satisfaction and pride, as was right and proper for a young girl who knows she has stitched well.
“Indeed, they do look fine. Over your back they will proclaim to the world that the quiver was made for you by a girl who-” She stopped. Again her soft everted lips trembled. She did not go on. I said, in something of that foul and harshly-dominating tone I so much deplore in myself, “The quiver is beautiful, Sosie. I am a rough adventurer, who must travel in wild and perilous lands. It could be the death of me. It would show the world where I was; it would show the world that I carried a fortune on my back. I would have no peace.” She started to say something, quickly, hotly, but I shushed her and went on. “This should hang in the house of the man you marry, Sosie, the man you will love. For him, it will be a source of unceasing joy and pleasure. For me, it could bring death.”
“But — Dray-” She was confused.
“You do see, Sosie. I appreciate-”
As I spoke, as I held out the scintillating quiver to her, she leaped to her feet with a choked cry.
That hot wet pressure on my lips shot through me with a spike of agony. Then Sosie released me and fled into the house.
I sighed. Bending, I retrieved the book.
Kyr Nath. Well. I read at random: “And in this wise did Kyr Nath astride his coal-black impiter smite the legions of Sicce, so that they recoiled from him in thunder and lightning, and Kyr Nath smote them from beyond the sunrise to the day of judgment, so that they fell to the ground and crawled into the caves beneath the Mountains of Pearl and Gold from whence issueth their fiery breath even to this day.”
I put the book down. Sunrise. It said sunrise. I was still, as an Earthman, bothered over saying
“suns-rise” instead of sunrise. Those ancient people of the Eye of the World who had lived and laughed along the coasts, who had built the Grand Canal and the Dam of Days, they were called the people of the sunrise or the people of the sunset. There were mysteries here that I had no way at all of unraveling. Perhaps Maspero, in distant, unknown Aphrasoe, could have explained. Also, and significantly, this copy of the book had Kyr Nath flying an impiter. Those coal-black flying animals with their huge wingspread were well known here, in the Hostile Territories, and I had alternately cursed and blessed them, as I had fought Ullars screeching wildly on their backs, and flown with my Delia astride Umgar Stro’s great impiter away to find safety with the airboat
“Sosie asks me to say to you that she quite understands.”
Although I had faced many wild beasts, as you have heard, I felt the strongest disinclination to probe into the details of the scene that had preceded that announcement. What had been said between Slopa and Sosie was nothing to do with me. It was to do with me, really; but it could not be allowed to become of me.
The subject of conversation being turned, Aunt Slopa said in answer to my question: “When a man dies, his embroidered quiver and tunic and buckskins are laid up with him in the Glittering Caves.”
“The Glittering Caves?”
She nodded to the overbearing cliff face dominating Arkasson. “The cliff is riddled with the caves. The gems within the rock glow and glitter.”
Further comment from me did not seem required; but I did think that a fortune beyond calculation lay within that cliff, embedded in the rock and lying beside the dead bodies of generations of men in the Glittering Caves.
Before I left Sosie appeared. She had dried her tears and made herself look presentable, which, in reality, meant that she looked dazzlingly beautiful with her black skin gleaming and her Afro hairdo a puffed-up nimbus. She wore a simple dress of a dark orange color, heavily spattered with sewn gems, and her feet were clad in yellow slippers. I remember those yellow slippers. I started to say, “You will forgive me, Sosie-”
She hushed me at once, for which I was grateful. I make it a rule never to apologize; sometimes — not often — that rule of life becomes tricky.
“So you are determined to travel the Owlarh Waste, Dray Prescot! I know, now, I cannot prevent that. I thank you for your kindness to me-”
“Now, Sosie, it is you who are kind!”
“But not kind enough.”
That was spoken tartly enough. She was no weeping willow, was this Sosie na Arkasson.
“I wish you all the luck in the world, Sosie — all the luck in Kregen. May you find the man of your heart, and marry, and the farm prosper. May you be happy. Zair go with you.”
As before, she did not question my use of the name Zair. They were tolerant, in Arkasson, of any man’s religion, unlike the primitives of Cherwangtung.
“And with you, Dray Prescot”
Before me lay what Sosie called the Owlarh Waste. I took a few steps away from the frowning stone walls, out of their shadow and into the streaming light of the Suns of Scorpio, and I turned.
“Remberee, Sosie!”
She lifted her arm in farewell. “Remberee Dray Prescot. Remberee!”
With deliberate purpose I did not look back until the town of Arkasson had sunk into a blending gray against the lowering cliff upthrust beyond its walls.
During the midday break when I ate and drank sparingly was the time to take stock of myself. Around my waist I wore the scarlet silk formed into a breechclout. Sosie had, without my knowledge, stitched up for me a scabbard and baldric from plain supple leather of lesten hide and the deadly Krozair long sword now snugged safely against my thigh. She had made some remarkably raucous comments on that sword which, to her eyes accustomed to the slender blades of the Hostile Territories, was so monstrous a brand. The broad belt Delia had given me aboard the airboat buckled up firmly about my waist, the silver buckle deliberately left tarnished, and kept the silken loincloth in place, for silk has this exasperating tendency to slip. The rapier hung at my left side. It did not hang parallel to the long sword but thrust out at a divergent angle. The main-gauche was scabbarded to my right side. You may smile at this plethora of weapons, and consider me a walking arsenal — remember Hap Loder! — but I was accustomed to be so accoutered and could manage athletic evolutions without the slightest inconvenience.
The quiver that had caused so much heart-searching I slung over my back, the black-feathered shafts protruding up past my right shoulder. This was for convenience in carrying. For rapid shooting the quiver would be carried slung low and angled forward on the left hip. The bow itself, all six feet six inches of it, I carried unstrung. In a waxed-leather pouch I had a dozen spare strings. Also there were the food bag and the water bottle.
So, thus I found myself, Dray Prescot, walking on my bare feet toward the eastern coast of Turismond. If I fail to mention the broad-bladed hunting knife sheathed onto the belt behind my right hip it is merely because a knife in that position has been my constant companion from the time I first stepped aboard a seventy-four.
In my long life I have handled many weapons and grown skilled in the use of weapons wholly strange to an Earthman. Armor in its right and proper place has also been of importance to me. Yet, however much I grow used to any one sword or rapier in particular, one special bow, I have never chained myself and my fortunes to just one single weapon. Many weapons have been presented to me, I have bought large numbers, and taken quantities from dead foemen; if I were to lose all this gaudy arsenal I would feel annoyance — an annoyance not, for instance, that I had lost this one particular Krozair long sword presented to me by Pur Zenkiren, but annoyance over the loss of any weapon in the midst of dangers. The man who wishes to be an adventuring fighting-man had best not lock his fortune to one brand alone. Fate is all too often ready to snatch it from him, and seldom ready to offer it back — as I had snatched back my sword from Umgar Stro after I had snapped his backbone.
And with this goes the corollary that the true fighting-man can fight with whatever weapons come into his hands.
The twin suns of Antares passed across the sky, the smaller green Genodras now leading the giant red Zim, so that at the second sunset the land took on the tincture of rusted iron, a broad wash of orange and brown and crimson with the last few streaks and streamers of green pulsing through that ruby sky. Ahead the Owlarh Waste stretched in dust and thorn-ivy and prickly scrub. Finding safe anchorage for the night was not overly difficult and by the time Genodras reappeared ahead of me with its filaments of lacy green patterning the sky ahead and painting
