Many times have I journeyed in caravans across country inhospitable by reason of nature or man, and on each occasion I vow never again, and know even as I vow that the lure of the adventure will always drag me on. Each occasion is different. Kregen is a world of so many startling contrasts that the beauty and terror mingle and fill the spirit with wild eagerness or desolation, with burning ambition to win against all or a calm and joyous acceptance of the stupendous.
Nights under the stars! Ah — they are never to be forgotten.
The Caravan labored along, crossing rivers and winding down long defiles, gaining the far slopes and so rising to emerge onto the vasty plains where the mist lifted blue and eerie, like lantern smoke against snow.
The totrix of the lady Yasuri’s given into my charge and whom I rode across the Desolate Wastes was a skewbald called Munky. I was careful of him. Accustomed I may be to walking barefoot across the awful places of Kregen, I was now far more of a mind to ride rather than walk. Oh, yes, despite all my deeper concerns, I enjoyed that caravan across the Desolate Wastes to Jikaida City. And, if the truth be told, the land was not all desolate. Grass grew and the animals fed. There was water in swift silver streams. Every now and then we crossed stony deserts, or sandy deserts; but we prepared for them. The various places along the way were infested with drikingers and these bandits attacked us, as was their custom. We fought them off.
Here we saw why the Star Lords had provided two men — two kregoinye, I must now call them — to escort the person they had chosen to save for posterity. The Rapa escort fought well and earned their hire along with all the other caravan guards. But, one by one, they went down, by arrow or spear, sword or javelin. Soon my companion Pompino was given the escort command, with the rank of Jiktar, whereat he smiled at me, and I warmed to him, realizing how much and how little he valued these titles. But we saved the skin of the lady Yasuri.
It is not my intention to give a blow-by-blow account of that journey, much though the prospect tempts me, for this was a kind of holiday. It is with some of the people of the caravan that my interest lies, and therefore yours.
The lady Yasuri herself was going to Jikaida City to play Jikaida, and most of the other folk in the caravan were doing likewise, to play, to participate, to gamble or merely to make a profit on the game. As is the way with such caravans, people tend to fall into clumps, who jog along together, for company, good fellowship and mutual protection. A deal of this can be put down to the speed of progress. The lady Yasuri’s coach matched the speed of an ornate, top-heavy creation of the carriage-builder’s art, in blue and yellow, that swayed along next in line. This conveyance was drawn by six krahniks. In the caravan were so many of the various marvelous animals of Kregen it were vain to name them all; but there were Quoffas, calsanys, plain asses, hirvels, totrixes, and the like. There were few zorcas. Of course, being Havilfar, there were no voves. This blue and yellow coach with the black and white checkerboard along the sides contained Master Scatulo. In Master Scatulo’s terms, to speak his name was enough.
Master Scatulo — he trumpeted a host of names all attesting to his enormous prowess as a Jikaidast -
permitted the lady Yasuri the graciousness of his company when we halted for meals. Yasuri hung on this young fellow’s words — for Scatulo was young, brash, supremely self-confident and, by the reckoning of anyone you cared to ask, a remarkable player of Jikaida, a true Jikaidast. His face was of a sallow cast, sharp and edgy, with deep furrows between his eyebrows, and eyes of a piercing quality that Sishi, the lady Yasuri’s least important hand maiden told me with a laugh, he painted with blue-kohl to enhance their impression of brooding intelligence. I believed this. It is known. Pompino guffawed and passed a most demeaning remark.
“He’s real clever, is Master Scatulo!” protested Sishi. She, herself, was apim and a little beauty with dark hair and a rosy glowing face and ways that were still artless, despite the way of the world. I waggled a finger at her.
“Now then, mistress Sishi. Beware of clever men like this Scatulo. Just because he says he is Havil’s gift to the world, that he is a genius, doesn’t mean he can-”
“I know what you’re saying, Jak!”
“Just as well you do, Sishi,” said Pompino. “For Jak speaks sooth. This Scatulo will get you-”
Her face was scarlet. Sishi burst out, “You’re horrible!”
