and told them to have a party instead. Then I turned Twitchnose’s head toward the Mustard Gate, which is a strong battlemented tower set in an angle of the northwest walls of Vondium.
Away to the northeast the monstrous pile of mountains known as Drak’s Seat glowered up darkly against the stars, lit by the Maiden with the Many Smiles. I rode on, sunk in odious thoughts, and the zorca riders closed in on each side.
My rapier came out in a moonlit blur of steel under the overhanging balconies where the moonblooms drank up the light. A hulking fellow swathed in a dark cloak husked out. “We mean you no harm, Prince. We are your friends.”
“What friends ride up so suddenly from the shadows?” He lifted, his hands. They were empty. The street led to the Boulevard of Grape Pressers which, bordered by an arm of the Vindelka Cut, would bring me to the gate I sought. They had chosen their spot well. The overhanging balconies, the pressing walls, the narrow slot of star glitter — yes, they had waited here for me, knowing I would pass this way. How?
The answer to that came more rapidly than I expected.
One of the fellows on my left side, a canny position, reined up. He doffed his hat. The moon showed me a thin face with bright sharp eyes, a narrow face, a hungry face. The jaws were hard and lean. I knew him.
“Strom Luthien!” I said, surprised.
“Aye, Prince. At your service.”
He was a racter. The black and white favors showed dark and bright upon his tunic and cloak and pinned to the hat he had doffed. Now he sidled his zorca closer, disregarding my rapier point like a bar of pink and golden light between us.
“There is much to be said, Prince, between the chief party of Vallia which seeks to save the empire, and the Prince Majister who has been disowned and banished by the emperor.”
Those damned secret ways in the walls of palaces? Spies had listened to the emperor and me talking privately. With a sudden gush of relief I felt reborn. This, then, was what the night held. I fancy he was surprised at my tone, for I have, as you know, a certain unsavory reputation with villains.
“Lead on, Strom Luthien. It is I who am at your service. Let us go and talk, by Vox!”
Fourteen
The fuzzy pink light from the Maiden with the Many Smiles and the golden glitter from a distant torch bracketed to a wall ran gleaming up my blade as I sheathed the rapier. We rode through the nighted streets of Vondium, this parcel of avowed racters and I. They were all apim. There are many so-called menagerie-men on Kregen, as you know, and you also know that they are men even if they are not carrying their spirits and souls in bodies exactly like those of
Vondium is a large and sprawling city, not occupied by as many inhabitants as the enclave city of Zenicce, perhaps, but large and prosperous and filled with great wealth and luxury. Up the paved roadway of one of the Hills we rode, the Hill known as the Ban’alar, past dark masses of vegetation and long walls concealing the villas of the rich. The Ban’alar holds a number of the richest houses in Vondium. We halted by a fortified gateway outside a stone wall with bronze spikes where four samphron-oil lamps cast their pleasant mellow gleam upon the guards and the gates and the shimmer weapons. The simple fact of four samphron-oil lamps conveys adequately the wealth of this house. We were passed through and rode silently along a winding pathway bordered by missals and flowering shrubs. The sweet scent of night-blooming flowers reached me, most soothing. But I kept my senses alert as we dismounted and slaves ran to attend the zorcas. We passed through ornate halls and lushly furnished corridors and so out a glass door into a crystal-walled conservatory. Heat smote me. The walls and ceiling were fashioned of fireglass and the crystal which resists great heat showed the steady beat of furnaces beyond.
The place was crammed with exotic plants, many from the jungles of Chem, and others from Zair knew where upon the face of Kregen.
In a wicker chair stuffed with cushions the Dowager Kovneva Natyzha Famphreon awaited me. I let her have a half-bow, a small mark to show irony, rather than any mark of respect.
“So you come to see me, Prince Majister.”
“The invitation was pressing.”
“Strom Luthien had his orders. You would not have been harmed.”
I looked at her. She had been carried in her palanquin this morning, joining in the rush to greet the emperor. Now she let go one of her famous barking laughs. Yes, I knew her, this famous old biddy, this Dowager Kovneva of Falkerdrin. She must now be almost a hundred and seventy. Her face contained that nut-brown, cracker-barrel experienced look of iron authority. Her mouth curved down at each corner and deep grooves extended the arc of her rattrap mouth so that all her habitual callous command lay revealed in that dominating face. Her lower lip was upthrust in a perpetual sneer. And as I could see by the way she was dressed all in gauzy silks, that carefully pampered body of hers remained as lushly alluring as ever. She kept her priorities in order, did Natyzha Famphreon. Standing with his hand on the back of her chair, her son the kov looked at me uncertainly. He was a weak-chinned, spineless nonentity, his every thought and deed ordered by his mother. That was not his fault, but rather the fault of his breeding. He was still the Pallan of the Armory, and through him his mother wielded enormous powers.
Many of the pallans, the high officials, the ministers or secretaries of state, had changed since my absence. But. Natyzha Famphreon held onto her power with iron claws.
“You say I would not be harmed. If you wish to talk I will listen for a mur or two.”
She didn’t like my tone.
“Will you remove your hat, your cloak?”
They could all see the bow stave thrusting up. The hilt of the longsword was hidden by the upstanding jut of the cloak’s collar.
It was warm. I said, “I am comfortable. Speak.”
“Let us drink a little wine first. I await others who wish to speak with you.”
As to drinking wine with these racters, that was another matter. That I had been called in for conversation meant they had a zhantil to saddle, and I fancied the purpose of my presence, alive and without a slit throat, was to make an attempt to seek my alliance. After all, however they had found out about my banishment from Vondium, they knew and therefore counted on that to make me amenable to their proposals. Those proposals must be obvious. So I refused the wine and waited for a space, removed my hat and looked about this luxurious conservatory.
What a wonderful world this planet of Kregen is! What a profusion of life seethes and ferments there!
So much there is to know of Kregen, so very much, and so pitifully little have I been able to speak into this microphone. But if you who listen to these tapes have some small inkling of the wonders of Kregen, the marvels, the beauties and the horrors, then you will grasp at the wider reality and the sheer vastness of it all. And I never forget that sheer size, although counting for a considerable amount, is by no means that most important criterion of value. Most assuredly so. So the racters, to bring back the thoughts which crowded my mind to the scene I awaited, so these racters might be the largest political party of Vallia with most of the big guns; they were not, in my view, by any means the best. Not by a chalk. Presently in came Nath Ulverswan, Kov of the Singing Forests, just the same, tall and lean and with his scarred face vivid in the fireglow. He wore a lounging robe all of deep dark purple, and the black and white favor was pinned to his shoulder. For all the informality of his attire, the rings and the jewels about him, he carried a rapier and main gauche belted up around his narrow waist. I said, “We have had no real addition to our parties to talk, kovneva.”
The old biddy cackled at this, sticking up her lower lip. Nath Ulverswan was notorious for saying so little as to be practically mute. He gave us a surly “Lahal” and sat down and the slave girls brought wine. The third attendee — one tended to discount the Kovneva’s son in these affairs, rather cavalierly, true
— turned out to be Nalgre Sultant, Vad of Kavinstok. I was hardly overjoyed to see him, for we had pointedly
