vast expanses of Kregen and to set up puppets to carry out his orders told most eloquently that he must be mad. Mad in that special sense, of course, a kind of madness which afflicts people in certain ways. He was clever, brilliantly clever, and fiendishly ruthless, as I knew. He was an opponent to reckon with. Apart from anything else, his sorcerous skills gave him an advantage almost impossible to conceive of on this Earth. I must look to my own defenses within the mystic realms, that was for sure, and get Khe-Hi-Bjanching to earn his keep, although that was hardly fair. Khe-Hi had done wonders. His own powers had grown over the years. He would, if he lived, prove a most potent ally to me and adversary to Phu-si-Yantong.
Thus thinking, I dismounted from the zorca and tied him to the hitching rail. Pulling my tattered brown cloak around my shoulders and with a touch of the fingertips to the bamboo stick, I went into the Running Sleeth.
The brightly painted wooden sign over the lintel had been carved in the round and showed a sleeth running, the reptile’s powerful back legs fully extended, its silly front claws curled, its dinosaur-head thrust out, the forked tongue — a strip formed of brass wires — twitching out most realistically. The craze among the young bloods of Hyrklana and Hamal for owning and racing sleeths had not yet extended to Vallia, I had thought. In this I was clearly wrong. The reptilian sleeth can run reasonably fast, not as fast as a zorca, but it is a damned uncomfortable ride, waddling along on those two massive hind legs, with its tail stuck out aft to balance itself.
So the name told me the kind of inn this would be.
The place had been tarted up. Smoky old beams had been painted over. Garish pictures filled every corner. Instead of quaffing ale from jacks or flagons, the customers were drinking parclear or sazz from thin glass goblets. The smells of cooking told me that the over-refined food served here would be all fashionable rubbish, not fit to last half a bur in a man’s stomach. Still, it takes all kinds to make a world. Small round tables on spindly legs, elegant chairs with needlepoint covers, flowers in pots of chunky ceramic — well, flowers are a boon to tired eyes — all gave the impression that this Larghos who owned the place must be a man of taste, well able to satisfy his provincial clientele that they were being entertained in the best fashion of the capital.
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with sazz or parclear or elegant chairs and furnishings. It is when these appurtenances to gracious living are pushed blatantly forward as an end in themselves, catering for empty-headed gadflies, that the ordinary man must recoil. I say must. Some do not see things in this light, and as I went in and sat down in a chair with my back to a wall facing the door — an instinctive action, this, done without thought — I was prepared to let any man enjoy whatsoever he wished within reason. So I scanned the people there and then prepared to ignore them. Farmers, stockholders, breeders, they were unlikely to be found here. Here in the Running Sleeth would be found those men’s sons, eating up the family wealth. One or two soldiers of the garrison who fancied themselves men of culture, an artist and poet or two, if they had little talent but large incomes, light ladies and fashionable damsels, the would-be cultured layer of provincial life would come here to ape the ways they imagined to go on in Vondium.
And then, well, I admit it fully and freely, I could not find it in my heart to blame Larghos, the owner and landlord. After all, into this place of conscious refinement and culture stumbles an unshaven common fellow, a wandering laborer, with a raggedy old brown blanket cast over his shoulders and a mop of untamed hair, and puts his odiferous sack on the beautiful embroidered tablecloth and sticks his naked feet out over the charming rugs woven in imitation of Walfarg Weave. Well!
Larghos, slender, oily, charming, with wavy hair, trotted over and his face showed such outraged fury that I almost laughed. I couldn’t see what was setting him going.
“Out, fellow! What do you think you’re at! Schtump!”
“I only wanted-” I began, beginning to understand.
“You’ll have a broomstick over your head! Schtump!”
I made a solemn promise to myself. I would not allow myself to become angry. No. No, this Larghos was right. I had no business bringing my old blanket cloak and my sack into this temple to culture and gracious living.
I sighed. “Is Koter Rafik Avandil here? I am supposed to meet him.”
“He is gone out! Paid his bill and gone. Now you go!” Then he lifted his voice and shouted squeakily,
“Nath! Cochu! Come running and throw this fellow out, and his verminous sack with him!”
I stood up.
“Thank you for your hospitality, dom, I’m going.”
I hefted the sack and put out my hand for the bamboo stick which I’d placed on the table. Now there are some men who cannot let well alone. Larghos stepped back, his face red, breathing heavily, scandalized at my intrusion into his establishment that had such a good name, but prepared to let me go without further ado. Not so the idler at the adjoining table who had watched all with a bright, birdlike gaze.
He was young, full-fleshed, bright of eye and erect of carriage, and yet about him there were plain to see the old familiar hateful signs of corrupt authority.
“Let Nath and Cochu give him a beating before you let him go, Larghos. The rast deserves a lesson, forcing his filthy self in here among decent people.”
Before I could stop myself, I’d said, “I’m not filthy, dom.”
He levered himself up from the chair. He wore foppish clothes, not of decent Vallian buff, but of a mixture of bright colors among which the black and white predominated. His rapier was overlong and the hilt was ornately set with jewels. Whoever he was, he was not a citizen of Arkadon. Larghos began to wring his hands.
“Please, jen, my men will throw him out without fuss-”
“Silence, cramph!” This young lord — for Larghos called him
There would be no profit in my telling this young bully that I was the Prince Majister of Vallia, for he was a racter and would joy in having the excuse to get his rapier between my ribs, claiming afterward that this filthy tramp could not possibly have been the Prince Majister. How was a loyal jen supposed to know that?
Nath and Cochu appeared, beefy apims in blue-striped aprons, bare-armed. Larghos started to say something and the young lord waved him down. “I shall deal with the cramph myself. I do not care for his manners. You, rast!” he shouted at me. “I shall teach you manners!”
With that, confident in his own limber strength against this bent-over fellow in his brown blanket cloak, he took a couple of dancing steps forward and struck out, with more power than skill. I slid the blow and stepped away from the table calmly. The bamboo stick was in my right hand, held by the end, the thick, ridged end.
The young coxcomb went mad with fury. He shook with rage. “Do you see that!” he yelled. “The calsany! He threatens me with his stick! A filthy tapo daring to lift a stick against me, against the Trylon of Tremi! I’ll prick a little blood from his mangy hide!” With that he ripped out his rapier and flung himself into a fighting crouch.
I sighed again, this time with real regret.
He lunged for me. I used the old bamboo stick to parry him off. I judged him to be reasonably skilled with the rapier, well able to take care of himself in an inn fracas, swishing and swashing; as to his caliber against real opposition, I was still unsure.
When he couldn’t quite get his rapier to cut me up, as he expected to do just as he expected the twin suns to rise each day, he grew even more angry. His face was blotched. His eyes glared. His lips twisted with rage and frustration.
His cronies at the table, laughing and hawking, did not help him with their crude advice and mocking injunctions to spit the old fellow and have done.
Here in my Delia’s Delphond, I knew, a murder would merit the strictest investigation. Delphond was civilized.
He blundered toward me and caught his foot in one of the elegant chairs and sprawled forward. His left hand raked up instinctively. He caught the bamboo stick. His face went mean.
“I’ve got you now, you cramph!”
He tried to wrench the stick aside and so slice me down the face, as a nice preliminary to what he intended to do to my carcass.
