A Sword for Kregen

Chapter Nine

A hard abrasive surface scratched at my stomach and legs. The blueness and the Scorpion of the Star Lords had hurled me somewhere. My arms dangled. I opened my eyes. Light — a familiar opaline wash of radiance — reassured me instantly; the idea that I might have been transported back to Earth had tortured me, held me in a stasis that this simple opening of the eyes dissipated. I was lying full length on the knobbly branch of a tree, my arms dangling into space, and bright green fronds tumbled about me as I moved. Swinging my legs over I sat up. The tree was not overlarge, and the leaves were very pleasant; but the bark was like emery paper.

How far the woods went on I could not see for trees.

About to jump down to the ground a glint of light off metal caught my eye and I waited, still, scarce breathing. In the direction which, by reason of the moss on the tree trunks, I took to be north, that wink of metal blinked twice more and then vanished. I was wrong about the direction being north, as I subsequently discovered. I waited for five heartbeats and, again, prepared to jump down. A man walked out from under the trees opposite.

Like me, he was stark naked. Unlike me, apim, he was a diff, a Khibil. His shrewd fierce foxy face turned this way and that. His body was compactly muscled and he bore the white glistening traceries of old scars. A bronzed, fit, tough man, this Khibil, with reddish hair and whiskers, and alert contemptuous eyes. He bent and picked up a stout length of wood, a branch as thick as his arm, which he tested for strength before he would accept it into his armory.

At this I frowned.

He looked all about him and then padded off between the trees, going silently and swiftly like a stalking chavonth.

My business, I thought, could not concern him. He was in no immediate danger and, anyway, apart from being naked and weaponless, looked as though he could defend himself. A cry spurted up from the trees to my rear and I swiveled about. Just beyond the end of the branch on which I sat bowered in leaves, and running to fall on the grass, a young Fristle fifi yelled and blubbered. The Fristle who was hitting her with a slender length of switch wore a brown overall-like garment, and his whiskers jutted stiffly. His gray-furred arm lifted and fell and the switch bit into the fifi’s gray fur. The branch bore my weight almost to the end. Then it broke with a loud crack. I jumped. I fell full on the Fristle. We both collapsed onto the grass.

He came at me raging, slicing his switch. I took it away and clipped him beside the ear and he fell down. He lay sprawled, and his whiskers drooped most forlornly.

Instantly the little Fristle fifi was on her knees at his side, wailing and crying.

“Father! Father! Speak to me!” She shook him, and pulled him to her. Then she sprang to her feet. Like a flying tarantula she was on me, striking and scratching, shrieking.

“You beast! You rast! My poor father — a great naked hairy apim — monster! Beast!”

I held her off. I felt foolish.

“Your father?”

She was sobbing in my grasp.

“We are poor wood cutters. I broke the jar with poor father’s tea.” She tried to bite my finger. “It was ron[3]sengjin tea. He beat me for it.”

“Tea,” I said. I shook my head. “Ron sengjin. A broken jar and a father’s chastisement.”

She broke free, for I could not bear to hold her, and she dropped to her knees and took her father’s head into her hands, crooning over him. Presently he opened his eyes and stared vacantly upward. I put down my hand and hauled him to his feet. He stood, groggily, shaking his head. I feel sure the Bells of Beng Kishi were clanging in there well enough.

“You fell on me from the sky, apim.”

“I owe you an apology — but the switch was too severe a punishment for the crime.”

“You fell on me.” His eyes rolled. “From the sky.”

A blaze of scarlet and gold flew down between us. The Gdoinye passed right before the staring eyes of the Fristle and his daughter. The cat-faced man and girl saw nothing of that impudent bird. He perched on a tree and he squawked at me.

“From the sky,” said the Fristle. He swallowed. “A great naked hairy apim. Fell on me.”

The Gdoinye squawked again and ruffled a wing.

Knowing when to make myself scarce I left the Fristles to it. The father might have lost his tea; I fancied he had learned a little lesson, also.

“Remberee,” I shouted back. And I plunged into the blue shadows of the trees. With that curious little incident, over which many a man would have grown rosy red in the remembrance, to point me on to my duty for the Star Lords, I ran out from under the far trees and so looked down on my real work here.

