Alan Burt Akers
A Sword for Kregen
Chapter One
“Do you bare the throat?”
“Aye, my love. I bare the throat.”
The brightly painted pieces were swept up and returned to the silver-bound box. I had been comprehensively defeated. The game had been protracted and cunning and fiercely contested, filled with shifts and stratagems on Delia’s part that wrecked my cleverest schemes. I leaned over the board awkwardly from the bed and picked up my right-wing Chuktar. He was the only piece of high value my remorseless antagonist had failed to take.
“You held him back too long,” she said, decisively, her face half-laughing and yet filled with concern for the instinctive wince I failed to quell as that dratted wound stabbed my neck.
“I did.”
He was a marvelously fashioned playing piece, a Chuktar of the Khibil race of diffs, his fox-like face carved with a precision and understanding that revealed the qualities of the Khibils in a way that many a much more famous sculptor might well miss. Delia took the Chuktar from my fingers and placed him carefully in his velvet-lined niche within the box. When you play Jikaida, win or lose, you develop a rapport with the little pieces that, hard to define or even to justify coherently, nevertheless exists.
“You will not play again?” I leaned back on the plumped-up pillows and found that smile that always comes from Delia. “I am mindful to develop a new ploy with the Paktuns-”
“No more games tonight.” The tone of voice was practical. There is no arguing with Delia in this mood.
“Your wound is troubling you and you need rest. We have won this battle but until you are fit again I shall not rest easy.”
“Sink me!” I burst out. “There is so much to do!”
“Yes. And it will not get done if you do not rest.”
The invasion of the island of Vallia by the riff-raff of half a world, and the onslaught by the disciplined iron legions of Hamal, Vallia’s mortal enemy, had been checked. But only that. We held Vondium the capital and much of the northeast and midlands; from the rest of the empire our enemies pressed in on us. I’d collapsed after this last battle in which we had successfully held that wild charge of the vove-mounted clansmen — I’m no superman but just a mere mortal man who tries to do the best he can. Now Delia looked on me, the lamps’ gleam limning her hair with those gorgeous chestnut tints, her face wonderfully soft and concerned, leaning over me. I swallowed.
“You rest now. Tomorrow we can strike camp and fly back to Vondium-”
“Rather, fly after the clansmen and try to-”
“The wind is foul for the northeast.”
“Is there no arguing with you?”
“Rather seek to argue with Whetti-Orbium, of Opaz.”
I made a face. Whetti-Orbium, as the manifestation of Opaz responsible for the weather and under the beneficent hand of that all-glorious godhood, the giver of wind and rain, had not been treating us kindly of late. The Lord Farris’s aerial armada had played little part in the battle, the wind being dead foul, and only his powered airboats had got themselves into the action.
“Then the cavalry must-” I began.
“Seg has that all under control.”
Good old Seg Segutorio. But- “And there is-”
“Hush!”
And then I smiled, a gently mocking, sympathetically triumphant smile, as with a stir and a rattle of accoutrements, the curtains of the tent parted and Prince Jaidur entered. He saw only Delia in the lamplit interior with its canvas walls devoid of garish ornament, with the weapons strapped to the posts, the strewn rugs, the small camp tables, the traveling chests. Delia turned and rose, smooth, lovely, inexpressibly beautiful.
“Mother,” said Jaidur. He sounded savage. “That rast found himself some flying beast and escaped.”
Jaidur, young and lithe and his face filled with the passions of youth and eagerness, took off his helmet and slung it on the floor. Through the carpets the iron rang against the beaten earth.
“Mirvols, I think they were. Flying beasts that cawed down most mockingly at us as they rose. I shot -
but the shafts fell short.” His fingers were busily unbuckling his harness as he spoke, and the silver-chased cuirass dropped with a mellower chime upon the floor. Armed and accoutred like a Krozair of Zy, Pur Jaidur, Prince of Vallia. He scowled as Delia handed him a plain goblet of wine, a bracing dry Tardalvoh, tart and invigorating. Taking it, he nodded his thanks perfunctorily, and raised the goblet to his lips.
“Prince Jaidur,” I said in my old gravel-shifting voice. “Is this the way you treat your mother? Like a petulant child? Or a boor from the stews of Drak’s City?”
He jumped so that the yellow wine leaped, glinting over the silver.
“You-”
“You chased after Kov Colun and Zankov. Did they both escape?”
His brown fingers gripped the goblet.
“Both.”
“Then,” I said, and I gentled my voice. “They will run upon their judgment later, all in Opaz’s good time.”
“I did not know you were here-”
“Evidently.”
My pleasure at his arrival, because it meant I could go on taking an interest in affairs instead of going to sleep at Delia’s orders, was severely tempered by this news. There was a blood debt, now, between Kov Colun and my friends. For a space I could not think of Barty Vessler. Barty — so bright and chivalrous, so ingenuous and courageous — had been struck down by Kov Colun. And Zankov, his companion in evil, had murdered the emperor, Delia’s father. But, all the same, vengeance was a road I would not willingly follow. The welfare of Delia, of my family, and of my friends and of Vallia — they were the priorities.
“I will leave you,” said Jaidur with a stiffness he cloaked in formality. He bent to retrieve his harness. He made no move to don the cuirass and the helmet dangled by its straps. “Tomorrow-”
“Tomorrow!” The surprise and scorn in my voice braced him up, and sent the dark blood into his face.
“Tomorrow! I recall when you were Vax Neemusjid. What harm has the night done you that you scorn to use it?”
Delia put her hand on my arm. Her touch scorched.
Jaidur swung around toward the tent opening.
“You are the Emperor of Vallia, and may command me. I shall take a saddle-bird. You will not see me again, I swear, until Kov Colun and Zankov are-”
“Wait!”
I spat the word out. “Do not make so weighty a promise so lightly. As for Kov Colun, there is Jilian to be considered. You would do her no favor by that promise.”
He looked surprised. “She still lives?”
“Thanks to Zair and to Nath the Needle.”
“I am glad, and give thanks to Zair and Opaz.”
“Also, I would like you to tell me of your doings since you returned from the Eye of the World.”
“I see you humor me, for whenever have you bothered over my doings?”
“Jaidur!” said Delia.
“Let the boy speak. I knew him as Vax, and took the measure of his mettle. I own to a foolish pride.”
Here Delia turned sharply to look at me, and I had to make myself go on. “Jaidur is a Krozair of Zy, a Prince of Vallia. I do not think there can be much else to better those felicities.” I deliberately did not mention the Kroveres of Iztar, for good reasons. “His life is his own, his life which we gave to him. I, Jaidur, command you in nothing, save one thing. And I do not think I need even say what that thing is, for it touches your mother, Delia, Empress of Vallia.”
“You do not. I would give my life, gladly-”
I said the words, and they cut deeply.
“Aye, Prince Jaidur. You and a host of men.”
The color rushed back to his bronzed cheeks. With a gesture as much to break the thrall of his own black thoughts as to slake his thirst, he reached for the silver goblet and took a long draught.
“Aye. You are right. And that, by Vox, is as it should be.”