried on for the shelter of the trees. “Get into any big battles?”

“Aye, one or two.”

To the best of my knowledge, Nodgen had been a cutpurse running with Lop-eared Nath’s gang in his quarter of LionardDen. But, then, when a man has upward of two hundred years of life, as Kregans have, he may do many things, many things...

We were drawing near the trees and work lay ahead.

“Go on, then, Nodgen. Tell us!” Hunch was eager.

“Nothing in it — all a lot of yelling and dust and sweating and running—”

“Running? You lost?”

Nodgen’s bristles quivered. The Brokelsh are recognized as an uncouth race of diffs, with deplorable manners. He made an unfavorable comment in lurid language concerning the ancestry and level of military intelligence of the general in question.

Then we were in among the first trees and instead of breaking ranks to make camp, Galid the Krevarr strode up with his whip going like a fiddler’s elbow, urging us on. We stumbled on through the trees and down a long loamy slope where flowers blossomed most beautifully — although, at the moment, they meant very little to us slaves.

We burst out on the far side of the belt of trees and a most remarkable vista broke upon our eyes. Even the slaves cried out in wonder. On we were urged, down the slope. Before us spread a wide expanse extending as far as we could see under clear skies, with only the merest wisps of cloudlets. That wide and extensive sunken plain was covered in rounded hills like tells. Hundreds of them reared from the ground as far as the eye could see. Their humps broke upward in serried ranks, in confused patterns, in haphazard clumpings. None was nearer than a dwabur or so to its neighbor. They varied in size, both as to height and extent, but each was crowned with a fantastic jumble of turreted towers, with fairy-tale battlements and spidery spires from which the mingled radiance of Antares struck sparks of fire. Now every one of us could see why this place was called the Humped Land. Our expedition hurried on. All this talk of gold lying about waiting to be picked up had given me the impression I would find mine workings, tailings glittering under the suns. But if these were mine workings then they were totally unlike any mine engineering I had seen on two worlds. Any thought that by this headlong rush we had escaped the riders who had so ominously scouted us vanished as the long lines of swarthmen appeared over on both flanks, trotting out from the trees, pacing us.

Prince Nedfar and his group galloped past, their zorcas splendid, and following them rode a group of men mounted on swarths. They were led by a fierce, tall, upright man who lashed his scaly-swarth with vicious strokes of his crop. These were the purply-green scaled swarths of this part of Kregen. The jutmen of the caravan made threatening gestures. But any fool could see we were heavily outnumbered. The caravan struggled on and those dark powerful lines of riders herded us. The swarthmen of the caravan returned, evidently attempting to protect the flanks. But no attack was made. In the period that followed before the suns sank it was made perfectly plain to us that we were being herded, were being shepherded into a predetermined course between the monumental mounds. As we passed the nearest pile, vegetation and trees growing on the miniature mountain were clearly visible, with streams falling in cataracts, and winding paths leading up to the walls and towers at the summit.

The suns declined. One hump — for to call these impressive mounds humps does not belittle their awesome character — one hump, then, lay directly before us, and to this particular one and no other it was clear the ominous riders were directing us. When we were within running distance the riders, with no warning and acting with consummate skill, lanced their swarths upon us. Arrows curved against the darkling air. One or two slaves screamed and fell as the shafts pierced them. In a straggling, bolting, panicking mob, we fled for the stone gateway at the foot of the mount. There were ugly scenes as the carriages jammed trying to force their way through the stone gateway. But the riders curveted away, and loosed as they went, Parthian shots that fell among us. Men screamed. Animals whinnied and neighed and shrieked. The dust smoked up, glinting in the slanting rays of the suns. Tarkshur lashed his zorca alongside us, swearing foully, his black armor a blot of darkness against the last of the light.

“Wait, wait — let these craven fools press on. There is time.”

He was a damned Kataki; but he was right in this. The swarths melted back into the creeping shadows. They had done what was clearly expected of them. Gradually the caravan crowded in through the gate and when we followed on last we saw the carts and coaches and beasts of burden all crammed into a wide area, bounded by high stone walls, with a dominating gateway at the far end. The gates were closed. The uproar continued.

