The Tides of Kregen [Dray Prescot #12]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Felteraz, with its lush estates and its town and its fortress, was built into the sheer rock over the sea. Memories of the view from the high terrace there swam into my mind. How alike and yet how vastly different was the view in Felteraz from that dizzy prospect over the Bay and Valkanium from Esser Rarioch! Yet I loved this place. As my course took me over the gray battlements with their freight of banners, a sudden shaft of cunning pierced me through so that I trembled with my own deceit and struck the levers that sent the voller swirling down through the bright air.

  There was no impediment to an aerial landing in the lands of the inner sea, for they knew nothing in their daily lives of aerial armadas and saddle flyers. The cities of the hostile territories were festooned with anti-flyer defenses. I was able to make a swooping landing, still the voller, and step out onto a broad platform just below the highest terrace. People came running, astonished at the apparition of a man falling from heaven. I dare say many of them took the commonsense view that I was a visitor from Zim.

  Bronzed faces surrounded me. I saw again the mesh link mail of the men of Zair, the white surcoats blazing with a device I knew. That symbol, stitched in red and gold, with a lenk-leaf border, represented a pair of galley oars, crossed, divided upright by a longsword. Oh, yes, I knew that symbol. Hadn't I proudly worn it myself as a Krozair captain of a swifter of the Eye of the World, that device of Felteraz?

  I knew none of the faces.

  A longsword's point hovered a knuckle before my breastbone.

  “Your name and your business, dom."

  “My name is Dray Prescot. My business is with the Lady Mayfwy of Felteraz."

  Only after I had spoken did it occur to me that Mayfwy might be dead, another here in her place as chatelaine of Felteraz.

  The few murs of hesitation before the guard Hikdar spoke caused me great uneasiness, which vanished in a flood of relief as he said: “The Lady Mayfwy is at home. I think I have heard of you, Jernu,[3] from my father."

  [3 Jernu: This word for lord belongs to the Zairians and is not often used by Prescot. It equates with the Vallian Jen and the Hamalian Notor. Its correct use is clear in this context. A.B.A.]

  He looked at me doubtfully and did not lower the longsword. I would have faulted him in his duties had he done so. And from his father! Well, it had been a half-century by Earthly reckoning since I had been here last. I do not smile easily, as you know, so I looked at him and said, “Probably, Hikdar. If you will inform the Lady Mayfwy—"

  “At once, Jernu."

  He dispatched a swod of the guard and remained on the alert, watching me. The ring of people, joined now by women and girls, kept respectfully back and none offered to go anywhere near the voller. That was a marvel. I saw a movement in the pressing ring of people, in the direction opposite that taken by the guard swod, and I looked, seeing men and women moving quickly aside. A woman stepped out before them, holding a long silver wand in her hand with which she had no need to touch anyone who lagged in moving. I did not know her. I stared at the girl—the woman—who followed through the opened path.

  She did not look quite the same. There was about her sweet face a graver air, a shadowed resignation to life that greatly pained me. In all else, though, she was the same lively, spritely, elfin girl who had first welcomed Zolta and Nath and me as we drove rattling up in our ass cart. Her dark, curly hair gleamed in the slanting rays of the suns, her pert nose uptilted and that small, soft sensuous mouth trembled and opened on a gasp. Her eyes widened and fastened on me a look that thrilled me through, a look compounded of pain and gladness, of joy and abiding sorrow.

  With not the slightest holding back, with not a heartbeat of hesitation, she ran forward, lifting her arms.

  “Dray! Oh, Dray! You have come back!"

  And then she was in my arms and clasping me close and I looked over her shoulder with the scent of her in my nostrils and I felt the weight of Kregen crush in on me and knew myself for the most evil of devils imaginable—as I truly was.

  She would not cry. Even with the emotions filling her she would not break down before her people. She stood back and held my hands and looked at me. I saw the brightness of her eyes, the tremble of that soft mouth.

  “You have not changed, my Lord of Strombor!"

  “And you,” I said. “Mayfwy, you are the same dear Mayfwy."

  “Oh, no. No, I know better than that.” She glanced at the robed woman with the wand. “We will go to the terrace, Sheena, and be alone. Bring refreshments, Zond wine, for Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor."

