Combined with the meanderings of the River at that point a couple of tributaries contrive to isolate a section of the city, with the adjacent canal forming an aloof enclave. This is the Old City, called Drak’s City. A warren, festering in places, sumptuous in others, it attracts both disreputable elements and free spirits, artists, poets, thinkers, students, and provides them with a kind of security. I say a kind of security, for Vondium herself offers that kind of security a man of the cities can understand. As I sped toward the palace I gave but scant thought to Drak’s City, for I then knew little of Vondium. In Ruathytu, which I knew much better, the Sacred Quarter in its way served for the purposes of Drak’s City in Vondium. But the two were not the same — very far from the same. Old and ancient and steeped in the mysteries of its past is Drak’s City. Here men first built their camp when they came to the Great River, gradually enlarging their buildings and walls, until what is now the Old City dominated the surrounding countryside. The light picked out the colors along the tall walls of the higher palace. Each fluttering from its own flagstaff, every province flag of the empire flew. The long rows of flagstaffs and their gorgeously colored treshes passed below as I turned to slide in for a landing. Drak’s City sank from sight as I lowered in the air. The Old City completely surrounded by the modern metropolis carried on its own life, had its own mores, gave scant attention to what went on in Greater Vondium. The flier touched down.
The guards were duly obsequious. The Vallian Air Service patrols above had let me through because the Valhotran colors marked me as a friend. Unmarked boats would be challenged. Because she understands me passing well, Delia had waited for me. The moment she learned I had returned to the palace and of the collapse of the latest plot against her father, she had said something -
which I will not repeat — and had gone up to the landing platforms with a picnic basket and a good book. How she does these things amazes me still.
So, clad in my worn and travel-stained old buff, I stomped across the platform. She looked up and marked her place in the book with a slim finger — I know that gesture well. Then she saw who it was. The book went up in the air. The picnic basket flew the other way spilling palines and delicious fruits and sandwiches and bottles of wine. She flew at me. Time after time I have come home to my Delia. It is always the same and it is always different. Close, we held each other, close. My Delia — my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains!
Three
I hitched up the huge brown beard on its silver wires over my ears, and smoothed down the golden plates of the helmet. I turned to let Delia see me.
She lay on an elbow, her white gown voluptuous in its curves and lines, and started to laugh so that the little gilt sofa shook.
“Dray! Dray! You look-”
“I look like a shaggy graint of a clansman. If that is the way the good folk of Vondium imagine me -
then that is the way they can see me.”
Much had happened since yesterday, when Delia had met me on the high landing platform. Now we prepared in our own private apartments for the great thanksgiving ceremony. Much of what had happened was talk. There were other things; but they remain between Delia and me. Now we put on fine fancy clothes, readying ourselves for the dismal prospect of a state function.
“But you can’t go out looking like that.”
“Why not?”
“Well — for one thing, you’re hardly recognizable and absolutely not respectable.”
I laughed at her. “True. And two more admirable qualities I have yet to find. I do not wish to be recognized, and if ever I was respectable, I fancy I’d-”
“I know you, Dray Prescot. If you were respectable you’d die of boredom.”
“True.”
She sat up. Those soft red lips pouted at me.
“Very well. Wear the beard. But at least have Tilly trim — oh!”
“Yes. Our friends are scattered all over Kregen. Tilly will be back in Hyrklana.”
“We must help them — I’m sure Tilly would wish to come home. Valka is her home now.”
“We will. As soon as the emperor has given thanks to the Invisible Twins through Opaz the All-Glorious, we can start.”
A shadow passed across that face, that face that is the most beautiful in two worlds.
“What is it, my heart?”
“Dayra-”
Now I frowned.
“We have lost our daughter Velia-” The pang this caused both of us had to be endured; neither of us could forget Velia. I went doggedly on. “Our three sons are making their ways in the world. But our daughters, Lela and Dayra — do you know, since I returned from-” Here I checked, and stammered.
“Yes?”
I had been about to say “from Earth.” But that would mean nothing to Delia, and I had not yet nerved myself to explain to her that I was born on a world that had only one sun, only one moon, and had only apims as people. So I fished around and then said: “Since I had to leave you on the island of Lower Kairfowen-”
“In the village of Panashti-”
“Yes. I’ve spent most of the time in the Eye of the World. We have managed to save your father. But in all this time I have not seen my two daughters.”
Delia made a small, not so much helpless as resigned, gesture. “It is a matter for the Sisters of the Rose. I have told you much. Lela is very much the grand lady now. She goes her own way. She stubbornly refuses all offers of marriage.”
I nodded. “If she gets married and I’m not there, I’ll-”
“You no doubt would, you great grizzly graint. But Lela is like Drak. They are twins. Drak can run affairs while you are — away-”
“I know. They call him the Younger Strom and me the Old Strom, in Valka.”
“He does not want Valka. You know what he has said. He is a fine man now, my heart. As for Zeg, you did well when you made him the King of Zandikar, and Queen Miam will be good for him.”
“I didn’t make him. Miam did that.”
“That may be. And our third son, Jaidur-”
“Jaidur.” Jaidur, sometimes called Vax, Vax Neemusjid, was Dayra’s twin. “He hasn’t made up his mind about me, yet. But Dayra-”
“Jaidur and Dayra. They were born when you were away. It was a hard time for me.”
I could not look at her. The Star Lords who had callously hurled me back to rot on Earth for twenty-one years had a great deal to answer for. I ploughed on.
“Jaidur still doesn’t believe I can possibly be his real father — yet, I think, he does know and will not acknowledge it. If I were a true Vallian father I’d take a whip to him if he continued on that tack.”
“But as you are a savage and barbarian clansman, you will not.”
“So Dayra hates my guts. Well, that is fair. I deserve that. But I shall find a way of making her see — I have to — as I owe it to you and the children.”
“She ran away from the Sisters of the Rose. I saw the — I saw the necessary people there and smoothed things over. But she joined up with a rascally gang. Seg and Inch found out about them, or as much as they could. Seg’s daughter, Silda, was also mixed up with them at one time. But Seg was there and he sorted that out.”
I had turned to look at her and as she spoke a flush mantled up onto her cheeks, and she looked away, and went on speaking very quickly, very quickly indeed.
“And as Inch couldn’t wed his lady Sasha from Ng’groga for some reason connected with their taboos he was making further investigations but it was all very difficult and kept most secret and I can say that Dayra fancied herself in love with this man who calls himself by any name that takes his fancy and as the whim strikes him and no
