Below the trundling flier the ground passed in a swirl of greens and browns and blues, with the silver-glittering canals of Vallia cutting their lordly way across the landscape. Magnificent are the canals of Vallia. True, their water is a nasty poison to anyone not of the canalfolk. In Vondium there are many canals fed by the waters of the Great River, and these canals are safe for ordinary folk, not of the canals. The canalfolk of Vallia are a people apart. As far as I knew up to that time they had kept themselves strictly separate from the intrigues and struggles for power within the Empire. Now that the emperor was assured of a thousand years of life, vouchsafed him because his daughter Delia possessed the courage and fire to take him to the Sacred Pool of Baptism, he was most firmly seated on his throne. He could outlast his enemies, and guide and control those who followed after. Oh, yes, there were still plots against him, and factions seeking to topple him. But he had only to last out the current crop of troubles, and then, by Vox, he was safe.
So I thought.
As for myself, after my own problems, I was concerned to discover who it was who had been controlling Ashti Melekhi.
Some shadowy figure of great power had been giving her orders. She had attempted to poison the emperor and been foiled. Then she had brought Chulik guards to slay him, and been foiled. Now that she was dead the menacing shadow at her back would have to find fresh tools for his nefarious purposes.
I knew, as I winged back to Vondium the Splendid in the mingled streaming radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, that I was in for a few hectic bouts of action. And, so I was. As you shall hear. Poison is not often a favored instrument of murder on Kregen and the abhorrence of just about everyone concerned at the imminent death by poison of the emperor gave a true indication of that kind of morality. But death by hired assassin — well, now. . In that department of murder the stikitches of Kregen have few peers. Which, I suppose, reflects badly upon the morality of those who employ them. My friends and I had been set upon by stikitches, and we had tumbled them into a handy canal; I recalled the promise Ashti Melekhi had made and knew her promise would be kept. Her stikitches would be after me, still. In that, thinking that her malignance persisted from the grave, I misjudged the niceties of protocol and honor of the stikitches of Kregen.
In the growing light the land spread bountifully. Truly, Vallia is a rich and rosy island. Away on my right hand the lofting twin pinnacles of rock spearing up from the land showed me Vondium was very close. That curious double formation of rock and crag is called Drak’s Seat. From its slopes ice is brought down to the city.
The Great River — Mother of Waters, She of the Fecundity — glimmered ahead. And Vondium — ah!
Vondium, the proud city. I have spoken but little of that splendid city, and to think of it now brings a pang. The slanting mingled rays of the suns smote full upon the serried array of domes and towers, of spires and roofs, caught gleams from the gilt, struck sparks from the ranked windows. The long granite walls ringed the city, and the buildings spilled out beyond their ancient circumference. Here and there the dots of early fliers spun up into the morning brightness. Across the long-reaching arms of the aqueducts the clear, clean water flowed down from the hills. Smoke from breakfast fires coiled into the limpid air. The boulevards already thronged with people and carriages, a steady traffic that would continue all day. Narrow boats and barges glided silently along the canals. Movement, color, life — all were spread below me as I slanted in over the seeming metropolis of Vondium the Proud, heading for the palace of the emperor.
A number of tributaries of varying size and importance empty into the Great River at or near Vondium. Combined with the meanderings of the River at that point a couple of tributaries contrive to isolate a section of the city, with the adjacent canal forming an aloof enclave. This is the Old City, called Drak’s City. A warren, festering in places, sumptuous in others, it attracts both disreputable elements and free spirits, artists, poets, thinkers, students, and provides them with a kind of security. I say a kind of security, for Vondium herself offers that kind of security a man of the cities can understand. As I sped toward the palace I gave but scant thought to Drak’s City, for I then knew little of Vondium. In Ruathytu, which I knew much better, the Sacred Quarter in its way served for the purposes of Drak’s City in Vondium. But the two were not the same — very far from the same. Old and ancient and steeped in the mysteries of its past is Drak’s City. Here men first built their camp when they came to the Great River, gradually enlarging their buildings and walls, until what is now the Old City dominated the surrounding countryside. The light picked out the colors along the tall walls of the higher palace. Each fluttering from its own flagstaff, every province flag of the empire flew. The long rows of flagstaffs and their gorgeously colored treshes passed below as I turned to slide in for a landing. Drak’s City sank from sight as I lowered in the air. The Old City completely surrounded by the modern metropolis carried on its own life, had its own mores, gave scant attention to what went on in Greater Vondium. The flier touched down.
