from the various magnificent chambers. We passed a room in which Jikaida was in full swing, with great piles of gold wagered on the outcome. Jikalla too was being played, along with Vajikry. We saw no rooms devoted to the Game of Moons and that surprised no one. People were staggering about, this early already the worse for wear. And so, steadily, we passed on up the wide stairways until we reached the top floor.
Sometimes I have swift attacks of nostalgia for remembered struggles. Sometimes; usually I am too bound up with the struggle going on at the moment. We found the door leading to the roof and stepped out under the stars of Kregen.
“We take three if we can,” said Tyfar. “Is that agreed?”
He was brilliantly excited, keyed up. “We strike a blow for Hamal tonight! Do not forget that.”
“How can we forget it?” said Jaezila.
Tyfar colored up again, and then shook himself, dark in the starlight, and we padded off in search of a suitable voller for the first of us to fly away. Our first port of call would be to pick up Barkindrar and Nath, and then we’d make for the camp and pick up the others. Then it was Hamal… The airboats were parked neatly and the guards moved about, dim silhouettes against the stars. Tyfar crept forward with Kaldu at his elbow.
Jaezila and I, for the moment, waited in the shadows.
“That one, I think, Jak, for me.”
“Yes. A fleet craft. But you cannot trust a voller from Khorundur as you would trust one from Hamal.”
“No — yes. You are right. But, I am not sure if I should go to Hamal. My work here has been spoiled-”
“You’ll never obtain fliers now that the lords are against Hamal. Is there nowhere else you can try?”
“You mock me, of course. I find your manners — uncouth.” She used the word sturr. I laughed. Oh, yes, I laughed.
“You have the right of it, my lady. That is my name. Jak the Sturr.”
She gazed at me. And then she, too, laughed. The look of her, the way her head tilted, the star-gleam in her eyes. . I felt my stupid old heart give a leap. She was magnificent, and she worked for my enemies. Quietly, the laughter still bubbling away but held now within her poised manner, she said, “I shall not forget the way you dealt with that beastie that sought — it was quick.”
“No quicker than the way you loosed to save poor Tyfar.”
“Poor Tyfar! Indeed! He is a ninny, is he not?”
“No. . No. He is a gallant young man a little out of his depth.”
And, a ghost rising to torment me, I carried on the thought in my head — like Barty Vessler.
“Well, Jak the Sturr,” she said, and there was the bite of decision in her voice, “you are not out of your depth in this midnight murder and mayhem, that is very sure.”
“I hope there is no murder.”
“So do I.”
A low whistle cut the dimness. We moved forward. Kaldu stood over the unconscious body of a Khibil guard. A Fristle slumbered at his side. Kaldu held his sword very purposefully.
“There are two vollers, my lady. And the third for the hyr-paktun.”
She looked at me, swiftly. “Kaldu dubs you a hyr-paktun and he has an eye for these things. Do you wear the pakzhan at your throat, Jak the Sturr?”
“I have done so, in my time, my lady.”
“So be it. Then let us board — and woe betide the laggard!”
“Now, just a minute-” began Tyfar.
She turned on him like a zhantilla turning to meet the rush of a leem.
“Tyfar! Fambly! Get aboard and fly — the guards will not wait for your waiting.”
“My lady, you treat me hard-”
“Now Krun save me from a pretty-speechifying ninny!” she said, and swung her leg over the voller’s coaming. That fancy sensil robe split down and revealed her long russet-clad leg. She was in the voller in a twinkling and Kaldu at her side.
I said to Tyfar, “Take your voller, Tyfar, and let us go.”
“What a — a girl!” stuttered Tyfar.
What a girl, indeed!
Chapter ten
The Brothers Fre-Da Give Nikobi
As the three vollers touched down on the grass and then ghosted in under the trees out of chance sight from the air, I felt relief that we had carried it off successfully. Tyfar leaped down from his craft, leaving Nath to assist Barkindrar. Such is the way of unheeding princes. I was watching Tyfar. A shadow moved under the trees and the moons’ glitter caught on the blade that pressed against his breast.
I started to leap down, dragging the thraxter free, when Tyfar said, “What? What? Oh — yes, I understand, Modo.”
The Pachak’s tail hand quivered and the blade vanished in shadow. I came up with them, pretty sharpish, and Modo, seeing me, said, “Jak. A word from San Quienyin. He wishes you to call him Naghan and not to let these new people know he is a Wizard of Loh.”
“Very well. If it is his wish.”
The others crowded forward and Hunch and Nodgen came up, and the pappattu was made, and Quienyin had forsaken his blue robes and doffed that turban, and stood forth in a simple brown tunic -
admittedly, there was a touch of silver braid at throat and hem — to be introduced as Naghan.
“Naghan what?” said Jaezila in her sweet voice, not at all rudely. She smiled and charmed old Quienyin clean through.
“Naghan the Dodderer, some folk call me, my lady. But, for you, the name Naghan the Seeing is more seemly. If it pleases you, my lady.”
I marveled. Such humbleness from a Wizard of Loh!
“It pleases me, Naghan the Seeing. And I am famished-”
“My lady!” And Hunch was there, grimacing away, filled with enormous desires to be of help to this imperious and lovely lady, who had appeared at our camp from the shadows. We ate the viands we had, and none that we had brought from Khorunlad, alas.
“We rest for two burs,” declared Tyfar. “And then we fly. And we will let our fluttrells go free. They will bring joy to whoever finds them.”
“If they do not fly wild, Tyfar, as anyone would who had to support your-”
“Whatever happens to the fluttrells,” I said, “they deserve well of us. Now, rest us all — and I shall stand the first watch.”
Tyfar and Jaezila glared hotly, one at the other. I sighed. Bantam cocks — and a bantam hen, by Krun!
The Maiden with the Many Smiles shed down her fuzzy pink light as we took off into the soft night air. Tyfar expressed himself as mightily pleased that Jaezila elected to fly with me.
“For if I have to endure the barbs of her tongue,” he said, “I swear by the names I shall-” And then Jaezila, climbing up beside me, smiled down, and Tyfar was struck dumb. So we flew over the sleeping face of Kregen beneath the moons. Two of the lesser moons hurtled close by above. The night air breathed sweet and cool. The windrush in my face, my hair blowing, ah, yes -
and a glorious girl at my side! Well, she was not Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains; but I felt then they would be well-matched, and that, in all soberness, by Zair, was a strange feeling for me.
She talked a little, small inconsequential matters, of her mother whom she loved dearly, and her brothers and sisters, although she did not mention their names. It would have been all too easy to slide into confidences, and to have spilled out my own near-despairing feelings about my own children. But I did not. I purported to come from Hamal, and must therefore watch my tongue. Hunch and Nodgen sat in the body of the voller. We fleeted on our way north and east toward the empire of my enemies.
And I had to make a decision. I was going to stop by South Pandahem and drag Turko the Shield out of his fairground booth. Then I would look in on Vallia, just, I assured myself, to make sure the place was on an even keel. I felt a traitor even to think it might not be with Drak at the helm. And then it would be Hyrklana for me.
“You are pensive, Jak the Storr.”
