A voice spoke from the corner of the inn and I was off the zorca and under the eaves before the last words were uttered.
‘Temper, temper!” said this light voice. “If you would accept a Llahal and a drink of wine from a stranger, they are here for the asking.”
Cautiously, the hilt of bamboo in my right hand and the rest of the stick in my left, ready for emergencies, I peered around the corner. A man sat there on a pile of old sacks holding out a leather wine bottle. The spout was formed of balass, black and shining, stoppered with silver-wound ivory.
“Wine, dom,” said this young fellow, smiling.
“It is too early for wine,” I said, somewhat surlily. “But Llahal, I thank you and I will take a sip.”
I took the bottle. It was deliciously cool. I moistened my mouth — a light white Yellow Unction; so this fellow had a few silver coins to rattle in his pouch — and then took two measured swallows. I looked hard at this purveyor of wine. Young, in that way the Kregans, with their better than two-hundred-year life span look young, he had a peaked, cheerful face, with merry eyes and a droll mouth. He was dressed in a simple open-necked buff tunic and decent breeches. His boots were not black, being of a tan color, well-splashed with the white dust of the road. He had a scrip and a staff, and at his belt hung a strong lesten-hide satchel.
I handed the wine bottle back. “My thanks, dom.”
“Oh, I am Covell. Men call me Covell of the Golden Tongue.”
“I have heard of you,” I said, pleased. “All Vondium rings with praises for your latest, Time Lost is Time Gained Hereafter,’ I believe. A fine poem.”
He laughed easily and drank wine himself, moderately.
This Covell was by way of being a poet. I saw that he favored the unconventional life, in order to gain the experiences he distilled into his verses. Some of the older and sterner critics of Vallia condemned his work as trifling, but they were a trifle ossified, or so his supporters said.
“What brings you here? Is Vondium too hot for you again?”
“You know me then? Yes, a tavern brawl and an onker with a knife in his guts, he did not die. But the guards thought to lay me by the heels and question me, and I do not fancy mewing up. So I took to my travels again.”
“Who does? I am Nath the Gnat and—”
“And,” he said easily, laughing, standing up, “and you are no laborer or farmworker, not even a cattleman. Whoever you are, Gnat is not the appellation for you, dom.”
I remembered to bend over at that, whereat he laughed again.
“I have my hirvel tethered in the shade. Should we ride together? I heard uncommon evil stories of Blessed Delphond in these latter days.”
I fired up at this. If my Delia did not know what was going on in her estates, then it behooved me to find out.
“Right willingly, Covell. But I am a laborer. That is true.”
I meant I labored for a living, not that I was a laborer who dug ditches or built walls. I fancied this Covell of the Golden Tongue understood.
“There are fields of labor that demand other skills than brawny shoulders.” He picked up his satchel. “I labor with words, and damned intractable beasts they can be, as well as singing with golden wonder. Why I do so is beyond my limited understanding.”
He mounted up on his hirvel. The animal was a fine beast, superior to Whitefoot, whom I had slapped on the rump and sent off, knowing he would find his own way back to his owner. Covell eyed the zorca.
“You are well mounted for a laboring man, Nath the Gnat.”
“The zorca came to me by way of a bequest from a dead man.”
He laughed again at this and shook his reins; together we rode gently along the dusty white road. He carried a long-knife like Oby’s and, as far as I could see, no other weapon on his person, although a short blade mounted on a shaft some six feet in length was stuck down into a boot on his stirrup. His scrip and staff were slung onto the hindquarters of the hirvel, and rode a trifle awkwardly.
So we rode along talking. It is not my intention to regale you with all we spoke of, but you may be very sure I soaked up all the information he gave, and as it bears on this my narrative I will tell you, all in due time.
Covell mentioned the concern felt in Vondium over the continual unrest in the northeast of Vallia. Up there the folk were of altogether a more down-to-earth character, blunt, hardheaded, out for red gold and self-determination.
Using some little skill I introduced a query about black feathers into our talk.
He replied as an educated man interested in literature would reply, quoting
The Black Feathers of Ulbereth the Dark Reiver,
giving a stanza or two of that old epic fashioned from the legends of olden time. But that is another story.
