stop myself from going down among the archers of Zandikar and showing them what a Lohvian longbow might do in the hands of a skilled archer.
The cruel walled funnel is a bitter trick. The riders rode boldly through and charged on, yelling, and so the farther they galloped the more compressed became their ranks. Confusion set in; they recoiled and men toppled from the high saddles; they shrieked now as the arrow storm sleeted upon them. The bow of Zandikar may be only puny compared to a longbow; but it could wreak havoc in these conditions where the shafts sped so thickly that the air appeared filled with their whispering death. Sectrixes screamed and thrashed their six hooves. Men fell, to be battered to death. The arrows never ceased their spiteful singing. A handful of mail-clad riders reached the far wall and I leaped up, placing the longbow down carefully first, and so went at them on a level with the Ghittawrer blade. It was all pulsing and high excitement for a space; we beat down those who had survived to reach the end of the funnel. They died unable to fall, so great was the crush. Men in the gate towers shot into the riders from above, and great stones fell upon them.
By the time we closed the doors and put the stout beams back and walled up the aperture, my men were stripping off the harnesses and mail, leading away those animals that had not died, carting off the corpses, collecting up the weapons. Details of archers with wicker baskets picked up all the shafts. The broken ones would go back to the factories, where women and girls would reshaft the old heads, fletch them with the feathers of the Zandikarese chiuli bird — a deep plum color, most pleasing.
“How long can they sustain such losses?” demanded Janri.
“As long as this genius king orders them to,” I said.
Thereafter we maintained a careful watch upon all the walls and beat back sudden attacks, and prepared for grand assaults, and listened for mining operations, and so caved in two tunnels upon the diggers beneath. The siege went on.
I said to the Queen’s Council in the High Hall of the Palace of Fragrant Incense, “I think Glycas will try an assault from the sea.”
Pur Naghan ti Perzefn, a Krozair of Zamu, leaped up, declaring, “Let me take the swifters and ram and sink them!”
He was given permission and took as well as our three swifters the four smaller swifters the Zandikarese navy had left of those they had begun the war with. On the day the expected attack developed the land operations demanded my attention. Pur Naghan reported in as the suns sank, smiling, blood-spattered, grim, and triumphant.
“We lost
“Hai Jikai, Pur Naghan,” I said. “The queen will see you.”
Queen Miam, without much prompting from me, expressed her thanks to Naghan, and then said, “We feel it right in the Jikai that you should be known henceforth as Pur Nazhan. Do you agree?”
“I agree, Majestrix. I thank you.”
So Pur Naghan became Pur Nazhan. I was happy for him.
The siege went on.
All this time, for all the power I could exercise in the city, I did not forget that, in truth, I was in deep dire trouble in the areas of life that mattered to me. I might bellow orders and send mailed men scampering into action, whip my blade down and so order the release of five hundred deadly shafts from the bows of the Zandikarese archers, I might chivy and cajole and instruct a queen, I might be imperious with Pallans and Chuktars; all the time I remembered I was Apushniad, outlawed from the Krozairs, debarred from returning home to Valka and my Delia.
And, too, I had most certainly not lost sight of my business with King Genod — the genius at war, who had murdered my daughter Velia — and with Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea Zhantil, Velia’s lawful husband.
We knew these two were not with the army of Prince Glycas, and we surmised they were with the Grodnim army of the west, pressing on along the coast, and no doubt thinking about encircling Zimuzz, if they had not already taken that great city. Genod’s plans had worked so far, for he had enclosed various centers of resistance as in a nutcracker. We could afford no assistance to Zimuzz. They could not aid us. Zamu, the next great fortress-city to the east, would be the next to fall, and then it would be Sanurkazz
— Holy Sanurkazz.