The guards were duly obsequious. The Vallian Air Service patrols above had let me through because the Valhotran colors marked me as a friend. Unmarked boats would be challenged. Because she understands me passing well, Delia had waited for me. The moment she learned I had returned to the palace and of the collapse of the latest plot against her father, she had said something -
which I will not repeat — and had gone up to the landing platforms with a picnic basket and a good book. How she does these things amazes me still.
So, clad in my worn and travel-stained old buff, I stomped across the platform. She looked up and marked her place in the book with a slim finger — I know that gesture well. Then she saw who it was. The book went up in the air. The picnic basket flew the other way spilling palines and delicious fruits and sandwiches and bottles of wine. She flew at me. Time after time I have come home to my Delia. It is always the same and it is always different. Close, we held each other, close. My Delia — my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains!
Three
Barty Vessler, Strom of Calimbrev
I hitched up the huge brown beard on its silver wires over my ears, and smoothed down the golden plates of the helmet. I turned to let Delia see me.
She lay on an elbow, her white gown voluptuous in its curves and lines, and started to laugh so that the little gilt sofa shook.
“Dray! Dray! You look-”
“I look like a shaggy graint of a clansman. If that is the way the good folk of Vondium imagine me -
then that is the way they can see me.”
Much had happened since yesterday, when Delia had met me on the high landing platform. Now we prepared in our own private apartments for the great thanksgiving ceremony. Much of what had happened was talk. There were other things; but they remain between Delia and me. Now we put on fine fancy clothes, readying ourselves for the dismal prospect of a state function.
“But you can’t go out looking like that.”
“Why not?”
“Well — for one thing, you’re hardly recognizable and absolutely not respectable.”
I laughed at her. “True. And two more admirable qualities I have yet to find. I do not wish to be recognized, and if ever I was respectable, I fancy I’d-”
“I know you, Dray Prescot. If you were respectable you’d die of boredom.”
“True.”
She sat up. Those soft red lips pouted at me.
“Very well. Wear the beard. But at least have Tilly trim — oh!”
“Yes. Our friends are scattered all over Kregen. Tilly will be back in Hyrklana.”
“We must help them — I’m sure Tilly would wish to come home. Valka is her home now.”
“We will. As soon as the emperor has given thanks to the Invisible Twins through Opaz the All-Glorious, we can start.”
A shadow passed across that face, that face that is the most beautiful in two worlds.
“What is it, my heart
?”
“Dayra-”
Now I frowned.
“We have lost our daughter Velia-” The pang this caused both of us had to be endured; neither of us could forget Velia. I went doggedly on. “Our three sons are making their ways in the world. But our daughters, Lela and Dayra — do you know, since I returned from-” Here I checked, and stammered.
“Yes?”
I had been about to say “from Earth.” But that would mean nothing to Delia, and I had not yet nerved myself to explain to her that I was born on a world that had only one sun, only one moon, and had only apims as people. So I fished around and then said: “Since I had to leave you on the island of Lower Kairfowen-”
“In the village of Panashti-”
“Yes. I’ve spent most of the time in the Eye of the World. We have managed to save your father. But in all this time I have not seen my two daughters.”
Delia made a small, not so much helpless as resigned, gesture. “It is a matter for the Sisters of the Rose. I have told you much. Lela is very much the grand lady now. She goes her own way. She stubbornly refuses all offers of marriage.”
I nodded. “If she gets married and I’m not there, I’ll-”
“You no doubt would, you great grizzly graint. But Lela is like Drak. They are twins. Drak can run affairs while you are — away-”
“I know. They call him the Younger Strom and me the Old Strom, in Valka.”
