come closer in that high ceilinged room with the tall windows and all the splendor of the Suns of Scorpio flooding in.
“ ‘The Freeing of an Ib from a Mortal Body Undiluted.’ ”
He looked up. “The spirits of the dead do not always leave the body the moment men are killed. Sometimes a man retains his ib, to his own mortification in the blessed light of the Twins.”
“Aye. Read on.”
“ ‘Take the body and wash in the water taken from a maiden’s first bath after the marriage night. Place the body undried in a brazen coffin above a fire heated seven times, and with bellows pumped by a dwarf. A dwarf with red hair ensures complete success; if a red-haired dwarf is not to be found then a black-haired dwarf will suffice, or a brown-haired dwarf; but then the fire must be pumped over twice. Into the coffin over the body pour the water used in the bathing. To this add the same weight of squishes. The fruits may be used entire, but they must be scrupulously clean. Add in double-handfuls so that the spirit may boil from them into the water and the cayferm enter the submerged body and so remove from it the ib. When all has boiled away the body may be taken up and given due burial; it is wise to place a tuffa wand at the head and feet until the first night of Notor Zan passes.’ ”
He looked up, resting one hand on the open hyr-lif. His eyes wrinkled up, regarding me. I was aware of a flick-flick plant snaking out a six-foot tendril, taking a fly on the wing, and popping it into one of its orange cone- shaped flowers. The shadow of the plant in its pot on the windowsill, the sound of laughter from outside, high and shrill, meant nothing; the sight and sounds were as distant as the planet of my birth.
“Cayferm,” I said.
“Aye, Prince. I think after treatment like that any body would be willing to go down into burial, aye, and be glad to.”
“Yes, that would be the way of it. But, Evold, it must be! Don’t you see? Steam! If you boil water you must get steam!”
“Steam,” he said. We used the Kregish word, the most common word for steam,
“You have done well.”
“I remembered one horrific time in the Heavenly Mines where I had sweated, as number eight two eight one, to dig and tunnel for minerals. And how a little Och stylor, writing in his notebook, had jumped with alarm, deep in a tunnel through a seam, and called to the Rapa guard to prod the slaves out fast. We had not gone back to the seam. And now I recalled that over the smell of the cheap oil lamp I had sniffed the scent of squishes. I had thought of Inch, and then the little Och had near-panicked. Now I thought I knew why.
“Steam made up with boiled squishes,” I said. “Cayferm.”
Evold sneezed. “Maybe, maybe. But we must test it first. We can only talk now, we must-”
“Yes!” I bellowed. “Everyone must gather squishes! Every perishing soul, by Vox!”
Evold Scavander nodded, the excitement getting to him.
“Although. .” I said. And I felt a chill. “Although this cannot be so. It is against nature.”
“Many things are against nature, my Prince. Every time you put on a hat to go out into the rain, it is against nature.”
“I grant that. But I mean that boiling will produce a purity; the steam cannot possibly contain any part of the squishes! This is a matter of common knowledge.”
He put a yellowish finger alongside his nose, which had a large brown lump on the larboard side.
“Maybe nature winks, my Prince. For a man to fly through the air using boxes filled with dirt and air -
surely that is so against nature as to make all the rest simple.”
“Oh, the vollers work. There is no doubt of that. Aye,” I added viciously, “and they crash, also.”
We looked at the pathetic pile of wreckage. Lish’s voller had come down hard at the end. The two silver boxes had been taken from the smashed jumble of sturm-wood and bronze orbits. They lay on the table, separated from those we had made ourselves.
They were also well separated from each other. I walked across and gently pushed one of the boxes toward the other, along the lenken tabletop. I could feel nothing at first. And then like a thrilling of rubbed amber, like a million warrior ants of the hostile territories marching over my skin, I felt the tremble, the vibration. When the two boxes came within that certain special distance from each other they both, together, sprang into the air. Up they went, glittering in the light of Antares. We stared upward, knowing what would happen.
The boxes flew up together until wind pressure divided them. They curved out and away and so, separated, plummeted back to the floor. One hit so heavily that the corner split. I cursed. Evold Scavander scuttled for the box, lifted it, and stuck it under that lumpy nose of his. His mad old eyes snapped with intelligence, with baffled intelligence.
“Ha, my Prince! Squishes! When I was a small boy, cleaning the retorts and collecting the frogs’ legs and sweeping the floor, aye, and being well beaten by the old San, I remember a piece of squish pie as a direct gift from Oolie Opaz himself.”
I sniffed. Squish, without a doubt.
“It has gone, drifted into the air and gone.”
“True. But we will do as you command, and boil many squishes. The whole fortress will be perfumed with squishes.”
“But,” I said, fretful, seeing that first quick flash of hope utterly ruined, “if we boil squishes and put the steam in a silver box, why, then, the steam will condense and we will merely have a box of water.”
San Evold shook his head. What I said was true. But he had no other suggestion.
“Let me first try, my Prince. Afterward, if it does not work, we must think again.”
“You see about the squishes and the boiling. Inform me and I shall come at the right time. Meanwhile, there are the other minerals to be found.”
“Ornol will be back by nightfall, my Prince.”
So, with a few cheerfully intended words which sounded dismal even to me, I took myself off. Seg met me in the long hall of the images where, in ivory and chemzite and bronze and marble, the ancient ones of Valka stared endlessly out upon the blue sky of Kregen. His face was reassuring and refreshing to me, but he said, “Dray! The Emperor has arrived and is in a foul temper!”
Chapter 4
“We are not well pleased with you, son-in-law.”
The Emperor looked just the same as when I had last seen him, big and powerful, standing with booted feet thrust firmly on the ground, his back erect, his hands on his hips. He wore a fine Vallian tunic-coat and breeches, and his hat glowed with feathers. He wore a rapier and left-hand dagger, and a cloth-of-gold cape glittered finely, slung from his left shoulder. But the creases at the inner corners of his eyes had grown more deeply etched, and his face showed a pallor that I saw, with a pang, distressed his daughter Delia.
Across this end of Vorgar’s Drinnik the First Regiment of Valkan Longbowmen stood in their long lines, braced, ready, waiting. They made a fine show. I admit I would far rather deal with them and their like than the gilded popinjays who surrounded the Emperor and his suite, the Pallans and the courtiers, the nobles and the high Koters. I made no direct challenge to the Emperor’s annoyance. He had been feeling his way back to greater power than he had enjoyed for many a long season, and all because I had saved his neck, I and my comrades there in the immortal fight in The Dragon’s Bones. So I placidly said, “It is right that the first regiment of this kind formed in Vallia should be honored by their Emperor’s presence at the presentation of the standards.”
“As to that, Dray Prescot, I agree. But I talk of weightier matters.”
The zorcas moved gently in the lessening heat of the late afternoon. Soon Zim and Genodras would be gone. Then we could go up into the Great Hall of Esser Rarioch to see what kind of banquet my people could prepare for the Emperor.
