you will perceive I was in a turmoil of fear for Delia. If that bastard Phu-si-Yantong was up to more mischief, and my Delia flying all alone — I sweated and shook and went off running toward the high aerial landing platform where her airboat would touch down. Any sensible fellow would have waited. I had been up and about for a long spell. I had fought a combat in the emperor’s bedroom that some would put down as a Jikai, although I did not vaunt myself that far. The Chuliks who had come to slay the emperor had been dealt with by me, and their employer, Ashti Melekhi, had been stabbed to death by Kov Layco Jhansi. I was tired. But tiredness is a mortal sin. So I rousted out the guard and yelled and bellowed and acted like a high and mighty prince and secured an airboat and went leaping away into the star-studded night.
Due east I headed, on course for Valka, trusting that Delia’s flier would be on the reciprocal of my course, and I would see her airboat in the bright star glitter. She of the Veils, Kregen’s fourth moon, was hidden by cloud, but as I flew on eastward of the great circle of the city, so the clouds dissipated and cleared and pink and golden moonshine flooded down. I could see better then. The land fled past below. The wind buffeted my face and roared in my ears. On and on I flew, searching the heavens for the first glimpse of the airboat.
As I flew on searching the sky for that flitting sharp-prowed form, Deb-sa-Chiu’s words recurred to me. I puzzled over one word. He had said: “kharrna.” I did not know what that was. I would have to ask my own Wizard, Khe-Hi-Bjanching.
Then I checked.
After my friends had dipped the emperor and themselves in the Sacred Pool of Baptism on the River Zelph in far Aphrasoe, the Guardian of the Pool, Vanti, had dispatched them all willy-nilly to their places of origin. That meant that Bjanching was somewhere in Loh, that veiled and mysterious continent to the southwest of Vallia. It meant that Seg Segutorio was back home in Erthyrdrin, the mountainous promontory at the northern tip of Loh. It meant that Inch was home in Ng’groga, in the southeast of Loh. Odd how they all came from Loh, a fact I had been barely conscious of. And my other friends, all my comrades on the expedition, were back home. Gloag was in Mehzta. Hap Loder was back on the Great Plains of Segesthes. Turko the Shield in Herrelldrin in distant Havilfar. Tilly, Oby, Naghan the Gnat, back in Hyrklana. And Balass the Hawk in Xuntal.
There was no help from them in the coming struggle.
Many of these friends had made a new home for themselves with Delia and me in Valka. I made up my mind I would make the most strenuous efforts to assist them if they wished to return, as I felt they would
— as, indeed, knowing the comradeship between us, I was absolutely certain they would. But, first things first.
By the wheeling movements of the stars and the onward progression of She of the Veils I counted the passing hours. Each bur is roughly forty terrestrial minutes, and as another of the little catapulting lesser moons of Kregen vaulted across the sky I knew the burs were rattling away. The good graces of Five-handed Eos-Bakchi, that chuckling Vallian spirit of luck and good fortune, were passing me by, too. When I reached the point at which it was fruitless to hurry on farther I slowed the voller in its headlong rush. If Deb-sa-Chiu spoke the truth and Delia was due to reach Vondium at dawn, then she must have passed a circumferential line around the capital city by now. So I had missed her. She was vectoring in on a different approach line.
Instantly, I swung the voller about and slammed the speed lever over full. It jarred against the stop. Well, as you know, that was a bad habit I’d been getting into more and more of late. As to whether or not driving a voller at top speed all the time through thin air materially affected its performance, I did not at the time know. I cared. Airboats still broke down at distressingly frequent intervals in Vallia. We bought our fliers from Hamal, and they continued to sell us inferior models, that broke down, despite the drubbing we’d given them at the Battle of Jholaix. I brooded as the night wind whipped at my face, hurtling back to Vondium under the Moons of Kregen, brooded on the mighty and proud Empire of Hamal and what must be done about that place and its mad and cruel Empress Thyllis. So many schemes and mischiefs needed attention on Kregen. Four hundred light years from Earth, the planet of my birth, Kregen is a marvelous world, peopled by wonderful beings, filled with light and clamor and furor of life lived to the hilt. But Kregen has its darker side, where horror and terror batten on innocent people, where sorceries rend reason, where injustice denies light. Yes, there was much still to be done on Kregen.
I am but a simple, ordinary, mortal man — despite that I have been vouchsafed a thousand years of life
— and although my shoulders are accounted broad, they can only seek to bear the load I can carry. I was despairingly conscious of all those things I had left undone. But, by Zim-Zair! I would do them. Aye, by the Black Chunkrah, all of them!
The hurtling headlong pace of the voller faltered.
The wind-swept spaces of the sky extended all about. The star glitter above, the pink wash of moonlight, the drifting shadow clouds, all coalesced.
The flier was falling.
Screaming with wind-bluster the flier fell toward the dark earth below. Many philosophies and religions of Kregen seek to give guidance and reassurance to those at the last extremity. I have spoken little of these things. Each to his own. If I turn to Zair — because I am on Kregen — and, also, to Opaz, this is only natural. Djan, too, holds importance in my scheme of things. If I was to be denied a last long lingering look at my Delia before I died I would curse and rave and then, at the end, perhaps accept that harsh decree. Certainly, I’d do my damnedest to claw back up out of my coffin to bash the skulls of those rasts in Hamal who sold us faulty vollers. The wind blustered at me, screaming past the fragile wood and canvas of the little two-place flier. She twisted and turned, toppling through the air. Down and down we went, headlong, screeching for the final impact.
The controls appeared to be useless. I juggled the levers and then, intoxicatingly, fancied I caught a spark of response. The cover ripped away over the silver boxes that upheld and powered the voller in flight, I probed in, trying to figure out what the damage might be. If the silver boxes had turned black then that would be the end, for their power would all have leached away. They gleamed dully silver back at me. I began frantically to search back along the linkages of bronze and balass, the orbits that controlled the movements of the two silver boxes, the vaol and paol boxes.
The flier lifted a little, flew straight. I stood up with the wind in my face, gasping, and the flier lurched and slid sideways.
In the pinkly golden rays of the moon I saw another flier, below me, heading west. She was a largish craft, with an upflung poop, and so I knew she was not Delia’s voller. The moonlight ran glittering along her coaming, sparkling from ornamentation there. Flags flew, mere featureless tufts of cloth in that erratic light. My flier lurched again, and slid sideways, and then, recovering, skewed the other way. We wallowed through the air like a reveler reeling from a tavern in Sanurkazz, celebrating the capture of a Magdaggian swifter.
More frenzied bashing of the controls brought me up level again. But it was a mere matter of time before my voller gave up completely and down to the hard earth we plunged, to make a pretty hole in the ground of Kregen.
The flier below flew parallel, surging on surely. By her lines she was a first-class Hamalian-built vessel. I could see no sign of life aboard her; doubtless her passengers were asleep in the cabin aft and her crew snugged down along the bulwarks.
There was a chance.
A slender chance — true; but it was all I had.
I let my voller down as gently as I could, gentling the controls now, handling her like a fractious zorca, light on the bit.
Sink me! I said. Was I not an old sailorman? Did I or did I not have the skill?
Putting my trust in myself is no new sensation for me; but always I do so with a trembling uncertainty. I can never be sure. With a muttered prayer to Zair — and to Opaz and Djan — I let the voller drift down, fighting the controls, feeling the rush of wind, feeling the sinking bottomless sensation of the gulfs of emptiness under me.
Down we plunged, down to a chance in a thousand.
In a thousand?
In a million. .
Two
