“My people have been enslaved, you nulsh,” she said.
I spoke quietly. “I do not believe I am a nulsh, Mog. I do not call you rast or cramph — or not very often. I own I am an onker — a get-onker, as you will. But watch your tongue or I’ll see what your Migshaanu the Odoriferous can do about it.”
Turko laughed. He was much better, and that was a relief.
Mog took a deep breath. She still wore her stinking slave breechclout hanging down, and she smelled. I promised myself to give her a damned good wash at the first opportunity. Now she explained, remarkably lucidly, all things considered, and with a refreshing absence of insults, just what was wrong with her city of Yaman in the land of Migla.
Her story interested me only to the extent that I was always eager to learn about Kregen, my adopted planet. There was much I knew already, but I have not as yet related it for it does not fit in with my narrative. I hope I am managing to keep unentangled all the various skeins of fate and destiny that both manipulated me and which I, in my own way, attempted to manipulate, to the confounding of the Star Lords.
The Miglas had been a quiet, contemplative, peaceful race, much given to religion. Mog said she was the high priestess of the Miglish religion, using many strange expressions I will tell you of when necessary. But they had been overthrown and subjugated by a fierce and warlike race who invaded from the island of Canopdrin in the Shrouded Sea in Havilfar where terrifying earthquakes had destroyed cities and flooded fertile valleys and laid the land waste.
“They were few, the bloody Canops, but they were clever. They destroyed my religion. They took me and chained me and defamed me before the eyes of my people. They slaughtered all the royal family. But it was our religion, our love of Migshaanu the All-Glorious through which they enslaved us.” She looked shrunken and miserable, and my feelings toward Mog the witch were forced to undergo a change. “My people believed their lies. They worshiped their false images. They made sacrifices, where we of Migla have not sacrificed for a thousand seasons — more! They made of Migshaanu a mockery. And if I return, Dray Prescot, they will surely slay me before all the people of Yaman.”
So, I said to myself, what of the Star Lords’ orders now?
“Not sacrifice, Mog?” I said. “But you are continually threatening me with what this Migshaanu will do to me.”
She stared up, her bright agate eyes hard on me, her witch’s face slobbered with tears, her hooked nose running. She looked a horrible object, but she also looked pathetic, and I suppose, for the first time, I really thought of Mog the witch as a person.
“Migshaanu the All-Glorious is peaceful and calm and gentle, and her love shines upon all, twin rays from the suns, in glory and beauty! It is the foul nulshes of Canops who do the things I threaten! I merely put them in my mouth as from my Migshaanu the Ever-Virtuous to — to-”
She had no need to go on.
“I have heard that no religion can be crushed utterly. There will be people who would welcome you back, the high priestess?”
“Yes. There are a few. Scattered, weak, feeble, hiding their adherence to the true beliefs under a mask, bowing to the bloody Canops in the full incline with despair in their hearts.”
“Well, it is settled. I will take you to your friends.”
All the fight seemed to have been knocked out of her. She just squatted down in the aft cabin, and presently she started rocking back and forth and crooning. Saenda shouted at her crossly to keep quiet, but the old crone hardly heard and went on rocking and crooning. I heard her say, between a clear change of musical pattern in the crooning dirge: “Oh, Mag, Mag! Where are you now?” And then she went on with her crooning and her rocking, and Saenda cursed her and came up to sit by me at the controls.
