I tried to bellow back, and merely wheezed.
I thought. I tried to hurl my thoughts; and the voice crashed down, masterful, dominating.
“I command you now, Dray Prescot. And I demand from you more than you have hitherto given -
more than you appear willing to give. But that more I will have.” The voice whined suddenly, and became incoherent. Then: “Hearken unto me!”
And, another voice, harsher, deeper: “The man is ours!”
“You do not use him to the full!”
“We use him as we see fit. He is, after all, but a mere mortal man.”
“And fit therefore to be driven-”
“He is often stubborn. He is not an easy man-”
“I would drive him! I would-” Again that acrid voice became incoherent. I listened, my mouth dry, my eyes fairly starting from my head, and my backside jabbed thick with the thorn-ivy needles. This could not be the Savanti, arguing with the Star Lords!
Could it?
The thorn-ivy needles jabbed me cruelly and I rolled away, cursing, feeling harsh rock and stones beneath me, broken twigs, the detritus of a wild animal’s lair.
Brittle bones crunched under my hands as I struggled to rise.
“We wish him-” continued the second voice.
The acid voice, the voice that had spoken first and so allowed me a listening post, illuminating with sound the black silent recesses, that voice that kept wavering as though the speaker strove to pierce through the tumult of a tempest, lashed back. “I shall run him now!”
“Not so! He works well — when he does work-”
“Does he know-?”
“Of course not! How could he? He is apim. Apim.”
“Then perhaps I shall let him know a little-” The bitter voice trailed. Suddenly I found myself urging the voice to return. He’d tell me what, the rast?
These were not Savanti. I held that conviction with sudden deep resolution. Star Lords. They were the Everoinye.
“He is still too soft. The knowledge might destroy him-”
“I am prepared to take that chance.”
I stood up at last and shook my fist at the gory viridian dance of colors against the sky. “You’d take the chance, you kleesh! With my hide! With my sanity!”
Well, that was a mistake.
Like a blind lashing up on a runaway roller, I opened my eyes anew, and stood up, and, lo! I stood on a wide and dusty plain, the thorn-ivy bush at my side, and before me men and women fought among themselves.
I took a breath of sweet Kregan air.
This was more like old times!
A quick glance aloft showed me blue sky — and a whorling diminishing struggle between the blue and the red. And — and! A long beautiful streak of yellow coiled and drifted away into laypom and lemon and so vanished into the clear blue vault of the sky. I let rip a great sob of thankfulness. The yellow, so fragile, creeping in, told me Zena Iztar was at last aware.
I knew I had been brought here — wherever here was — to rescue some wight among that struggling throng, to preserve him or her for the pleasure of the Everoinye. I had served the Star Lords in this fashion before.
Or, so I believed.
I took one step forward.
And blue radiance dropped about me, and I tumbled head over heels, gasping, falling upwards, and so stood with a thump upon a high rampart atop a lofty tower, with a great city spread beneath me. Boulevards and kyros, avenues and temples, spread out beneath the glitter of the suns. And the city burned. Dull wafts of brown smoke rose from the bright buildings. Hordes of crazed people fled in every direction, wildly, not caring where they fled. The smell of blood and fire cloaked the doomed city. From the air echelons of warriors, all steel and bronze and leather, flying their winged saddle-beasts of war, swooped mercilessly down, casting death before them. The beat of the wings sounded the death knell of the city. Fire, destruction, desolation — from that high tower I looked on the casting down of a city. Where, in all this violence, was I to find the wight I was to rescue? Or, failing to rescue, to find myself packed headlong back to Earth?
Again, I took one foolish step forward, and the light changed.
The crimson beat in, drowning the blue. In crimson flakes of fire I was borne up, whirled headlong about, sent crashing down. I felt the heaving deck of a swordship beneath me and saw the banks of sweating rowers pulling, saw the tangled heat of striped sails about the mainmast, the severed rigging, the varter bolts embedded in the wood of deck and bulwarks, the smashed and splintered scantlings where varter-flung rocks had wreaked their destruction. Up in the bows both below and above the fore-platform where the varter lay scattered in useless shattered timbers and sinews, the frenzied struggle battered on between men who cut and hacked and slipped in blood and shrieked and died, their weapons fouled and glistening in the opaz radiance of Antares. A varter bolt flew past my ear. Fierce bearded men with golden rings in their ears and tall golden-feathered helmets, their eyes alight with the joy of killing, their scale armor glittering, bore down howling on me. Whom to rescue on the command of the Star Lords? I bent to snatch up a fallen sword — and the crimson light trembled, and faded, and gushed deeply, and was gone and the yellow light limned me, drenching me in golden glory, and I tumbled full length into that damned thorn-ivy bush. Bellowing aloud that Makki-Grodno’s diseased intestines would provide a capital sleeping bag for Star Lord, for Savanti, for whomever sought to drag me away from the voller and Delia, I pulled out of the thorn-ivy bush, stung to blazes.
The struggling mass of people had vanished from the dusty plain. The doomed city no longer existed. The swordship had gone.
I stood alone upon that dusty arid plain, stark naked, prickled by sharp thorn-ivy spines, and I looked about on nothing save dust.
“By Zair!” I roared, shaking my fist at the sky. And then I could not think of anything relevant to say. There was too much pent up within me. I had no real idea of what had been going on. I turned three hundred and sixty degrees and saw nothing save that dusty plain and the thorn-ivy bush. So I stood, fuming, filled with an enormous baffled rage — and, also fully aware of my ridiculous position.
A voice ghosted in from nowhere, from everywhere, riding the radiance, ringing sweetly from the distant sky, fading.
“Go north, Dray Prescot! North. This is all I could contrive, all I can do. . The voice of Zena Iztar! Yes, I knew that voice. That mysterious woman who could charm men and animals to a magic sleep, that woman of whom I hoped for much, that woman who seemed to offer sanity in a universe of madness; well, she was trying to help. I felt sure of that. But. .
“By Vox, Krun, Djan and Kaidun!” I bellowed. I stamped my foot. “What an infernal waste of time!”
“Fight, Dray Prescot. Go North. Jikai, Ver Dray! There is nothing else. .”
The sweet voice faded and was gone and I stood alone under the opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio.
Useless to pretend I had not been profoundly shaken by that unearthly experience. Unearthly -
Unkregan! I had been a witness to a titanic struggle among superhumans, seeing a tiny corner of the veil of mystery lifted. All was not sweetness and light among the Star Lords, then. . Maybe an old paktun rogue like Dray Prescot could use that information. Yes, I thought, where werstings squabble the gyp gets the bone.
I stuck my old beak of a nose into the north, pulled a last spine from my rump, and set off on my bare feet.
The more I thought about these recent occurrences the more I fancied the Savanti were not involved. They were mere mortal men, superhuman, admitted; but men. They were the tiny remnant of the Sunset People who had once dominated Kregen. Their buildings lay in ruination in many lands. They it was who had constructed the Dam of Days and built the Grand Canal. Now they lived in the Swinging City and sought to train Savapims to work for the betterment of Kregen. No, I did not think the Savanti had been involved in that cosmic struggle.
I plodded on.