  “At once, my lady."

  And so there we were, Mayfwy and I, alone on the terrace as the sulking suns painted opaline radiance in the air and drowned the cliff face in color. I saw and I ached. How long it had been, how foolish I was! Fifty years—and then some of the iron returned, for twenty-one of those damned years had been wrenched away from my power by the Everoinye. Mayfwy took up a goblet of wine, laughing, handing it to me, and yet I saw the deep pain in her eyes. I gravely drank to her.

  “Dray, there is so much to tell."

  “Aye, so much."

  “But first there is news that will gladden your heart ... strange news to come from us here..."

  So I knew.

  “Delia! She has visited here? You have seen her?"

  A shadow nicked across Mayfwy's elfin face and passed, then she lifted her chin proudly and smiled.

  “Yes. Delia has been here. She sought you."

  I looked at her. My relief was obvious, for Mayfwy went on: “Yes, she crossed the Stratemsk in safety. There was a beast, a horrific beast, with her, that I swear would tear a leem to pieces. My men were uneasy until your Delia reassured them."

  “Melow the Supple."

  “That was the name."

  “She will not harm you, Mayfwy. But tell me of Delia!"

  How cruel that was, those words of mine, my whole demeanor, to this girl!

  “You treat women harshly, my Lord of Strombor.” She paused and lifted her goblet. Its ruby decoration in chains around the gold caught the light and blazed blood-red. “You say you love them and you leave them, for seasons on end. And should I call you Prince Majister now? Or even King?"

  “You call me Dray Prescot, as you always have. It is not of my will that I left Delia—or you—without saying remberee. There are dark and evil forces in my life—but enough of this. Is Delia well? Did she speak of the children? Where did she go? Tell me, Mayfwy, for the sake of my dear friend and oar comrade, Zorg."

  “Zorg.” She drank then, and it was a benediction. “She is well and she says the children are well, although wild—well, we all know how wild our children are."

  “Forgive me,” I said quickly—me, that Dray Prescot who never apologized except to Delia. “Young Zorg and Fwymay. They are well?"

  “Yes. They are well. Zorg is now a Krozair of Zy, which is as it should be, I suppose. He captains a swifter. He has much of his start to thank you for, Dray."

  “Nonsense! A lad like that will forge his own way on Kregen."

  She looked at me oddly. Well, not so long ago I had been standing in a Parisian hospital with the Prussian guns thundering and Kregen was four hundred light-years away. So I said: “The Zairians will always need men like young Zorg. And Fwymay?"

  “She has made me a grandmother twice, the minx. She married Zarga na Rozilloi, who is a Krozair Brother, and a very pleasant young man."

  I knew that this Zarga na Rozilloi must be of importance to warrant the na as his connective term, but he was not a Krzy. Had he been, Mayfwy would have said.

  “He is a Krozair of Zimuzz.” She was looking at me.

  “A fine order,” I said. But we both knew there was no other order as fine as the Krozairs of Zy.

  Now the suns were almost gone. The purple shadows dropped across the terrace. Soon the Twins would be up, eternally revolving one about the other, to cast their mingled pinkish light down on Kregen. We moved into the inner room where we had often sat and
talked and listened to the music provided by the citadel singers. The room looked just the same, except that a full-length portrait of a splendid-looking man had been added to the other portraits. This must be Zarga, for he wore the symbols of the Krozairs of Zimuzz. I ignored this new son-in-law and walked across, planted my feet on the thick rug and stood firmly looking up at the portrait of Zorg of Felteraz. Mayfwy moved silently away and left me. I looked at this painting of Zorg and I remembered, I remembered the warrens of Magdag and the rowing benches of the Magdaggian swifters, with Zolta and Nath, and I remembered our shared agonies and perils, the onions we had divided up, the lashes we had taken and, finally, Zorg's death, there in the stench and filth of a Magdaggian swifter. I remembered. And when I turned back to Mayfwy she put a hand to her mouth and did not speak for a moment. I suppose a great deal of what I felt showed on that ugly old face of mine.

  Then, as though what she said had been jolted out of her by this reunion, by my abstraction, she said: “I used to hope I could place your portrait there, my Lord of Strombor."

