He amazed me.
Migla, situated at the western point of the Shrouded Sea, consisted of three large promontories running out northeastward and a tract of country inland. The Shrouded Sea is thus named for volcanic activity, which must be fairly frequent, as much as for the mystery it posed to the first inhabitants of Havilfar. I ought to mention that the northern coastline of Havilfar extends upward past the latitude of southern Loh, almost reaching the equator. Ordsmot and the Orange River lie north of Ng’groga in Loh. And Loh, as you know, has the shape of a Paleolithic hand-ax, with the point northward — and that point is Erthyrdrin.
“Then we shall go to Migla by the Shrouded Sea and I will leave you with Mog and her friends.”
“If Morro the Muscle so wills, Dray Prescot.”
He had shouted so passionately at the halflings when I had been about to attack the voller, and then he had called me Dray.
The two girls called me Dray all the time, of course, and I wondered when I’d shout at them to address me as Horter Prescot. My name is Prescot. I try to allow friends only to call me Dray, although friendship is a rare and precious thing to me. Maybe that is part of the reason. To digress; there was once a man -
an apim — called Rester who familiarly called me Dray while insulting me and what I was doing in his sneering insufferable way, and when he staggered up with a smashed nose crying and vomiting, I could find little pity in me, for he had considered himself so superior and knowing and all the time he had been acting, as I well knew from other sources, out of spite, cliquishness, and a petty denial of human dignity to a fellow human.
When he had been carried off I broke into laughter. I, Dray Prescot, laughed. But I was not laughing at the pitiful rast Rester. I was laughing at myself, at my folly, at my arrogant puffed-up and foolish pride. We flew due south after a space to avoid Faol, and the voller sped through the air levels with her firm steady movement so unlike the pitching and rolling of a ship at sea. Turko explained what had itched the redheaded youth who called himself Nath of Thothangir when we flew inland on that previous flight. Somewhere among the forests of central northwest Havilfar lay a region over which vollers would not fly for fear of what — they knew not. But it was an area to be avoided. We drove on southerly down the coast, and we would swing southeast when we were opposite Ng’groga, although Turko identified the place by reference to Havilfar, and so strike across the narrow neck of the continent here to reach Migla. To the west of Hamal and extending north and south ran a range of mountains that, so I gathered, might rival The Stratemsk. There was much to learn of Havilfar, the fourth and last continent of this grouping on Kregen.
We had a long distance to travel and, accustomed as I was to employing the free winds to blow my vessels along, or the oar when occasion was right, I could afford to think with some scorn of the clumsy steamships appearing on Earth’s oceans and their dependence on limited supplies of coal. The vollers, by reason of that mechanism of the two silver boxes, needed no refueling and would fly as long as was necessary. For food and wine we would have to descend sometime, and I counted us fortunate that the mighty hunters after their fashion had a goodly quantity of golden deldys among their clothing. These coins were of various mintings, from a variety of Havilfarese countries, but as a rule the golden unit of coinage in Havilfar is the deldy.
Gold and silver, with bronze also, seem always to be the noble metals for coinage; men and halflings alike hewed to the style. I have come across other systems of monetary exchange on Kregen and these all will be told in their time.
There occurred one fright that made us realize we were not on some holiday jaunt with picnic baskets and thoughts of pleasure.
Emerging from a low-lying cloud bank the voller soared on into the suns-shine and I saw a cloud of what at first I took to be birds winging up from a broad-leaved and brilliant forest below. By this time Turko was able to walk about without discomfort, although still fragile, and it was he who shouted the alarm.
“Volleem! Volleem!”
He needed to say no more. Shrieks arose from the girls and curses from the men. The leems, those feral beasts of Kregen, eight-legged, furred, feline, and vicious, with wedge-shaped heads armed with fangs that can strike through lenk, are to be found all over the planet in a variety of forms and all suitably camouflaged. There are sea-leem, snow-leem, marsh-leem, desert, and mountain-leem. These specimens were volleem.
