Battlefield of the Crimson Missals, the scorpion spoke to me.
“You get onker, Prescot!”
I knew no one else could hear that voice, or mine, in reply.
“I know.”
“There is no escape from the Heavenly Mines of Hamal.”
“You may be a messenger from the Star Lords, you and the Gdoinye; but I will escape.”
The scorpion waved his tail mockingly. “The Star Lords know you, Dray Prescot; they know you are a fool, a get onker, an onker of onkers. They know many things. They know you are such a stupid onker you might succeed where noone else has succeeded before.”
“Believe it, scorpion.”
“The Star Lords have a use for you, Prescot. A use far from here in space and time.”
Sheer terror hit me then, for if the Star Lords banished me back to Earth, as they could (as they could!), I might never be returned to Kregen beneath Antares. I started up, sweating, prepared to defy the Star Lords and all their superhuman power once again.
But the scorpion was growing, was glowing now with that damnable blue radiance, was bloating into a gigantic blue shape that filled the hut and burst the rock walls and so engulfed the night sky and all the stars and tumbled me headlong into that radiant blue confusion.
CHAPTER SIX
Often and often had I cursed that I was merely a puppet, a mere hank of hair and blood and bone, dangling on the strings so callously pulled by the Savanti and the Star Lords. Well, that might be true, in its own way. But as you know I had been developing ways and means of circumventing the Star Lords. Oh, yes, they could still hurl me back four hundred light-years to the planet of my birth, perhaps never again to summon me to Kregen. They could forever sunder me from Delia, the only woman in two worlds that means anything to me — and I say that in due deference and love for all the other women who have been and are my friends. But this construction of artifices had more than once before kept me on Kregen. The Star Lords could be manipulated.
But this time the transition came with blinding suddenness. I yelled out, once again, in my own old intemperate bellow: “I will not return to Earth!
I swear I heard a ghostly chuckle, and a voice that was in all probability in my head and not gusting from the blue radiance surrounding me, as I thought, say: “You get onker, Prescot! You would stay on Kregen even in the Heavenly Mines!”
“I would escape even where they say escape is impossible!”
“Maybe you would, Prescot, you wild leem. Maybe you would. But there is work under your hands, work for the Everoinye. And, Dray Prescot, you fail at your peril!”
I opened my eyes and the blue radiance fell away.
Above me blazed the twin Suns of Scorpio.
And — the red sun preceded the green across the sky!
Immediately I knew I was caught once more in a time loop cast by the Star Lords. Once again I had been thrown into the past. I could take great comfort from that, for my Delia was not waiting for me now in trembling apprehension, and whatever I had to do here — wherever here was — could be done and I might then rejoin my beloved and she would not have spent a single extra day in sorrow over my fate. Also, I knew, and the knowledge brought a shivery feeling of insecurity over me, that somewhere on the face of Kregen, I, Dray Prescot, was at this very minute fighting or drinking, slave or free, struggling on or living it up in luxury. At this very minute somewhere over the horizon a Dray Prescot that was me was walking and talking, fighting, and, perhaps, loving, and I own I found it all most weird, to be sure. Then — why then the obvious thought occurred. If I was back to certain times past, there might be
In Valka I had been thrown into a time loop.
I could be in the Hostile Territories right now, fighting on in our long journey with Seg, Thelda, and glorious Delia at my side; and at the same time I could be in Valka, fighting to free my island from the aragorn — and, at the same time, here I was, naked and weaponless as usual, ready to undertake some great new task.
I shivered a little at the power of the Star Lords.
I, Dray Prescot, who called them onkers and rasts and cramphs!
From my experiences in the Heavenly Mines I had emerged in reasonable condition, completely hairless, for the Hamalians with their rigid adherence to the rules shaved the slaves once a sennight, and without the brands on chest and back. I had to acknowledge that forethought to the Star Lords, although as I knew my dip in the Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph of Aphrasoe as well as giving me a thousand years of life and phenomenal powers of recuperation also enabled my skin to slough off brand marks. Sometimes, as when I had been a hauler for the Emperor’s barges, that had not been too comfortable an attribute.
Unlike most of my previous transitions to various unfriendly locations of Kregen, this time I had not landed slap bang in the midst of danger, action, and headlong adventure. Around the Heavenly Mines stretched the Barrens, a deadly waste of desert and near-desert. All food had had to be imported. I stood up slowly, taking stock of my situation. Around me now extended broad fields, heavy with corn, with brilliant flowers blooming in the hedgerows alongside narrow lanes. A house or two showed red-tiled gables, and smoke drifted lazily from tall twisted chimneys. A flock of birds -
ordinary Earth-like birds — swooped and squawked about a clump of trees remarkably like elms. Had the two brilliant suns of Antares not blazed down from the sky above I might have thought myself back at home, in a rich and golden autumn with all the goodness of the harvest to be gathered in. This situation, then, was like no other that had confronted me on arrival on Kregen. I could see at once the dangers here, the difficulties. Perhaps, if the truth was told, more danger for me existed in this apparently peaceful scene than in the damned Heavenly Mines of Hamal. Did I tread the soil of Havilfar? Had I been taken back to Vallia, or to Turismond? Segesthes, perhaps?
Or, a continent I had touched only at the tip of Erthyrdrin, Loh? The thought crossed my mind that I might have been deposited in one of the remaining three continents; but I had no information of value on them, and no one of the people of this grouping knew much of them; they were foreign and strange beyond the understanding of ordinary men and women.
A mirvoller flew out from the trees and passed across the sky and, without having to think, I took cover in a hedge. The mirvol flew effortlessly, and I caught the wink of weapons from its rider. The flyer passed out of sight.
As far as I knew mirvols were found only in Havilfar. So I felt reasonably sure I was still in Havilfar. If this was a game the Star Lords were playing with me, I knew only too well it was a deadly game, and failure would result in death or a fate worse than death, if you will pardon the expression, in my return to Earth.
Perhaps, the treacherous whisper crossed my mind, perhaps I was still in the rock hut of the Heavenly Mines, and I had imagined I had seen and spoken with the scorpion, and all this was pure hallucination. A quoffa cart rumbled along the road, and the apim sitting in the front with a straw in his mouth and a wide hat pulled low over his forehead looked real enough. Naked as I was, I must accost him. He wore a shirt and trousers, a fashion quite often seen on Kregen, and I would face some quizzing, I felt sure. But it had to be done.
The white dust of the road puffed under the six pads of the quoffa, and his huge, patient, wise old face cheered me as I stepped out. This was a crossroads. A tall tree stood in one corner of the cross, and a blackened
The red roof of the inn was new, for the tiles were unpitted and still full of color, but the far end gable roof showed older tiles, darkened and cracked here and there.
This was a mystery, this whole occurrence, so unlike anything that had happened before. The peacefulness of