The girl started in at once, chatting gaily about how wonderful it was that we were free, and flying to Havilfar, and she tried her arts and wiles, but I took little notice. Old Mog worried me. I’d said that, by Zim-Zair, I’d rescue her and take her back, and that was what I was doing. She hadn’t wanted to come. I’d put that down to fear, and, as was afterward proved, her suspicions of the treacherous guides. But the truth lay deeper. As a high priestess she had been defamed and sold into slavery, for she had said that the Canops, with all their vicious pride, had quailed from having her killed. Now, if she returned, they would not hesitate to do what they should have done in the first place. The impression grew on me as we flew over the first scatterings of tiny islets fringing this part of the coast of Havilfar that this Mog the high priestess of the Miglas had many more surprises in store for me. Certainly the little Xaffer, when he discovered just who Mog was, reacted in a way that left me in no doubt that the powers of the priesthood of Migla had reached his ears. Calling Rapechak, I asked him if he would care to fly the voller for a space. I phrased it like that, carefully, and in the doing of that apparently simple thing surprised myself. I realized I had been relying on Rapechak rather too much as a loyal lieutenant; he was a Rapa, fierce, predatory, one of a race of beast-men who had given me much grief in my time. He twisted his beaked face in that grimacing way Rapas have and said, “I recall when we flew down on Harop Mending’s castle, Dray Prescot. I flew a voller then that had been half shot away by a varter and with a shaft through my shoulder.”
“You are still a mighty warrior, Rapechak, for all that you were a slave with the manhunters. You were on the losing side in a battle, I take it?”
“Surely. It is over and done with, now. I think I might venture to look at my home, a Rapa island to the south and west of Havilfar. I have not seen it for nigh on sixty years.”
If I noticed then that he did not give me the name of his home I made no comment. His business would be Rapa business and I wasn’t interested in halflings — with the exception of Gloag, always, of course. We flew on with Rapechak at the controls and I went aft to talk seriously to the Khamorro, Turko. I found him being fed a potion by Mog, mixed with wine. She had given over her crooning, and she glanced up at me the moment I ducked my head to enter the cabin, her old hooked nose and chin fairly snapping at me, like a crab’s claws.
“I’ve decided to go to Yaman, to find my friends, and to keep out of trouble, Dray Prescot. By Migshaanu, if you insist on taking me home, I’ll go, although I won’t thank you.”
I brightened. This was more like the Mog I knew.
“Very good, Mog. That is settled.” She rose and left Turko, with a final quick wipe of a clean cloth to his lips, in a gesture that, I realized, moved me. Turko leaned back on the settee, his overly handsome face eased of pain, staring at me with rather too much mocking knowing in his eyes. “Now, Turko, we must decide what to do with you.”
“What would amuse me, Dray Prescot, is to take you to Herrelldrin and there see how you fared against a Khamorro or two — without edged weapons in your hand.”
Oho! I thought to myself. So that is what itches the good Turko. He might get his wish yet, if the Star Lords willed it, but I doubted it, although, of course, not being in any way privy to their devious schemes.
“Perhaps we may meet a khamster or two-” I began. He pushed up, frowning, and yet relaxing, as it were, all in a movement. I knew what had goaded him. Khamster was the name used by Khamorros of themselves between themselves. I started over, amazed at my softness. “Perhaps you Khamorros travel Havilfar. We might yet amuse you.”
“As to that, we are not allowed — that is, yes, we do travel, as guards and servants. I was indentured to the King of Sava. The caravan was attacked and with a crossbow bolt aimed at my guts I was taken to Faol. Iron chains may not easily be broken, even with syple disciplines.”
“I know,” I said, remembering.
The shape of Havilfar is interesting, looking something like a rounded rectangle that has been badly bitten and hacked about. Gouging into the southeastern corner is the Gulf of Wracks, which leads to the great inland sea called the Shrouded Sea. To the northeast of this sea lie many kingdoms and princedoms and Kovnates. To the west lie wilder lands, although the coastline contains many ancient kingdoms, for philosophers say that it was here, along the coasts surrounding the Shrouded Sea, that men first settled Havilfar. The whole northeastern corner of the continent consists of the puissant land of Hamal. Hyrklana, a large island, although not counted as one of the nine islands of Kregen, juts wedgelike from the eastern central coast in temperate and pleasant climate. Far to the west and just below a great beak-nosed promontory that extends southward of Loh lies Herrelldrin, with Pellow tucked into a great bay.
“If not Herrelldrin, Turko, then where?”
“You fly to Mog’s Migla, do you not? That will do.”