And yet, even as I plunged on down the slope, I could not feel fully convinced. The horizon lifted mellowly from a patchwork of fields and woods, threaded by watercourses, and the glittering roofs and spires of a town showed less than a dwabur off. The air held that fragrant freshness of Kregen. I breathed deeply as I skipped down the slope into action. The length of wood I had snatched up would serve to crack a few skulls.

And yet, as I say, I was not fully convinced.

An ornate blue and gold carriage drawn by six krahniks was being besieged by a band of Ochs. The offside front wheel of the carriage jutted awkwardly from under the swingle tree, indication that the axle had broken. The krahniks stood, russet red and placid in their harness, chewing at the grass. Half a dozen Ochs were busily attempting to cut the traces and make off with the animals. Half a dozen more were banging spears on the wooden panels of the carriage and yelling. A big Rapa was running about, his beaked vulturine face desperate, trying to fend the Ochs off. Another Rapa lay in the grass. He was not dead, for his crest kept quivering as he tried to haul himself up, only for an Och to give him a sly thwack and so stretch him out again. Now Ochs are small folk little above four feet tall with lemon-shaped heads with puffy jaws and lolling chops. They have six limbs and use the central pair indiscriminately as arms or legs. Usually, they prefer to work in as large a body as they can, numbers giving them strength.

The rest of the group, about ten or so, were all yelling and jumping about and trying to attack the naked Khibil. He was laying about with his length of wood, knocking Ochs over, sending them flying, whirling them away. It was all a crazy little pandemonium. I ran down, debating. Often I have had to make up my mind just who the Star Lords wanted rescued. Was this Khibil in need of assistance? Or was he the aggressor and the Ochs required for the mysterious purposes of the Everoinye?

The Gdoinye, who had acted in so strange a manner, left me in no doubt. He flew on before me and swooped at the Ochs banging on the coach. They could not see him. So I ran on down and stretched that group of Ochs out and turned to give the Khibil a hand. There were only three left by then and they ran off as I turned on them. The rest left the krahniks and ran off, also, squeaking, their spindly legs flashing.

The Khibil swelled his massive chest and regarded me.

He held his length of wood cocked over his right shoulder. Deliberately, I allowed my length of wood to drop.

“Llahal, dom,” I said cheerfully.

For a moment he hesitated, and I fancied he was fighting the inherent feelings of superiority some Khibils never master. Then: “Llahal, apim. You were just in time to assist me in seeing this rabble of Ochs off -

they are not worth pursuit.”

“Probably.”

A noise echoed inside the carriage and I heard a whisper, quick and fervent. I moved slowly sideways so as to get a view of Khibil and coach together. The Khibil lowered his length of wood. Whatever the obi might be hereabouts it evidently did not include the immediate giving and receiving of a challenge it held in other parts of Kregen. I, of course, had no idea where I was. That I was on Kregen was the extent of my knowledge. The two suns were in the sky, and they were high in the meridian, and they did not jibe with my moss-and-tree deduction of the direction of north. The Khibil shared my curiosity.

He said, “Tell me, dom, where are we?”

Before I could answer, a sharp female voice from the coach window spat out: “Why, you knave, in Kov Pastic’s province, of course, and if you don’t put your clothes on at once I will have the kov’s guard arrest you the moment we reach Gertinlad.”

The Khibil and I stared at each other for a space. His reddish whiskers twitched. I thought of the Fristle on whom I had dropped from the sky. I thought of the occasion when I had given a helping hand to Marta Renberg, the Kovneva of Aduimbrev, with her luxurious coach that fell by the way. And, too, I thought of an earlier occasion when I had been transmitted to Kregen by the Star Lords to assist Djang girls against Och slavers. The two instances were strangely mingled here. Again that sense of machination troubled me, and by machination I mean wheels within wheels and not the ordinary interference in my life by the Everoinye. So the Khibil’s whiskers twitched. The woman in the coach was still screaming about our nakedness and her friend the kov. The Khibil was the first to laugh. And I, Dray Prescot, who had learned to laugh muchly of late in odd ways, I, too, laughed. The Khibil recovered first.

With the length of wood held just so, he approached the carriage. He spoke up; but the note in his voice was of a fine free scorn tempered by social observance.

“Llahal, lady. We have no clothes. They were stolen by these rascally Ochs. But we have saved your life.”

