Ras-Far waved his hand, dismissing the two red-faced guards that came up behind Dray-Gon. “If it was that easy for you to get in, then I will take you up on your offer—except I suspect my guards held back out of respect for your father’s office.” The king put aside his official documents and gave Ron Ka’s son his full attention, speaking with a hint of laughter in his eyes. “It has been reported to me that you ceaselessly prowl the palace halls, seeking to find the way to my daughter’s apartment—and you have not succeeded in defeating her guards.”
Dray-Gon’s face flooded with embarrassed color before he spoke quickly. “That is why I am here. Your majesty, you cannot permit your daughter to travel with us to the Mountain! She is but a girl! She will never survive that trip, as delicate and frail as she is, and spoiled and pampered as well! Only the favors of the Gods will see any one of us through and back to Dorraine again!”
The king studied the agitated young man very observantly, seeing more than Dray-Gon knew. “I have said almost exactly the same words to her myself, and she refuses to listen. She is determined to go, and frail or not, she has the will of ten men like you or I.”
“Then she is just being obstinate and stubborn! She can’t go! Twenty young men with only one girl. Can you imagine all the trouble she will cause? Why every one of us will be fighting each other to win her favor!”
Ras-Far smiled. “I don’t think fisticuffs will win Sharita’s favor, and since you are so concerned about her safety, I could put you in charge of her defense.”
“And what would those ten men from Upper El Dorriane think of having me, a Lower, named protector of their princess? I don’t want her to go under any circumstances. Let me see her, sire, let me try to convince her to stay here and wait.”
Why not? Ras-Far thought, narrowing his eyes and studying Dray-Gon thoughtfully. Getting to his feet, he gestured to Dray-Don to follow, and he led the way through the complicated maze of palace corridors that were planned to be a puzzle to anyone not familiar with the palace. “I am trusting you, Dray-Gon, not to reveal the route to my daughter’s rooms to any of my enemies, as they would have her kidnapped, and so force me to yield to their demands.”
Dray-Gon appeared thoroughly shocked. “Has that been threatened?”
“I have heard rumors that the outlaws on the wildlands have talked of doing this. It seems, living out there, those men have gone as savage as any animal, and I would not like to see my daughter in their hands.”
“Nor would I!” Dray-Gon stated with grim vehemence. But he could see, as he followed the king, that the princess was very well protected, not only with triple numbers of the guards that protected the king, but with secret doors and panels that would open only when the king inserted his crested royal ring into a small opening. And though he tried to remember the way, it was so twisting and complicated, he became confused and displaced.
At length they came to the high pinnacle of her terraced apartment, to find Sharita feeding the small birds she kept in golden cages, while other small pets followed her about playfully pawing at the flowing fabric of her gown.
She spun about, startled to have her father come so quietly into her apartment…and with Dray-Gon in tow! “Father,” she scolded, “when you bring a visitor, you should have yourself announced! Look at me, I am not dressed appropriately to receive guests!”
“You look beautiful, as always,” said the king lightly, watching Dray-Gon as his eyes scanned over the princess’s brief attire. She was wearing a very short brief gown underneath a long flowing robe of some thin transparent material, and her remarkable shimmering hair was loose and cascading down her back, and her feet were bare. “Dray-Gon wished to talk to you in private, and you are much less formidable in your private rooms, without those pompous clothes on, and that crown upon your head. As for myself, I have always found a barefooted girl very appealing.” In fact, she was dressed exactly as he had hoped.
Immediately, Sharita found slippers and put them upon her feet, and looked up to say stiffly, “Good light to you, Dray-Gon, son of Ron Ka.”
“I am flattered that you still remember my name, princess.”
“You needn’t be. My recall is of that strange type that cannot help itself, it remembers everything, trivial or not.”
“You are honest, princess, if not very tactful…and I expected better of you.”
“And you, Dray-Gon, have certainly grown more proficient with replies—are the delights of our city making you a bit more sophisticated?”