I looked at Hunch and Nodgen and we three crept into a corner by the outer gate, out of the way of all those dangerous hooves and claws. A number of slaves were not so fortunate — or not so smartly craven — and were trampled to death.

Just what the hell would have happened then nobody could say. Over the inner portals a light bloomed, a pale corpse-green lych-light. Against it the shape of a woman showed, her hair a halo of translucent silver, her face in shadow. She lifted her arms and a voice, magnified artificially, echoed over the expedition.

“Listen to me, travelers, and be apprised.”

The silence dropped as a stone drops down a well.

“Do you all enter here of your own free will?”

No single person took up the shout. A chorus spurted up at once, men and women shrieking in their fear. “Yes! Yes!”

Even as the affirmative uproar went on, I fancied that Prince Nedfar, and Lobur the Dagger, for two, would not be shouting thus.

But the clamor continued.

“Let there be no mistake. You enter here to escape the riders who await you outside with steel and fire. It is of your own free will and on your own ibs. Let it be so written.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” the mob shrieked.

“By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable!” Tarkshur lashed his zorca to still the animal. His lowering face filled with fury. “This is a nonsense! It is all a trick!”

The nearest people turned to look at him. They saw his imperious manner, his impatient gestures, they saw all the alive dominance of him in his black armor. He pointed at the open gate through which we had all crowded to safety.

“There is no danger. The swarthriders are gone! Roko,” he bellowed at one of his Kataki mercenaries,

“ride out and show these cowardly fools.”

Obediently the Kataki, Roko, turned his zorca and rode back out through the opening. Now many faces turned in the last of the light to watch. Tarkshur spurred across.

Practically no time passed.

Roko’s zorca sprang back through the opening. His head was up and his spiral horn was broken. Roko sat, clamped into the saddle, his tail wrapped around the zorca’s body like a second girth. Through Roko’s neck above the gilt rim of his iron corselet a long barbed arrow stuck wickedly. Flaming rags wrapped about the arrow burned up into his predatory Kataki face. The silver-haired woman’s voice keened out, chillingly.

“In fire and steel will you all die outside this Moder.”

“Take us in! Take us in!” The screams pitched up into frenzy. Men were beating at the closed far doors.

“Of your own free will?”

I was looking at Tarkshur the Lash. He looked sullen, vicious, crafty. There was no fear there. He shouted with the rest.

“Yes, yes! Of our own free will!”

The shrieking mob clamored to be allowed in — of their own free will. The suns sank, shafting ruby and emerald fires in brilliant dying sparkles against an inscription deeply incised in the rock above the gateway. The woman lowered her arms.

Slowly, the gates opened.

Chapter Ten

Down the Moder

“I, for one,” declared Nodgen, spitting, “say I do not enter this place of my own free will.”

“Nor me,” said Hunch.

We were moving forward with the rabble all jostling and pushing to get through the inner door before the swarthriders roared in to shaft the laggards. It seemed important to me to say aloud that I, too, did not enter here of my own free will.

I said it.

We shuffled along, as always caring for the draught animals and beasts of burden in our care. Beyond the arched gateway stretched a wide area, shadowed with dappled trees and vines, with stone-flagged squares upon the ground, and the hint of stone-built stalls at either side. Here we halted, looking about, seeing yet another gate in the far wall.

We were simply slaves and so at intemperately bellowed orders fruitfully interlarded with that vile word

“Grak!” we set about making camp, caring for the animals, preparing food for our masters. These great ones went a way apart and conferred together. There were nine expeditions in the greater expedition, nine supreme great ones to talk, one to the other as they pleased.

Nine is the sacred and magical number on Kregen.

Among the superb establishments of these masterful folk with their remudas of zorcas and totrixes and swarths, their fine coaches, their wagons and strings of pack animals, their multitude of slaves, it amused me greatly that old Deb-Lu-Quienyin with his preysany to ride, his pack calsany and his little Och slave, must be accepted on terms equal to one of the nine principals.

Against the high glitter of the stars the overreaching mass of the hill lifted above us. The Moder appeared to be moving against the star-filled night, to lean and be ready to fall upon us. The slaves did not often look up.