The woman was hidden from me by the jut of window; I could see her hand, thin and white, on which at least five rings glittered. Her voice continued in its shrill shriek.

“Onron! Give these two paktuns clothes! Bratch!”

The Rapa who had been running about, the one with the red feathers in whirlicues about his eyes and beak, went to the trunk fastened to the back of the coach and, presently, the Khibil and I were arrayed in gray trousers and blue shirts. I was beginning to have an idea of where I was, and not caring for it over much.

“See to the wheel,” said the lady, and the window shutter went up with a clatter. A mumble of conversation began within the coach.

I looked at the Khibil, prepared to get on with fixing the axle, for I conceived that the Everoinye wished this hoity-toity madam in the coach preserved for posterity. If she was anything like the couple I had saved in the inner sea she might pup a son who would topple empires. The Khibil said: “Lahal, apim. I am Pompino, Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot. When I saw the Gdoinye leading you on I realized you were a kregoinye.” He sniffed. “Although why the Everoinye should imagine I would need help against miserable little Ochs, I do not know, by Horato the Potent.”

I felt the solid ground of Kregen lurch beneath me.

A man, another mortal man, was talking of the Gdoinye, of the Star Lords! He knew! He called me and by implication himself a kregoinye. I swallowed. I spoke up.

“Lahal, Scauro Pompino. I am Jak.”

If I was where I thought I was the name of Dray Prescot would have that villain hog-tied and subject to an agonizing death.

About to go on to amplify the single name of Jak with some descriptive appellation — and it would not have been Jak the Drang for news travels where there are vollers — this Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot interrupted.

“You call me Pompino. On occasion it pleases me to be called Pompino the Iarvin.”

“Pompino.”

“Now we had best fix this shrewish lady’s axle and then see her safely into the town, which I take to be Gertinlad.”

“I agree. We are in Hamal, I think.”

He shook his head as we began on the axle. The lady made no offer to get out of the coach, and the Rapas gathered themselves to help.

“No. I am not sure; but not Hamal.”

Well, I thought, if you’re right, dom, thank Vox for that.

The Rapa called Onron scowled. “Hamal? You are from Hamal?” His fist gripped his sword, a thraxter, and he half-drew.

“No, Knave,” snapped Pompino. “We are not from Hamal.”

“The Hamalese,” quoth the Rapa, “should be tied up in their own guts and left to rot, by Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls!”

“Quidang to that,” said Pompino.

A soft clump of hoofs drew our attention as a party of men riding totrixes rode up. There were ten of them and their six-legged mounts were lathered. Their weapons glittered in their hands, apim and diff alike. Pompino grabbed his piece of wood and prepared to fight; but Onron shrilled a silly cackle and said: “Peace, Knave. These are the lady Yasuri’s men, my comrades. They were decoyed away by other Ochs, may they rot in Cottmer’s Caverns.”

With the increment in our numbers we were able to repair the wheel and axle and so the coach started creakingly on its way to Gertinlad. Pompino and I rode perched on the roof, with Onron and his partner driving, and the totrix men resuming their function as escorts. We rolled through the mellow countryside and under the archway of the town and so into the familiar sights and stinks of a bustling market town and to an inn called the Green Attar. This was a high class hostelry such as would be patronized by a lady of gentle birth. The commander of her escort, a surly Rapa called Rordan the Negus, would have seen us off with a few curt words. He and his men wore half-armor, and were well armed with spear and bow, sword and shield. Pompino would have started an argument in his high-handed way; but Onron, who had carried the personal satchels from the coach into the inn, came out and yelled that the lady Yasuri would speak with us, and Bratch was the word.

So we jumped and obeyed on the run, which is what a serving man does when Bratch! is yelled at him. As we went in Pompino said: “I think the Everoinye wish us to continue to take care of this lady. I admit it is not an assignment I relish, but the ways of the Everoinye are not for mortal man to understand.”

I just nodded and so we went into the Green Attar and the smell of cooking and rich wines and stood before the table at which sat the lady Yasuri. The inn looked to be clean and comfortable, with much polished brass and dark upholstered chairs of sturmwood, with a wooden floor strewn with rugs of a weave new to me. We stood respectfully.

“You did well to drive off those rascally Ochs,” said the lady in her high voice. “You will be rewarded.”

