I gave him a brief — a very brief — resume of what had happened to me after we’d parted. He expressed a desire to twist Gafard’s neck a little. We had both been employed by Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea Zhantil, who was the hateful King Genod’s right-hand man, when we’d been renegades, as Gafard himself was a renegade. When I told Duhrra that the Lady of the Stars had, at last, been kidnapped by King Genod’s men, he thumped his left fist against the dirt and swore. When I told him that the Lady of the Stars was dead, callously hurled from the back of a fluttrell by the king when the saddle-bird had been injured, and Genod thought himself about to die, Duhrra simply sat on the ground. He ran a little dust through his fingers onto the dust of the ground. His head was bowed. At last, he said, “I shall not forget.”
I did not tell Duhrra of the Days that this great and wonderful lady, who had been called his Heart, his Pearl, by Gafard, and who had loved him in return, was my own daughter Velia, princess of Vallia. My Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, waited for me in my island Stromnate of Valka, that beautiful island off the main island of Vallia. I yearned to return to her. Yet I was under an interdiction. Until I had once more made myself a member of the Order of Krozairs of Zy I would not be allowed to leave the Eye of the World. Whether or not it was the Star Lords or the Savanti who chained me here, I did not know, although Zena Iztar had indicated it was not the work of the Star Lords. Well, I would become a Krozair of Zy once more and escape from the inner sea and return to Valka. Before I did that I fancied I would bring this evil king Genod to justice. So, having done all these marvelous and wonderful feats and proved just how great a man I was, I would go home. I would go home and race up the long flight of stairs in the rock from the Kyro of the Tridents, leap triumphantly onto the high terrace of my palace of Esser Rarioch overlooking the bay and Valkanium and I would clasp my Delia in my arms again. Oh, yes. I would do all this. And then — and then I would have to tell her that her daughter Velia was dead.
It is no wonder that on this dreadful occasion I found less thrusting desire to go back to Valka and Delia than I’d ever experienced before. I must return. I must tell my Delia and then comfort her as she would comfort me. It was not just a duty, it was what love prompted. But it was hard, abominably hard. Duhrra was telling me about his new hand and I roused myself. I had to plan and think. My thoughts had run ahead. Here we were, still chained oar-slaves in a swifter of Magdag.
“. . locks with a twist so cunning you’d never know. Look.”
I looked. Duhrra’s right stump had been covered with a flesh-colored extension that looked just like a wrist and the hard mechanical hand looked not unlike a real hand. He could press the fingers into different positions with his left hand. He kept it hooked so that he could haul on the manette of the oar loom. I felt it and the hardness was unmistakable.
“That’s a steel hand, Duhrra — or iron.”
The doctors of the inner sea are not, in general, quite as skilled as those of the lands of the Outer Oceans. They are good at relieving pain and can amputate with dexterity. But I did not think they were capable of producing prosthetics of this quality. Duhrra had seen Molyz the Hook Maker and this kind of work would have been quite beyond him. Duhrra had been attended to by the doctors attached to the Todalpheme of the Akhram, the mathematical astronomers who predicted the tides of Kregen, and they had fitted his stump with a socket and an assortment of hooks and blades to be slotted in. But this work here was beyond them, also. Duhrra waxed eloquent for him.
“In Zandikar, it was, Dak. Right out of the blue. This lady says she can fix me up properly. Wonderful woman — wonderful. Gentle and charming and — well, you can see what she did.”
“You saw her do it?”
“No. Somehow — duh, master — I do not know! She looked into my eyes and then she laughed and told me I might leave and I looked down — and it was all done.”
“And her name, this wonderful woman?”
“She said she was the lady Iztar.”
I did not answer. What was Zena Iztar — whose role so far had been enigmatic in my life although I felt I owed her a very great deal — doing in thus helping Duhrra? Her machinations, I suspected, might not jibe with those of the Star Lords or those of the Savanti. She it was who had told me I might never leave the Eye of the World until I was once more a Krzy. I believed her implicitly, had not thought to question her. She, I felt, I hoped, wished me well. That would make a remarkable change here on Kregen, where I had been knocked about cruelly by Savanti and Star Lords moving behind the scenes and exerting superhuman forces. So I admired Duhrra’s new hand and thought on.
Then the selfishness of my thoughts mocked me. It was all “I” — Zena Iztar could have helped Duhrra because he was Duhrra.
Tame-slaves threw in malsidges and we ate them, for they are a quality anti-scorbutic. We settled down to sleep and I had a deal to think about; but, all the same, I slept. Sleep became a rare and precious commodity during the next couple of sennights, for we were employed pulling at night as well as day. The swifters called at islands for short periods and then weighed again, and once again we threw our tortured bodies against the looms of the oars. Food was short and we hungered. Men began to die. I fancied Duhrra would last this kind of punishment well, and the Kataki had reserves of strength on which to call. For Fazhan ti Rozilloi the work became harder and harder; but with all the gallantry of a true crimson-faril he struggled on, refusing to be beaten. The young man Vax stuck to his work with stoical fury, sullen, with a smoldering anger in him hurtful to me. We were not flogged more than any other set on any other loom. But we lost Lorgad the Rapa. One day he could not pull any more, and the flogging lash merely made his dead body jump. He was unchained and heaved overboard, and a fresh man took his place.
He was short, and he took the apostis seat, chunky, and with a black bar look about the eyebrows, and a pug nose that was of the Mountains of Ilkenesk south of the inner sea. Yet he was a Zairian, an apim, and he contrived to give Rukker the Kataki a cunning slash with his chains as the whip-Deldars bundled him across.
Rukker bellowed and shook his chains.
I saw the chain between him and Duhrra pull taut. The chain between Duhrra and me began to pull. The link on which we had been working bent. It began to open. I cursed foully, loudly, unable to get at Rukker past Duhrra.
“Sit back, you stinking Kataki cramph! You tailed abomination! Sit down or I’ll cave your onkerish head in!”
He swung back to glare with murderous fury at me. The whip-Deldars bashed away at the new man’s chains. Duhrra tried to sit back as well, to release the pressure on the chains. It was a moment when all hell might have broken loose.
One whip-Deldar flicked his lash — almost idly — at me and I endured it. I bellowed again, something about Katakis and rasts and tails, and whispered to Duhrra, “Tell him, Duhrra! Get the gerblish onker to sit down!”
Duhrra leaned across and his rumble would have told the whole bank if I had not started yelling with the pain of the lash. It was not altogether a fake. Vax looked at me in surprise. I yelled some more. And then Duhrra must have got the message across, for Rukker slapped himself back on the bench, whipping his tail up out of the way, and the strain came off the chain.
When the whip-Deldars had gone, he started to rumble at me, “You called me many things, Dak, and I shall not forget them-”
“You would have ruined all, Rukker. You must think and plan if you wish to escape the overlords of Magdag and their slave-masters. Onker! I did what I did to make you sit down.”
Duhrra said, “Had you ruined our chances, Rukker, I would not have been pleased — duh — I would have been angry.”
Rukker glared at me again. Duhrra lifted the chain between us. Rukker looked. Duhrra’s metal hand had worked hard and well. The bent link was on the point of parting. Rukker whistled.
“Well, you onker! Now do you see your foolishness?”
He did not like my tone. But he was a Kataki.
Rukker said, “I understand. I will not speak of it again.”
That was Rukker the Kataki. He had this knack of putting his own mistakes and unpleasant experiences into a limbo where he chose not to speak of them. The idea of apology never entered his ferocious Kataki head.
