praise to Zair for that!”
“Who are you?” he croaked.
Gafard did not draw. I flicked the sword about, between them, and I said to Gafard, “Tell him who I am.”
“You-” Gafard’s hands trembled. He gripped the hilt of his Ghittawrer longsword and the scabbard shook. “You are Gadak, who was Dak, and yet I think-”
“Yes, Gafard. You think?”
“What you said, there in the Zhantil’s Lair. I have tried to think. You would not go after my Lady of the Stars, even though I pleaded as best I could — and you knew I loved her — and-”
“Aye, you loved her, Gafard. She told me that. And she loved you. Never was man more blessed than to receive the love of my Lady of the Stars.”
“Yes — you would not go — and then — then you did go. Did I say something, anything — I cannot remember-”
I did not know if he was speaking the truth. Yet the horrific scene in the hunting lodge when I had discovered that the Lady of the Stars was my daughter could have been so painful to him that he had shut it out of his mind. It is known. I glared at him.
“You told me, in all truth, who my Lady of the Stars was.”
“Ah! And then you went?”
“Yes.”
He trembled uncontrollably now. He had doted on his lady, and he had yearned to emulate the exploits of her father, saying there was a matter between him and Pur Dray. Now I had realized he did not mean he wished to fight me, as I had then thought. He had wished to talk to his father-in-law. As was, in very truth, proper. For I would have a hand in the bokkertu.
The king roused himself. He looked ghastly. “What is all this nonsense, Gafard! Kill the cramph, here and now!”
“I do not think I can do that, Majister.”
“Then try, you ungrateful cramph!”
“Tell him who I am, Gafard.”
Gafard’s face had lost all its color. His bronze tan floated on his skin. He looked frenzied. “I–I think-”
“Why should I not slay you now, Gafard — you who bow down to his kleesh of a king? Oh, yes, Gafard, you know who I am. You have dreamed of this meeting. You save relics. You say there is a matter between us. By Zair! There is a matter between us!”
He gasped and tried to speak and his mouth merely opened and closed.
“There is a matter! I want to know why you fawn on this foul object, and let him steal away my daughter, Velia!”
He did not fall. In truth, the shock of the meeting would have felled a lesser man with all the passionate longings he had put into just such a confrontation. He wet his lips. The cords in his neck strained like ropes in a hurricane. He croaked, and tried again, and, at last, he could say the words.
“Pur Dray! Pur Dray Prescot! The Lord of Strombor! Krozair of Zy!”
The king shrieked at this, and cowered away, his hands fumbling at his throat. Like a fool, I ignored him.
“No, Gafard —
For a moment no one spoke. The moment was too heavy for mere words. The king levered himself up. His anguished face bore the look of a madman. His hand fumbled at his neck.
“Dray Prescot! The Bane of Grodno!” His hand whipped the cunning little throwing knife from the sheath at his back. “Then die, Dray Prescot, die!”
Chapter Twenty
“Die, Dray Prescot, die!”
The glittering throwing knife hurtled from the fingers of the king straight at my face. And, in that selfsame instant, as though time shuttered through a macabre repetition, I caught a single flashing glimpse over the side of the voller of a gorgeous scarlet and golden bird of prey in full diving vicious attack upon a shining white dove.
The two scenes merged and melded in my eyes and became one.
The golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords, their spy and messenger, striking with black-taloned claws at the white dove of the Savanti, and the glittering terchick, the Kregan throwing knife, hurled full at my face, were one and the same. I saw the Savanti dove hesitate and swerve and the lancing blow of scarlet and gold shriek past. The Genodder in my fist sprang up and twitched in the old cunning Disciplines and the terchick rang like a gong-note of despair, clanging against the blade and springing in a gleaming curve away into the vast reaches of the sky. The king’s mouth slobbered wetly and he began to claw out his Ghittawrer longsword.
“He is a Krozair, Majister,” said Gafard, staring at me with hunger and despair.
“You call this object ‘Majister,’ Gafard. Yet he stole my daughter away from you, and now she is dead. You are a man. I know that. You prated on about the Lord of Strombor, and you emulated my deeds and sought my renown. I would surrender all those deeds and give all that renown if my Velia were back with me, alive!”
He pushed himself up. He had stopped shaking. “I, too, Pur Dray, would give everything I own, everything I am-”
“The girl was a fool, a shishi!” shrieked Genod. “I am the king. It is my right to take-”
“Your rights will be allowed you when you are judged. For I take you back to Zandikar. There you will be judged for murder.”
“Murder?” Gafard’s jaw muscles ridged. He stared at me. His eyes held a look no man should suffer -
a look I had borne as I cradled my Velia in my arms and watched her die.
“Aye, Gafard — murder. This kleesh’s fluttrell was wounded by Grogor’s shot. The bird was falling. Velia was callously thrown off by this kleesh to save himself.”
“It is a lie!” Genod staggered up, distraught, panting, whooping great gulps of air. He had drawn his Ghittawrer blade with the tawdry emblem of his Green Brotherhood upon it. “A lie!”
“I never heard the Lord of Strombor was a Krozair who lied.”
“I speak the truth, Gafard. This kleesh whom you worship threw my daughter down to her death -
threw down your wife!”
Once the first stone is dislodged in a wall or a dam the final pressure mounts swiftly and more swiftly to the point of breaking and utter collapse. This Gafard — the King’s Striker, Sea Zhantil, my
had revered the genius king Genod, the king with the yrium, had worshiped my daughter Velia, and had envied my reputation upon the Eye of the World and had attempted to emulate me. Zair knows, the poor hulu was a tormented man. Struck and buffeted by passions and beliefs, by desires and duties, he had been caught in a mind- shattering trap. Renegade, loyal Grodnim of Magdag, once a loyal Zairian, he now faced the final collapse of everything in his life. He had been tortured in his ib by beliefs and truths beyond the breaking of a mortal man. Even as King Genod, foaming, berserk, launched himself forward with the Ghittawrer blade lifting, so Gafard bellowed and flung himself at the king.
“King Genod!”
“Stand aside, Gafard, you rast, while I cut down this devil.”
“Genod — murderer!” Gafard’s howl pricked the nape of the neck. “I have served you faithfully. I revered you past reason. You repay me by murdering my Velia, the only woman in the world-”
“Lies! Lies!”
They stood for perhaps a half dozen heartbeats, their chests laboring to draw breath as they shouted, their faces demoniac with convulsive rage and revelation.