“He does not want Valka. You know what he has said. He is a fine man now, my heart. As for Zeg, you did well when you made him the King of Zandikar, and Queen Miam will be good for him.”
“I didn’t make him. Miam did that.”
“That may be. And our third son, Jaidur-”
“Jaidur.” Jaidur, sometimes called Vax, Vax Neemusjid, was Dayra’s twin. “He hasn’t made up his mind about me, yet. But Dayra-”
“Jaidur and Dayra. They were born when you were away. It was a hard time for me.”
I could not look at her. The Star Lords who had callously hurled me back to rot on Earth for twenty-one years had a great deal to answer for. I ploughed on.
“Jaidur still doesn’t believe I can possibly be his real father — yet, I think, he does know and will not acknowledge it. If I were a true Vallian father I’d take a whip to him if he continued on that tack.”
“But as you are a savage and barbarian clansman, you will not.”
“So Dayra hates my guts. Well, that is fair. I deserve that. But I shall find a way of making her see — I have to — as I owe it to you and the children.”
“She ran away from the Sisters of the Rose. I saw the — I saw the necessary people there and smoothed things over. But she joined up with a rascally gang. Seg and Inch found out about them, or as much as they could. Seg’s daughter, Silda, was also mixed up with them at one time. But Seg was there and he sorted that out.”
I had turned to look at her and as she spoke a flush mantled up onto her cheeks, and she looked away, and went on speaking very quickly, very quickly indeed.
“And as Inch couldn’t wed his lady Sasha from Ng’groga for some reason connected with their taboos he was making further investigations but it was all very difficult and kept most secret and I can say that Dayra fancied herself in love with this man who calls himself by any name that takes his fancy and as the whim strikes him and no one knows who he is although I expect Dayra does.” She finished a little bitterly, on a sigh.
I felt the fury mounting.
Calmly, I said: “And this was the problem you had to go away to attend to? You and Lela?”
“Oh, no.” She looked up. “That was settled. Well, more or less. Dayra has been led astray. That is what I meant when I spoke of her when you talked of going to Hyrklana to fetch Tilly and Oby and Naghan the Gnat.”
“Aye, and we’ll bring the others. But I see.” I took off the ridiculous golden helmet and scratched the false beard. “We must find Dayra first — and this fellow, what’s-his-name — and then we can see about our friends.”
“I think — Dray — I think — yes.”
“Well then, Delia my lovely, we must dress ourselves up and attend the emperor and see your father right. Have you any idea where we should start looking for Dayra?”
“They used to go around smashing up the taverns.”
“Right.”
“And Barty Vessler is here in Vondium and desperately unhappy, wanting to help.”
“Who,” I said, “in Zair’s name, is Barty Vessler?”
Delia shook her head so that those gorgeous chestnut tints in her rich brown hair caught the light, dancing, enchanting.
“You knew the old strom, Naghan Vessler? Strom of Calimbrev?”
“Oh. Oh, yes. So this Barty Vessler is the Strom of Calimbrev. How does he come to be so desperately unhappy?”
But I could guess. Calimbrev is an island of about the same size as Valka situated off the southeast coast of Vallia, just to the southwest of Veliadrin. If this Vessler was unhappy and wanted to help it could only mean he and Dayra had been friends. Probably the loon wanted to marry her. I cocked an eyebrow at Delia, and she smiled, and confirmed the suspicion.
“He is a charming young man. Very well thought of. You mind you are nice to him.”
“And he has nothing to do with Dayra’s running off? Her running with this wild bunch? He’s just a good friend?”
“Yes. I am sure. He had a struggle to hold onto the Stromnate when his father died. But he did.”
“Well, good for him.”
All my hackles had risen at the thought of a man sniffing around my daughter. I thought of Gafard, Sea Zhantil, the King’s Striker, who had wed Velia, and I sighed. .
“If he’s half the man Gafard was then he’ll do, I suppose, providing you approve.”
“For the sweet sake of Opaz, my heart! It is not as definite as that yet. Not by a long way.”
