So, not without some hesitation, I moved my first piece. This was a nicely carved representation of a swordsman, an inferior piece, called a hiviku. Now Hiviku the Artful is, I suppose, the Havilfarese equivalent to Vikatu the Dodger, the archetypal old sweat, the old soldier who knows all the tricks and can swing the lead furiously. And this I was now about to do. I took my time. I played cautiously, well guessing that Trylon Nath would suss me out in no time and then bore in with all his force. And his long mournful face would look more mournful still. For he might be an old reprobate; but he dearly loved his Vajikry, and longed to meet an opponent who would give him a prolonged and engrossing tussle. I knew I was in no frame of mind to concentrate. My Val! Didn’t Turko, all Vallia, await me?
Well, that’s as may be.
We played. I fell smack into one of his traps, and with a mournful look he turned up the secret mark and his zoid whisked one of my vads away.
I had a nice opening showing, and took a chance, and one of my flutsmen removed a Rok from the board, ready to come in hell for leather when he least expected it. He reached for the wine. He poured himself, so I judged his temper concerning slaves.
“You will join me, Jak the Sturr?”
The wine was a green pimpim, thick and cloying, out of Loh.
“Thank you, notor. A little pale yellow, if I may…?”
He waved a negligent hand to the array of bottles and amphorae stacked on the side table and the floor on tripods.
I stood up. The guards were all looking at the board, and I judged Trylon Nath was forced to play them when he had no unsuspecting and uninvited guests. The thongs binding my wrists impeded me only a little. The chains and nets had been removed. I moved to the side table and took up a goblet. I half-turned, looking at the room, placing the positions of the guards.
Very well…
Turning my back on the Trylon so that I could break the thongs, I suddenly turned back. The old devil was in the act of lifting up the flap of the board to look at my secret mark denominating one of my hivikus as a zoid.
The yetch!
Swiftly I twisted back to the table and broke the thongs. My wrists tingled as they came free. Holding a glass, low, I swung back to face into the room. The guards were smirking away, one to the other, letting their lord see how much they admired his astuteness.
There were four strides to the desk — three if I jumped a trifle. Three strides took me there, that wicked curved dagger came free of Trylon Nath’s scabbard, and the broad, sharp blade pressed against his neck.
“Just all hold still,” I said, cheerfully.
Trylon Nath was a rigid lump. He knew a single twitch from that deadly curved blade could slit his throat from ear to ear.
“Yes, trylon,” I told him. “And will slit your damned throat. Now you will play my game, and not your cheating brand of damned Vajikry.”
“You are a dead man, Jak the Sturr.”
“And, my friend, so are you, if that be the case. Now, up with you. I am tired of games.”
The guards sweated. They looked at me and I looked at them. They knew the score.
“We are going to take a little walk.” I didn’t care if I sounded like a cheap melodrama down on Wharf Street in Vondium. “You have a voller? Good. I shall regard that as fair quittance for unwanted hospitality.” Then I wounded him sorely. “And for a damned cheating rogue who wins foul at Vajikry.”
“Never!” he said, and he tried to twist that gaunt head to glare at me. The blade bit and he choked. “I had you — you know nothing of the arts of Vajikry-”
“I know enough to know when to take a dagger to your scrawny throat. Move!” And I amplified that with: “Bratch!”
He jumped.
We went out of the room and if the guards thought to stop me they saw my face and made no move. Which was the wiser course for them. We went up the stairs, and retainers and servitors shrank away as the trylon called, hoarsely: “Let us pass. This mad leem means me ill.”
“Right, trylon,” I said. “Absolutely right!”
“You will spare me my life? I can give you wealth-”
“A voller is all I need. And, Trylon Nath Orscop, I may return your voller to you, one day, and play another game of Vajikry with you. It is, I own, infuriating and fascinating.”
A thought struck me. They had in the nature of these things stripped my splendid mesh steel from me and taken my weapons away. I am so used to padding about in the old scarlet breechclout I’d clean forgot I owned a pretty little arsenal, and fine armor.
“Oh, trylon. Bid your people bring my belongings. All of them.” And the bright curved kalider twitched against his skin.
“You heard!” shrieked Nath Orscop. “Run, you nulshes! Fetch this — this man’s armor and weapons!”
So, as we emerged onto a flat roof between two spires and I fastened my gaze on a chunky little voller, retainers ran up bearing the mesh steel and the armory. “Into the voller with them!” I snapped it out, and they obeyed. I wondered why no one had challenged that dagger at the throat of the lord. Surely, some one of all these folk would wish to see the trylon dead?
But I climbed into the voller gripping Orscop by the neck.
He slumped down and his gaunt face turned up, pleadingly.
“You said…”
I looked over the side. The landing chains were cast off. I moved the control levers and the voller lifted a couple of feet into the air. I nodded, satisfied.
“Over you go, Orscop. And thank whatever gods you pray to that I spare you your miserable hide.”
He clawed up, gibbering, and as he went over the side I assisted him with an ungentle foot. Then, roaring with laughter, I sent the voller skimming into the night sky, racing away under the Moons of Kregen.
Chapter twelve
Why is the air of one continent or island so different from that of any other? Each country’s air holds its own essences and aromas. Does the air over Valka smell sweeter than the air over any other part of Vallia? I believe so — but to ask me to explain it — ah, there you should better question the Todalpheme, the wise mathematicians and meteorologists of Kregen.
I know that as I breathed in the air of the island of Pandahem, I tasted the difference, and vivid memories of Pando and Tilda rose up to torment me. Yes, at that time on Kregen I still owed dues to many people. I gave thanks that Deb-Lu-Quienyin had eased my mind on the score of Que-si-Rening. But, when I went to Hyrklana this time, I vowed, as well as seeking out Balass the Hawk, Oby, and Tilly, I would make more strenuous efforts to discover what had befallen the Princess Lilah. All the agents I had sent off to make inquiries had reported a total absence of news. All that was known then, all I had heard here and there, were merely rumors. Rumors of the “tragedy” that had overtaken Princess Lilah of Hyrklana.
So I marched down from the jungly foothills where I had hidden Trylon Nath Orscop’s voller. And, of course, he had not lost on the deal. The airboat I had left in the clearing, the one of the three we had liberated in Khorunlad was fair recompense.
The island of Pandahem, between Vallia to the north and Havilfar to the south, is divided into two halves by a massive east-west chain of mountains, variously named along their rambling length. Kingdoms divide up the northern portion of the island, lands some of which I knew well. The southern half’s kingdoms were virtually unknown to me, and were mostly smothered in thick, lush, hot, and mostly inhospitable jungles.
Walking along the overgrown path toward the town of Mahendrasmot I fell into conversation with a lanky Relt. He was clad decently in loincloth and sandals, with his rolled coat over one shoulder. Looking like skinnier replicas of their distant cousins the fierce and voracious Rapas, the Relts do have beaked faces, but these are of altogether a gentler aspect. He carried a hollow bamboo filled with pens, and a scrip with paper and three bottles of ink, bamboo bottles, swung at his girdle. He was a stylor, and so we fell into easy conversation, as I had been a stylor at one time, working for the Overlords of Magdag. He, this Relt called Ravenshal, knew nothing of the inner sea of Kregen, of course.