She presented an outre picture, for she was tiny, and lined of face, with shapeless clothes that swaddled her in much black material like bombazine, shiny and hard, with a blaze of diamonds and sapphires, and with fine ivory lace at throat and wrist. She was apim, and her face looked like a wrinkled nut, with yet a little juice remaining. Her nose was sharp. She wore a wig of a frightful blond color. The rings on her fingers caught the oil lamps’ gleam and struck brilliants into our eyes. Pompino said: “We thank you, lady.”

She glared at him as though he had offered her violence.

“I am for LionardDen. The kov here is my friend; but he is away in the north helping in the fight against those Havil-forsaken rasts of Hamal. The land is hungry for fighting men. You are mercenaries. I offer you employment to see me safely through to Jikaida City.”

Pompino took a breath.

Before he could speak, the lady rattled on: “I can offer you better pay than usual. A silver strebe a day will buy a mercenary here. I offer you eight per sennight.”

With a dignity that set well with him, Pompino pointed out, “One does not buy a paktun. One pays him for services rendered.” As he spoke I received the impression that he was a paktun, probably a hyr-paktun and entitled to wear the golden pakzhan at his throat. “But, lady — are the silver strebes broad or short?”

She cocked up her sharp chin at this.

This was, indeed, a matter of moment. Coinage varies all over Kregen, of course, just as it does on Earth; but the common language imposed, so I thought, by the Star Lords, and the wild entanglement of peoples and animals and plants mean a creeping universality makes of Kregen a place unique by virtue of its very commonality. A short strebe, the silver coin known over most of the Dawn Lands, is worth far less than a broad strebe, and every honest citizen knows very well how to value the two in the scales. They may carry the very same head of whatever king or potentate has issued them, and the reverse may show the same magniloquent declarations of power or current advertisement of political policy; but the short and the broad will not buy the same quantity of goods in the markets — no, by Krun, not by a long chalk.

Now the Dawn Lands of Havilfar form a crazy patchwork of countries, and they bear no resemblance to the ordered checkers of the Jikaida board. They are a confusing conglomeration of kingdoms and princedoms and kovnates and republics, and a map-maker’s nightmare. The lady Yasuri hailed from one kingdom and while she was gone her king might be deposed, or her country invaded, so that when she returned she would have to vow fealty to a new sovereign — that was if her vadvarate still belonged to her. The Dawn Lands, viewed from some lofty perch in space, must resemble a stewpot forever on the boil.

Watching the lady Yasuri I saw how she used her shiny black bombazine to armor herself against the world. She was more accustomed, I guessed, to soft sensil and languorous dresses in the privacy of her own quarters, and she’d probably doff that hideous wig. She presented a hard and shrewish front to the world out of fear or the desire to intimidate. She screwed up her eyes, and her white hand toyed with her glass. She made a great show of thinking deeply. Then:

“Broad.”

Pompino nodded, still grave, still engaged in the negotiation of hiring out as a mercenary. But he did not attempt to increase the offer on account of his being, as I supposed, a hyr-paktun. He said: “But I am a Khibil. It would be nine for me.”

“Done,” said the lady Yasuri, promptly. “Nine for you, Khibil, and eight for the apim.”

I was too amused to argue.

Most places of Kregen use the six-day week, which I, rather contrarily, call a sennight. So our pay would be useful. A Pachak here would receive at least twelve broad strebes, possibly fourteen. A Chulik would get the same. You would rarely find a Kataki as a mercenary although there were renowned races of that slavemaster people whose second method of earning a living was hiring out as mercenaries; and they would grump until they got their twelve. As for the Ochs, four or five at the most. Rapas and Fristles and the like would get the standard one strebe a day.

If they didn’t argue it out, they’d get short strebes, too.

Pay is relative, of course, and I guessed that in these lands profoundly affected by the war with Hamal up north the price of commodities would have shot up. Perhaps this pay was not as excellent as at first sight it appeared. All the same, I contrasted these rates with those paid to the bowmen and archers of home, where a silver stiver was regarded as the small fortune paid to a Relianchun and where the bronze krad, a denomination of coin newly introduced by the Presidio, figured largely in the imaginations of the men come pay day. The krad, with, I hesitate to observe, an unspeakable likeness of the Emperor of Vallia on the obverse and resounding and inspiring slogans on the reverse, was regarded as fair and just. But, then, my men there in Vallia served their country and not for pay. Even so, I did not think that the old Crimson Bowmen of Loh, who had formed the old emperor’s bodyguard, had received a silver stiver a day. Their Jiktars and Chuktar had taken away their golden talens; of that I was very sure.