They flew on wide membranous wings extending from their second and third pairs of legs, very conveniently, and like the flying foxes they could really fly. Their colors were not the velvety green I might have expected, seeing that their camouflage might seek to ape the fluttrell; they were all a startling crimson as to back, toning to a brick- red underbelly. The wings shone in the light, the elongated fingerlike claws black webs against the gleam.
“Inside the cabin!” yelled Turko, and bundling the old Xaffer before him, he pushed us into safety. Turko might know these parts and be aware of the vicious nature of the volleem, but skulking in a cabin was not my style. I know I am headstrong and foolish, but also I feared lest the volleem damage the airboat.
“Their fangs will rip us to pieces,” I said.
“We are on a rising course,” said Turko. “They will not follow us far from their forest treetops.”
He was proved right.
Even then, as I looked at this superbly muscled Khamorro, I wondered why I had listened to him instead of doing what I had felt right, of rushing out, sword in hand, to battle the volleem. One reason for his action was clear: unarmed combat against a leem usually results in a verdict of suicide. Because of this the Xaffer and the other two halflings decided they would get off at the next stop. I had to quell my reaction, thinking that, once again, I was doing nothing more than running a coach or an omnibus line. Gynor the Brokelsh said he would alight, also, so we divided up the remaining deldys fairly, not without some rancorous comment from Saenda and Quaesa, and we bid Remberee to our departing comrades.
Rapechak looked thoughtful when the voller swung to the southeast, over the land toward the Shrouded Sea.
“My home is down there, Dray Prescot, not over far from Turko’s Herrell. It is cold, but I think of it often.”
“I will be pleased to visit, Rapechak,” I said. “After Mog is unhung from around our necks.”
“Perhaps.” He said that the southernmost part of the continent was called Thothangir. I thought of the redheaded Nath, and was more than ever sure that he had never come from Thothangir. So we sped on southeastward across the neck of Havilfar and after a lapse of time, for the voller was swift, we saw the clouds rising ahead and then the intermittent gleam of water. The temperate regions were very welcome after the heat and sweat of Faol. Mog roused herself and gave her instructions. I was reminded of that arrival with Tulema at Dorval Aymlo’s home. Well, this time we would land among friends.
“You must go in at the darkest portion of the night, you great onker. The bloody Canops have patrols and soldiers and guards and mercenaries and spies everywhere.”
“We will do that, Mog, and we will keep a watch.”
Yaman was situated a little inland up from the broad sluggish river that ran down to the second of the large bays separating the three promontories. We waited until Far and Havil had sunk and only She of the Veils rode the sky, for this night she would be joined later by the Maiden with the Many Smiles and by the Twins and then it would be almost as light as a misty day in the Northern parts of Earth, although the shifting pinkish radiance from the moons always created that eerie hushed feeling of mystery inseparable from shadowed moonlight.
Mog insisted we hide the voller in a grove of trees on the outskirts. She said the trees were sacred to Sidraarga. Then, hitching our clothing and weapons about us, we set off for the home of one Planath the Wine, who owned a tavern that one might take a newly wedded bride to, as Mog put it with a cackle. Coming home had brightened and invigorated her. If we ran across a Canop patrol I felt she would not be the one to run screaming in fear.
Once again I trod the streets of a strange city in a continent of Kregen new to me. The houses reared to either hand, strange shapes against the starshot darkness, with She of the Veils riding low in the clouds, and very few lighted windows there were to see, and only a few hurrying pedestrians who avoided us with as much fervor as we avoided them. An air of mystery, of an eerie horror no one would mention aloud, hung over the city of Yaman.
As we hurried along in so strange a fashion I could feel the excitement rising and rising in me. Only a few short steps to go and then Mog the Migla witch would be in the hands of her friends, and I would be free! By this time I felt convinced Mog must be the one whom the Star Lords had sent me to Faol to rescue. I had felt this about Tulema, and been proved a fool. That could not happen again, by Vox, no!
