“Lahal, Stylor.”
I felt out of place. They both stood looking at me as though I were a ghost. In a way, I was. But they were both acting in a natural way, both cursing by and calling on Grodno, the green-sun deity of Genodras.
What, I wondered then with a dizzying feeling of helplessness, would Pur Zenkiren, or Pur Zazz, make of this situation?
I pulled myself together.
“I cannot stay long,” I said. “And I cannot venture outside the warren.”
Genal said, at once, hotly: “You may stay here as long as you wish, Stylor. Here, you are safe.”
He bent and picked up a gray tunic. I saw the green and black badges of a worker overseer, he of the balass stick. “I wield the balass now, as well as Pugnarses. We can offer you help, Stylor.” He eyed me keenly, looking at my shoulders and biceps. “Was it the galleys?”
“Aye, Genal, it was.”
“And you escaped!” Pugnarses whistled. I suspected he was annoyed that Genal had aspired to the balass while he, Pugnarses, still stayed as a worker overseer, and had not yet reached his coveted ambition, the white loincloth and the whip of the overseer of overseers.
“What of Follon the Fristle?” I asked. It would be as well at first to let these two believe what they willed.
Pugnarses let rip with a disgusting sound. Genal made a face and an obscene sign. I had forgotten the manners of slaves; this was a salutary reminder. I had best not forget. .
“He, too, is of the balass. He gave information about an escape — when you disappeared — he was rewarded.”
“I’m glad you had the sense not to become involved, Genal.”
“But we will rise, one day-”
“Yes,” I said.
Their heads lifted as I spoke.
“And — Holly?”
Their reactions were interesting. Both cast a swift look at each other, then away, and their faces went blank.
“She is well, Stylor,” said Genal.
“She is more fair than all the painted women of the palaces of Magdag,” said Pugnarses with some vehemence.
So that was how it was.
I had not come to the slave and worker warrens to see Holly, although I hoped I would see her soon. I had to establish an identity with these men. Already they believed I was an escaped galley slave, coming to them for help. That was a start.
“I may have to ask your help in concealing me,” I said. “From time to time. For I have great plans.” I broke off. A slim shadow broke the parallelogram of pink moonlight. Soon, that moonlight would silver as the night wore on, but the shadow now hesitating in the doorway was surrounded by a pink halo. A low voice breathed a single word.
“Stylor!”
Holly was still incredibly lovely. She had matured, but I knew those innocent lines of naivete concealed an iron resolve. Beside her the Princess Susheeng was an overblown, raddled bloom of autumn.
“Lahal, Holly-” I began.
But she rushed toward me and flung her arms about my neck. Her slender lissome body pressed all nakedly to mine. Her lips, hot and moist and overpowering with a passionate ardor that shocked through me, crushed down on my mouth. And as she kissed me with such abandon I saw over her shoulder the faces of Genal and Pugnarses, staring at me, stricken.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Life thereafter became exciting and interesting and extraordinarily rewarding. I spent many nights out among the warrens. After I had rejoined the safari and had then returned after a quick hunting trip to Magdag with a few leem as trophies, I arranged a cache near the warrens, adjacent to the river, where I could reach by sectrix easily from the Emerald Eye Palace. I had a cache there of weapons, clothes, and money. I would ride out from the palace without the Chulik escort, having disposed of them by a straight deception, change into my gray breech-clout, and glide silently into the maze of alleyways and courts. Long before dawn I would return.
On the sixth day I could often manage to spend the entire time with the slaves and workers, as Glycas and Susheeng were devoted in their observations of the rites of worship owing to Grodno. Particularly at this time, when the time of the Great Death approached, everyone of Magdag was punctilious in their religious life.
The business of Follon the Fristle was completed in a strange way that turned out to my advantage. To say that all Fristles looked alike to me would not be true. I could recognize individuals when necessary. One evening as the last of the suns vanished in the sky and the Maiden with the Many Smiles sailed clear above clouds I rode down to the river and hitched my sectrix to a tree branch. Away beyond the bank the warrens stretched, orange in that ruddy reflected light, and I took heart from that. In only a few moments I had stashed my Vallian gear, wrapped the gray breechclout around me, drawing the ends up between my legs and tucking them in. In the belt that held the clout was a sharp and gently-curving knife snug in its sheath. As I padded toward the first sprawling line of shacks and mud-brick dwellings, I heard a scream, muffled but close.
Screams were common in the slave warrens of Magdag.
Then, forcing itself on my attention, a struggle reeled out into the moonlight: two Fristles locked together. It took me a moment or two to decide that this was a male Fristle attempting to rape a female. She couldn’t scream anymore for the man had his arm locked around her throat. I could see her slit eyes, painfully twisted, and the way the blunted fangs of her mouth champed against her thin dark lips. Then I saw the male Fristle was Follon.
I recognized him well enough.
I loped over and took him around the throat. Fristles habitually wear a kind of leather jack, brass-studded. Those employed by Magdag had dyed theirs green. It was with some considerable force that I kicked that green color. Follon tried to yell and my fingers clamped on his windpipe. He couldn’t get his curved scimitar-like sword out. I bore down on him.
The female Fristle sagged to the ground, whimpering. She wore no clothes. Her body, with its light dusting of fur, gleamed golden in the pink rays of moonlight. Another Fristle, older, with a dun-colored hide, slipped to the fallen female’s side, held her head, and began to croon strange half-hissing, half-sobbing words in native Fristle. Then:
“He would have used my Sheemiff, and discarded her, killed her!”
It suddenly became easy to think of these half-human, half-cat people in fully human terms. The old woman glared up with a lift of her narrow chin and her slit eyes blazed red. The girl Fristle moaned again. I saw blood on the fur of her legs.
Follon gave a tremendous wrench, but I held him and leaned back and then, as Zair is my witness, whether it was his own lunge, or my impassioned grip, or my subconscious desire, I do not know. But, audibly, I heard his backbone snap.
I had been given a thousand years of life without consultation or request and now I could see a long, dark, and exceedingly narrow tunnel before me, delimiting a life in which it seemed my fate would go on facing up to the consequences not only of my own actions but also the reverberations from the natures of other peoples and other beings. It was in the nature of that scorpion to try to kill me; it was in my nature to defend myself. What was natural about this Fristle trying to rape a young girl of his own kind, and was it natural for me to prevent him? I think it was then, as I let the dead limp form of Follon slip through my hands to the ground, that I first began to sense the dim and awful doom that overhung me. I was doomed. Oh, yes, everyone is doomed in the sense that