The king interrupted the two, who seemed to have forgotten his presence: “It seems I am not needed here. I concede the battle to you, Dray-Gon. When you are ready to leave, I will inform one of the guards on the outside to lead you back to your suite.” Ras-Far turned about and left the room, a smile playing on his face for the first time in many days.
“Whatever does he mean,” Sharita asked when her father was out of hearing, “that he concedes the battle to you?”
“Why, that is how we converse, isn’t it, princess? We don’t talk, we wage war! The last time we met, you almost broke my arm. Who taught you to do that?”
She made a gesture toward a delicate white-and-gold chair, and curled up on another across from him. “Lately we have not run into each other in the corridors—have you found more entertaining ways to keep yourself busy than searching for my rooms?”
“So, you have missed me,” he said mockingly, and pleased.
“I have been informed that you are seeing a servant girl very often. Not that I care, but this palace abounds with gossip. Nothing goes unobserved or speculated upon. And no, I have not missed you, why should I?”
“No reason at all why you should miss me, or why I should miss you. I am seeing a servant girl. She is exceptionally beautiful, almost as pretty as you are, and much friendlier.”
“Aren’t you embarrassed to be seen with a person below your station?”
“No. She is so lovely, and so warm, I don’t care what she is. I grow tired of stiff, cold women who hold you off at arm’s length. With her I can relax and put down my guard.”
Sharita frowned and pulled the folds of her robe together to conceal her long, beautifully shaped legs. “I suppose you are falling in love with her.”
“I haven’t come here to discuss with you my romantic life,” said Dray-Gon impatiently. He turned his head, discerningly looking over her rooms, one joining the other. Exquisitely beautiful rooms, with every lavish comfort and convenience. “You are going to miss all of this, Sharita, when you set forth on a journey from which you may not return.”
She flung her hands wide, lightly dismissing her style of living. “I won’t miss this at all! I have lived here for eight plus ten years, and I have looked every day to the Green Mountain. Now I have my opportunity at last to see it up close, and to learn for a certainty what it means…and losing a few comforts is not going to prevent me from going!”
He looked at her pityingly…with some wistfulness. “Sharita, don’t you know we will never reach there? I have talked to the other men going with me and we have all agreed our chances are very, very slim. Nevertheless we will all make a sincere effort. No one has ever survived but a few days on Bay Sol.”
“Far-Awn did!” she threw back quickly.
“Yes, he had the luck of the Gods with him, and the puhlets to guide him to the star-flowers—and even so, he was there but two days. It will take us two hundred days, or maybe more, to reach that mountain!” Dray-Gon leaned forward, intently pleading with his eyes. “Don’t go, Sharita. Let someone else take your place. You will be nothing but a burden to us. There are outlaws hiding in the wildlands. If they know you are with our caravan, they could well raid our party, and try to steal you away. With you in their hands, they could force your father to concede to any demand!”
She laughed at him, getting up and dancing out onto a terrace, where she kicked off her blue slippers and twirled about before she threw herself down on a long blue couch. Dray-Gon followed
and stood beside the couch, staring down at her, wishing he could shake some sense into her beautiful head. She surprised him by reaching out to catch his hand, drawing him down to the couch. “Ah, Dray-Gon,” she began softly, in a way in which she had never spoken to him before, “you have no faith, while I do. My father and Es-Trall say it is possible to reach the Mountain, and I believe them. The outlaws may attack, but I have twenty of our strongest and bravest young men to defend me, and our weapons are much superior to their contrived bows and arrows. We will reach that mountain, and we will talk to the Gods! I know we will, and what’s more, we’ll live to reach home again.”
Oh, but she was one stubborn, hardheaded, beguiling woman. He could almost believe her, she seemed so certain. “Sharita, how can you speak so positively? How can you possibly be so certain? When I think about it, I see nothing ahead but impossible obstacles to overcome, and I don’t want you to die in the attempt.”
