“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.”
“Aye, my lady. I am thinking that I shall have to leave you and Tyfar soon.”
“Oh!” she flared. “Why link my name with that ninny’s?”
“Now, young lady,” I said, and I heard my voice harden, “you are altogether too harsh on Tyfar. He is a young man with high ideals and great notions of honor-”
“Like to make a laughingstock of himself-”
“That is true. But, at the least, laughingstock or no, he will not be shamed.”
She cocked her head at me. The moons’ light caught her hair and sheened soft brown and fuzzy pink.
“No. I think you are right. But he is so — so-”
“Gallant?”
“Very well.” And she laughed, her head thrown back. “A gallant ninny!”
We flew on into the blaze of dawn when the twin suns, Far and Havil, rose and the land came alive with color. Tyfar, in the lead voller, pointed down. Below us a small stream wended between wooded uplands. Some two dwaburs ahead, almost lost to sight, the towers of a city or fortress rose from the trees. Below us, by the stream, a clearing offered a landing place. Down we went. Making camp, with the vollers pulled into the shelter of the trees, and a circumspect fire going, we surveyed our paltry rations and resigned ourselves to going hungry. The Pachaks glided into the woods to find game. Hunch brewed tea. Barkindrar, wounded leg or not, went off by the river to sling at birds. Nath the Shaft and I stood watch.
Presently this Deb-Lu-Quienyin, whom we now called Naghan the Seeing, approached. He looked thoughtful.
“Tyfar and Jaezila and Kaldu are for Hamal. I would like very much now to go to Vallia. But — what of you, Jak?”
“You know. South Pandahem.”
“Yes. I followed your adventures in Khorunlad, a little, a few quick observations in lupu to make sure you were all right. I can tell you I was heartily glad you came out safely.”
I favored him with a searching look. His face that had, since he’d regained his powers, lost a deal of those lines and wrinkles, was now down-drawn in fatigue. The smudges under his eyes, bruised purple, were new.
“You are tired, Quienyin?”
“Aye, Jak. By the Seven Arcades! Since our little trip with Monsters and Moders I do think… I need to sleep in a soft bed for a whole season.”
“That can be arranged in Vallia.”
“So? I shall go, and, I sincerely trust, with your blessing. But you?”
“Give me a look out, from time to time,” I said, lightly, thinking nothing of the words, trying to jolly him along. He was very down and I wondered why. “I shall pull out with a whole skin, never fear.”
He shook his head.
“From anyone else, I would take that as boasting, Jak-”
I was dutifully repentant. “And from me, also, I confess.”
“Mayhap.”
I drew a breath. “I have known other Wizards of Loh. Some I account good friends and others, as you know, as foe-men. But for none have I felt… Even Khe-Hi… It is strange. I would never have believed it of a Wizard of Loh. But it is, and I joy in the gift.”
He smiled. “And I, too — Jak.”
Again, that hesitation before the name. A deliberate hesitation? Yes, by Vox, I said to myself. Oh, yes… The Pachaks came back with game, and Barkindrar with a half-dozen birds, and Hunch got busy by the fire. Nodgen helped. Barkindrar stretched out with a grunt of relief, sticking his wounded leg before him like a crutch itself. Nath bent to him and Jaezila came across, imperious and commanding, ordering this and that, and mightily tender as she unwrapped the bandages to attend to the Bullet’s leg. I noticed that Kaldu remained always near his lady, ready to leap instantly to her defense. As a retainer, he was invaluable. Tyfar stood by as Jaezila worked on his man, and the cooking smells began to waft up. It was a pretty scene, there in the woodland, not quite Arden, perhaps, but very much a scene as I would like it on two worlds.