warmth of her through the silver tissue. Quite evidently she expected me to put my arms about her as she put hers about me, tilting her head to gaze up at me, her lips half parted, moist and clinging in that way that can madden almost any man of sensibility. I kept my arms away from her.
“Oh, you fond, silly, silly man! Don’t you know why I worry so over you, so that my heart seems to burst right out of my bosom?” She unclasped one hand, and grasped my fingers. “Feel my heart, Dray, and you will know how passionately it beats-”
I had had enough of this. I simply didn’t let my arm bend in, and I said, gently: “I think Seg is up and about. His wound mends well-”
She flounced away, her lips plainly wanting to rick into a snarl and yet forced by a will I was coming to recognize to curve into a fetching pout.
“It is no good thinking of Delia, Dray-”
“What?”
She wouldn’t be checked now.
“Why — didn’t you see? I thought you knew-”
I was at her side and I gripped her by the shoulders, crumpling the silver tissue, dragging her half upward so that she staggered up onto her toes. I glared down on her upturned face where now that silly pouting look vanished to be replaced by a sudden startlement.
“Knew what, Thelda?”
She gasped as my fingers dug into her shoulders.
“Dray — you’re hurting-”
I let her down, but I still held her hard.
“Tell me!”
“Delia — the Princess Majestrix — the impiter dropped her, Dray — I thought you knew! It dropped her into a pond — you know, one of the little tarns that you find all over the uplands — and I screamed
— why did you think I was screaming, Dray, for myself?” She wriggled and licked her lips. “I knew Delia was dead, and I was screaming in fear for you, Dray!”
I let her drop so that she went down in a flurry of silver tissue with the brave scarlet breechclout sprawling in an ungainly back-slide, and turned away, and Seg said: “I did not see Delia fall from the impiter! By the veiled Froyvil — she cannot be dead! It would not be allowed!”
He came into the room with most of his old reckless air still about him; his limp had almost gone. He was better, he was the old Seg again, with the reckless laugh and the damn-you-to-hell manner.
“No,” I said, my voice a croak. “No — it would be unthinkable — it could not be allowed. My Delia, she is not dead-” I swung to Thelda, who raised herself on her arms, the silver tissue bulging and crumpling with the force of her breathing. “What tarn was it, Thelda? I will go to this pond and see for myself!”
Nothing would stop me.
When Hwang pointed out the dangers, that travel between cities anywhere in this land was beset with peril, that the winged host might still be in the vicinity, that wild beasts would rend me, I brushed all that tomfoolery aside. I donned my scarlet breechclout, buckled on my long sword, and I found a blanket roll, and some odd items of food. I took my new longbow in my hand, slung the quiver over my shoulders, mounted a borrowed nactrix, and I was off.
As I had expected Seg soon spurred up to ride at my side.
By the time we had ridden back over that ground and found the site of the battle — massacre, really -
where the bones lay white and bleaching under the suns of Scorpio, Hwang and a regiment of his own cavalry were hard on our heels. I had heard from the Queen’s nephew something of the reasons for that disastrous battle in the valley; that the men cherished their traditions and fought in disciplined bodies held together by rules sacrosanct with age. That the treacherous councilor Forpacheng — and not Orpus whom the Queen had suspected and who had miraculously escaped the ambush on the stairway — had led the troops into the valley, and had then let them be cut to pieces. That the discipline had broken under Forpacheng’s malicious and contradictory orders. Now, Hwang had said, a new army was being forged from the remnants and new recruits, and they would not repeat the mistakes of the past. The pool lay black and ominous beneath the suns.
I dived. I dived and swam beneath the water until my lungs burned and all the suns of the universe flamed before my eyes; I did not find my Delia.
Memories of that time blur. I remember men talking to me and urging me not to continue; and of myself taking deep agonizing breaths and cleaving the dark water of the tarn and swimming, swimming, swimming, and always that nightmarish expectancy that my groping hands would close on the obscenely bloated, water-logged, half eaten body of my Delia of Delphond.
Exhaustion had no place in my scheme of things. I would search every single square inch of the bottom of the pool, and every cubic inch of its water; and if I did not find my Delia, then I would begin all over again. I did not want to find her there, God knows; but I did not want to leave the task unfinished and be haunted for the rest of my days.
Perhaps, in the end, I was only saved from insanity by the arrival of Orpus and more soldiers. They seemed to my dulled senses smart enough, Zair knows. With them rode a man whose hair was dyed a deep indigo.
I reared up and from somewhere my long sword was in my fist and I started for this man with the indigo hair and I heard Seg shout and his hand gripped my arm.
“No, no, Dray! He is of Hiclantung — his hair is dyed because he has been scouting-”
“A spy,” I said stupidly.
“Yes, yes — and listen! He believes he has found where Delia is held captive!”
When I had somewhat recovered my senses and the news had been expounded, my next step was obvious.
The name I now focused on with an intensity of purpose at once hateful and vengeful and obsessional was — Umgar Stro.
The spy, one Naghan, a common name on Kregen, had been clever; clearly he was a courageous and resourceful man. Charged with the task of discovering who had instigated the nighttime attack upon the Queen he had begun by making inquiries in Chersonang, the rival city-state of Hiclantung, only to discover that the whole political situation had changed. A new force had entered this area of the Hostile Territories. From far to the northwest a fresh barbarian horde had swung southward as they had done when the empire of Walfarg in Loh had fallen. From the windy heights past The Stratemsk they had flown astride their impiters and corths and zizils, intent on carving a new land for themselves. They had taken over a country inhabited by Rapas, killing the vulturine people by the thousand, installing themselves as overlords. And here their leader, this Umgar Stro, had suborned and paid the traitor Forpacheng. But now — Umgar Stro had announced his intentions of dominating the entire section of nations centering on his new capital of Plicla, that had once been Rapa, and then of taking over the whole of the Hostile Territories, and the eastern seaboard with its scattering of settlements of nations of the outer ocean, and, so he had said, boldly, he would also march across The Stratemsk and attack whatever lay beyond. Of course, the inner sea, the Eye of the World, was unknown to these people except in the vaguest of myth and legend.
“And Delia is held in a tower in Plicla. May the veiled Froyvil guard her and keep her from harm!”
“You are sure?” I asked Naghan as Seg’s anxious words died.
“I cannot be certain that the girl captured is the princess you seek,” said Naghan, omitting all forms of ceremonial or obsequious address. “I never saw her.” He was short and strong, with a faded look around his eyes. He had built his face up into a blunt profile with oiled clays, but no one would think him one of Umgar Stro’s half- men in any kind of decent light. He had taken his life in his hands to bring me this information, and I was grateful to him. “I can give you all the information of the tower you require; externally, that is. Once inside-” He spread his hands.
Umgar Stro.
The whole area between The Stratemsk and the eastern seaboard had been turned into a place containing a very large number of petty kingdoms. The so-called Hostile Territories were places where a series of nations each followed its own destiny. There were tracts where the original inhabitants remained, there were barbarian nomads, there were cities of half-men and beast-men, there were nations of half-civilized barbarians, there were the cities which had managed to retain much of their Lohvian heritage. The whole was a great quilt of conflicting cultures.