The hushed conference of the nine masters broke up. Tarkshur came strutting back to our camp and bellowed for Galid the Krevarr, the Jiktar of his five remaining paktuns. At least, I assumed they were mercenaries, although they might well be his retainers from his estates in unknown Klardimoin. What Tarkshur had to say was revealed to the slaves after we had all eaten. The meal was good — very good.

Then we were paraded for the master.

He came walking down toward us, and the Maiden with the Many Smiles shone down into the stone-walled area and illuminated the scene with her fuzzy pinkish light. He halted before the first in line, a shambling Rapa with a bent beak. To him, Tarkshur dealt a savage buffet in the midriff. The slave collapsed, puking. Tarkshur snorted his contempt and walked on to the next. This was Nodgen. Tarkshur struck him forcefully in the guts, and Nodgen grunted and reeled, and remained upright.

“Him,” said Tarkshur.

Galid and the other Katakis shepherded Nodgen the Brokelsh to one side. Along the rank Tarkshur went, striking each man. He chose nine who resisted his blow. Nine slaves, in their tattered old gray slave breechclouts, stood to one side. I was one of the nine.

“Now get your heads down. Sleep. Rest. In the morning — we go up!”

And, in the morning — we went up.

Each superior master with his retainers had chosen nine slaves — excepting the old Wizard of Loh, of course. Up the stony path we trailed, toiling up as the suns brightened. Below us the panorama of the Humped Land spread out, hundreds of Moders rising like boils from the sunken plain.

Each slave was burdened with a piled-up mass of impedimenta. I carried an enormous coil of rope, a few picks and shovels, twisted torches, and a sack of food. Also, around my shoulders on a leathern strap dangled half a dozen water bottles. It was a puffing old climb up, I can tell you. We were venturing into a — place — of gold and magic and it occurred to me to wonder who would return alive.

Occasionally I caught a glimpse of Deb-Lu-Quienyin straggling on. He used a massive staff to assist him. Also, he had four new slaves and I guessed he had borrowed these from one of the other expeditions and my guess — proved right — was that they came with the compliments of Prince Nedfar. Much vegetation obscured our view but at last we came out to a cleared area at the top and saw a square-cut gateway leading into the base of the tower-pinnacled building crowning the Moder. The gates were of bronze-bound lenk and they were closed.

It was daylight, with the twin suns shining; yet the light that grew in a niche above the gate shone forth brightly. Against the glow a woman’s figure showed — a woman with translucent golden hair. Her voice was deeper, mellower than her sister’s who guarded the lower portal.

“You are welcome, travelers. Do you desire ingress?”

The shouts of “aye” deafened.

“Of your own free will?”

“Aye!” and “Aye!”

“Then enter, and fare you well.”

The gates opened. We passed through. The moment the last person entered the hall beyond the gates, lit by torches, the gates slammed. Their closing rang a heavy and ominous clang as of prison bars upon our hearing.

I, for one, knew we wouldn’t get out as easily as we had entered.

The devil of being a slave, inter alia, is that you just don’t know what is going on. The hall in which we stood was coated thickly with dust. Many footprints showed in the dust — and while most of them pointed toward the double doors at the opposite side, four or five sets angled off to the corners — and without moving from where we stood we could see the dark and rusty stains on the stone floor at the abruptly terminated ends of the footprints.

At the side of the door an inscription was incised.

Useless for me to attempt to render it into an Earthly language. The problem lay in the language itself, a kind of punning play on words. The nine superior masters conferred, and now I could get a closer look at them all. Already I had met four of them. The flying man clashed his wings in frustration, trying to work out the riddle. The Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis gave a sarcastic and knowing chuckle, and expounded the riddle in a breath. The other three of the nine I did not know. One was a woman. One was the tall and upright swarth rider I had seen attempting to guard our flanks. The last was an enigma, being swathed in an enveloping cloak of emerald and ruby checks, diamonds of artful color that dazzled the eyes.

“You have the right of it, San Yagno,” said Prince Nedfar. At this the sorcerer preened. He looked both ludicrous in his fussy and over-elaborate clothes, and decidedly impressive to those of a superstitious mind. He had powers, that was sooth; what those powers might be I fancied would be tested very soon.

“Speak up, then, and do not keep us waiting,” growled Tarkshur.