  I shook my head.

  Then she cried.

  Afterward I gave her another cup of wine and wiped her eyes with a clean cloth—she wore no makeup and had need of none—and said: “I must press on to find Delia. You know that. It is a fate I cannot—would not—deny. Until I know she is safe I cannot rest."

  “I do understand. But please forgive me for saying ... and for crying.” She tossed her head back so that the clustered dark curls glistened in the samphron-oil lamp's gleam. “What young Zorg would say I do not know. No Krozair's mother cries!"

  “I do not believe that. And Zorg, if he is a true Krozair as I know him to be, does not believe it either."

  “If only he would get himself married and have children, they would be a comfort to me here."

  There was more talk after that, and a fine meal which I knew had been especially prepared for me, and more wine—that smooth splendid Zond wine that Nath was so fond of—and Chremson if a difference in the tickle of the palate was needed. But Mayfwy could see the impatience burning in me. Truth to tell, I felt that Delia would understand when I told her that I had broken my journey to see Mayfwy, more so now that these two had met. How I had both welcomed and dreaded that encounter, for I desperately wished for them to be friends. But sober reality would seem to indicate the opposite. I would have to see what my Delia had to say.

  I stood up.

  Mayfwy rose, lithe as a neemu, her gaze wide on me, a hand to her breast. She wore what I remembered as being her favorite costume, a sheer gown of shimmering silk, white, simple, deeply cut, fastened at her shoulders by golden pins encrusted with rubies. They must be the same fibulae. They would be the same when we were all rotting in our graves or shivering in the Ice Floes of Sicce.

  “You must go? So soon?"

  “When I find my Delia we will return, Mayfwy. I shall not again be such an onker. Do you forgive me?"

  As I said the word that must have cut her, that simple “my” Delia, I cursed myself again. It seemed I could bring nothing but pain into the life of this girl. And girl she seemed to me still, despite all the lonely length of time she had lived, for she kept up her appearance out of her pride in being the widow of Zorg of Felteraz, a Krozair of Zy.

  Luckily I did not ask her why she had never married again. That would have been the action of a clod; while I am a fine full-bloomed specimen of a clod, I did see clearly enough that the question would have been a slap in her face.

  We stepped out onto that paved square high on the flank of the cliff where my voller waited. A guard had been posted around the craft, but no one had ventured near. Perhaps this was the very first airboat ever seen in these parts. I didn't care if it was or not, and I didn't care for the Hamalians and their dictates either. There was no remorse whatsoever in me for stopping here. Mayfwy told me that Delia had said she would fly direct to the fortress of Zy to find me. She had not confided in Mayfwy why, after a space of twenty years, she had thus come flying into the Eye of the World. But Mayfwy told me that Delia appeared sad, confirming Panshi's story.

  I would brook no longer delay.

  “Delia came riding a sectrix,” said Mayfwy. She put a hand out tentatively and touched the leather and canvas of the voller. Her hand trembled. “You will use this marvelous thing?"

  “If Delia went by here a year ago and then took ship for Zy, I can catch her all the quicker by voller."

  “Voller? Ah, the flying boat."

  “Yes."

  “There are many of these ... vollers, in the outer world? In the world of Vallia and Valka, of Djanduin and Strombor?"

  “Yes."

  “It must be a marvelous place."

  “It is, but in many things it is not as marvelous as the Eye of the World."

  “We have our troubles. I fear for Zorg and for Zarga, my son-in-law. Those horrible greens of Grodno bear down our defenses. We are in parlous case, these latter days, my Lord of Strombor."

  She went on to tell me in a small voice that the Grodnims pressed hard on the Zairians, that many battles had been lost; the Grodnim swifters might still be kept at bay; but the Grodnim armies swept on, irresistibly, it seemed, from victory to victory. Her son Zorg scoured the seas and gained success in single-ship actions—how my blood fired up at the thought!—but Holy Sanurkazz lay sunk in apathy, awaiting the stroke of doom. I could scarcely credit this. When I had left here the Zairians, under the command of my friend Pur Zenkiren of Sanurkazz, had been pressing on to victory along the eastern shore in alliance with the Proconians, a people distinct from the red and green.

