vengeance. I heard one of the guards, a tough old bird with a scarred face, speaking hotly.
'To the Ice Floes of Sicce with him! He is Apushniad!'
And another, younger, with a strong determined face, spoke out.
'And yet she is very beautiful.'
I reeled. I gripped the nearest Krozair and he grunted and shifted his sword hilt out of the way. Mercy is a commodity in relatively short supply on Kregen. Zair does not teach mercy to a Grodnim. And Grodno teaches only implacable hatred for all Zairians. Even in my kingdom of Djanduin the pantheon of warrior gods led by the divine Djan must have the case for mercy argued and won before they deign to nod their heads in merciful acquiescence. For the religion of Opaz, the Invisible Twins, mercy is a guiding light, but that too is a mercy tempered with forethought for the welfare of those of Opaz. As for Lem the Silver Leem — they should receive the same mercy they show and they would all be extinct. For old Mog, the high priestess of the religion of Migshaanu, away there in Migladrin, mercy was a known and valued component of the religion, used with care as a precious unction. I could expect no mercy from these men who had been my Krozair Brothers, men for whom I would have fought and men who would have given their lives for me in like manner, before I had been tried and judged and condemned.
I would not plead.
But through all the agony of spirit I felt the fire in my blood. The agony refreshed itself at the wellspring of a new agony.
I knew.
We hustled toward the rock of the side wall. The guards spoke in harsh whispers. 'Keep quiet,' and
'Careful with the light,' and 'He should be thrown to the chanks.' I stumbled along. A lenken door opened and closed, silently. An iron bolt dropped into place, silently. A pitchy darkness confronted my groping fingers. My chains clanked. I heard a panel squeal and a voice, hoarse, say, 'One bur only, my lady. Not a mur more.' A form moved. A soft pearly light shone across a littered floor of discarded impedimenta, fishing gear, a broken trident, crumbling floats, a scattering of canvas, wooden tubs and withy baskets. The light wavered.
I looked up.
It is a long time ago, I was in torment, I do not recall — I remember her soft arms, her lips, the touch of her hair, the thrilling whisper of her voice. Oh, I felt as poor and downtrodden and useless there as ever I have felt. That it should come to this! A beaten man, chained, thrown out of all he held dear, yet daring to clasp in his arms the most wonderful woman in two worlds!
'Dray, oh, my heart. .'
No, I cannot tell more.
Delia — my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.
Of all we babbled I remember little. She said these terrible Krozairs of Zy were incapable of being bribed. Nothing would move them to deny their duty. I could have told her that. There was no easy escape through gold here. She was well. She held a great pride in her sons and daughters. Krozairs, Sisters of the Rose, Princes and Princesses of Vallia. I could hardly talk. She wanted to talk of the youngsters, but I kissed her and we clung together, warm, warm, and again she wailed that there was no way of contriving my escape.
I do remember, in a pale pathetic reflection of my old arrogance: 'I will win free, my Delia. I will. And I will tell you why sometimes I go away even if you do not believe.'
'If you tell me I will believe.'
I was charged afresh with a ludicrous determination. ’I will win free. I will prove I am a true Krozair.' She held me. 'Yes, yes, that is what you will do. I know. They are wrong. .'
'It is a thing I must do. I must.'
How different this, from all my grandiose expectations! I had waited twenty-one dreary years, and all for this! My Delia, the most perfect woman of two worlds, how cruel that she should thus be tormented on my account. I held her close and my thoughts were clouded. I remember. . I remember little then. No, I cannot tell more.
The panel scraped and the pearly light strengthened. I held her close, but she was gone, gone, and the panel closed and the light darkened and I was alone.
The outer lenken door was flung back and rough hands grasped me and, with my chains clanking about me, I was led down to the stone quay and up the gangplank. So once more I entered on the life of a galley slave of the Eye of the World, which is the inner sea of the continent of Turismond on Kregen, spinning beneath the Suns of Scorpio.
A galley slave may survive if he can last out the first week.