The sorcerer gathered himself, lifted his amulet of power he kept hung on a golden chain about his neck, and said, “The answer is there is no answer this side of the deepest of Cottmer’s Caverns.”

His words echoed to silence, and the doors opened of themselves.

We pushed through, the masters first, their retinues next, and we slaves last. For the slaves this order of precedence had suddenly become highly significant.

The next chamber, lighted by torches, contained two doors.

The obvious question was — which?

From our breakfast I had filched a helping of mergem mixed with fat and bread and orange honey, rolled into a doughy ball. Now I took a piece of this from where it snugged between me and my breechclout, rolled it around my fingers for a time, then popped it into my mouth and began to chew. Let the great ones get on with solving their riddles of the right door. That was their business — not mine. A heated debate went on. In the end they solved whatever puzzle it was and they chose to take the left-hand door.

I didn’t say, “You’ll be sorry!” in a singsong voice, for I didn’t know if they were right or wrong; but it would have been nice to understand a little more of what the hell was going on. We picked up our gear and trailed off through the left-hand doorway.

Shouts warned us, otherwise we would have fallen.

A steep stairway slanted down. The walls glistened with moisture and mica drops. The stairs were worn. So somebody had chosen the left-hand door and gone down here before. We descended. I began to suspect that the whole hill, the entire structure of the Moder, was honeycombed with a maze of corridors and tunnels and stairways and slopes up or down, a bewildering ants nest of a place. At the bottom three doors confronted us. I had enjoyed my piece of mergem and felt I might take an interest in whatever the puzzle might be. There was no puzzle. Each door was opened to reveal a long corridor beyond. The three corridors ran parallel.

“The left-hand one again?” said Prince Nedfar.

“I always prefer to stick to the right,” said this tall swarth-rider. He was full and fleshy, with a veined face, and his armor was trim and compact, surprising in so worldly a lord. He carried a small arsenal of weapons, in the true Kregan way, and his people were all well-equipped.

“An eminently sensible system,” said Nedfar, and from where I was standing in the shuffling, goggling throng of slaves, his easy air of irony struck me as highly refreshing. The woman said something, and then the man who wanted to go right snapped out, “I shall go alone, then—”

The way he offered no special marks of deference to the prince was immediately explained as the mysterious figure in the red and green checkered cloak spoke up.

“Best not to split up too soon, kov. There is a long way to go yet.”

“If the prize is at the end — I shall go,” said this kov.

Well, with seventy-five slaves all milling about and shouldering their burdens, I was pushed aside. The retinues of the great ones closed up, further obscuring my view. When it was all sorted out we went traipsing along the center corridor.

There were quite clearly other decisions that were made by the important people up front. We slaves tailed along in a long procession that wound through corridors and crossed chambers and penetrated the shadows, one after the other when the way was narrow, pushing on in a gaggle across the wider spaces. We went through open doorways following the one ahead and so had to make no heart-searching decisions. We halted at times, and then were called on, and so we knew that some one or other of the clever folk up front had solved another puzzle.

A tough-looking Fristle eased up alongside of me as we passed through a corridor wide enough for two. His cat face showed bruise marks, and he had lost fur beside his ear.

“I hope the master falls down a hole,” he said, companionably.

He was not one of Tarkshur’s slaves.

“Who is your master?”

“Why, that Fristle-hating Kov Loriman — Kov Loriman the Hunter, they call him. And he hunts anything that moves.”

He had to be the armored swarth-rider, and he had to be the Kov Loriman the Hunter against whom I had played Execution Jikaida. A few questions elicited these facts. Loriman was renowned for hunting; it was his craze. He had visited the island of Faol many times — only, not recently. Now he was on this expedition because he had heard rumors of gold and magic and gigantic monsters, and he was anxious to test himself and his swordarm against the most horrific monsters imaginable.

“Well, dom,” I said to the Fristle. “You don’t have to go far on Kregen to find yourself a horrific monster.”

“I agree, dom. But these ones of Moderdrin are special.”

We were just passing an open door in the corridor as he spoke, and we both looked into the room beyond.

The charred body of a slave lay in the doorway, headless, and his blood still smoked.

“See?”