“Quidang!”
Endru and Carlotta watched the prince and the girl walk toward the queen’s tent.
Torchlight pooled around the tents. The ever-present murmurous noise of an army even at night floated in from the camp. Carlotta and Endru resumed their conversation.
The white-shawled girl and Drak vanished into the darkness between the two pools of light.
“I suppose, my famous kampeon,” said Carlotta, joking Endru for whom she had a deep respect, “you fancy that chit of a girl instead of a jurukker like me.”
“Why, Carlotta!” Endru put on a show of gallantry. “You malign me cruelly. Anyway, who is she? I have never seen her before.”
“Nor have I. The queen is highly choosy about the girls who serve her. I saw little of this one in the torchlight; but she looked beautiful, as I’m sure you noticed. The queen does not often have really beautiful young girls about her person.”
Carlotta saw no need to give the reason for that.
Looking at the queen’s tent in its sheath of light and the Jikai Vuvushis on guard there, Endru waited for the girl and the prince to appear. He’d have a careful look at her. Prospects might be improving... He waited expectantly.
Presently, he said, “Where are they?”
Before Carlotta had time to answer, Endru bellowed at his men. The shock hit him like a thunderclap.
“Turn out the guard! Alarm! Follow me!”
He ran like a maniac for the darkness between the tents.
Carlotta, abruptly aware of the situation, shrilled: “Bring lights!” and took off after Endru.
Past those pools of light the night clamped down with only one of Kregen’s lesser moons vaulting past. The starlight did nothing to assist Endru’s eyes, still dazzled by the torches. He ran on, blinking, whipping out his sword, trying to see.
The horror he experienced drove him on. The prince, who considered him as a friend, depended on him. And he had failed him! He ran on dementedly.
A vague shape ahead...? The fugitive starlight wink of a blade...? Endru peered ahead. That was the petal shape of an airboat. Figures, dark and ominous, clustered below and then he saw the sudden blob of white rising up against the flank of the flier.
That was the white shawl of that Opaz-forsaken girl!
They had been duped. The prince was in mortal peril. Endru shouted, screaming, and ran on headlong. Carlotta, up with him now, fleetly running, saw what was going on. Her sword snouted. Together, they rushed on as the last figures clambered aboard the airboat. It began to rise.
A lump and then another showed above the bulwarks.
Endru felt nothing. One moment he was running on, the next he was pitching forward, flat on his face, with the crossbow bolt through him. He tried to yell, and froth and blood bubbled. Carlotta fell on top of him. He tried to push her off and she felt like all the Mountains of the North. He stared up as his men reached him, swords and spears brandished, and saw the airboat rise and turn and, as his eyes misted over, she vanished into the shadows.
* * * *
King Vodun Alloran beamed. He felt the glow of pleasure all through him. Chemsi the Fair had not been treating him just lately as he considered a king should be treated, and she had packed her baggage and been seen off. Just where she’d been sent, Alloran did not inquire. He was too wrapped up in his new light o’ love, Thelda the Voluptuous.
And, on top of his new conquest — this!
With deep, delicious delight coursing all through him, King Vodun Alloran stared down upon the bound and unconscious body of Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia.
“You have done well, Scauron the Gaunt. Exceedingly well.”
“If I have served you, majister—”
Alloran’s wits were quick enough.
“What, fambly, that will requite you? No gold, then?”
Caught out, Scauron bowed. “I am at the command of the king, majister.”
“Good. Then get this proud prince sent into the custody of the Mantissae. Tell them that never have they been offered a choicer morsel. No, by Takroti, never!”
Again, Scauron bowed, and started on his duties. He accepted orders and carried them out. He didn’t much care for all the Katakis thronging about Alloran. But he did know, as they say on Kregen, to keep his hat on in the rain.
Frightened slaves carried the limp form of the prince through side corridors from the anteroom where Scauron the Gaunt had delivered him to the king. Drak was passed on through a triply guarded doorway into the clutching claws of the Mantissae.
