There hung a silence in the back room of
Both girls started in presently claiming that I was taking them home, and may Opaz rot the idea of going anywhere else.
“There are deldys enough to pay your passages,” I said. “And you may have all mine, except a handful for food and wine. I am not going your way.”
“Well, then! Which way do you go?”
“That is my affair. Come. I will see you to the voller offices — or the shipping agents, if you prefer.”
Backward though Migla might be, and relatively poor if compared with many of the nations of Havilfar, nevertheless I knew there would be passenger services operating.
Migla was a case of a mild and overly religious country being taken over and subjugated by a smaller but infinitely more ferocious group of people. The other nations around the Shrouded Sea would not help; probably they had all been relieved when after the earthquakes that destroyed their island home the Canops had gone to Migla.
From all that I heard of them, these Canops were a very nasty bunch indeed. The halfling Miglas went in deadly fear of them, the beast-men convulsed by terror at the thought of acting in any way that would bring down the sadistic and destructive retribution of the Canops. The tiny handful who still met to worship Migshaanu did so with terror in their hearts and, as I was the first to say, with high courage and selfless devotion to their own ways and religion. I am not an overly religious man, as you know, but I know what I know, Zair knows!
Into the back room of the tavern from the stairway entrance walked a halfling woman clad all in crimson, with heavy gold lace and embroidery, with jeweled rings upon her fingers, and a massive golden, silver, and ruby crown upon her head. Her face shone. Her lips were rubbery-thin the Migla way, and her hooked beak nose and toe-cap chin jutted arrogantly. She carried a great staff of plated gold in one hand
— the likeness of the head of that staff I shall not say, at this time — and jewels flashed and coruscated from every part of her crimson and golden person.
Hovering with a mixture of awe and pride Planath the Wine and his wife, Ploy, followed this gorgeous halfling creature into the room.
Saenda and Quaesa ceased their silly babbling. Turko flexed his muscles, and was still. Rapechak twisted his great beak of a face, and hissed beneath his breath, and was silent.
“All hail!” called Planath, a little huskily. He wore his crimson robe, but now across it had been slung a glittering gold cloth baldric, and in his hand he carried a small silver replica of the staff of power in the Migla woman’s hand. “All hail!” Planath said again, and his voice grew and the quaver vanished. “All hail the high priestess of Migshaanu the Glorious!”
No one said a thing. I didn’t care much, one way or another, for all my selfish thoughts were set on Delia and Valka, but I felt that those gathered there looked to me. For the sake of Mother Zinzu the Blessed I cannot say why, but, not then wishing to spoil the effect, I lifted up my voice and said loudly: “All hail the Mighty Mog!”
Which, I thought, was a suitably ironic comment, when all was said and done. The old witch caught my meaning at once.
“You may mock me, Dray Prescot! But I am what I am. One day, Migshaanu willing, I shall return to a rebuilt temple and once more the people of Yaman shall worship their true god.”
You couldn’t say fairer than that.
“I devoutly hope it will be so, Mog,” I said.
With that, as though she had achieved what she had set out to do, Mog swept her stiffly brocaded garments about and swept out — in the sense that a loose scrap of straw caught in her skirts swept away with her. I did not smile. Truth to tell, I already knew there was more to Mog the witch than appeared. The Star Lords did not fool with worthless people.
“Well!” said Saenda. “Such airs! Anyone would think she was a queen.”
I admit to a relief that Planath had gone, also.
I said, “With regard to Mog, Saenda — and you, too, Quaesa — you will oblige me by keeping a civil tongue in your head. Otherwise I shall not hesitate to show my displeasure.”
“If you were in my father’s hacienda!” began Quaesa, very hotly, her dark eyes regarding me with fury.