  “Proconia?” I said.

  She made a little moue. “They keep themselves aloof. They resist any attack on their territory. They no longer wish to ally with us in the fight."

  “Then Zair will see they do not ally themselves with the damned Grodnims,"

  “That is what we all pray."

  I did not tell her that with the politics of this region—politics I had previously regarded as simple and straightforward—if the Grodnims gained an upper hand the Proconians, aye, and all the other uncommitted peoples, would jump in to be on the winning side. Once the slide began it would gain speed with frightful force.

  “Perhaps I will call in at Sanurkazz,” I said as I stepped up into the voller, observing the fantamyrrh. “On our way back. There has to be an explanation for what you say."

  “King Zo still rules, Dray. He will be pleased to see you."

  I put my hand over the levers. The Twins rolled along above among a myriad of stars. The Maiden with the Many Smiles would soon be up and then She of the Veils. This would not be a night of Notor Zan, the Tenth Lord, the Lord of Darkness.

  Felteraz lies about three dwaburs to the east of Sanurkazz and the distance in a flier's straight line to the island fortress of Zy from there is roughly a hundred and sixty dwaburs. At my voller's best pushed speed of ten dbs I ought to sight the island cone well before daylight. So I looked down on Mayfwy and she looked up. The fuzzy pinkish light played tricks with her features; but I knew she was not crying.

  “Remberee, Mayfwy."

  “Remberee, Pur Dray."

  I thrust the levers home and the voller shot skyward.

  To relate the events that now befell me is to relive a time of scarlet horror, a time when reason itself vanished from Kregen, a time when my reason for a while deserted me. My recollections tumble all confused and distorted, as the massive russet bodies of the chunkrah swim and haze when seen in the heat of the campfires of the Great Plains of Segesthes.

  The voller did not fail me and I came at last in sight of the extinct volcanic cone that is the heart of the fortress of Zy. On the journey I had eaten and drunk of the supplies so liberally provided by Mayfwy, and I had slept. As I stared eagerly forward with the slipstream blustering in my face and saw that grim black pile harshly upthrust against the moons-glowing sea, I rejoiced. Soon, soon, I would clasp my Delia in my arms again and she would cl
asp me...

  I sent the voller straight for the tall rock arch leading to the inner harbor. Only a few dim lights burned where I had been accustomed to seeing many lights blazing from the rock and the pharos lantern, swung from chains in the arch of the rock, casting its friendly greeting on the waters below. In a penumbrous circle of indistinct forms I dived for the entrance.

  It is a commonplace experience, universally observed, that when a person returns to a place of his former abode everything in building and architecture and scale appears to him much smaller than the memories he had carried over the years. I had not experienced that in Valka. To a certain extent in Felteraz, yes, I had noticed, but then, it is the very smallness of Felteraz that enjoins so much of its beauty. Here, as I swooped the voller under the immense rock arch of Zy I felt only renewed awe at the grandeur about me. The water rippled gently below, pitch-black and runneled with the reflected lights of torches. Lights clustered on the dock. I touched down on the stones and stood up, stretched and cocked a leg over the side of the voller.

  “Stand still! Declare yourself or you will be feathered."

  That seemed perfectly proper to me.

  “I am Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy."

  To say those words again, here in the very heart of all that made the Krozairs of Zy so formidable, so much a part of my life, in the very sanctum of the order, gave me a sweet, dizzied feeling of homecoming that marched with those other feelings of homecoming I had experienced in Valka.

  “Climb down from your flying contraption, Dray Prescot. Do not touch your weapons as you value your life."

  This was carrying precaution to an extreme. Still, I accepted. After all, eternal vigilance was part of the Krozair creed. I stepped from the voller to face the party of men who accosted me.

  They wore the white surcoats over their mesh mail. The old familiar device glittered from the breasts of the surcoats, bravely shining in the light of the torches, the scarlet circle enclosing the hubless spoked wheel embroidered in silks of blue and orange and yellow. I saw the faces enclosed in the mail hoods, hard, fierce, dedicated faces, all a strong mahogany brown from the suns and the winds, with those arrogant upthrust black mustaches bristling. Yes, these were my Krozair Brothers.