Tells of a wisp of straw
Although the darkness was not that of a night of Notor Zan — when no moons shine in the skies of Kregen — the Maiden with the Many Smiles would be late, and only a lesser moon raced across the starfields. The night breeze whispered along the cobbled alleyways of Rashumsmot. Lights flickered erratically. This was a night for ghosties and ghoulies to prowl the shadowed streets seeking soft throats and warm blood. Silda Segutoria firmly ensconced in the persona of Lyss the Lone, threw off these childish fancies.
She had put in a great deal of hard work on Crafty Kando’s nefarious band. They were not drikingers, bandits, but they were a cutthroat crew. At the smell of gold, a number of newcomers had been recruited by Kando, all men and women he certified as safe.
Between them and under Silda’s guidance they had scouted the back areas of the villa and Kando had pronounced no difficulty in getting into the grounds. These folk had their ways of avoiding sentries. But, to get into the building itself was an altogether different kettle of fish. Silda had rejected any ideas of introducing this hairy bunch into the normal entrances. They’d not be chucked out on their ears immediately. Oh, no. They’d be rounded up at the points of spears and sold off as slaves.
So she was forced to arrange a break-in. All the ordinary windows would be no use. Many of the men in the gang were accomplished bar breakers or benders, and others specialists in door-opening. If Silda’s plan was to work, these folk were of paramount importance. The other important side of this operation nearly caused the whole show to come to grief.
“Swords?” said Lop-eared Tobi. His voice did not so much quaver as shrill in alarm.
“Swords?” yelped Long Nath. “Oh, no!”
“But,” said Silda, nonplused. “If we meet up with sentries—”
“Run, or loop ’em, or the knife,” quoth Yolande the Gregarian. The meeting, the last before Silda felt herself fully committed, being held at Yolande’s crumbling house again, provided remarkable calm after earlier attempts at meetings. “Or,” added Yolande, “a short spear, perhaps.”
“Very well,” snapped Silda. “I will provide short spears. By Vox! I thought you’d have handled swords in your lives.”
“Oh, no, my lady. Swords are not for the likes of us.”
So, outfitted as a gang of thieves with the addition of short spears purloined from the armory by Lyss the Lone, they’d set off. And the night was dark.
Silda, a Sister of the Rose, needed no assistance in scaling the outer wall. She was as adept as any of the skulkers at skulking. A funny little thought hit her that Dayra, or Jilian, would joy to be with her now. They prowled on toward the wall of the villa, shrouded in darkness, and if there were any sentries in this quarter their presence was not made known.
Crafty Kando said between his teeth: “Wait here.”
He slid off with a few of his people to check the last approaches across a greensward. Silda with the others waited in shrubbery. The night pressed down.
Presently, Kando returned. His whisper breathed like a furtive slipper on polished wood.
“The damned windows are all boarded up. Bricked up. You promised us an entrance, my lady.”
“Let me have a look.” Silda was fed up with handing about. “There are windows all along the wall here.”
She and Kando slid ahead, ghostlike through the darkness. Kando had to acknowledge that this fine lady certainly knew how to skulk. They reached the wall and in the dimness Silda saw two windows bricked up.
“They are all like this at the back,” said Kando.
“What about those?” Silda indicated windows set in the angle of wall and ground. “They are barred, yes. Does that prevent you?”
“No, But they must lead below ground.”
“And a good place to start. I’ll get the rest of the people. You start.”
Silda, without more ado, started back for the shrubbery.
A voice from out of the darkness said, “Silda.”
She stopped as though shot through by a crossbow bolt.
“Silda!”
Her first thought was that this must be Mandi Volanta out on sentry go. But that voice — she knew whose voice that was...
Off to the side and hidden from observation from Kando at the wall and the others in the shrubbery a yellow light bloomed. That glow looked for all the world like the radiance from a samphron-oil lamp. She ran silently straight for the glow, halting, peering, saying, “Deb-Lu!”
“Yes, Silda, my dear, it is me. There is very little time. Drak—”
Silda felt her heart contract. “What of Drak?”
“He needs your help. You defended him against the clansmen and would have given your life. The emperor used his skill with the Krozair longsword through my arts in gladiomancy. You remember, Silda, up there in Ithieursmot in Northern Jevuldrin?”
“I remember.”
Deb-Lu-Quienyin, a magical and mystically powerful Wizard of Loh, did not really stand in the garden of King Vodun’s villa in Rashumsmot. Deb-Lu could be anywhere in Vallia. In his plain robes with his funny old turban that was forever falling over one ear, he was bathed in the lamp’s glow, here in the darkness of a single-moon night!
