“We-ell,” said Chido.
“Come on, old son, hand it over and tell me.”
By Makki-Grodno’s worm-infested intestines! I said — but to myself — wild risks must be taken to get my itchy fingers on a letter like this. It had to be important. I just knew it had to be. Otherwise why the coincidences that were not coincidences?
Chido hesitated. “Gordano said he didn’t dare go through the official channels — he’s not supposed to be here in Ruathytu at all, only came for some fun, get-onker that he is — and I’m supposed to say he’s been taken ill. Can’t let him down. We had a few good romps when we were young.”
“I won’t let you down, old feller.”
Well, I said these things and planned what I would do, and I took no joy from it. Except — and here the joy welled fierce and deep — except that I was absolutely certain I was on to a further revelation of the silver boxes, the vaol and the paol boxes that powered fliers.
In the end, with many cautions, Chido handed the letter over. We were walking along in the blue shadows of the colonnades of the Kyro of the Vadvars, and out in the blinding light of Antares the zorca riders and the young onkers astride sleeths and all the many varieties of carriages and litters passed and repassed.
The light burned into my eyes and I looked back to see Chido as a red-limned blur. “Well, and how do I find this Horosh?”
He gave me my directions, and I realized that the volgendrins lay to the west, right up to the Mountains of the West and the sparsely populated lands there.
“And, Hamun, you won’t get a voller now. The Queen has commandeered every last one for military and governmental use.”
“Well, by Krun!” I said. “I don’t fancy a fluttrell. I’ll buy or hire a mirvol.”
Neither of us even so much as contemplated my getting a clepper of any kind; all the fluttcleppers and volcleppers would be pressed into military service. And the little money I had left would not run to a zhyan. So, in any event, it was arranged. I did not see Rees before I left. I sent him my best felicitations by Chido and then, having gone up to the barracks to collect my gear including at least one most important article, I took off for the Mountains of the West.
Chido did not call Remberee. Instead, just before the mirvol bashed its wings down in that powerful muscular beat at the beginning of a flight, he called out, “By Krun, Hamun. May the Light of Opaz shine on you.”
One of the handlers in the voldrome looked somewhat curious, so to cover all that and warming to Chido, I yelled down: “May the Greenness of Havil cover you in benediction!”
Then I was up and away, soaring out over Ruathytu with the familiar streets, avenues, and boulevards spread below, with the Kyros and their radiating arteries of traffic, the Jikhorkduns doing brisk business, the merezos with the races already beginning. All the domes, arcades, and towers speared up, then fell away and away and the wind rushed in my ears and the mirvol bore me high up into the sky of Hamal.
Chapter 15
Wind-bluster battered past my ears. The close-fitting leather flying cap was devoid of feathers or ornamentation. I bent low to the neck of the mirvol as we hurtled on through the air over Hamal, the fields and watercourses passing away below in a long stream of checkered browns, reds, and yellows threaded with blue. Forests sprawled beneath, the trees mere toy lumps of greenery. This mirvol was a sturdy beast, not overly fast, but I had picked him out in the voldrome with an eye to reliability and stamina. His deep keel chest indicated he would fly well and for a long time. His coloring, too, was a mere speckled brown, with nothing of the flamboyance of some flying animals of Havilfar. I liked him, and his name was Liance.
Chido had not been standing at my side all the time I had made my preparations. But, even so, I had not opened the letter. He could easily have asked to see it before I took off, just to make sure I had it. He had not done so, but might have. My way lay south of west, almost three hundred dwaburs away. In theory the mirvol could cover that vast distance in something like forty-eight burs, the length of the Kregan day-and-night cycle. But that was in theory only. The beast would need to rest and eat, for a flying animal consumes enormous quantities of energy and must replenish its vital faculties with adequate supplies of food. Mirvols, like many flying animals, eat some meat, but the nut of the tsu-tsu tree and those fat and nourishing beans the Hamalians call dyrolains are the favorites of the mirvols; those and a sweet thick syrup they like dripped on just about anything they eat, including meat. Feeding flying animals is often more involved than merely turning them out to graze, although they forage on their own account most efficiently. I thought of the groves of dyrolains growing in my Delia’s estates of Delphond. Vallia could feed her aerial cavalry when the time came.
Planning to reach the Volgendrin of the Bridge just after the suns set on the next day, I touched down at a tiny dusty mining town where the local inn turned out to be surprisingly well stocked on beers and sazz, if not wine. I partook of an enormous meal there and saw to it that Liance filled his belly also. I relied on the cunning strength of his wings.
The plans went well and I slanted down from the sky with all the forward horizon sheets and pinnacles of color as the twin suns sank beyond the Mountains of the West. The mountains bulked against that glowing sky, black edges of menace. The coruscations of fire, all ruby and emerald with orange and yellow shooting through in a glowing pyrotechnic display that formed one of those breathtaking suns’
settings of Kregen, could not diminish the stark jaggedness of those peaks; neither could the beauty conceal the horrors I knew lurked beyond the mountains ready to fly in to lay waste and destroy. Was I not the Amak of Paline Valley?
The letter had been opened and read.
I had not done this at the mining camp, which I left with much good-humored abuse ringing in my ears, but later, coming to earth by a grove of trees where a river edged the beginning of the barren plain that led up to the mountains here. Much of the eastward face of the mountains and the land immediately below it is smothered in heavy forest, subtropical, dangerous country. But equally as dangerous were the areas where the rivers did not run, where the rain shadows caused barrens. Where I was going, following Chido’s instructions, was clearly a semi-desert.
I opened the letter with some skill, although the seal was broken in the process, for I was over-hasty. I would deal with that problem when it arose. A single sheet of paper, yellow and finely made by hand, folded in half, rewarded my larceny. It was covered with rows of figures. Apart from the heading which read The First Month of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, that was all. It seemed fairly clear what the figures must be. If my suspicions were right — and I was going on a mishmash of whispers, overheard conversations, and coincidences that were not coincidences, but engineered by the Star Lords; and also on the very reasons I was here at all — then these figures must refer to production targets. I believed they would be targets, for completion reports would be flying in the opposite direction. And, that being so, the product of which these figures were the subject must be connected with the silver boxes, must in all probability be a mineral, and, if I was lucky, one of the four minerals we in Vallia had not identified and so had been unable to use. If I could discover what the actual stuff was, instead of merely giving San Evold Scavander a name he did not recognize, then we might produce vollers which would travel and steer instead of merely float up in the air. The paper, correctly folded, went back into the wrapper. I pushed the split seal together, then I threw the packet on the ground and jumped on it. A few crumples and bashings and it looked as though it had gone through a charge by wild chunkrahs.