“No — that is madness. You need not be slain — from me, will you take your discharge, in all honor?
Will you save your men?”
“If I do, I think you will die here.”
“That is as may be, by Zair. The emperor-”
“He is sore wounded.”
I felt the shock. “The get onker! I told him — the moment I leave him to his own devices the idiot gets himself wounded.” Smoke boiled down the ornate passage and the Pachaks braced themselves for the next attack. I bellowed at the Chuktar. ‘Take your nikobi back, in honor, Pola Je-Du. And you, Laka Pa-Re. Take what you will from the palace in payment for your service — and my thanks to you for your devotion, in the name of Papachak the All- Powerful.”
“Let the compact be unraveled,” said Pola. And then he said: “And you, prince?”
“By the Black Chunkrah! I’ll have a few words to say to the emperor, believe me! Remberee, Pachaks all.” And I turned and belted along the corridor toward the inner apartments. As I ran so I marveled that the Pachaks had consented to be released from the compact by me, who was merely the Prince Majister of Vallia. Their hire had been to the emperor. . At the door of those sumptuous apartments Delia met me. The tears stood brightly in her glorious brown eyes; but she would not weep. Not just yet. .
“My father — oh, my heart! My father is dead.”
I couldn’t believe that.
I pushed through. Lykon Crimahan and the Lord Farris stood with dripping swords within the doorway, their faces ashen. Queen Lushfymi crouched over the body of the emperor. He had been killed by a slashing blow that had near severed his head from his body. Despite the Baptism in the Sacred Pool, he was dead. No man was going to recover in time from that kind of savagely mortal blow. I stood looking down on him. I did not know what I felt.
Then I took Delia in my arms.
“He said — he said you are the emperor, Dray.”
“That is so,” shouted Farris, suddenly. He came to life. “Hai Jikai! Dray Prescot. Emperor of Vallia.”
“There’s no time for that,” I said, savage, incensed, sullen, vindictive — anything but pleased. “We must get out of here. And bring the emperor with you. We will give him proper burial.”
Delia shook her head.
“We cannot carry him and fight as well. He will lie here, and he will burn in his own palace. What more magnificent funeral pyre could an emperor have than that?”
I bowed to her wishes. He was her father.
“How-?”
“Hawkwas. We fought them off; but one did for him.”
I knew.
“A bright, nervous, malicious bastard-?”
She nodded. “Yes, I think so.” We hurried along the corridor past the Pachak dead who had fought to the last. “That sounds like him.”
A few more words convinced me it had been Zankov. Zankov. He had slain the Emperor of Vallia. I swallowed. Carefully, I said: “Were there women with him? Jikai Vuvushis?”
“Yes — and very dreadful — renegades from the Sisters-”
“Was there one who — who fought with a sharp steel claw?”
“No.”
Thank Zair, I said, but to myself.
Delia bore herself like a princess. But I watched her narrowly. The shock of her father’s death would prey on her and I felt the agony for her tearing at me. I had watched my father die, with that damned scorpion scuttling, and I had been only a little lad. Delia had known her father for far longer than ever I had known mine, and the wrench, the agony, the shock must affect her far more profoundly — so I thought.
Useless to prate on about how I had warned him to keep himself safe and stay out of trouble. He had pushed to the forefront of the battle, convinced, determined. Now he was dead. We reached a stairway leading up and a gang of Falinurese sought to stop us and we carved a path through them. Bitterness directed our strokes, anger and vengeance and sorrow. We smashed our way through our foemen and raced up the stairs.
We cut our way through a confused and struggling melee of Layco Jhansi’s men fighting Hamalese. So Jhansi had sought the supreme power for himself. Ashti Melekhi. . Some veiled acts came clear. And Jhansi was interfering with the plans of Phu-si-Yantong. There would be no easy path to the throne for Zankov, for all he had slain the emperor, when faced with the dark and secret ambitions of Kov Layco Jhansi.
Up onto that high balcony we stumbled and so over and down to the niche where the voller nestled. Delia stood firmly at the controls. Queen Lush huddled on a bench, wrapping flying silks about her, weeping and weeping. Lykon Crimahan and the Lord Farris stared back and up, viciously, hungering for a head to appear over the balcony and so give them the opportunity to take one more blow at the hated enemies who had ruined all of Vallia for them.
“Jhansi,” said Delia. “He is proved foresworn. He must have given Ashti Melekhi her orders to poison my father.” She stopped, then, and her mouth trembled. “My father-”
“Take us up and away from this accursed place, my heart.”
“Yes, Dray, my heart. We will go. But — one day — we will come back. We must return. .”
I put my arm around her waist as she sent the voller slanting up in the declining rays of Zim and Genodras. The Suns of Scorpio flamed along the horizon and bathed the burning city in crimson and emerald fires.
“Oh, aye, we’ll return. I don’t pretend to be perfect — or even particularly cut out for the job — but all Vallia is captive to Phu-si-Yantong and the other villains now, and that is something I do not like and must, in conscience, try to alter.” I held my Delia as we shot away over the doomed city. “Anyway, there are the children to consider. What’s to become of them?”
“Outcasts,” said Lykon Crimahan, his voice faltering. “We are outcasts, unwanted, fated to wander forever-”
“I do not,” said the Lord Farris, “think so.”
“But Vondium is fallen. The emperor is dead.”
Farris pointed at me. “Not so! The Emperor of Vallia stands before you!”
I warmed to him; but it was nonsense. Crimahan put a trembling hand to his mouth, the realization of what he had seen and heard breaking fully into his consciousness. I saw the expression in his eyes, the shifting of the planes of his face, the dawning of painful emotions.
“That is of no consequence now,” I said in my rough old sailorman’s voice. “If I am emperor then I am emperor of nothing.”
Delia moved in my arm and looked up at me, the last of Zim’s glowing light rosy on her face.
“Vondium is doomed — but there are other places of Vallia.”
“Aye. We fly to Valka. We will collect Velia and Didi and Aunt Katri, for I am utterly convinced they are still safe. If Valka has been swamped by foemen, we will seek others-”
“Strombor?”
“Aye, my heart. Strombor. My enclave of Strombor will welcome us and will love Velia and Didi as they love you.” I looked away from her tear-filled brown eyes. It was in my heart to tell her that I would as lief remain in Strombor. I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, a Lord of Strombor. But — Vallia. That proud and puissant empire was torn and shredded from end to end. Could I, in all honor, turn my back on that agony?
And, so, I looked up. Against the sulphurous masses of smoke coiling from the burning city floated two wide-winged birds.
I knew them both.
Oh, yes, I knew them. That great hunting bird with the scarlet and golden feathers, circling high above me, was the Gdoinye, the messenger and spy of the Star Lords. And the white dove peering watchfully down was from the Savanti. So the two agencies who had directed so much of my life upon Kregen spied on me still in these last cataclysmic moments as a proud city burned and a puissant empire slid down into degradation and ruin.
The birds flicked their wings at me and circled and flew off once they were sure I had seen them. They reminded me of the continued existence of their masters. They did not speak to me. Delia turned the voller
