have your arm off and see if it will fit!”
But I eased the pressure, and he gasped, and his fingers moved like a crab’s legs.
“Cayferm!” he said. “Steam!”
It made no sense to me then. The common Kregish word for steam is
I let him go.
The names of the nine ingredients were imprinted on my brain. For good measure — and ill luck as it turned out — I took up three of the scales they used here, for I recognized the workmanship of them and knew they would be invaluable in Vallia. After all, Vallia was going to be drawn into a war against Hamal, despite all our attempts to prevent it.
The way back through the darkness took me little time. I felt uplifted. I had done more tonight than in all my long sojourn in Hamal. And I had a clue, a single slender thread, it was true, to the contents of the other silver boxes. I felt very good then, I remember, as I made for the massive iron-bound lenken door that had opened so easily for Ornol.
He had known what cayferm was. I would seek him out again and give him more money, and ask again. Truly, as I put out my hand to draw the door open, I felt I had succeeded at long last. The door creaked uneasily as I drew it back stealthily.
I had to be sensible. I had not succeeded yet. Almost; not quite. A few more hours’ work — and then I would succeed!
A torchlight flared in my face.
A voice, a hateful voice, thick and rich and giving commands that gave pleasure, bellowed: “Take him!”
The net descended about my head and shoulders with wicked entangling folds. I half drew the thraxter, still near blinded by lights that glared all about me. If skull-bashing was necessary, then I would skull-bash with a will!
The thraxter caught in the net.
Iron-studded sandals scuffled at my back, and like a leem I ducked and sprang and fell, the net wrapping me as a fish is wrapped, and whatever they bit me with landed precisely under my ear. Notor Zan. .
Chapter Eighteen
Queen Thyllis outfits Bagor ti Hemlad
The twin suns of Kregen burned down harshly on my naked back as I swung the pickax, smashing granite, and so I was not at all displeased when Matoc Fokal hauled me out of the sweating line of slaves.[8]
Fokal wasn’t a bad sort, really, for a Hamalian slave overseer. He carried the balass, that black and uncomfortably hard stick of office, and would thwack us about, but he seldom bashed our heads, unlike some of the other overseers.
“What’s afoot, Fokal?”
We walked along the lip of the ramparts. Ruathytu’s walls were being strengthened and the slaves broke fingernails and sweated their guts out over the fortifications. We were all chained up, and Fokal had to summon Deldar Nath the Whip to come with the key before I could be released. I still clashed my own chains, though, swinging between my legs and my wrists as I walked. Everything done according to the law, in Hamal. .
“I do not know, Bagor, you wild onker. A summons for you to go with a party of guards.” He spat. “It is not the Jikhorkdun, though.” Then he let rip a bellyful of laughter. “Not that I wouldn’t pay my sinver to see you facing a wild leem, by Beng Thrax and his glass eye!”
Around us the busy work went on. Among those poor devils who were slaves for the rest of their lives were men like the man I was supposed to be, a common criminal. I did not know whether to pound granite to dust in anger or to howl to the suns in glee — here was I, spying against Hamal, and they had caught me stealing three valuable scales, and had tried me and sentenced me as a thief! A laugh, I suppose, even for Dray Prescot, could be the only correct response.
The guards turned out to be ordinary swods under the command of an ord-Deldar.[9]We marched off with me in the center, all their iron-studded sandals crashing down in time, a left-right-left of brutal power, their stuxes all aslant, the suns gleaming from their helmets and loricas, their shields brave with the painted insignia of their pastang and regiment.
Matoc Fokal was a slave overseer with a sense of humor as well as a balass rod. “Treat him gently,” he bawled after the guard detail. “That Bagor is like a wild leem if you upset him!”
Not for the first time I blessed the conceit that had led me to use again that name of Bagor when dealing with the underworld of Ruathytu. No possible connection could be established between the naked slave in his chains sweating along among guards, and the effeminate Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley. My friends who had not gone off to war with the Trylon Rees’s regiment of zorcamen would think I visited Paline Valley.
My hair had grown, too, although the slave overseers saw to it that we were cropped and bathed at regulation intervals.
Bundled into the back of a cart drawn by two calsanys, and the canvas awning let down, I was trundled off I knew not where.
The guards’ harsh footfalls paralleled the cart. All for one miserable slave? I began to wonder if, perhaps, my disguise had been penetrated. But then, by how much? How deeply into my multifarious deceptions had they penetrated? It was no good worrying; I would find out in Zair’s good time. The calsanys halted just after the hollow echoes told me we had entered a stone courtyard bounded by high walls. The moment I was dragged out a great blindfold was whipped about my eyes. Prodded and pushed, I went where I was directed, up stone stairs, along passages, then into corridors where carpets felt soft and luxurious beneath my toughened soles. Coolness dropped about me, and the tinkle and splash of fountains sounded most refreshingly. I heard girls laughing. I heard the deep-toned voices of men in conversation, their worlds clearly far removed from that of slaving. A feeling of soft pressure against my shoulder explained why no one appeared to have taken any notice of a party of armed guards and a naked slave in chains; some form of pierced screen, of wood or ivory, probably, shielded us from their observation. I was led into a room I knew by the echoes to be relatively small. A door clashed. The guards remained, for I heard their suppressed breathing, the creak of their harness.
After a moment a fat and unctuous voice said: “Is this it?”
“This is the slave Bagor, Notor,” said the Deldar.
The abrupt feel of soft fingers prodding my muscles, digging me in the belly, poking about in my mouth, sickened me.
I bit.
The resultant shriek was most instructive. The blow that sent me reeling until brought up by the chains was also intended to be instructive.
“The nulsh!” The fat eunuch — it had to be — sounded anguished. “Take it away! Wash it! Clean it!
Perfume it! Do not bring the offensive carcass before me again until it has been tamed.”
The Deldar’s voice hid a quaver. “We were told the slave Bagor was a wild leem, Notor.”
They carted me off and I went through a caricature of the baths of nine. At least, I washed off the sweat and the dust. They dressed me up in a mocking suit of colored clothes, all bright yellows and greens and reds, with feathers, bells, and ribbons. I knew I looked an imbecile; I would endure, for by now I was intrigued.
Again the blindfold was wrapped about me. This second time the journey was shorter, and involved getting into and out of a boat. The soldiers pulled the oars and by the splashings I knew they were an unhandy lot. I was prodded up a steep and slippery flight of stone steps, very narrow, and the guards lumbered after, swearing by their soldier gods.
More chambers and corridors and stairs followed. At last, and not before time, I was told to incline. I did so. I wanted to know what was going on. The incline involves the prostration of the entire body, head down, rump up, a stupid and undignified position, one used by slaves for princes. Or princesses. The blindfold was whipped away, many lights blinded me, and a harsh voice bade me crouch. I crouched.
Then, blinking, I could see through the tears in my smarting eyes.
She sat on a throne fashioned from crystal, a block of multifaceted crystal that must have weighed tons. The
