The air remained warm, the suns shone, a few birds wheeled about above and you may be sure I favored them with a close scrutiny although their presence comforted me. They would not fly about here if there were no game to hunt. Mind you, I might be the Sunday dinner they had in mind; but I was used to that, and by certain signs near the thorn-ivy bushes I knew small animals lived in this waste that appeared a wilderness but was not to those who knew how to survive. So I trundled on northward, trying to be philosophical.
By Vox! But it was hard. What were my people doing now? How was Delia reacting to my disappearance from the voller? She would shake her head and sigh, and say, no doubt, more or less: “So he’s off again.” I thought of the gaudy array of weaponry I had been in the act of belting on. By Krun! I could do with some of those edged and pointed weapons now. Particularly, I needed a bow. The bow I had intended to take had been a good greenwood bow of Erthyrdrin, its manufacture superintended by Seg. Although a kov he would indulge his passion for creating better and better bowstaves, working with his hands. The stave, like any bowstave, looked lumpy and sullen, following the grain of the wood, cunningly built to avoid any weakness. But it looked marvelous in the eyes of a bowman. Bows that look flashy and wonderful do not always work as well as those that follow the grain; they never do. With that bow, six feet six inches, a yard in the pull, I could cast an arrow and fetch up my supper with no trouble.
So, perforce, I stomped along in a foul humor and picked up a sharp stone and carried the thing in my fist and looked about with a fine predatory eye.
The ravening monsters of the air and land that ringed and protected the central mass of mountains would scarcely allow a naked unarmed man to pass. Thought had to be taken.
A black dot on the horizon almost directly on the back track attracted my immediate suspicious attention. I stopped moving at once and crouched beside a thorn-ivy bush. I watched. The black lump came on, growing in size, pirouetting with the heat devils, lumping and parting, coalescing, gradually drawing nearer.
Soon I made out a riding animal carrying two persons.
The beast looked to be some kind of member of the trix family in that it had a blunt wicked head, six legs and a coat of coarse grayish hair. The riders — I whistled. The man was a numim lad, a lion-man, well built, glorious in the numim way with his great golden mane, hardy. The girl was a Fristle fifi, delicate, beautifully formed, charming, her slanted eyes and frolicsome tail eloquent of all that is best about the cat-people. They sat close together on the uncomfortable back of the six-legged animal and they were totally engrossed in each other.
Now numims and Fristles may sometimes get on well together, seeing that they are both of feline stock; and sometimes they spit and snarl and rick back their lips and tear great chunks out of each other. I had an inkling of what was going on here and although I did not smile — I did not forget the indignity and the sheer awful frustration of my predicament — I felt a little lift of my flinty old heart. It has been my experience on Kregen that a man must make what he can of the situation in which he finds himself. Until I could rejoin Delia and my comrades I must work and fight to stay alive, and take an interest in all that occurred, trying to use events to my own advantage. So, feeling an intruder, I stood up from the thorn-ivy bush and shouted: “Llahal, dom, domni. Llahal.”
The stux whipped up in the lad’s hand.
“Llahal, dom. You are apim. I bear you no grudge.”
“Nor I, you.”
“Shall we make pappattu?”
“Assuredly.”
“I am Naghan-” Then, his manners catching up with him, he stuttered and started over. “You have the honor to be in the presence of Fimi Shemillifey. I am Naghan Mennelo ti Sakersmot.”
“I am Dray Prescot.”
“Now that we have made pappattu-” and here he put up his stux, so that he could finish the pappattu, which means, as you know, more than a mere formal introduction. “I would ask you why you wander alone and naked in these perilous parts.”
The answer was glib. “My caravan was set upon by drikingers. And you?”
“We elope-” And then he stopped himself, and Fimi, his little Fristle fifi, giggled, and so I attempted to scrape up a smile. So wrapped up were they in their brave and foolhardy solution to their problem they barely heeded my own thin story.
“If you wish, we may continue our journey together.” My eyes regarded his water bottle. He shook his head. “As to the companionship, right gladly I welcome it, even though you have no weapons, for you look a fighting man and the Khirrs prowl hereabouts. But, as to the water. . “ He shook the bottle. The confounded thing was nearly as dry as my throat.
“As Oxkalin the Blind Spirit chances,” I said, resigned.
“Oh, for a long cool drink of parclear!” sighed Fimi.
Naghan chided her. “When we reach Great Aunt Melimni she will welcome us and you may drink all the parclear in Ba-Domek.”
Incautiously, always a garrulous onker, I said: “Ba-Domek?”
“Why,” says this Naghan ti Sakersmot. “Do not tell me you do not know where you are?”
If the twin suns had fallen from the sky upon my foolish head I do not think I could have been more shattered. Of course I had assumed without thinking that I was still on the island of Aphrasoe. And, instead, I was somewhere else on the surface of Kregen! I felt my face going red and my eyes must have betrayed all the killing passion in me. This Naghan ti Sakersmot reined up, smartly, flinching, staring down at me, starting back.
“This is not,” I got out in a strangled voice. “This is not the island of Aphrasoe?”
At this both young people shrieked and clapped their hands over their ears. Their young faces expressed extreme horror.
“Do not say that!” screeched Naghan. “Never! We have not heard! As I love Fimi — I shall cut you down!”
“Brace up, lad!” I bellowed. “If you do not tell me where I am or what is going on — for I admit I am lost — how can I know? Tell me of Ba-Domek.”
Relief at their reaction to my use of the name Aphrasoe made me weak. I had thought — what a horror that would have been!
“Why,” Naghan said, cautiously taking his hands from his ears and the imp had heard me clearly, right enough. “Why, this is Ba-Domek. The city of which you speak is a place forbidden.”
Of course. Trust the Savanti to spread a little ghoulish rumor about the Swinging City. I would not press this young couple; but I felt sure they could retail grisly stories about the goings-on in Aphrasoe. So I was still on the island. Zena Iztar had managed to keep me here, at the least. I swallowed down, dry as a bone, for I could not spit.
“So you ride together. In that direction.” My arm sliced down toward the north.
“Only for a ways. Then we turn off down the Valley of the Twin Spires. I feel confident of the way,” he said, eagerly. “Even though I have ridden it but once before. Always, the way was through the River Feron’s lowlands. This is a dangerous route.”
“This city of which we do not speak. Where away lies that?”
“Down the other River,” he said. That made sense.
Now I had to find where the river began — or where I could join it. I didn’t care if it was the Aph or the Zelph.
In answer to my query he looked around the featureless horizon, undecided. He squinted up at the suns. He frowned.
Then: “I think, dom, I think — that away.”
He pointed due north.
Chapter Thirteen
For a space then, our ways would lie together.
