“Do not move, my heart!”
She saw the four neemus, then, their heads low, their tails moving slowly from side to side, as they slunk out like four demoniac black shadows, creeping forward on their bellies. Queen Fahia had released her pets to cleanse her palace of a man and a woman who had despised her before her people and thrown a stux at her, and defamed her.
I cocked an eye up at the statue.
With a sinewy thrust I lifted Delia so that she stood upon the idol’s left foot. The leg had been encased in a greave of chased gold and emeralds, and at my urgent gesture Delia began to climb up the projections, as she would a ladder, so that soon she was some ten feet above my head. Then I slid the shield down before me and took a fresh grip upon the thraxter and faced the neemus. They spat at me. Their lips writhed back and their fangs gleamed in the mellow samphron glow. Delia did not speak.
A sullen booming began from the high balass door and the lenken bar in its steel sockets moved and groaned.
At that moment, with my Delia in so grave a peril, I think I can be forgiven if I say that had the four neemus been four leems they would have stood little chance. The first one sprang and I smashed the shield into its face and passed the thraxter through it, the sleek black fur clotting with blood, the claws grasping and scratching at the shield rim. On the instant I ducked and withdrew and slashed the sword in a flat arc that slit the second’s throat as he sprang after his fellow. The third sprang, also, and landed on the shield; but I kept low so that his hind legs could not rake forward. The thraxter bit again. That left one. He circled, his tail lashing, his head turning from side to side, and he hissed and spat. And I charged him, and so took him, the shield smashing into his head and forequarters, and the thraxter sliding bloodily into his heart.
I stepped back.
Delia did not immediately climb down. I looked up at her and she lifted her right hand, and she said,
“Hai Jikai!”
I laughed at her. “Rather, Delia, my girl, you should say as these folks here do — hyr-Kaidur!”
“Oh, they would, them and their debased arena.”
She climbed down and I hugged her and then we prowled on toward the far end of that vast and shadowy chamber where the emerald idol of Havil the Green brooded through the centuries. The booming gong-notes from the balass door receded as we passed through the far opening. In this corridor I was completely at a loss. No one appeared. No guard, no courtier, no slave.
“The sacred precincts,” Delia said, with her practical knowledge of palaces and fortresses and temples.
“There must be a way out, if we can find it.”
“We should be feeling like two trapped woflos,” I said. “But I feel sorry for anyone who crosses our path. Lead on, my princess. After all, you are a princess — now let us see you put that elevated position to some practical use.”
“You great shaggy graint! You, Dray Prescot. .”
But I laughed and we went on, my thraxter and her dagger dripping bright blood, shining in a trail of red drops upon the priceless marble of the pavement.
We came at last to another vast chamber within the fortress of Hakal, which frowns down over Huringa, and now I stared about and whistled in admiration. We stood in Queen Fahia’s trophy room. Almost all the collection gathered here referred to the Jikhorkdun, in weapons and armor and curious artifacts used in the arena. Delia was happy to throw down her curved dagger and take up an example of that long slender-bladed dagger in the use of which she is a master — or mistress, more accurately. I stopped. The hope had grown in my breast, but I would give it no credence, no room to burgeon — and now. .
“Well, Dray, my shaggy Krozair, take it down and let us get on.”
So I took down the great Krozair longsword.
This was the same weapon with which I had bested that silver-collared leem in the arena. My fingers felt the incised letters, feeling the power flowing from them, the miraculous magic of those simple letters KRZY pouring through me.
I threw down the thraxter, but I kept the shield and pushed it back on loosened straps so that it sat high on my left shoulder. I strapped on the scabbard, but I held the brand naked in my fist. We pushed on.
Delia said, “I think there will be no exits in this direction, Dray. The balass door protected all this wing of the fortress. There will be secret ways only, and we do not have the time to find them.”
“Very well,” I said, like any tomfool hero from a shadow-play acted out to the glow of samphron-oil lamps in the pink-lit moonlight of Kregen. “We will go back and make our way through these cramphs-”
“There is always a window.”
“And the stones will be worn, for the fortress is old, and our fingers and toes have enough skin on them to see us down. Perhaps you are a princess, after all.”
“You are a prince, my hairy graint, or had you forgotten?”
“I’ve not had the same practice at it that you’ve had.”
“Well, you will go jaunting off on various mysterious errands. Little Drak and Lela are likely to grow up orphans if you carry on like this.”
All the time we spoke thus to each other we ran swiftly through the deserted corridors. We both heard the distant booming thud, like a gong that is beaten so savagely it breaks from its chains and crashes to the floor. We both knew that the guards of Queen Fahia would be upon us with feral swiftness. Delia found the right corridor and chamber beyond. Her instinctive familiarity with palaces grown with her from childhood did stand her in good stead now — aye! and me.
We ran swiftly along the corridor toward this room and now we could hear the clank of iron-studded sandals following us, beating a menacing tattoo upon the marble floor. We burst into the room.
A narrow window in the far wall showed a pinkish wash of moonlight. The Twins would be up, forever circling each other, and I took heart from that, as a sign from Zair. I stuck my head through the window.
The pink moonlight picked up the scene and showed me the trap into which we had blundered.
“What is it, Dray? Let me see!”
Delia wriggled herself by me to look out.
The angle of wall beside us dropped sheer in an unbroken line for six hundred feet, sheer to the fanged rocks upon which the high fortress of Hakal had been built. Just beyond the rocks terraces dropped away, one below another, to the northern face of the Jikhorkdun, its massive pile dwarfed as to height by the Hakal, its oval shape easily discernible.
“May Opaz smile on us now!” breathed Delia.
All along that precipitous drop the moonlight picked out crevices and chinks, but I doubted if they would serve us all the way. Then in that moonlight I saw the wide band of marble about the wall, a band smooth and slippery and carefully repaired, so that angle of marble fitted against angle. We would need a stout stake to drive in as a piton and a rope to negotiate that, and in this bare storage chamber with broken chairs heaped against one wall, a few brooms and buckets of bronze and wood against another, and dust everywhere, ropes and pitons were not available.
I looked along the wall.
A shadow moved there, and a shape humped around and a wing flickered up to be tucked more comfortably back, and I knew that Zair had answered my plea.
“Into the next room, Delia, and swiftly, before the cramphs spot us.”
We ran from that dusty storage chamber along the corridor and into the next room. It was empty of life, although fitted as a sleeping chamber for a guardsman or courier. Judging by the perch-pole outside the narrow window, it was more probably the latter. With her neemus prowling, Queen Fahia had withdrawn all her people from this part of the fortress, ordering them to steal away down the secret passageways. Now that her pet neemus were slain — and would I ever forget the picture of my Delia facing with so great a courage the coming spring of the savage black beast? — and her guardsmen had broken through the balass door, we could expect mercenary guards to come streaming in from every direction. I looked out the window. Here in the heart of Huringa, capital city of Hyrklana, where saddle-birds were common, there was little need even for the minimal anti-flier precautions they took in Miglish Yaman. As for the flier-protection of cities of the Hostile Territories, here in Huringa such things were unknown and — given that an attack must cross the sea to reach the island at all, and then wing for dwaburs inland — unnecessary. A concession in the perch-poles was made so that they might in time of trouble be drawn inward. Feet clattered in the corridor outside and Delia swiftly closed the door. I hauled in on the leather rope running from a brass ring in the wall. The flying beast out there stirred and flicked that wing again and gripped its claws into the perch and twitched around — and I cursed savagely.