A couple of brilliant Fristle fifis came out with streaming silks and started to dance; they were soon chased off and then the swods began to sing.
So, as you may imagine, I let all my problems slide away for a space and gave myself up to hoggish relaxation. There are many finer things in two worlds than sitting in a tavern singing with swods, and this is so. But all the same, when you are singing and roaring out the old songs, the world takes on a marvelously brighter hue.
My Delia had gone off and left me at home. The idea intrigued me. I felt no indignation. She was as entitled as I was to her ownlife. Our shared life was so intense and passionate that nothing could interfere. I was dragged away by a great ghostly representation of a Scorpion, blue and shining, whirling me away to some other part of Kregen to fight for the Star Lords, or hurling me back to Earth in despair. Delia had gone because her vows, vows like mine to the Krozairs of Zy, impelled her. I had discarded at once any notion of following her secretly. That would shame us both. Anyway, with Melow along, she should come to no harm. And she could handle weapons with the best of men. I knew that. So I, Dray Prescot, left at home with the dishes, sang with swods in a tavern. We sang the Lay of Fanli the Fristle and Her Regiment of Admirers and the Lay of Faerly the Ponsho Farmer’s Daughter and Tyr Korgan and the Mermaid. The Jikalla players stopped pushing their counters around the board and the dice fell silent in the cups. We roared out King Naghan, his Fall and Rise, and Eregoin’s Promise.
Then these hard-living, hoarse-voiced, hairy fighting men drew on a sudden maudlin melancholy, and led by a fellow with a thin reedy voice we warbled out The Fall of the Suns. This is a menacing song, for its cadences and images invite mournfulness. It tells of the last days when the twin suns fall from the sky and drench the world of Kregen in fire and blood, in water and death. I am not overfond of it, for all the deeper truths it expresses in its roundabout way.
So when a flushed fellow, bulging his tunic and wildly slopping his ale, leaped to his feet and started bellowing out the first lines of Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie, I, for one, joined in with a full-throated roar. And the rafters shook as the swods came to those famous lines that always crease them up, and great gusts of laughter swept across the room as we sang out: “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.”
Yes.
We kept that refrain going until we were all well-nigh bursting. The serving girls scurried in with more flagons and great was the relishment thereof. We quieted down as the tall thin fellow with the reedy voice favored us with a solo, choosing parts of the song cycle composed from fragments of The Canticles of the Rose City concerning the doings of the part-man, part-god Drak. Naturally my thoughts winged to what my Delia was doing now, how she was faring, and I offered up a fervent prayer that she would be kept safe.
We did not sing The Bowmen of Loh, for almost all the Crimson Bowmen were away with the emperor. It seemed to me my course was reasonably clear. I would have to discharge all those mercenaries who had become untrustworthy by reason of accepting bribes. I would seek to discover who had paid them; I would make no attempt to match the bribes, gold for gold. If a man takes gold from another when in employment his trust is forfeited. I had experience of that when I’d been a renegade and contracted to Gafard the Sea Zhantil, the King’s Striker.
The decision about reporting to the emperor what I had so far discovered about the Chyyanists would have to be taken. There was, in truth, pitifully little to report. A minor religion would appear to offer little danger to the emperor, beset as he was by combinations of powerful nobles. While everyone in Vallia regarded as a foregone conclusion that the conflict with Hamal must reopen at some time in the future, for the present the uneasy state of truce between the two empires offered some hope of continuing peace. The emperor would brush aside any suggestions I might make along those lines, and his Presidio, torn as it was by internecine strife, would greedily pursue the path of individual power. By Zair! The worst thing of all was how lost, how at sea, empty and forlorn I felt without my Delia. When I’d been dragged away from her before I had struggled always to return to her. I had cursed and raved at the forces keeping us apart. But know well, this was a topsy-turvy situation and one I just did not relish at all, at all, as Sogandar the Upright might say.