Silda was vaguely aware that the two Wizards of Loh exerted their thaumaturgical powers in defense of their comrades. She had never considered the matter over much. Now Deb-Lu-Quienyin rattled on passionately.
“I will try to guide you, Silda. Drak has been taken by the madman Alloran. He is to be sacrificed, and there is sorcery involved. My arts — such as they are — are at you disposal. But I must work through a — well, never mind that. Choose the fifth window from the right end of the villa, and break through. And, Silda — hurry!”
“I will, I will. Drak—”
“By Hlo-Hli, Silda. Run!”
The eeriness of this confrontation, the insubstantial wraith-form of the wizard, projected by the power of his kharrna for miles and miles through thin air, could not be allowed to affect her. She fairly flung herself on, calling in a low penetrating voice. The people from the shrubbery came out, warily, casting glances in every direction. They did not see the Wizard of Loh.
At the wall Silda, impatiently, said, “Break through the fifth window from the right. And hurry.”
“Now wait a minute,” said Kando, standing up. He’d been working on the first window. “Why—?”
“There’s no time to argue. The fifth window.”
Crafty Kando saw the girl meant what she said. One window or the next, so what was the difference? He got his people started on breaking a way in. Expert at their tasks, they had the bars out and a rope down and then all eyes turned on Silda. She didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the rope, put her booted feet into the chute-like opening and slid down. The darkness and the stench hit her as though she’d plummeted into Cottmer’s Caverns.
Deb-Lu’s voice whispered, “Tell them to wait.”
She called up the slot, “Wait!”
Another voice, faint, husky with soreness, said, “What? Who’s there?”
“We have come to save you in return for a favor,” said the ghostly apparition of Deb-Lu, now faintly visible. He must have turned down his lamp so that his shrewd friendly features, highlighted, took on that upwardly shadowed aura of omnipotent power. He did not look the cheerful, pottering old buffer Silda knew and loved. Now he looked what he truly was, one of the most powerful mages in all of Kregen.
“I am chained and helpless—”
“You will soon be set free. In return you must use your powers, aided by mine, to guide my friends. We seek a certain person whose value to us is immense. I am sure you understand the nature of our bargain.”
“You are a Wizard of Loh?”
“Yes.”
“Then, San, I must agree and place my ib under the hand of Opaz into your protection. I will do as you command.”
“Thank you, San Fraipur.”
A wisp of straw among the dire scatterings on the floor lifted, it seemed of its own accord, and rose into the air. It curved toward Silda and she took it into her hand.
“When San Fraipur is free, give him the talisman. There is power therein. He will know how to use it. I have done what I can for now. There are portents in Vallia, werewolves to be dealt with. Time is running out. Hurry!”
The glow faded and Deb-Lu was gone.
“Come down!” Silda called up the tunnel slot.
Lon the Knees was first down. He made a face at the smell and then started to strike a light. Kando and the others followed, and although they crowded the cell, they made no more noise than the schrafters in their hidden recesses gnawing on dead men’s bones.
As they started in on the job of freeing Fraipur, two men appeared at the cell opening, took one look, and tried to flee. One was a butter-head Gon, the other an apim with half a left ear. Both were hit on the head with just sufficient force to put them to sleep. They were bound.
Silda gave Fraipur the wisp of straw. Truth to tell, she could feel no difference in the straw; but Fraipur took it up and in the covered-lantern glow she could see him as it were swell, grow taller. He put on the unconscious apim’s rough clothes and without a word immediately led off out of the cell. Silda felt a rush of confidence.
The layout of the villa as it had been in the past was known in the thieves fraternity and Silda was able to indicate the likely places where Alloran had altered walls and made doors to create his secret apartments in the rear. There was no certainty about any of that, of course; but common sense told her that if she went up and remained in the rear she would emerge beyond that mysterious gold-framed green velvet door. She urged the band on with vigor, and San Fraipur, talisman in hand, went in the van.
With shielded lights they went up the stairs, broke quietly through a locked door, and so came into a carpeted corridor. Fraipur unhesitatingly turned right.