That, by Vox, was true enough; but had little to do with the subject in question. There were other Jikaidasts in the caravan; not many. I gathered from sly remarks that a Jikaidast must be in the very topmost flight of his profession to be preferred in Jikaida City. Trouble was, Pompino and I could not flaunt our ignorance; everyone understood so well the significance of Jikaida City that significant details were taken for granted. We agreed to keep our ears open and learn. The other person who jogged along with us and shared our fire and engaged in conversation was a Wizard of Loh.
Yes. Oh, yes, I well realize the surprise anyone must feel in so cavalier a treatment of a representative of one of the most powerful groups of wizards on Kregen. But Deb-Lu-Quienyin was a pleasant old buffer whose red Lohvian hair was much thinned by perplexed rubbing and whose lined face expressed a perennial surprise at the state of the world. But, for all that, he was a Wizard of Loh. He wore plain robes, with their dark blue only moderately embellished with silver and he wore a stout shortsword, which made me look in wonder.
“Aye, young man, a sword and a Wizard of Loh. Parlous are the days, and grievous the evil thereof.”
“Aye, san,” I said, giving him the correct honorific of san — sage or dominie. “You speak sooth.”
He tilted his lopsided turban-like headdress to one side so as to rub his hair. Strings of pearls and diamonds decorated the folds of blue cloth; but he assured me they were imitation only. “For I have fallen on hard days, young man, and Things Are Not What They Were.”
He rode a preysany, the superior form of calsany used for riding, and that indicated a slender purse. Munky jogged alongside the preysany well enough, for a few emphatic kicks indicated to him he had best mind his manners. Preysanys, like calsanys, do offensive things when they are frightened. Deb-Lu-Quienyin wanted to talk. I did not think he suffered from that hideous disease, chivrel, that wastes a man or woman into premature old age; but he was without doubt unlike any Wizard of Loh I had previously encountered. During the days of the journey across the Desolate Waste I heard a deal of his history.
He had been a powerful sorcerer, come from Loh as a young man into Havilfar, and set fair to making his fortune. He had been variously court wizard to kings and kovs in the Dawn Lands, and had spent a time in Hyrklana, whereat we reminisced for a space. Then he had become aware that his powers were failing. He talked to me like this, frankly, I believe, out of the misery in him. He maintained a dignified mien to the people of the caravan and they, being prudent, gave him a wide berth. Some spark struck between us. I realized he told me much more than he perhaps knew, and I put that confidence down to the journey and the circumstances of the caravan and our traveling together through dangerous country. In the event, we got along capitally. He kept no famulus, for, as he said: “The last one grew too clever, and taunted me, and so left to set up for himself. And I do not have the wherewithal to pay an assistant.”
He had a little tame Och slave who tended his clothes and cooked his meals and chattered away to himself, a scrawny bundle in an old blanket coat who walked, for Deb-Lu-Quienyin’s purse could not stretch to a second saddle animal. His calsany was loaded with mysterious bundles, bowed under the weight, and there was no room for the Och, Ionno the Ladle. The Wizard of Loh cast glances of mingled covetousness and scorn at the Jikaidast, Master Scatulo, and sighed.
“Look at him, young man, Puffed With the Pride of the Masterful. Once I, too, must have been like that. And see his slave, the muscles, the strength — why, he could carry his master on his back all the way to Jikaida City if he had to.”
Truly, Scatulo’s personal slave was a powerfully built diff, a Brukaj with immense rounded shoulders and a hunched-forward head with a forceful face with more than a passing resemblance to that of a bulldog. The Brukajin possess legs rather on the short side, it is true; but they are determined, dogged, and I had been pleased to have them serve in any of the armies I had commanded on Kregen. As is to be expected from their natures they are superb in the defense. They are as dissimilar as one could imagine from the Tryfants, who attack with enormous elan, and in retreat merely rout, running every which way. The Brukajin are not to be confused with the Brokelsh, whose thick mat of coarse body hair complements their generally coarse ways of carrying on. I have good friends among the Brokelsh, and I was intrigued to notice the protocol that existed between the Brokelsh in the caravan and this slave of Scatulo’s, this powerful but docile Brukaj, who wag called Bevon.
Not for Bevon the Brukaj, as a slave, the privilege of a descriptive appendage to his name; Deb-Lu-Quienyin’s slave chattering to himself in his brown blanket coat was crowingly conscious of his descriptive name, the Ladle.
