“She does not blame you for the defeat of her army in the massacre,” I said. “At least, she did not mention you in that context — or at all.”
“She would not.”
“What have you discovered, San?” asked Seg.
“The Queen will need my guidance and advice in what is to come. But she was cold — distant and cold. There is a woman, another woman, they have fought bitterly-”
“Thelda!” exclaimed Seg. He stared at me in dismay.
I was intrigued. Could this old man in some way have seen what was even now happening in Hiclantung?
Impossible! But, remember, then I was young and new to the ways of Kregen and especially to the wiles of the Wizards of Loh.
“The Queen has imprisoned this woman, this Thelda, and she weeps for her lost lover.” Yuong canted his head so that his supercilious nose aimed itself over my right shoulder. “Perchance she dreams of you, Jikai?”
“If she does,” I said, “she does so without my permission.”
“Since when has a maid required permission to long for a man?”
I didn’t want to continue this, not with Seg looking and listening, so I went across to my corth and inspected its harness.
“Let us go,” I said. “If Queen Lilah has flung Thelda into prison we must get her out again. We owe her that much, at least.”
Seg vaulted into his saddle. His fist gripped into his rein knot — and his other hand made sure his great longbow was in position, handy as to bending and loosing, the feather of his arrows protruding from their quiver past his right ear.
I could see the irony in this situation; more than irony, deadly mockery of all I held dear. Here I was setting out to rescue my Delia from the clutches of a malevolent monster and instead was hurrying back to our friends to rescue a tiresome woman.
How all the Clansmen would have roared their appreciation of the joke — until I silenced them with my upraised sword!
We soared aloft with those initial convulsive rippling movements of the corths’ wide wings driving us low across the clearing until we had picked up enough speed to rise and bank out past the trees. I scanned three hundred and sixty degrees as I would have done the moment I stepped onto the quarterdeck of
Had I been of the stuff from which the romantic heroes of Kregan legends are constructed — all manliness and pride and stoicism and lofty indifference to personal pain — I would not have felt then as I did, all the agony and the remorse clawing and tearing my spirit. I knew only that I must go on -
somehow.
We alighted on the outskirts of Hiclantung.
“If Thelda truly has been imprisoned by Lilah,” I said, “then it would be foolish simply to fly back when day dawns.”
“Yes,” said Seg.
I knew how he felt. His constant cheerfulness with me both heartened and saddened me, for Seg had tried most desperately to interest Thelda in himself and had as desperately failed. The corths snuffled around, ruffling their feathers, giving clear indication they wished to rest. I looked at Yuong.
“Tell me, San. Can you reach out with your mind and find the woman I seek?”
“Speak more plainly, Jikai. Do you mean Thelda, whom you would rescue from the Queen, or do you mean the woman you love?”
I started violently.
Fool! Why had I not thought of this myself — and before!
I gripped his thin shoulder. He did not wince but stared up at me placidly. I began to speak, but he shook his head.
“Is this woman you love as beautiful as you say?”
“Yes.”
“Incredibly lovely?”
“Yes.”
He moved my hand away. I let him. “I cannot find her for you, for I have no means of location, as I had with Thelda, who was with the Queen.” He started back at my movement. Pink moonshine runneled along his jaws. “But, if she is as beautiful as you say, I believe she still lives. Umgar Stro values beautiful objects.”
“Delia of the Blue Mountains is not an object!”
“With Umgar Stro all women are objects.”
I turned away from him. Old as he was, cocksure as he was, weird as he was, if I had not turned away I believe I would have struck him down.
“By the veiled Froyvil, Dray! Let us get on!”
San Lu-si-Yuong went through his pantomime again. I call it a pantomime, for that is how I thought then when I was under tremendous strain, tensed up, desperate and weary and vengeful. Yuong did, however, play fair by us.
“She is with the Queen even now, in the Paline Bower-”
“I know it!” said Seg.
“I shall humor you,” went on Yuong, “and go into lupu in the morning when the gates are open and we may enter the city.”
Seg started violently.
I said: “You do not think Seg and I are men to wait tamely out here for them to open the gates for us, do you?”
He nodded that stringy lipless head with the wine-dark eyes somber and yet full of a spritely malice.
“What else will you do, Jikai?”
Seg laughed.
I do not laugh easily, as I have said; I simply stood up and went across to my corth — the one with the trapeze and the thongs — and readied him for flight. Seg followed me. When the corth was ready I turned to Yuong.
“You had best fly with us — there are leems hereabouts-”
He shook his head.
“Nay, Jikai. If you lend me one of those thick anachronistic flint-headed spears, I will fare well enough.”
“As you wish. The spears were unnecessary, after all. They were a failure, like my plans.”
“Dray!” said Seg. “All is not yet lost.”
“Come!” I said, and I was abrupt with Seg. So we left the Wizard of Loh, San Lu-si-Yuong, there with a flint- headed spear to await the dawnrise of the twin suns of Scorpio and the opening of the gates to Hiclantung.
We rode the same corth for the short journey and by taking turns we both dropped off the swinging trapeze onto the trip-wired and fan-spiked roof of the Queen’s palace and let the corth go where he willed. I fancied that sharp eyes peering out in the pink light of the twins would have spotted us from one of the many watchtowers rising in the city. That did not concern me as yet. We padded down stairs carpentered from sturm-wood and opened lenken doors with our swords. We did not kill the guards we encountered, for these were, after all, our hosts.
No incongruity of repetition struck me as we crept silently down past the guards, for this time I carried no high palpitations of hope and fear for my Delia; now we were merely attempting to do the right thing by a comrade — and then I remembered the way Seg felt about the callous and shallow Thelda, and I sighed, and wondered just what I did wish for this baffling comrade of mine. Truth to tell, I felt a queasy sense of responsibility for Yuong; how could his frailty stand up against the awesome ferocity of a wild leem, flint-headed spear or no?
A young Hiclantung guardsman very smart in the ornate robes of a Queen’s spearman with the gold and silver buttons and buckles in place of workmanlike bronze or bone was very pleased to assist us when Seg placed his dagger at the lad’s throat. We were led past a doorway into an area of dust and cobwebs. It was a long narrow