My memory of that time remains hazy. I recall that the work came as a shock; I had grown slothful. My strength remained, but it was not as easy as I might have been forgiven for thinking. It took me some time to regain all my old toughness and hardness, to endure the incessant toil, and all that time I remained sunk in a spiritless slough. I cared little for anything. I even came to regard that dark meeting with my Delia as an hallucination. Had I really once more clasped Delia of Delphond in my arms? Could it truly have been my Delia of the Blue Mountains? Or was I gripped by the Drig-driven phantasms of the madness I know claimed me?
Reason had fled. I pulled my oar. I lived like a vosk sunk in swill. I endured. Even thoughts of Zorg of Felteraz, and Nath and Zolta, my two oar comrades still living, penetrated like a nightmare, so that often and often I would call their names, thinking them laboring at the loom at my side.
As for the five other wights on the loom with me, I knew nothing of them nor cared how they regarded me. I was the madman of the benches. I shouted for Zorg when the swifter went into action, yelling for Nath and Zolta, cursing the Overlords of Magdag, pulling with frenzy so that I could drown out the blackness of a despair I had forgotten tormented me, or why, or how, sunk in the blazing mania of madness.
When I had been a slave in the Magdaggian swifters I had gradually surfaced from near-insanity. I had taken an interest in what went on, noting the galleys, their construction, their methods of working and sailing and fighting. Now I cared for nothing. I pulled. When the lash fell on me I yelled out in abandon, uncaring, all pride forgotten.
It is all a fragmentary scattering of scarlet memories.
One time we were rammed and the apostis crumpled in deadly splinters and the side caved in and three of the poor devils chained with me were crushed to red pulp. One time arrows sought down into the slave benches, for this craft was rigged anaphract, and I saw a shaft sprout suddenly from the back of the slave in front of me. I saw with perplexity and no sensations of pain an arrow pinning my foot to the deck. I wrenched the thing out with a jerk of my leg, seeing blood, feeling nothing, pulling, pulling, pulling. I must have been sent down to the sickbay and recovered of the wound. I remember nothing of that. There was a space when I felt the rain and the wind on my face, and the heat of the suns, and then a space when I did not. Now I realize I must have been transferred from the upper bank to the lower; it made no difference to my madness.
Once, I dimly recall, I awoke to look up and see the immense arch of the rock harbor of the Island of Zy above my head and I cried out 'Krozair!' in a terrible voice. I strove to rise and could not, for I was chained and manacled and the chains were stapled to the deck.
Now, later, I know it was after that experience that I was vaguely aware of people bending over me, of shadowy forms, of a shielded light, of whispers.
I recalled these fragments of the night as I labored at the oar by day. The suns scorched my back, my hair grew wild, I fined off the excess weight that being a prince and king brings. I know I was as hard and tough and enduring as ever I had been.
In the full circle of vaol-paol all things must come to pass.
One night I felt my chains shaking, and I cursed and turned over irritably, for sleep was a precious boon to a slave. I heard a whisper and a curse, and someone said, 'Sleep, you Grodno-gasta!' and the soggy sound of a blow. Another voice hailed, it seemed from a distance. Closer at hand the first voice said with great viciousness: 'May Makki-Grodno devour his intestines!' The chains shook again, I heard a clink of metal, and then all was silent. I turned over and found a softer patch on the ponsho-fleece covered sack of straw and slipped back to slumber. No use to ask me where the swifter in which I slaved sailed. I had no idea. I had no desire to know. I believe I did not even understand quite what this all meant, somehow regarding all the toil and agony as a part of a dream in which Zorg, Nath, Zolta and I slaved and labored through all eternity. During the periods when the breeze blew fair and the square sails on the two masts could be set, the slaves might rest. On one evening when the suns sank into a metallic sea and sheened from horizon to keel in a single sheet of burnished bronze, I realized we were at sea. I thought Zorg must have the better share of our onion. Nath and Zolta would share theirs. We were down to half