Sharita looked at him strangely, her violet, almost blue eyes shadowing. “I don’t know why I believe, yet I do.” She rose from the sofa and strolled to the farthest end of the long terrace, where she could see best the mountain that was pale blue-green in the distance. Rounded at the top, behind the jagged peaks of the Scarlet Mountains, it seemed from her vantage point perhaps a million miles away…as distant almost as a star. She felt Dray-Gon’s presence as he came to stand at her side, placing his hand on her balustrade next to hers. “We may never stand here together, like this again,” he said in a wistful voice, wishing they had a different kind of future ahead.
Her eyes met his. “Would it matter? You have your servant girl, who is warm, where I am cold. She will probably yield to all your persuasions, and you will have no need of me.”
He glared at her, anger darkening his eyes. Then he seized her in his arms and brutally kissed her. “There,” he said, throwing her down on the blue couch, “it seems you don’t want tenderness. You want to fight, and be taken ruthlessly. Maybe when the outlaws attack, we’ll just throw you to them, and say good riddance while we ride off on our way without the nuisance of some damned silly princess who has always gotten her own way in everything! Good-bye, Sharita, I’m off to see my servant girl! She is a thousand times sweeter than you are!”
The triple moons, rotating about each other as they encircled the planet, had made the journey one hundred plus two and twenty days, before the caravan of twenty plus one was ready for the long trip across the dry plains of Bay Sol. During that time, every person, young or old, of both Dorraines had helped to plan and prepare for that long and dangerous quest into the unknown.
There were no differences now between the two halves of the whole. United in cause, they stood behind the unprecedented journey. In unison they shared the concern for the safety of the twenty sons of the Upper and Lower bakarets and for the princess. Though never, really, did they quite believe that elusive, remote, and beautiful princess, accustomed to all the luxuries the crystal palace provided, would actually follow through and keep her promise. She would turn coward at the end, and cling to the safety of her high tower, protected by guards. She wouldn’t have the nerve to face the wilderness and all the discomforts, and even the pain it might provide. Nor did they for one minute think the king would not find a way to free the princess of her obligation, and keep her safe at his side. They knew what she was to him—his single remaining link to the future, and to eternity, for the laws forbade that even a king could reproduce himself more than three times, so crowded were the domed cities already.
Nor could they, in some ways, condemn the king for wanting to keep his only child safe. They would do the same. At the last moment the princess would be sick, unable to travel, or she would stumble and break a leg, some grand excuse, something sure to eliminate her. Some met in the wine taverns and placed wagers: the odds were one hundred to one.
The last evening before that fateful departure to conquer the impossible, and to face the Gods with a question, Dray-Gon met in secret with the lovely servant girl Ray-Mon. Through the darkness she came running to him in one of the isolated, most private of the palace gardens, where they embraced and kissed, and she clung to him with tears in her eyes.
“Please let no harm come to you, Dray-Gon,” she whispered, tattooing kisses all over his face. “But even if you survive, and I pray you do, you will come back to me a different man.”
“No, I will be the same,” he said gently, stroking her silky red hair. But Ray-Mon shook her head, denying this. “No, you are bound to change. You will ride off with the princess, the kind of woman meant for a man of your station, and you will forget me.”
“Don’t say that. I will never forget you, Ray-Mon!” Dray-Gon vowed. “You are all the soft and sweet feminine things that the princess doesn’t know the least thing about. I fear she is just meant for taking, not for giving.” His eyes grew bitter as he thought of the princess. “Besides, I have nineteen others who are competing for her favors. She cares nothing at all for me.”
“Then she is a fool!” declared Ray-Mon, and flung her arms around his neck, pressing on his lips a long, passionate kiss. When the kiss was over, they both stood looking at each other, in a kind of double shock. She was the first to recover, and slipped on the smallest finger of his left hand a silver ring with a small blue stone. “This is for good luck,” she whispered, her purple eyes swimming with tears. “Wear it until we meet again.”
