The Wizard of Loh was good-natured enough to be pleased at this.
“Since my accident, young man,” he confided to me as we jogged along under the Suns of Scorpio, tasting the sweetness of the air, watching the ominous countryside. “I have not been the man I was. Time has Entrapped me in Her Coils.”
I gathered that the accident, the exact nature of which he did not specify, although it sounded as though he had tried some magic too powerful to be contained, had deprived him of enough of his wizardly powers as seriously to jeopardize his life style. He could not, for instance, go into lupu and spy out events and people at a distance. There were other powers he had lost. He was resigned to them in a bittersweet way, talking of his misfortunes and of life in capital letters. He was a humorous old boy, not strong, proud as are all Wizards of Loh, and yet much on the defensive after the accident. After a trifling brush with drikingers who drew off after the caravan guards shot their leader, we found we had water trouble. The bandits had shot deliberately at the water barrels fixed to the wagon. The amphorae they smashed with ease. The wooden staves of the barrels resisted; but enough were pierced through to cause Ineldar the Kaktu, the caravan master, to put us all on quarter rations until the next water hole.
This caused trouble.
Two days later we were all hot, dusty, dry — and thirsty.
And an event occurred that brought me vividly face to face with the Meaning of Life.
Chapter Eleven
“By Horato the Potent!” exclaimed Pompino. “I am drier than a corpse’s shinbone.”
I said nothing but sucked on my pebble.
The caravan wended along, a brightly colored succession of carriages and wagons, with clumps of people, apim and diff, trudging along in the dust, and the outriders flanking us, their weapons ready. Ineldar the Kaktu had been wroth with his caravan guards, although, in all honesty, they had fought well and driven the drikingers off. But we all guessed we had not seen the last of those skulking rasts. Before we reached the water-hole they would attack again — with a new leader in command, no doubt. When a straggling line of black dots showed in the southern sky I felt the muscles beside my eyes tighten. At bellowed commands the caravan halted at once. Dust hung about us, slowly dissipating. Everyone stared aloft, to the south, away from the twin suns. Those flyers there must be flutsmen, out reiving, and if they attacked us we’d be caught between two foes. But, and I do not think the flutsmen missed seeing us, the big birds wheeled away in the air and soon vanished. Probably they were in insufficient strength to attack our caravan, which was clearly large and well protected. This being Havilfar, one would expect many flyers to be seen. That group was the only one we saw on the journey. The exigencies of the war being waged against mad Empress Thyllis of Hamal demanded hordes of flyers and the land here was almost denuded. The same was true of vollers and we saw not one. Some of the countries of the Dawn Lands manufacture their own fliers, and these were in constant demand and short supply. Hamal, as I knew to my bitter cost, had a stranglehold on that particular industry.
We were traveling generally westward toward the rugged chains of mountains running through the heart of Havilfar. These were the same mountains that in their northern reaches the Hamalese call the Mountains of the West, and against which nestles Paline Valley. But that was around four hundred and fifty dwaburs north. We were about halfway between the River Os north of us and the Shrouded Sea to the south. In their southern extremities the mountains swing somewhat to the west and beyond them lie broad rivers and wide lakes, all terra incognito to me. The folk in the caravan called the mountains there
— for they have a plethora of names, as common sense must indicate by reason of their extent — the Snowy Mountains.
We were within a day or so of the water hole and the drikingers had not attacked us again. A group of brilliantly attired riders went past the caravan at a good clip, apparently reckless of our short water supply situation. They had ridden out in defiance when the flutsmen vanished. I had asked Sishi about them and their leader soon after the caravan had started on its journey. There was no gainsaying their splendid appearance. There were some twenty of them, clustered about their leader. They were diff and apim; the leader was a Kildoi. He reminded me so much of Korero that I had started up the first time I espied him as he cantered past on his swarth. He had the same beautiful physique, the same four hands and handtail, the same golden beard, glinting in the light of the suns. His eyes were lighter than Korero’s and, when I got a good look at them, held a lurking distaste in their depths I recoiled from in instinctive antipathy. In this, he was poles apart from Korero. The swarths they rode were powerful beasts but two or three hands less in height than those we had fought at First Kanarsmot. Their scales were of a more greenish-purple than the swarths we had defeated, which were of a more reddish-brown. The swarths’ wedge-shaped heads which protruded from their bodies on necks that were extensions of body and head, diminishing in diameter from body to head, all in a smooth curved line, so that of neck, really, they had nothing, were decorated barbarically with metals and jewels. Their trappings blazed. From the front a swarth presents a picture of a massive humped mass with that wedge-shaped head thrusting down and forward, the jaws sharp and pointed, the teeth bared and serrated like razor-edged saws.
The Kildoi who led this brilliant and barbaric group wore link-mesh of that superb quality that is manufactured in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. He affected a gilt-iron helmet. He wore a short slashed robe of white liberally encrusted with cloth of gold. His cape was short and flared spectacularly when he galloped. It was a bright hard yellow in color, edged in gold and silver. His feathers blew in white and yellow, fixed into a golden holding crest.
Yes, he looked magnificent, proud, barbaric, blazing with light under the suns.
“Who,” I had said to Sishi, “is that man?”
Sishi knew all the gossip of the caravan, and the scandals, too. She had looked and her color mounted.
“Is he not splendid? So brave, so bold and handsome-”
“Who is he?”
“Why, everyone must know! He is Prince Mefto — Prince Mefto A’Shanofero, Prince of Shanodrin!”
As she continued to stare after the Kildoi and his companions I shook my head. Shanodrin was a country situated in the heart of the Dawn Lands, west of Khorundur. It was a full rich land with great wealth to be won from the rocks and rivers.
Then Sishi heaved up a great sigh.
“Oh,” she said. “I do so love a prince!”
“And why not?” I said, I fear somewhat drily.
If there was one thing certain sure about Prince Mefto, he liked to show off. He and his swarthmen would gallop around the caravan like gulls circling a ship, affording visible proof to the people of their presence and the sharpness of their weapons.
And then Sishi, still enraptured with the dazzlement of the prince, said: “Prince Mefto — he is the best swordsman in the world.”
Well, for all I knew, he could be. I will have no truck with this nonsense of proclaiming boasts about the best swordsman of two worlds. I have expounded some of my philosophy anent the perils of swordplay and the doom by edge or point that lurks — if expound is not too pompous a word. So I made some light quip, whereat Sishi flounced around, blushing, and tried to hit me with the length of sausages she happened to be carrying for the lady Yasuri’s midday snack. With that deeply philosophic reminder, I went off to see about my duties as a paktun earning his hire.
The rich personages in their carriages had taken the obvious and sensible precaution of providing a supply of water for their own personal use. We knew Yasuri had her amphorae stacked in her coach, which we louts of her escort were not permitted to enter. Ineldar the Kaktu was cognizant of this trick, of course, and he did his best to share out the water on an equal basis. But, as Master Scatulo was not slow to point out with his sharp Jikaidast’s wit, the caravan water was paid for and for the use of all. What he, Master Scatulo, happened to have in his coach was by way of an extra and, by the Paktun’s Swod’s Gambit! was none of anyone else’s damn business.