When Pompino and I, having made our respects to the lady Yasuri and the hiring being completed, returned to the courtyard of the Green Attar we became immediately aware of an offensive abomination going on there. The sights and sounds were sickening. A number of nobles put up here, for the place was renowned, and one of the members of a noble’s entourage was being flogged. The fellow had been triced up into the flogging triangle in a corner where sweet-scented flowers, brilliant and lovely, depended over the wall, forming a silent mockery of the obscenity going on in their shade. A thick leather gag had been forced between his teeth and secured by thongs around his head. He was flaxen-haired, strongly-built, and his tunic had been stripped down to his waist. He hung in the leather thongs binding his wrists and ankles to the wood of the triangle. He hung limply, as though accepting what was happening, and then he would jerk, every muscle standing out ridged, and so collapse into that limp huddle again. So he hung and jerked, shuddering, and hung again, and then convulsed once more as the other lash slashed across his bloody wreck of a back. A left-handed Brokelsh stood at his right side and a right-handed Rapa stood at his left. They took turns to slice the lashes down, black and whistling with stranded thongs.

“By Black Chunguj!” swore Pompino. “I never did like to see a man flogged jikaider.”

For the Rapa and the Brokelsh between them were dicing the man’s back up into a checkerboard of blood.

A Deldar, a heavy and thick-set man with the weight of years in the grade with no hope of ever making zan-Deldar and then Hikdar about him, spat and swore. “Hangi should have left the wine alone. It’s doing him no good, no, nor us, neither.”

The noble’s guards standing and looking on glumly as their comrade was flogged jikaider — a cruel and inhuman punishment, even to me who had seen men flogged round the Fleet — wore harness much studded with bronze bosses, and with pale blue and black favors. They looked a hard-bitten lot. Pompino made some remark, and the Deldar hawked up again.

“The notor is strict — aye, may Havandua the Green Wonder mete him his just desserts — strict. You can say that again about the notor, Erclan the Critchoith. Keep at it!” He swung away to bellow at the Rapa and Brokelsh who had desisted in their efforts to flay Hangi’s back. “You know the score! Ten times six and six more! Stylor!” to the shaking Relt who stood with slate and chalk marking the strokes.

“Keep a strict account!”

“Quidang, quidang,” stammered the Relt, his weak beaked face betraying by its frizzle of feathers the state he was in.

The lashes thwunked down again, and Hangi jerked, and was still. There is no real mystery why such a beastly practice should be given a name that associates it, however remotely, with the supreme board of Kregen. The contrast, it is said, explains the paradox.

“Stole Risslaca Ichor, did Hangi,” the Deldar told us, his face with the veins breaking around the nose sweating and empurpled. “A whole amphora. The notor’s favorite, is Risslaca Ichor, always keeps a special supply, and Hangi found it, and Hangi drank it, and there’s Hangi now, for all to see.”

“Risslaca Ichor.” Pompino sniffed. “A mere common rose adulterated with dopa-”

“Fortified, dom, fortified!”

“So they say.”

Then a profound change overcame the Deldar. He grew, if it were possible, even bulkier and more purple. The sweat sprang out in great pearly drops. “Keep at it, you hulus! Hit hard!”

So we looked up to the flower-banked balcony, and there stood the notor, this Kov Erclan Rodiflor. Square and hard and ablaze with gems, he stood braced on wide-planted feet, his hands clamped on his hips, his chin with his strip of black beard upthrust, and his square lowering face brooded on the scene below. Returning to Jikaida City, was Kov Erclan. A man who exuded authority and power, he possessed a dark inner core that gave him the yrium he would have taken had he been a gang leader and not a kov.