The swods were just beginning The Maid with the Single Veil and the serving wenches were giggling and laughing as is their wont when that song is sung, when a fellow at the adjoining table, leaning across, began to make directly offensive remarks. He was getting at me. There is no mistaking the idiot who intends to pick a quarrel.
I felt a hot resentment. I’d come out for a quiet evening bellowing out the old songs and this rast wanted to stir up trouble and spoil it all. I determined, mean and vicious, that I’d spoil his fun, that I’d not react, that he could cuss until he was blue in the face and I’d give him no satisfaction. I’d ruin his enjoyment and he could jibe and mock and insult all he liked.
I said to Laka and Nidar, “I’ll play the cramph along. Take no notice.”
Laka knew me and so laughed, falling in with the ploy. Nidar favored me with an old-fashioned look, but said nothing.
The fellow who got his kicks from being unpleasant wore too much gold lace about his buff. His face was lean and marked by a scar, and his mustaches had been clipped. I noticed the emblem he wore at his throat, a little gold strigicaw and swords, swung on a golden chain. He did not speak directly to me but insulted me through his cronies, in the way of these fellows.
“He perhaps thinks we are woflos who come here. His senses probably do not even understand that small thing.”
Nidar leaned across fiercely and said under his breath to me: “Let me blatter the fellow, Nath.”
“Tsleetha-tsleethi,” I said, which is to say, “softly-softly.” Nidar’s offer to bash the fellow in for me amused me. Normally quick to avenge an insult, on this night I wanted to bash this insulting fellow with more subtle weapons than a set of knuckles or a rapier in his guts. He persevered. His cronies tried to help his game. They called him Rumil the Point. I turned my back on them and bellowed for more ale. The song had changed and so we could all sing The Worm-eaten Swordship Gull-i-mo which is a Vallian sailor’s song, for a few swordships are employed in sheltered waters. That song is known in many anchorages in Kregen, and I’d sung it as a render up in the Hoboling Islands.
A hand touched me on the shoulder. I turned. I stopped singing.
Rumil the Point stood up, leaning over me, his lean face black with his sense of insult, because I took no notice of him whatsoever.
“Rast!” he shouted, thumping my shoulder, speaking thickly, either drunk or pretending to be drunk.
“You do not insult me and stand on your own stinking feet!”
I shook his hand off and started to turn back to the two Pachaks, determined to play my part out to the end. By Zair! But he was in a paddy! He just couldn’t believe that I didn’t consider him important enough to worry over. He felt at a loss, puzzled, reduced in dignity, his pride shredded.
“Then I’ll settle you, you zigging cramph!”
I saw Laka’s face go hard and I heard the scrape of steel and so knew I had miscalculated. With a motion I trusted would be quick and fluid enough I slid aside and turned back. This Rumil the Point stood glaring at me. His eyes protruded. The tip of his tongue stuck out, and his face was contorted back, ricked, stamped with an awful terror.
Around his neck clamped a buff clad arm, and the paw-hand gleamed with golden fur.
“Lahal, Nath the Gnat,” said Rafik Avandil. “I see I may be of service to you once more.”
Twelve
A message via the Sisters of the Rose
If I thought that because Delia and I were parted and I was alone in Vondium life would be flat and insipid, I was only partly wrong. Of course, life lacks its deep brilliance and color when Delia is away and I turn to fripperies, but sometimes the trifles turn into matters of more profound importance. The time when I
made myself King of Djanduin serves as an example. So life helter-skeltered along in Vondium as I sought to think out the best way of facing the various dangers that threatened. Rafik Avandil, quite enchanted at his opportunity to rescue me for the second time, as he thought, had spent the rest of the evening with us. Laka kept up my disguise as Nath the Gnat, and for this I was grateful. We saw a deal of each other in the days that followed and eventually I was persuaded to move into the inn at which Rafik stayed. I told Turko the Shield, Balass the Hawk, Naghan the Gnat and whoever else absolutely needed to know. Turko and the others grumbled about having to stay in our wing of the palace while I was off roistering in inns, but I explained that I was on to a lead. They were to call me Nath the Gnat. Here Naghan pulled a face, and I chided him, saying, “A great name, Naghan!
