Krozair of Kregen

He grasped my arm and glared up into my face.

“You don’t understand. No one here does. How can they?”

He enunciated his words carefully, as a near-drunk sometimes does; but he made sense in what he said. He was pretty far gone, and he just didn’t know he was saying what he was saying.

“My father-”

“Look, son. We all had fathers, and they all failed us at one time or another.” That was not true; but the intensity of this lad’s hatred for his unknown father hurt me, thinking of my own father and the love I bore him.

“My father failed my mother. He ran away — ran away-”

“You said he died.”

“I always say he is dead, out of shame. But he was alive, all the time. All the time. He ran away and left my mother in mortal peril, and she was carrying me at the time, and he ran away and left her. They nearly got her — she told me, and she laughed — but — but I knew. He wouldn’t answer the Call, the Azhurad, and it is im- impossible for a Krozair not to answer the Call. So they made him Apushniad. And serve the rast right. And I was training to be a Krozair of Zy — and they — they- So I left them, ashamed. My father, Apushniad — destroyed me. Destroyed me! Me, Jaidur, Jaidur of Valka, ruined my whole life, and if I find the kleesh I shall surely slay him.”

I just gaped, stricken.

Chapter Six

Renders of the Eye of the World

The Renders of the western end of the Eye of the World made us welcome. They welcomed reinforcements of tough and ruthless fighting-men. They were not so sure of the three swifters we brought, for they habitually used small, fast craft, which could slip into a convoy and cut out the fat prizes. They said they could no doubt pick up enough oar-slaves for the swifters. But we would to a great extent be on our own. Rukker boomed his great laugh and swished his tail and said he’d show these people what real rending was about, what a fighting Kataki could do in the piracy business. He had found a competent ship-Hikdar among the ex-slaves to run Vengeance Mortil for him. I ran Green Magodont, and a tough and experienced swifter captain, a Krozair of Zamu, took command of Pearl. Once we filled with oar-slaves we would be a hard little squadron, and carry some punch in the Eye of the World. The Krozair of Zamu, Pur Naghan ti Perzefn, would sail Pearl back with all the Zairians who wished to return home.

These Renders were a cutthroat lot. Consisting of escaped slaves, criminals, men who could find a home neither north nor south of the inner sea, they carved out their own destiny. If you ask why I was with them, instead of pursuing my schemes in Magdag, the answer is surely plain. My son!

Jaidur — that same name that Velia had spoken, and I had not understood, when she had been dying in my arms. So my Delia had been pregnant when we’d flown off to chastise the shanks attacking our island of Fossana, where the damned Star Lords had sought to make me do their wishes. I had refused out of stiff-necked pride and fear for Delia, and so had been banished to Earth for all of twenty-one miserable years. There had been twins again, twins of whom I had known nothing. The girl, Dayra, the boy, this same Jaidur who called himself Vax out of shame.

He had rambled on a little more before falling into a drunken stupor. He was quite unused to dopa. He had known that any son of Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, would receive scant shrift from the overlords of Magdag, and he had been on his way there because his sister, Velia, had been missing, reported captured by a swifter from Magdag.

Velia had, indeed, been captured. But she had been captured by Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea Zhantil, and they had fallen deeply in love. I believed that to be true. I believed it then, and I am sure of it now. Gafard owed complete allegiance to King Genod, and even when the king sought to abduct the Lady of the Stars, the name by which Velia was known, for the same reasons that Jaidur called himself Vax, Gafard had been unable to blame him; for the king possessed the yrium, the mystic power of authority over ordinary people.

King Genod had, in the end, taken Velia. And because Gafard’s second in command, Grogor, had shafted the saddlebird the king flew, and because the king was abruptly in fear for his life, the genius king had thrown Velia off, to fall to her death. Yrium or no damned yrium, when I caught the cramph I’d probably have trouble stopping myself from breaking his neck before I dragged him off to justice. I know about men who possess the yrium. As I have said, I am cursed with more than one man’s fair share of the yrium.

All this I, alone of our family, knew.

I could not tell Jaidur — or Vax.

I could not tell him.

I had not told him I was his father.

How could I?

There had to be a kinder, better, way of breaking that horrendous news to him. He was in very truth a violent young man. How could I lift a hand against my son in self-defense? And yet how could I stand and let him slay me? For I thought he very well might try. That would be a sin not only for him but for me, also.

His hatred was a real and living force.

Mind you, if I told him and then invited him to try to carry out his avowed intent, and so foined with him and disarmed him — no, no, no. . That would shatter his self-esteem, would turn hatred for me into contempt for himself. And, anyway, he was a remarkably fine swordsman. He might finish me. I share nothing of this silly desire to call oneself the greatest swordsman of the world — or, in my case, of two worlds. That way lies not only paranoia, but a mere killing machine without interest or suspense. Each fight is a new roll of the dice with death, a gamble of life and death. I had decided to go to join the Renders with Rukker because had I gone to Magdag, Vax would have gone with me, and in evil Magdag he might all too easily be slain or enslaved. I did not want that and would stop it. So I had turned aside from my purpose.

A scheme occurred to me whereby I might turn Vax from his path, also. It would give him pain; but nothing like the pain he would be spared.

We sailed out on a few raids and caught Magdaggian shipping and so fought them and took them and built up our stock of oar-slaves. Our base lay up a narrow and winding creek in the lush green island of Wabinosk. When I say green I refer to the vegetation. The island boasted a large population of vosks; but they were kept down by an infestation of lairgodonts. I had no further wish to meet any more lairgodonts, for the risslacas had caused problems before and, anyway, the things were the symbol of King Genod’s new Order of Green Brothers. The islands in this chain were, in their turn, infested by pirates, and we had one or two set-tos with Renders who fancied our prizes. But with Rukker booming and bellowing away we kept what we took.

One day Duhrra started talking about Magdag to Vax, who was most anxious to learn all he could. I listened.

The people we had released from oar-slavery had settled down into a pattern, taking up tasks for which they were suited. Those Zairians who wished to return home had gone in a captured broad ship. Now we had smallish crews, but we were building, and our motive power was almost up to strength. I planned to leave at the earliest moment I could; I had to be sure of Vax first.

“Zigging Grodnims,” Duhrra was saying, sharpening up his sword on a block, taking care over the work.

“All they do is build monstrous great buildings. Rasts.”

Vax egged him on to talk about Magdag. And as I listened so I caught an echo of the way Duhrra saw the rousing times we had spent as pretended renegades. “The king in Sanurkazz has our names down on his roll of infamy — and we innocent.”

“When King Zo hears what you did, Duhrra, I am sure he will pardon you. Was the Lady of the Stars, then, so beautiful?”

Duhrra spit and polished meticulously. “Indeed she was!” Duhrra rolled his eyes. “No maiden more fair graced the earth, they said.”

I felt a pang. Roughly, I said, “Did you ever see her face, oh Duhrra of the waggling tongue?”

“No, master. But I know she was. Duh — everyone said so.”