are not slain, as the Lord Wanek has suggested-may give you a new one, like rast or vosk. You have been evil, you have cared nothing for other people; but I cannot find it in my heart to condemn you for what your upbringing made you.”
“Dray Prescot!” she whispered again. How different now were the circumstances of our meeting! How changed her fortunes. With my clansmen about me with their weapons raised I looked down on Natema.
“You may live, girl, if you are lucky. Who would want a naked ragbag like you now? For you have nothing but an evil temper and a violent tongue and know nothing of laboring to make a man happy. But, maybe, there is to be found a man who can see something in you, who can find it in his heart to take you in and lift you up and clothe your nakedness and learn to school your tongue and temper. If there is such a man in all Kregen, he needs must love you very greatly to saddle himself with such a burden.”
To this day I do not truly know if Natema really loved me or was merely gratifying a lustful whim when she proposed herself to me. But my words struck through to her. She looked bewilderedly upon the pressing men in hostile dress all about her, at the steel of their weapons, at Wanek’s iron-masked face of hatred, and then she looked at her own naked body with the heavy chain pressing the white skin-and she screamed.
No longer could I hold back Prince Varden Wanek of Eward. He cradled her in his arms, smoothing back the lush yellow hair, calling for smiths to strike off the chains. He was whispering in her ear, and slowly her sobs and wild despair eased and her body relaxed from its rigid grip of hysteria. She looked at him, and, indeed, he was a fine and handsome sight. I saw those ripe red luscious lips curve.
I heard what she said.
She raised those luminous cornflower blue eyes to Varden, who was staring down at her with a foolish, happy, devoted and unbelieving look on his face.
“I think,” said the Princess Natema, “that blue will go with my eyes very well.”
I almost smiled, then.
A press circled in the hall and I saw a stately palanquin swing and sway in between the towering columns of the main entrance, slowly move toward the dais as the solidly packed masses of men whirlpooled away to give it passage. I also saw a sharp, weasel-faced little man dressed incongruously in clansman’s russet and with a long knife stuck through his belt, standing truculently, as though he had conquered everything himself, at the foot of the dais. Beneath the tunic of Nath the thief there were a number of highly suspicious bulges, and I remarked to myself that Shusha would be missing a few choice items when she installed herself in her new home.
“Hai, Nath, Jikai!” I called down to him, and he looked up with his furtive weasel face as proud as though he had stolen all three eyes from the great statue of Hrunchuk in the temple gardens across the forbidden canal.
The palanquin swayed to a halt and scarlet-liveried men helped Great-Aunt Shusha-who was not my great- aunt-up the dais steps. More men provided an ornate throne she must have had carried from some dusty and long- forgotten attic. She sat in it with a thankful gasp after climbing the dais steps. She was so covered with gems that scarcely a square inch was to be seen of her scarlet gown. Her bright eyes fixed on Varden, who had flung a great blue cape about Natema, and who now stood with his bride-to-be to one side.
All the noise of shuffling feet, of laughing, of hugely-excited men, fell silent. There was in the Great Hall of Strombor, that had once been Esztercari, an overwhelming tenseness of feeling, a current of thrilling excitement, a sense that history was being made, here and now, before all our eyes. The light fell from the tall windows and burned upon the colors and the weapons. The torches smoked and their streamers lofted into a high haze in which darting colored motes weaved endlessly. Even the very air smelled differently, tangy, tingling, bracing.
Here was a nodal point of history. Here was where a Noble House vanished, and another took its place, where the rightful House once more claimed its old rewards. The vague thought that I had been brought to Zenicce to encompass just this result flashed upon my mind, to be instantly dispelled.
I knew that Shusha might wish to administer the House of Strombor herself, for her Eward husband and sons and daughters were all dead and she was herself alone-but that she would certainly wish to unite the two Houses in the person of her great-nephew Varden. I felt this to a most happy outcome. She would will him everything, and this friendship between the Houses would be assured. I smiled at Varden where he clasped Natema, and surprised myself at the curve in my lips. His response a little surprised me, for he laughed widely, his eyes alight with merriment as he clasped Natema, and he bowed to me, a stately half-incline. I wondered what he meant.