And one I am proud to borrow.”
“Just let me have it back, Dray. I shall be Naghan the Arm, I think, if we two chance to meet, in remembrance of that hyr-kaidur.”
“Aye,” I said. “So far I have had no word of a single Black Feather in all of Vondium, and this is strange.”
“Maybe not so strange,” offered Khe-Hi-Bjanching, putting a finger in his book to mark the place. “The signomant held only an empty space for Vondium, remember.”
“I still think that the true reading. By Vox! If only we knew where they would strike next!”
“Agents are out, asking questions. Vallia is being scoured.”
“And,” said Naghan with the old armorer’s shrewdness strong on him, “that is costing a deal of money.”
“If the Opaz-forsaken Chyyanists win, we’ll have no money, you may be sure. And we, along with our people, will hang by our heels.”
“They’ll have to catch us first,” said Turko ominously.
This wing of her father’s palace had been furnished under the supervision of Delia, and I relished that. Even so, I was not enamored of the great palace of Vondium. Delia’s vision had created apartments of great beauty, but still the chill of the imperial presence came through. Rafik’s inn offered a change, at the very least. I just hoped Bargom at the Rose of Valka did not hear I had stayed at some other hostelry than his own. But, then, a few words and he would understand.
The capital city hummed with news. The emperor was returning in state and bringing with him as an honored guest to the Empire of Vallia none other than the famous Queen of Lome. Everyone was agog to see this fabled woman. The reports of her beauty and wealth had spread over this part of the world, dazzling men with impossible dreams. Everyone gave a curse and said how fortunate the emperor was, and how they’d like to be in his shoes. And some of them, saying that, would laugh and add words to the effect that his shoes would be fine and dandy — for now.
One item of encouragement, and of alarm too, we had in those days. Balass received a report that among a group of his countrymen from Xuntal, traders and merchants down in the wharfside area of the city, a man had been heard to speak of the Black Feathers when he’d been drunk. I said, “Then it is up to you, Balass. You are Xuntalese. You can mingle. May the Curved Sword of Xurrhuk guard you.”
“Amen to that, my Prince. By my hopes of entering Xanachang! My people are a fearsome people if they think they are spied upon.”
“It’s of little comfort to tell you that almost any people resent spying. But look at it in a different light. You go to root out evil. Make no mistake, Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword finds no favor in the hearts of the Chyyanists.”
Balass’s firmly muscled body glistened black and silver in the light of the suns streaming in through the high windows, for we met and talked in this small enclosed arena set up within our part of the palace. The silver-sanded floor slid and shushed to the quick scrape of feet as we foined and parried with wooden swords. Turko, I knew, had put in a good many burs of practice with his new parrying-stick, and he handled the klattar now with a sureness that pleased me. Mind you, I’d be the last to suggest it was but a small step to go on to handling a weapon very much like a parrying-stick with one blade and with sharp edges. Its name would be a sword. And Turko, the High Kham, would have none of them. Oby came in, throwing off his tunic, getting ready to have a bout with anyone willing to stand against the liquid cunning of his long-knife. He left the lenken door partly open and Naghan, about to shout out about people being born in bars, stopped. A flunky sailed in through the door. He wore the fancy and immodestly ridiculous court dress for servitors, for we were forced to accept the services of other servants than our own from Valka. He was not a slave. His red and silver and yellow clothes billowed about him as he flew through the air.
I turned to make sure Turko really stood by me. If he had not been I’d have sworn he was the fellow outside thus casually hurling importunate servitors about.
But it was no man.