So, bristling more than a trifle, I set about putting on all the ridiculous fancy clothes a state occasion warranted. As was often my custom I deliberately loaded myself down with bright gewgaws, lengths of cloth-of-gold, brilliant silks, tasseled scarves, bracelets, necklaces, and under all a shirt of that marvelously supple mesh-steel they manufacture down in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. The mazilla was a thing of wondrous beauty or downright irritation, depending on your point of view. Truth to tell, as it jutted up at the back of my head, gaudy with feathers and sensil and gold, it was both. Only the noblest may wear an aristo-sized mazilla. So, adding this to my calculated insult in the whole stupid finery I wore, my mazilla towered, flaunting, arrogant, insolent. I stroked the luxurious brown beard and felt that, at the very least, it should upset more than a few of the best-born of Vallia.
Which seemed to me a delicious and highly desirable achievement.
Delia — well, Delia was simply superb.
Dressed in white, with discreet jewels, with feathers and sensils, she floated like a — well, I will say it and be damned to all and sundry — she floated like a goddess as we sallied out to take our place in the procession.
A long Vallian dagger with the hilt fashioned from rosy jewels swung from golden lockets at her side. As for me, I belted on a veritable armory, well-knowing the frowns such wanton display would provoke. How Delia put up with my contempt for the nobles of Vallia escaped me. Besides a rapier and dagger I belted on a clanxer, a djangir and a small double-bitted axe. Over my back and hidden by the crimson trimmed cloak and the feathers of the mazilla, went my Krozair longsword. I drew the line at a Lohvian longbow. After all, there are limits, and to push beyond them would have been counter-productive.
The procession was gorgeous and immense. Everyone was there. The nobles lined out in order of precedence and a splendid array they made. The whole sumptuous proceeding went off well. Due thanks were offered up at various temples for the safety of the emperor. He, the old devil, strode through it all with a face like a granite block, hard and yet haughty, lapping up the plaudits of the crowds, conscious of the
looks and feelings of those who fawned on him, sorting them out in his shrewd old head, those for, those against, those who might be bought by gold.
The stinks of incense blew everywhere. Perfumes covered the smells that might have proved intrusive. The noise blossomed as the crowds huzzahed and screeched. It was all a terrible ordeal, yet an ordeal that had to be gone through so that Vondium might witness that the emperor was safe and in full health. Those of my few friends among the nobility — like the Lord Farris — knew that on these occasions I was like a graint with a thorn in his foot, and so they merely acknowledged my presence and smiled and went on with the business. As for my enemies, they ignored me, which suited me. Kov Layco Jhansi, the emperor’s chief minister, was there and looking mighty pleased with himself. High in favor, now, Layco Jhansi, after his valiant defense of the sacred person of the emperor. I nodded to him, and then turned away, and the proceedings ground on.
When they were over and I headed off at once for the palace to strip off the ridiculous outfit, Delia held me back.
A young man, slender, supple, his brown Vallian hair stylishly though decently cut, wearing ornate robes
— as we all did — approached. His face looked freshly scrubbed, bright, cheerful, yet with an anxious dint between the eyebrows he manfully tried to conceal.
He wore the colors of gray, red and green, with a black bar, and his emblem was a leaping swordfish. By these I knew he was of Calimbrev. So this must be Barty Vessler, the Strom of Calimbrev. He made a deep obeisance. Delia gripped my arm. She knows how I dislike this crawling and bowing; but we were still in public and were watched.
“Majestrix, Majister,” said Strom Barty.
“Strom, how nice to see you,” said Delia.
We stood on a marble platform with the crowds yelling below and the pillars and statues of the Temple of Lio am Donarb at our backs. Lio am Donarb, although a minor religious figure attracting a relatively small following, was considered worthy of a visit of thanks. To one side a group of nobles prepared, like us, to take to their palanquins or zorca chariots to return to their villas set upon the Hills. Among all their blazing heraldry of color the black and white favors showed starkly, proud, defiant, arrogant. I nodded at the group who watched us avidly.
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