It was then that Dray-Gon draped over Ray-Mon’s head a silver chain with a large heart-shaped pendant, centered with a very valuable blue diamond. “This is for your good luck,” he said before he kissed her again. “Wear it forever, so that it will always remind you of me, and the sweet times we have enjoyed together.”
The morning came too soon. The gaily decorated horshets were mounted, and the puhlet flock was herded, and the twenty young men and the single girl rode out through the shimmering gates of Far-Awndra. Cheering behind them were the voices of thousands upon thousands of people. The princess had not retreated! She was actually going!
The twenty young men were all dressed in smoke blue, with trimmings of the purple plum of night, and edgings of gold for the day. The Princess Sharita wore a uniform too, like those of the twenty young men, with a few alterations to fit her more abundant curves. Only her uniform was pure white, with blue piping and gold buttons, and a cap to match. Her magnificent hair flowed down her back in rippling waves. She turned and waved back to the cheering crowd, smiling at them with more gracious and genuine warmth than any had suspected she had. Now they were sorry to have misjudged her, and sorry she was riding away into the wildlands, into Bay Sol, risking her life, so that they might never see her again, or have the chance to know and love her. Many in the crowd began to cry, for her, for every one of those brave young men.
Dray-Gon turned and looked back too, raking his eyes over the crowd, searching to see Ray-Mon. But there were too many there with red hair and citron faces. He couldn’t pick her out from the crowd.
Ras-Far stood with his wife beside him, with the other parents of the twenty young travelers, and waved good-bye as cheerfully as any other. The king took pains to hide the tear that insisted on slipping down his cheek, traveling slowly to drop on the ground.
4
The Attack of the Outlaws
Each rider had two horshets apiece. One to ride, and one to use later when the first was tired. With them they had a flock of twenty puhlets, for that had been the charmed number for Far-Awn, and would be perhaps for them as well. They had five supply wagons, and a special wagon that would be a home for the princess. Each of the six wagons was pulled by a team of four horshets. The young sons of the bakarets took turns driving the wagons.
The wagons held a huge supply of water, plus quantities of concentrated and expandable food, enough to last for a year, if it took that long. The wagons were made of shimmering bygar, opaque, not transparent, of a smoke blue color like the puhlets. When the blustering, blazing, hot winds of Bay Sol blew, they would for
m an oblong with these wagons, lower protective shields over the wheels, and raise other shields over the wagons to form a pointed roof. Inside of their simulated, odd-shaped pyramid, they would take refuge with their animals when necessary. The wagons were equipped with machines that would heat, and others that would cool. They would survive! They would live! They were, each and every one, determined to reach that far Green Mountain!
The sensitive eyes of their horshets were shielded with a nonglare film. The puhlets were so uniquely evolved that they needed no extra man-made help. The riders of the horshets would shield their own eyes also from the white-hot glare of the dual suns on the white sands. Their long wagons were awkward to handle over the rough terrain, though they rode smoothly enough, for the wheels were cushioned with springs. Every trail had to be closely inspected by the scouts that were sent ahead to find the easiest route to travel, for the ruts and crevices could break the axles or mire a wheel.
The first night they drew their wagons into the rectangular shape, and lowered the shields to protect the wheels, but they did not raise the roof. All chose to look up and see the moons and the stars. They were terribly excited and talkative as they sat about their fires, groups of four individually cooking and preparing their own meals. It had been decided beforehand that the princess would eat her breakfast and noonday meal in her wagon, but the evening meal she would be the guest of one group of four alternately.
As chance would have it, for Sharita had reached into a hat and pulled out a number, it was Dray-Gon’s group with whom she shared her first evening meal. Enviously the other men looked to their campfire, where Sharita sat on a cushion, daintily eating a meal that was scorched, or on the other hand, not well done. She thought that tomorrow night, she would offer to assist in the preparation of the meal, and be hopeful that it turned out better than this one.
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