Pur Naghan — or, as he now was, Pur Nazhan — had scored a notable victory and as a result four of the Ten Dikars were open again. This was small consolation to us, penned in Zandikar, for we knew there were no forces at sea waiting to come to our relief. We were wrong in our suppositions, and the correction of our misapprehension came one dark night before She of the Veils rose to flood down in fuzzy pink moonlight. I had just completed one of my eternal circuits of the walls and had thrown myself down in the small room of the palace I used for sleeping when I could. Duhrra snored noisily in the corner. Roko, Roz Janri’s dwarf and chief chamberlain, bustled in flat- footed with a girl bearing a torch. He shook me awake.
“A messenger, Dak — a Krozair of Zy! Just come in.” Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and girding on my weapons, I followed Roko to the High Hall. I let Duhrra slumber on. The hall held a narrow cold look and a feeling of meanness in the night as I entered. Numbers of the high officials of Zandikar waited whispering together. The queen arrived shortly afterward and seated herself on the throne, with her handmaidens and guards about her. She had not yet adopted any throne step pets; I’d had experience of neemus and Manhounds and chavonths; I wondered what she might choose when she understood more of her power. Her small elfin face looked sleep- drugged, as did all our faces, for the sake of Zair; but we knew what we were about.
I was prepared for the newly arrived Krozair of Zy to take one look at me and to whip out his sword and bellow, “Pur Dray! The Lord of Strombor! Apushniad!”
But he did not. I did not know him. He looked a proper Krozair, well-built, erect, clear-eyed, with the fierce upthrusting moustaches of a Zairian. We ex-oar-slaves had grown most of our hair back by now, although still somewhat straggly. I looked at the coruscating device on his white surcoat, that hubless spoked wheel within the circle, and I own I felt an ache. He was all business.
“The Grodnims take all along the southern coast to the west. Zy still holds. We have been bypassed. Zimuzz is about to fall. The king is there, may Zair torture him eternally.”
I stood half in the shadows at the foot of the throne steps and I did not speak. Roz Janri stood at the side of the throne, a tall and dignified figure, and he it was who said, “You are welcome here, Pur Trazhan. Have you no good news for us in our darkness?”
This Pur Trazhan smiled. “Yes, Roz Janri. I am bid to tell you that the city of Zandikar must not fall. You must hold. An army is on the way. It is a strange army, for it is composed of men who do not swear by Zair, and who fly in the air in metal boats.”
There was a quick buzz of surprised comment and conjecture at this startling news. I felt a glow all over my limbs. But — of course! — it was Vax who started forward, eagerly, calling excitedly above the hubbub.
“This army of men who fly in the air, Pur Trazhan! Are they of Vallia?”
“Yes, they are.” Trazhan was clearly not quite sure what to call Vax or how to address him.
“Then, by Vox!” exclaimed Vax. “It is Prince Drak and the army of Vallia, with fliers! It must be!”
“That is so,” said Trazhan. “It is Pur Drak, a great and renowned Krozair of Zy, who leads them. Long have we awaited their coming, since the Call went out. And now Pur Drak has answered the Azhurad, as he promised he would when he was given permission to go to his home country, wherever that may be.”
So that explained what Drak had been up to. My eldest son had answered the Call in a typically Prescot way. He’d sought help from his own. I learned that he had brought vollers by sea from Vallia, vollers loaned by his grandfather, the emperor of Vallia. They had sailed all the way in those marvelous race-built galleons of Vallia. I knew why they’d sailed and not flown. The same reason had prompted Rees and Chido to sail and not fly. And, it also meant that the emperor, the tightfisted old devil, had not spared first-quality vollers. He’d let his grandson have those fliers bought from Hamal and therefore suspect, not safe for long aerial journeys. I did not blame Drak for sailing. This way, he brought all his men and fliers into the Eye of the World instead of leaving them stranded all the way across the Sunset Sea, the Klackadrin, the Hostile Territories and The Stratemsk. Soon, he would be here and we would be relieved!
“I have heard of Pur Drak,” said Roz Janri. A frown crossed his face. “He is the son of Pur Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, once the most renowned Krozair upon the Eye of the World. But that was long ago. Now this Pur