Like his men, he wore the pale blue and black favors, arranged in checkerboard fashion. Well, he looked down and we looked up and he saw neither Pompino nor myself in the shadows; his dark eyes were all for the flogging. I thought merely that I had met many men like that, and so we walked on, stony-faced past the guards, and when I next met Kov Erclan — well, that you will hear, all in due time. Pompino and I thus became, for each of us once more, paktuns, hired mercenaries, bodyguards, men who rented out their skill with arms and laid their lives at risk to earn their daily crust. Events moved with speed after that. The life of a paktun is mostly boring, and shot through with sudden and brief flashes of scarlet action. Often they are the last things that happen to him. We were outfitted, for it was all found, and donned bronze-studded leather jerkins, with gray trousers and calf-high boots. The weapons were thraxter, the straight cut and thrust sword of Hamal, stuxes, oval shields and a dagger apiece. The green tunic I was handed bore a rusty stain low on the left side, and a rip neatly sewn together, a rip about the size to admit a spear-blade. The trousers had been laundered clean, however, for which I was grateful.

Pompino made a face. “Dead men’s clothes.”

The helmets were of iron, and not bronze, iron pots thonged under the chin and with ear and back flaps. Holders at the crown bore tufts of green, black and blue feathers.

So equipped and astride totrixes Pompino and I rode out the next morning as part of the escort to Yasuri Lucrina, the Vadni of Cremorra, en route for LionardDen, Jikaida City. From the rich lands around Gertinlad the way led us across rivers and through forests into country that grew impressively wild and menacingly forbidding. We were in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. Here, in the ancient countries around The Shrouded Sea were situated those parts of the great southern continent that had been first settled when men arrived here in the beginning of history — so went the old stories. Both Pompino and I were firmly convinced that the Star Lords had sent us to ensure the safety of Yasuri. The whole operation, at least for me, was so markedly different from what had happened before that I deemed it prudent to follow events and to do my best to avoid the wrath of the Star Lords. Of one thing I was profoundly grateful. Because of the differences this time, and the warning, there was no extra bitterness in me at the parting from Delia. Of course I grieved for the sundering, and vowed to return as soon as I could, echoing in the old way and the old days, I will return to my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. But, this time, she was apprised of my disappearance, and she knew, now, what that fate was that dogged me. No moist-mouthed slimy minions of Quergey the Murgey could affront her now; she would send that lot packing with a zorca hoof up their rumps. Sorrow touched me that I had not welcomed Drak and clasped hands with him. As with Melow the Supple and Kardo. But I felt the warm glow of satisfaction at the thought that Drak, Prince of Vallia, Krzy, was now there, in Vondium, and, Opaz willing, ready to take up the reins. Suppose he refused? Suppose he contumed the task of standing in for the Emperor of Vallia? He had told us that he would not become emperor while we lived, Delia and I, and I had brushed that aside as sentiment. I felt that Drak, who of all my sons was the strong, sober, industrious one, with that wild Prescot streak in him, too, was best fitted to run Vallia. Had I thought Zeg, who was now King in Zandikar, or Jaidur, who was swashbuckling about in connivance with the Sisters of the Rose, could handle the job better, then primogeniture, too, would have been kicked out with a zorca hoof up its rump. Primogeniture obtains on Kregen; but it is not an unbreakable rule. A man must fight for what he wants there, and it is what a man is and the spirit and heart of him that counts, not what his father is. Or his mother, either… For the ladies of Kregen are people in their own right, and fully aware of that, with minds that are their own. The ladies of Kregen count, as this Yasuri, Vadni of Cremorra, so sharply reminded us. Some of the women of Kregen there are who hate all men because they are men, as foolish a stance as to hate all calsanys because they are calsanys, or all roses because they are roses. But, then, some women do not deserve to be ladies of Kregen, anyway…

There was little satisfaction to be gained in the situation where I was a puppet of the Star Lords; but it is useless to kick against the pricks when there is nothing one can do about that particular situation. I had slowly and cautiously been attempting to build a kind of structure of deceit against the Star Lords, and had intemperately gone against my own plans and been banished to Earth for twenty-one cruel years. Now I was trying a new tack. But, in the end, obedience to the Everoinye must dominate my actions. They were superhuman. Their powers were far beyond those of mortals, beyond those of the Wizards of Loh, beyond the Savanti. I trembled to dare to think that perhaps Zena Iztar might possess powers to match them.