I judged that he did not dissemble and had not encountered the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. But I would not completely trust anyone in this thing.
So, later, I mentioned the craze for flying fluttrells in Vondium, and suggested that flying a chyyan might be interesting. Whereat he said: “I have flown a fluttrell owned by a comrade, Nath ti Havring — and an experience it was, too! — but I am told by those who know about these things that chyyans are unridable. Surely, Nath the Gnat, it is zhyans you mean?”
“Perhaps it is,” I said. “They are all foreign, out of Hamal. Give me a zorca.”
“Aye. But one day these great soldiers of ours will go up against Hamal, and we poets will be forced to sing their praises. I prefer to tune my songs to sweeter themes.”
“Amen to that.”
I pressed him to recite a line or two of his own, and nothing loath, for he loved an audience, he declaimed his “Ode to Dawning,” in which the red sun Zim and the green sun Genodras are apostrophized as mere balls of colored fire, without sentience, marvels of nature, bringing light to all men over the whole of Kregen. He added, when he had finished, that translating Zim to Far and Genodras to Havil ruined the feel of the piece. “I have a large contempt for religiosity in pious hypocrites. Opaz is well enough, I suppose, given as a sop. But a man’s heart is his true religion.”
I made no direct answer. Rafik trusted in a right arm and a sword, and Covell in a man’s heart. What, then, did I trust in? Anything at all apart from my Delia and the Krozairs of Zy?
When I had first returned to Kregen after that hideous expanse of twenty-one years on Earth I had fancied Kregen had not changed. The more I learned the more I discovered that this marvelous world had changed, was changing and was like to change even faster as the days wore on.
When Covell spoke of the emperor he simply laughed and made witty jokes. He did say that the taverns reeked with plots, and then contemptuously dismissed them as wine-soaked dreams. “Trouble is coming to Vallia, Nath the Gnat, and all men can see that plain. There is the northeast. There are the racters. There are other parties and plots. I want none of them! By Vox! I am a poet and as a poet will I live and die a happy man. All else is illusion.”
“You do not share the fear of the locals to travel alone?”
“Do you?”
“Ah, well, I was not fully aware of the situation, being a simple wandering laborer. If there is no work here by reason of the troubles—”
“There are no troubles in Delphond, at least not yet. That is why I chose to travel here. But the lonely traveler is not as safe as he once was and isolated houses, like the inn where we met, are no longer little fortresses of peace. The damned aragorn prowl all the land — aye, and the racters aid and abet them. That is where their money comes from.”
“You do not like the racters?”
“I dislike all political parties. I am an individual.”
“The people take precautions against drikinger.”
“Yes, but Delphond is not an easy province for bandits.”
“So it is the slavers they fear?”
“If the emperor and the Presidio do not act soon no one will be safe. Vallia is like to be torn asunder.”
Deliasmot was its usual charming, smiling self, a typically beautiful, easygoing, life-loving Delphondian town. Yet even here the new edginess was apparent, the more anxious demeanor, the stricter controls at the gates. Here Covell of the Golden Tongue and I parted, for he was contracted to give a recitation of his poetry, a declamation he called it, and I was for the canal and for pressing on to Drakanium where I would meet Delia.
We made our Remberees and I expressed my disappointment at missing his declamation, for he was truly a golden voice, and then I hurried to the canal to make travel arrangements. The zorca ensured a ticket in a narrow boat. I found a quiet seat where I might watch the passing banks, sliding along all green and golden under the suns, and I dozed and took my meals with the best of them and kept to myself, tolerated here in Delphond, and so came at last gliding with the canalfolk all hauling lustily away under the stone vaulted archways of Drakanium’s watergate.
As a city, Drakanium was simply a larger edition of a Delphondian town, clean, neat, sparkling, bowered in vegetation, filled with the prosperous bustle of a contented folk — at least it had been. The city was just as clean and neat and the flowers bloomed magnificently and the fountains played. But the people hurried about their tasks with worried looks. A regiment of totrixmen were exercising on the parade ground and I judged by their antics they were newly formed. The Jiktar was near to apoplexy as he bellowed orders, and the awkward six-legged totrixes tangled up and squealed and the lances all slanted at odd angles. But they flew nice banners and flags.