“If my father ever found out about you, Dray Prescot!” began Saenda, interrupting. The girls started another of their arguments. For a moment they forgot me in their quarrel, which suited me fine. Neither of the little idiots had much idea of how they had become slaves. They might live in different countries, but the way of their taking sounded suspiciously alike to me. They had gone to a party and had thereafter remembered nothing until they were en route for Faol. I thought that the Kov of Faol paid hired kidnappers to procure pretty girls and handsome men for him to run as quarry for his customers. There was still, in my mind, the idea that I might pay a call on this Kov of Faol one day. On our way through the suns-lit streets of Yaman with the Miglas hurrying about their work and not looking too happy about it, I pondered on what had so far befallen me in Havilfar. I knew that nothing I did for the Star Lords was without a reason. Ergo, if I had rescued four people the Star Lords did not require they would hardly have let me rescue them and return them to safety. Of them all, Lilah, the first, had been in the most peril at the end, and I was in two minds to go and visit Hyrklana, to make sure. The Star Lords guided me; what I did today might be of use twenty seasons into the future. That this was true you shall hear, and the wonderfully cunning way of it too, into the bargain. Miglas ahead of us on the street began running.
These houses were strange spiky houses, tall and narrow, with crazily pitched roofs and toppling tall chimneys and roosts jutting up at geometrically alarming angles. Many of the roosts gave resting places to fluttrells and other saddle birds. The idea of this, with my experience of the Hostile Territories, affronted me. But then I saw that here in Havilfar everyone was accustomed to saddle birds and flying animals; therefore they were merely a part of the armaments of each country, and thus deployable in war as any other force. Given that Havilfar was in many respects further advanced than Segesthes or Turismond, they were not faced with the implacable barbarian winged horde.
“What is happening?” demanded Saenda, in her imperious, petulant voice.
“Protect me, Dray!” screamed Quaesa, clutching my arm. The little onker clutched my sword arm. Granted I had no sword — but: “If you trap my sword arm, Quaesa, I shall not be able to help myself, let alone you.”
“Oh! You’re impossible!”
With Miglas running every which way around us I hauled the girls into the shelter of an awning-draped store where a few amphorae stood in sardine-rows against the wall and an old Migla who looked like a washed-out edition of Mog shrieked and fled indoors and slammed her shutters. We had seen a few apims, human beings of Homo sapiens stock, walking about and we had attracted little attention, even Rapechak. We had seen a couple of Ochs, a Brokelsh, and a few Xaffers chewing their eternal cham; we had seen no Chuliks. So it wasn’t us that caused this commotion.
Down the center of the street came a body of men. They marched in step. They wore armor, scaled and gleaming in the light of the suns. They carried thraxters belted to their waists, and crossbows all slanted at one angle across their bodies. Their sandals had been solidly soled, and the clicking crack of iron studs on the cobbles sounded loudly, harsh and dominating. Their helmets were tall, crested with the peacock-bright feathers of the whistling faerling — which is the Kregan peacock — and they looked hard, confident, and extraordinarily professional.
At their head marched four men with brazen trumpets, but they had no need to sound these. Following the trumpeters strode the standard bearer. He was gorgeously attired. The standard consisted of a tall glittering pole, wrapped around with silver wires, a multicolored banner flaring, and atop that and arranged most ferociously, the silver representation of a leaping leem. Strange, I thought at once, that men should take the leem as their symbol!
Then I saw the men’s faces as they marched with machine-like step in their quadruple ranks. Harsh, domineering, intolerant, yes, all these things. But I have seen many men’s faces with those characteristics and, as you know, I admit to my shame that my face bears those betraying marks. There was about this something more, something yet more horrific. The halfling Miglas were running now and scurrying out of sight. The old Migla put her head out of a crack in the shutter and called to us: “Bow your heads! Bow your heads or you will be sorry!” and, smack, down came the shutter fully. Rapechak, the old mercenary, understood at once.
I suppose I did, in a weird way I would not tolerate or believe. Turko came from an enslaved people and so he, too, bowed his head as the silver leem, the symbol of Lem, went by. The officer — he was a Hikdar — strutting
