its chimney. In a pen at the side two dozen or so flying beasts flapped their wings and shrilled. They were sitting on lenken bars into which their claws sank, and they were chained by iron. They looked to be not as large as the impiters, those coal-black flying animals of The Stratemsk, but larger than the corths. Their coloring varied, tending generally to a beige-white and a velvet-green, and their heads were marked by large vanes after the fashion of pteranodons. They looked to be nasty brutes, well enough. Lilah took an eager step forward.
“Fluttrells!” she exclaimed. “We are in luck, Dray. The wind-eaters will carry us swiftly over the strait to Gilmoy, and from thence home to Hyrklana!”
Before I could answer the door of the house burst open and a ragged mob of men wielding weapons sprang out. They did not stop or pause in their rush but came on with an intent I have fronted many times. The pen was to hand. There was only one thing I could do. I grabbed Lilah and fairly ran her across to the sturm-wood bars of the pen. I selected the nearest fluttrell, and gave it a great thumping flat-handed smack around its snouted face to tell it who was master — I had no shame in this brutalization, for death ran very close to our heels — and hoisted Lilah onto the bird’s back.
“Can you fly one without stirrup, clerketer, rein?”
“I am perfectly at home in or on anything that flies in the air.”
The feel of the flying beast between her legs had changed Lilah — either that, or she was scenting her homeland. She looked at me with a triumphant expression.
“Mount up, Dray! Let us be off!”
“Not so, Princess.” Swiftly I released the locks of the chains holding the fluttrell. “You must fly for your home. If I take off with you these men will follow and we will surely be caught. You must go — I will hold them off until you are well clear.”
“But, Dray! They will slay you!”
“I do not think so, Lilah.”
I gave the fluttrell an almighty thwack and with a bad-tempered squawk it fluttered its wings and rose into the air. Lilah had to cling to its neck, ducking her head beneath the great balancing vane. She looked down on me. I snatched up a length of timber from the pen and with this cocked in my fists — and my fists spread in the old Krozair longsword way as I had done aboard Viridia the Render’s flagship when I fought her Womoxes — I awaited the onslaught of the men from the house.
“You will be slain, Dray Prescot!” she called down.
“You are safe, Lilah! Now go!”
She kicked the sides of the magnificent flying animal. “I shall not forget you, Dray Prescot!” And then, faintly as she rose into the limpid morning sky: “Remberee, Dray Prescot!”
I admit it now — I can look back and see and understand my feelings then — I welcomed the coming fight. I had run and crawled and pulled my forelock long enough. These men might be justified in their instant attack upon us — although I doubted that — but they would rue the day they tangled with me. No doubt the Star Lords thought that a good joke, too.
As I held that length of lumber prepared to show these yokels a little sword-practice, I felt, suddenly, treacherously, the shifting sensations and the blue radiance close about me, and I could no longer feel the wooden longsword — and I was slipping and sliding into the radiant blue void.
Chapter Eight
The stink of slaves lay in my nostrils with that thick choking odor so familiar to me. A voice said: “I can guide you out, Golan, by Hito the Hunter! But you must run-”
“I can run, Anko! And I will reward you, liberally, magnificently! I am a Pallan-”
“And me! And me!” other voices lifted, beseeching, begging, pleading to be led to freedom. I opened my eyes.
I had failed the Star Lords.
The brazen notes of a stentor’s horn filled the caves and passageways and like swirling weeds at the turn of the tide all the slaves raced madly off to the feeding hall. I stood up. By the Black Chunkrah! I’d go down to the feeding cave and take my food if I had to snatch it from all the Khamorros in Havilfar and all the guides in Faol!
So the Princess Lilah of Hyrklana with the golden hair and the beautiful form had not been the one I had been sent here to rescue.
There was but one thing I could do.
I must find the correct slave to be rescued and take him or her out to safety. Guide or no guide. Down in the feeding cave I saw a lithe and limber young man with dark hair, very alert in carriage now he was alone with only slaves about him, talking earnestly with a bulky man who had once been plump. His face, much sunken in, still contained traces of the habitual power of command he had once wielded. This was Golan, and he had been a Pallan, and had been betrayed, and so sold into slavery and found himself dispatched to Faol, where slaves brought a high price.
Golan?
I lifted my chunk of vosk — a Rapa who had thought to dispute with me its possession lay on the floor unconscious — and shook it at the rocky ceiling. “You stupid Star Lords!” I said, but I did not speak aloud, for I did not wish to attract unwelcome attention to myself, and although insanity was common enough among slaves, it was still regarded with a leery suspicion. “Idiot Everoinye! How am I supposed to know whom to rescue out of this mad crowd?”
I received no answer, and expected none, and so sank my teeth into the vosk and stared sullenly at my fellow slaves.
My beard had grown and my hair, too, making me look even more wild and uncouth and slavelike. All the same, Tulema recognized me instantly.
“Dray! I thought — how did you-? Have you crawled back through the caves?”
“No, Tulema. I didn’t go.” Then, to allay her suspicions, I said: “Here, finish this vosk for me. I am heartily sick of this place, for I thought I was safely away, and then I was not.”
Instead of saying, as one would, “Tell me about it,” she seized the remaining chunk of vosk with my teethmarks sharp upon it and wolfed it down. No one, it was clear, had been looking out for Tulema. Could my target be this girl, with her lithe body and dark hair, all matted with dirt, her savage ways, this girl who had been a dancer in a dopa den? I did not think so. It was, in truth and given the circumstances of my return, far more likely to be this Golan, who had been a Pallan. A Pallan, as you know, is a minister of state, a high official, and if he had been disgraced and sold as a slave, it might be my duty to return him and thus affect some great design in the political structure of Kregen. Lacking any other clues, I decided it must be Golan.
Of one thing I could be sure. If it was not Golan then I would be seized by the blue radiance and hurled back into the slave pens tunneled into the caves.
Then again — if it came to the worst, I might not be. I might be flung back to the Earth of my birth.
“Listen, Tulema. I mean to go again and this time I mean to break through to freedom. Will you come with me?”
“I dare not, Dray! You know why — the manhounds. .”
“They are most fearsome beasts — no — fearsome men. But I will look out for you.”
As you will instantly perceive, I was trying to copper-bottom my bet. If by chance Golan was not the target, and Tulema was, then I would be safe.
“You will, Dray! I think — I believe-”
Then this rough tough dancing girl from a dopa den turned away, and I saw her smooth shoulder with the dirt marks upon it quivering as she sobbed.
I felt pity for her — of course I did. But she was just one in exactly the same situation as all of us. I started to work at once. I took her shaking shoulder, and shook it, and her, so that she quivered, and I said: “This Golan, who was once a Pallan. Was he there when you and I first met?”