I had agreed to meet Delia at the best inn, instead of her villa here, to keep my cover. A hostler took in my message, giving me a sharp look as he went in through the lenken door under the glowing tiles, where the moon-blooms clustered thickly. Bees droned and the shadows lay across the stone-flagged court. I sat down on a bench and a serving wench brought out a flagon of best Delphondian ale. I quaffed it gratefully.
To these people I was a mere wanderer, a tramp, and if the Princess Majestrix wished to speak with me she would, and that was her business, and if she did not, then I would be told and seen off the premises. They are civilized in Delphond.
The hostler came back. He wore a frown.
“I gave your message to the landlord, dom. He says to tell you the Princess Majestrix is not here.”
“When is she expected? Maybe I am early.”
“Oh, she’s been here. You were expected.” He did not add that he couldn’t for the life of him understand why a great and glorious princess should worry her beautiful head over a dingy tramp. He went on, almost casually, imparting his news: “She has had to return posthaste to Vondium.”
I stood up.
“Did she say why?”
He took a step back. His coarse sacking apron rustled as he switched his arms out. “No. She did not say. Just that she had to go to Vondium on a matter of extreme urgency. A courier came in an airboat. From the emperor, it was said. The princess went with him and her suite with her.” He rolled his eyes with the memory of a great dread removed. “She had a ghastly creature with her, a most bloodthirsty monster, all claws and fangs and hair, but they all went in the airboat to Vondium.”
That monster was Melow the Supple, and I felt relief.
Relief that Delia was safe. But what could have caused her to dash back to Vondium? What disaster had struck now?
Of an independent girl of Vallia
The airboat flew swiftly toward Vondium.
Once I had received Delia’s message I had wasted no time. A quick trip to our villa in Drakanium, a change of clothes, with a flustered majordomo and flunkies running in circles, a hamper of food and drink, weapons, money, and I was away in one of the small fliers we kept at the villa, as we tried to keep a voller or two at all our places.
I did not think my cover had been broken, but then, I didn’t give a damn if it had. What had happened in Vondium to drag Delia away? Was the emperor dead? But everyone would have known — no. No, perhaps not. It paid very often to keep news of the deaths of kings and emperors secret for as long as possible.
The voller was a fleet craft, for its stabling at the villa envisaged its emergency use, and we made a good thirteen and a half to fourteen dbs.
[2]
At this headlong speed I would reach Vondium in a couple of hours. So, composing myself as best I could, I sat down and raided the hamper. Of the details of that meal I remain vague, save that I ate and drank and looked continually ahead for the fantastic sight of Vondium, the capital city of the Empire of Vallia, to rear over the distant horizon.
Once again I was entering Vondium at breakneck speed and with a single definite goal in mind. I flashed over the broad expanse of pastureland and agricultural activity surrounding the city. The waters of She of the Fecundity, the Great River of Vallia, sparkled ahead. There were the Hills, spread out and bowered in greenery, with the flash and gleam of white villas and red roofs. There were the sky-spanning aqueducts. There the grim gray walls and the higher battlements in gleaming yellow and sapphire, the flagstaffs, the conical tower roofs, the long, incredibly thin extensions of archways beneath the suns. Other fliers circled in landing and ascending patterns. The broad swaths of the major canals and ornate boulevards crisscrossed the city, creating islands of stone or brick, the timber and stucco island given over to parks and preserves, islands covered with barracks and factories, islands for sport, islands for all the devoted pursuits that obsessed the citizens of Vondium.
Of it all I fastened my eager gaze on the enormous Palace of the Emperors.
Over wide colonnaded streets parallel to the canals we flew, this speedy little voller and I, seeing below the broad wharfside avenues thronged with busy people. Over a cluster of temples, built to foreign tolerated gods, over an arm of a canal leading directly to the Great River where shipbuilders worked on the skeletons of galleons of Vallia, bare and ribby in the light. On, and now I slanted down, aiming for the palace. The majestically architectured kyro before the main façade showed its usual hectic activity and few people bothered to look up at a single small air-boat.