Through the pushed-open door strode a strappingly handsome girl. Her face was only lightly stained with a flush of blood under the tanned skin from her little exercise. She was clad in tights, with a body-hugging tan tunic strapped about with a lesten-hide belt from which swung rapier and dagger, buckled up in a way which showed she was ready to draw in a twinkling. Her weapons swung in that cunning way I had seen an infinitely more glorious girl scabbard her own rapier and dagger. So, forewarned by the weaponry and the demeanor of this girl, I knew from whom she came. She wore her light brown hair cut short. Her face held that open, frank look of the girl who knows she is a girl and is prepared to treat men as men because that is their misfortune. I liked the look of her. Over her heart an embroidered red rose, twined about with gold threads, resembled very much the little red and gold brooch, fashioned in the shape of a rose, Delia had given me in return for the brooch like a hubless spoked wheel I had given her.
“Llahal and Lahal, Prince Majister,” said this girl, marching straight up to me with a swing of the hips and a lithe and limber step. “You are well met. Here, my Prince.” And she hauled a letter from the small script at her waist.
The letter was written on yellow paper and carried a faint and fragrant perfume to my nostrils. The writing, firm and rounded and yet girlish, in that beautiful running Kregish script, is very dear to me. My comrades stood back. The girl touched the rose embroidered upon her breast. “I have a letter for the Princess Katri. But yours, my Prince, I was instructed to deliver first.” She laughed, a clear tinkling sound. “And the letter for the emperor the last of the three.”
So I, being intoxicated on emotion, laughed too. “I cannot wait, for no reply is expected.” She turned to leave, her legs in the tights very long and lovely. “But there is one lie I shall no longer believe.”
With the letter burning my hands I said, “Will you not stop to take refreshment? And what is this lie?”
She halted at the door and smiled back. “I thank you, my Prince, but I must hurry. As to the lie, all women say the Prince Majister of Vallia never laughs.”
And she went out, swinging, jaunty, laughing, the rapier and dagger swinging at her sides. She was a woman, like my Delia, all woman.
I banished her from my mind and opened the letter. I know the words by heart, but many of them are private so I will simply say that Delia said all was well, she was in good health, Melow sent her love, the task was proving more difficult than she’d expected and she was like to be away longer than she had hoped. There was more, but that is for Delia and me. She finished by saying that the letter to Aunt Katri requested the emperor’s sister to go to Valka to see after Didi, and that the letters were being entrusted to Jikmer Sosie ti Drakanium.
The word jikmer had been crossed through, but Delia had been in a hurry and so I could read it beneath the quickly scrawled scribble. Jikmer. That would be the Sisters of the Rose equivalent to Jiktar. Hmm. These girls had their chukmers, their jikmers, their hikmers and their delmers too, without doubt. The notion charmed me. It all added up, without the shadow of a doubt, to a powerful and secret organization of women who, from my knowledge of Delia, were dedicated to philanthropic and chi
valrous ends. What the mysticism might be I, of course, could not know.
I think it was the delivery of this letter with its evidence of an efficient organization of women devoted to purposes with which, from the little I knew of them, I could sympathize, that made me finally put into practice a scheme I had been harboring for some long time. As the scheme developed — and I worked on it with some intensity — I will tell you as it impinges on my story. For now, I would have to wait for the first fruits until Seg and Inch were available.
Also, I must make it clear that I am concentrating here very much on the Chyyanists. A great deal happened in Vondium during this time. Instead of being an idle layabout, I found myself hard at work. As the Prince Majister in the capital with the emperor absent I had many official functions to perform. I performed them. Most were very little of a laugh. I sat in the courts for a time and handed down judgments. I canceled work on a new slave bagnio, letting the slave masters see my scathing contempt, and set the laborers and masons into constructing a building to plans I laid out for them. They couldn’t really understand what the building was for. A visit to anywhere in Kregen where men and women flew saddle-birds through the air would have told them. It was accommodation for a thousand flyers. One day, and alarmingly soon, I fancied, Vallia would have need of them. So life was not all dressing up inconspicuously and sliding off as Nath the Gnat. Often one or another of my boon companions would accompany me, but we made a compact that we kept apart. Turko, as usual, grumbled. But he saw the sense of it. My cover, if it was to be kept, would not be served by my suddenly appearing with friends. In a tavern, Turko could sit drinking quietly and keep an eye on me. We all chuckled over the episode of Rafik rescuing me.
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