Anyway,” I went on with a rush of confidence, “this new Chief Pallan your father has brought forward to such power, this Kov Layco; he will keep things running while we are away. He has shown a misjudgment of character in appointing Ashti Melekhi — but that will be forgiven him, I daresay, if he is as skilled and clever as is said.”
“He is clever, no doubt of that. I try to like him.”
“Oh?”
“You are so often away, Dray. It is difficult. Once it is all settled you will tell me this dread secret that you feel will — will — I tremble to say it — will come to-”
“Do not say it, my heart. Nothing can destroy our love.” I believed it, passionately. “But I do fear to tell you. I feel — I feel the burden I shall impose on you is-” My thoughts were muddled. I had kept putting off and putting off telling Delia of my origins. To her, I was a savage clansman, with a strange underspirit that did not come from the plains of Segesthes. But — Earth! How could I tell her I came from a star in the sky she could barely make out? How could she possibly believe in a world which possessed only one sun? What sense was there in a world with only one moon! And, how could any sensible person of Kregen believe in a world that contained only apims as men and women, where diffs were unknown? My story would be taken as the ravings of a madman. I ploughed on somehow: “You will find it hard to believe me. But I shall tell the truth. I swear it. I swear it by Zair.”
“I shall believe-”
Turning for the arms rack I groped around and took up the scabbarded Krozair longsword with the plain strappings that would secure it to my back, the hilt comfortably jutting over my shoulder by the blue-fletched arrow shafts.
I remember, through the maze of impending agony through which I would have to go in trying to convince Delia and my family that I was not a raving lunatic, I sought a little tawdry comfort in thinking of ordinary things. I thought I would have to see about a proper supply of the rose-red feathers of the Zim korf for my Archers of Valka, and I also remember thinking I was growing far too accustomed to wearing the longsword sticking up over my back instead of jutting almost parallel with the ground at my left side. I was thinking I would like to see my new aerial cavalry of Valka mounted on flutduins performing against those rascally flutsmen. A torrent of vague thoughts poured through my mind. So I turned again to pick up the superb shortsword Hap Loder had brought me, a present from the Clansmen of Viktrik, the new clan who had given me obi, a blade built in Zenicce to the very highest standards, a blade to shame any Genodder of the Eye of the World, and I took the chunkrah-hide and gold scabbard up into my hand and a red and brown scorpion, glinting, ran from under the arms rack. I felt sick.
A scorpion!
Symbol of the forces of the Savanti or the Star Lords, symbol of those powers that could hurl me about Kregen or banish me back to Earth, contemptuously tossing me about like a puppet, that scorpion stood on its eight hairy legs, waving its vicious stinging tail at me in admonishing authority. Not now! Please Zair! Not now!
But the blue haze dropped upon me, and I felt the coldness, striking through like the clammy hand of Death himself, and the scorpion grew and bloated, radiant with the blue fire, and everything spun away in two worlds, and engulfed in agony I fell into nothingness.
Chapter Twelve
This nothingness differed from those other nauseating nothingnesses in which I had suffered so often before.
Always, so it seemed to me, I had been snatched away by the blue-limned radiance of the scorpion, caught up, whirled through nothingness, spun through an achingly cold void, smashed down with a hint of the red fire of Antares, slapped head over heels, all naked like a newborn infant, sent toppling helplessly into a new world.
But, this time. .
A difference.
I was stark naked, and that I expected.
I was no longer in the voller and that, too, I expected.
I tried to open my eyes and realized they were open. I could see and yet, seeing, see nothing. The hint of echoes, as of the rushing of a distant torrent far below ground, pent between eon-old walls never opened to sunlight. . The whisper of insane voices cackling over the edge of a world, pringling clammily against my skin. . I felt the coldness touch me, and ebb, and return. I saw — I saw blue whorls of light gyrating, and, across them and irradiating them with wheels of crimson, red streaks of fire pulsating. The blue was a pale, luminescent blue, and the sharp blue and the crimson struggled for supremacy. And — green! An ominous tinge of green washed across the lower corner of the firmament, clashing with the struggling blue and crimson.
Where had I see blue and crimson before, recently? My head rang with soundless echoes. I struggled, and did not move.
The sky colors fought and writhed, waxed and waned.
Yellow! Where was the yellow of Zena Iztar?
I bellowed out: “Zena Iztar!” and only a dolorous croak passed my lips, my corded throat bursting with effort, a croak like a frog with hernia.
Blue of that brilliant beckoning luminosity was the color used by both the Savanti and the Star Lords when they sent the Scorpion after me. Yellow had been used triumphantly by Zena Iztar, as I believed, to save me. As for that mysterious woman, who on Earth called herself Madam Ivanovna, I knew nothing
— or practically nothing. She came and went at her own whim. Glorious she was, aye, that is true. She showed no fear of the Star Lords or the Savanti; but if she worked for them or against them, or for one or the other, I did not know.
I fell.
As I fell I remembered — remembered Zena Iztar and the Kroveres of Iztar, and the crimson flag and the blue device.
I fell. All naked and bruised, I fell into a thorn-ivy bush and I cursed by the foul anatomy of Makki-Grodno. What was happening I had no idea; all I wanted to do was get back to the voller and Delia and go cure her father.
By an effort of will I had succeeded in erecting a kind of structure of deceits so as partially to mollify the anger of the Star Lords. I had managed to convince them I should stay on Kregen and not be dispatched to Earth. I had also, after some success along the way, like an onker resisted them, willfully, and so been banished to Earth for twenty-one horrendous years.
Resistance might once again cause another banishment.
What Maspero, my tutor in the Swinging City, had told me did make a kind of sense. He had said:
“Only by the free exercise of your will can you contrive the journey.” That journey had taken me for the first time from Earth — I was literally up a tree at the time, being chased by savages — to sail my leaf boat down the sacred River Aph and after the welcome departure of the scorpion crew to discover a little of what life on Kregen was like and how I would measure up to it — and at last so reach Aphrasoe. Could the Savanti not draw me at will, then? Their monstrous creature in the sacred Pool of Baptism had flung me back to Earth, and it had been the Everoinye, the Star Lords, who had picked me to labor for them about their mysterious purposes on Kregen.
So I exerted my will.
I roared it out, and produced only a croaking sighing like a pair of bellows shot through by musketry. “I will stay on Kregen! I will rejoin my wife in the voller! You have no powers over me, Star Lords! Savanti
— I would have worked joyously for you; but you disdained me! Why torture me now? Why?”
And, all the time, I looked for the welcome yellow to gush up among the gyrating colors staining the firmament, and no yellow came.
From the susurrating wash of background noises, from the color-dripping sky, from the mingling scents and perfumes, past the thorn-ivy bush, from everywhere and from nowhere, a voice spoke to me. A voice spoke to me.
“Insolent onker! You are a mere mortal man — do not presume.”