As we rode, I studied, to learn what I could from what Pompino could tell me. He was of South Pandahem, a land of which I then knew little. He was married with two sets of twins and from what he did not say I gathered that he rubbed along with his wife, in a kind of habit-formed pattern, rather than taking any active joy from the marriage state. Well, two worlds are full of marriages like that. He was not at all displeased to be called out to serve the Everoinye. He talked well as we jogged along through the land that increasingly grew more ominous, with rocky defiles and overhanging crags leading on to wide plains where the sere grass blew. The country was pock-marked with tracts of badlands, and we were due to spend the night at a fortified posting house at the ford of Gilma. Gilma is a water sprite found in the legends of Prince Larghos and the Demons. Pompino told me that he did not like the Hamalese, a sentiment I could well understand from Hamal’s ruthless conquest of Pandahem. But he could tell me little of the Star Lords.

He received his orders from the Gdoinye. When I introduced a casual remark about scorpions, he dismissed them as unpleasant but rarely seen creatures of Havil.

I told him I was from Huringa in Hyrklana. This city I knew well from my days as a kaidur in the Jikhorkdun there, and so could fabricate substantial accounts to bolster my story. He eyed me at that.

“Queen Fahia grows too fat, so men say — and I mean you no disrespect, Jak. But men say she cannot live long.”

I nodded. “So it is said.”

Pompino clicked his tongue at his totrix. We were passing a stand of withered trees and the branches reached out like gray wraiths.

“Men say that the tragedy of Princess Lilah cast a shadow over the kingdom.”

Princess Lilah of Hyrklana! I had sent spies to seek news of her whereabouts and all had reported failure.

“It is indeed a tragedy. I would dearly love to know where she is now, By Kru — by Havil.”

The slip passed unnoticed.

Much of what we said I will report when the time is due; suffice it that Pompino, for all he was one of those Khibils who consider themselves a cut above ordinary mortals, proved a stalwart companion, and in the manner of Khibils, brave and resourceful and loyal. A task had been set to his hands and he would fulfill that task with his dying breath.

He did grumble: “What the confounded woman wants to go all this dolorous way to play Jikaida for is a conundrum I would not burden Hoko the Amusingly Malicious with.”

There were so many burning questions I had to ask that mention of Jikaida passed me by then… But Pompino knew only that he took his orders from a great scarlet and gold bird, that he was paid handsomely for his trouble in real gold, and that should he disobey he would be punished with exceedingly unpleasant penalties. We did not go into their nature.

“Why, Pompino? Why?”

He looked puzzled. “The gods are passing strange in their ways, Jak. Passing strange. But to serve the gods, to serve the Everoinye, is not that a great pride and does it not confer stature upon a man? Is it not, Jak, a High Jikai?”

I had never looked on rushing about pulling the Star Lords’ chestnuts out of the fire as a High Jikai. That great word, that supreme notion of high chivalry and courage and self-sacrifice, seemed to me sacred to deeds writ in gold. As I did not answer he scowled. “Well?”

“Yes,” I said. “Assuredly.”

Because he had been the first to pelt down all naked into action and drive the Ochs away he had quite naturally assumed the leadership of our twin mission. I did not bother my head over that. Let him imagine he carried the burden. Truth to tell, I was happy to allow it — and, equally, I liked him. The posting house at the ford of Gilma was merely a single story house and surrounding wall all built of the gray stones carried down from the frowning hills. We did not change the totrixes or the krahniks, for we had not been pushing them and they were beasts of price. We set off early the next day and so came down the long valley into Songaslad, a town of thieves.

Over the border some sixty dwaburs off lay the country of Aidrin in which lay the capital, the city called Jikaida City. The journey was fraught with peril. It lay over badlands of an exceedingly bad badness. In Songaslad, the town of thieves, caravans were formed for mutual protection on the journey. The lady Yasuri sent her Rapa Jiktar to haggle for the price of a caravan’s protection. Perforce, we waited, and set a doubled guard over our possessions.

We lost only a good saddle, richly inlaid, a carpet of high price, and a set of golden candlesticks whose theft almost gave the lady a fainting fit. Her companions, her handmaids in the coach with her, used burned twigs of Sweet Ibroi to revive her. We concluded a deal with hawk-faced Ineldar the Kaktu, the caravan master, forthwith.

So, a long straggling procession of carriages and wagons and riders and people trudging afoot, we wended out of Songaslad, the town of thieves, to cross the Desolate Wastes, and so win our way to Aidrin, and the rich country around LionardDen, Jikaida City.