Shusha of Strombor began to speak.
She was heard out in utter silence.
What she said shook and dumbfounded me, and explained Varden’s laugh and bow, for he must have known and approved. Shusha of Strombor had made me her legitimate heir, given me suzerainty over all the House of Strombor, with all ranks, privileges and dues thereto entailed in law; all the bokkertu-that is to say, the legal work- had been concluded. I was to assume at once the lawful title of Lord Strombor of Strombor. The House of Strombor was mine.
I stood there like a loon, stunned, not believing, thinking myself the victim of some kind of insane practical joke. But my men did not doubt. My wild wolves of the plains lifted their weapons on high and amidst a forest of flashing blades the cheers rang out. “Zorcander! Vovedeer! Strombor!” Among the russet and the powder blue there was now to be seen more color. The black and silver of Reinman, the crimson and gold of Wicken, others of our allies; they crowded in and lifted their weapons and shouted and roared.
“Dray Prescot of Strombor! Hai, Jikai!”
My slave clansmen knew I would not desert them for a soft city life; was I not their Zorcander and was I not sworn in obi-brotherhood with them? So they bellowed with the best. That great and glorious hall rang to the repeated cheers as the swords lifted high.
I looked at Shusha.
Her wizened face and bright eyes reminded me of a wise old squirrel who has stored her nuts and seeds for the winter to come. That stiff slit in my lips twitched again. I smiled at Shusha.
“You cunning-” I said. And as she laughed I went to her and knelt. She put her ring-loaded hand on my shoulder. That hand trembled; but not with age.
“You will do what is right, Dray Prescot. We have talked long into the night and I have seen you in action and I believe I know your heart.”
“Strombor will be a mighty House once more,” I told her, and I took her other hand in mine. “But, there is one thing-slavery. I will not tolerate slavery whether it be a kitchen drudge or a pearl-strung dancing girl. I will pay wages and the House of Strombor will maintain only free retainers.”
“You do not surprise me, Dray Prescot.” She pressed my hand. “It will seem a little strange, an old woman like me, going through life without a slave at my beck and call.”
I looked at her on her great throne. “My Lady of Strombor,” I said, sincerely. “You will never be without a slave at your feet.”
“Why, you great big slobber-mouth lap-lollied chunkrah! Get along with you!” But she was pleased. The noise in the Great Hall bellowed and racketed to that wonderful ceiling and I could look down from the dais again.
A man in black and silver was talking to Varden, who had been about to leap up to congratulate me as had the others on the dais, clasping my hand, the first of whom had been Hap Loder. Varden, holding Natema in the crook of his left arm, seized the man by his silver cords, staring into his face. My attention was instantly arrested. Then, the man’s laughing having ceased abruptly, he was pushed back by Varden, who came roaring and raging up the dais steps to me. Shusha regarded him with a lift of her old eyebrows. He came straight to me.
I stood up and held out my hand in affection.
“You knew of this, Varden, my friend?”
“Yes, yes-Dray! Hanam of Reinman has just brought news. He was laughing at our good fortune that the Prince Pracek of Ponthieu did not intervene in the fighting, and that they had had no need to cover us in that quarter, for the prince was celebrating his nuptials this day.”
“I had heard,” I said, surprised at his manner, at once agitated and nervous. “He is marrying a princess of Vallia, is he not?”
“A great match,” put in Wanek, with an odd look at the form of Natema shrouded in her blue cloak. I guessed he wished Varden, his son, had made a match that brought with it a whole island under one government, an invincible fleet, and trade contacts firm for ten thousand miles of Kregen. Plus a fleet of airboats hardly seen outside Havilfar.
“A great match, indeed, Dray Prescot!” burst out Prince Varden. “A match such as a Jikai would not suffer to
