Heizari stood behind the foremast. Lightning spattered across the sky; thunder came almost at once.
The Flower stabbed deftly around the mast; the orange-haired girl clutched her side, tottered forth with a wondering face. The Flower aimed the dart gun but Palo Barba was there to knock it clattering to the deck. The Flower cut at him, cut at Reith who was trying to seize her, ran up the ladder to the forepeak, climbed out on the sprit.
The cog rose to the waves; the sprit reared and plunged. The sun sank into the ocean; the Flower turned to watch it, hanging to the forestay with one arm.
Reith called to her, "Come back, come back!"
She turned, looked at him, her face remote. "Derl!" called Reith. "Ylin-Ylan!"
The girl gave no signal she had heard. Reith called her other names: "Blue Jade Flower!" Then her court name: "Shar Zarin!"
She only gave him a regretful smile.
Reith sought to coax her. He used her child name: "Zozi ... Zozi ... come back here."
The girl's face changed. She pulled herself closer to the stay, hugging it.
"Zozi! Won't you talk to me? Come here, there's a good girl."
But her mind was far away, off where the sun was setting.
Reith called her secret name: "L'lae! Come, come here! Ktan calls you, L'lae!"
Again she shook her head, never taking her eyes from the sea.
Reith called the final name though it felt strange to his lips: her love name.
He called, but thunder drowned the sound of his voice, and the girl did not hear. The sun was a small segment, swimming with antique colors. The Flower stepped from the sprit, and dropped into a hissing surge of spume. For an instant Reith thought he saw the spiral of her dark hair, and then she was gone.
Later, in the evening, with the Vargaz pitching up the great slopes and wallowing in a rush down into the troughs, Reith put a question to Ankhe at afram Anacho, the Dirdirman. "Had she simply lost her reason? Or was that awaile?"
"It was awaile. The refuge from shame."
"But-" Reith started to speak, but could only make an inarticulate gesture.
"You gave attendance to the Cloud Isle girl. Her champion made a fool of himself. Humiliation lay across the future. She would have killed us all had she been able."
"I find it incomprehensible," muttered Reith.
"Naturally. You are not Yao. For the Blue Jade Princess, the pressure was too great. She is lucky. In Settra she would have been punished at a dramatic public torturing."
Reith groped his way out on deck. The brass lantern creaked as it swung. Reith looked out over the blowing sea. Somewhere far away and deep, a white body floated in the dark.
CHAPTER FIVE
FREAKISH WINDS BLEW throughout the night: gusts, breaths, blasts, whispers. Dawn brought an abrupt calm, and the sun found the Vargaz wallowing in a confused sea.
At noon a terrible squall sent the ship scudding south like a toy, the bluff bow battering the sea to froth. The passengers kept to the saloon, or to the trunk deck. Heizari, bandaged and pale, kept to the cabin she shared with Edwe. Reith sat with her for an hour. She could speak of nothing but her terrible experience. "But why should she do so dreadful a deed?"
"Apparently the Yao are prone to such acts."
"I have heard as much; but even insanity has a reason."
"The Dirdirman says she was overwhelmed by shame."
"What folly! A person as beautiful as she? What could she have done to affect her so?"
"I wouldn't care to speculate," muttered Reith.
The squalls became gigantic hills lofting the Vargaz high, heaving the round hull bubbling and singing down the long slopes. Finally one morning the sun shone down from a dove-brown sky clean of clouds. The seas persisted a day longer, then gradually lessened, and the cog set all sail before a fair breeze from the west.
Three days later a dim black island loomed in the south, which the captain declared to be the haunt of corsairs; he kept a sharp lookout from the masthead until the island had merged into the murk of evening.
The days passed without distinguishing characteristic: curiously antiseptic days overshadowed by the uncertainty of the future. Reith became edgy and nervous.
How long ago had been the events at Pera: a time so innocent and uncomplicated!
At that time, Cath had seemed a haven of civilized security, with Reith certain that the Blue Jade Lord through gratitude would facilitate his plans. What a callow hope!
The cog approached the coast of Kachan, where the captain hoped to ride north-flowing currents up into the Parapan.
One morning, coming on deck, Reith found a remarkable island standing off the starboard beam: a place of no great extent, less than a quarter-mile in diameter, surrounded at the water's edge by a wall of black glass a hundred feet high. Beyond rose a dozen massive buildings of various heights and graceless proportion.
Anacho the Dirdirman came to stand beside him, narrow shoulders hunched, long face dour. "There you see the stronghold of an evil race: the Wankh."
"'Evil'? Because they are at war with the Dirdir?"
"Because they will not end the war. What benefit to either Dirdir or Wankh is such a confrontation? The Dirdir offer disengagement; the Wankh refuse. A harsh inscrutable people!"
"Naturally, I know nothing of the issues," said Reith. "Why the wall around the island?"
"To daunt the Pnume, who infest Tschai like rats. The Wankh are not a companionable folk. In fact-look down yonder below the surface."
Reith, peering into the water, saw gliding beside the ship at a depth of ten or fifteen feet a dark man-like shape, with a metal structure fixed across its mid-body, moving without motion of its own. The figure twisted, slanted away and vanished into the murk.
"An amphibious race, the Wankh, with electric jets for their underwater sport."
Reith once more raised the scanscope. The Wankh towers, like the walls, were black glass. Round windows were discs blacker than black; balconies of frail twisted crystal became walkways to far structures. Reith spied movement: a pair of Wankh? Looking more closely he saw the creatures to be men-Wankhmen, beyond all doubt, with flour-white skins and black pelts close to somewhat flat scalps.
Their faces seemed smooth, with still, saturnine features; they wore what appeared to be one-piece black garments, with wide black leather belts, on which hung small implements, tools, instruments. As they moved into the building, they looked out at the Vargaz and for an instant Reith saw full into their faces. He jerked the scanscope from his eyes.
Anacho eyed him askance. "What is the trouble?"
"I saw two Wankhmen ... Even you, weird mutated freak that you are, seem ordinary by comparison."
Anacho gave a sardonic chuckle. "They are in fact not dissimilar to the typical sub-man."
Reith made no argument; in the first place he could not define the exact quality he had seen behind the still white faces. He looked again, but the Wankhmen had disappeared. Dordolio had come out on deck and now stared in fascination at the scanscope. "What instrument is that?"
"An electronic optical device," said Reith without emphasis.
"I've never seen its like." He looked at Anacho. "Is it a Dirdir machine?"
Anacho made a quizzical dissent. "I think not."
Dordolio gave Reith a puzzled glance. "Is it Chasch or Wankh?" He veered at the engraved escutcheon. "What writing is this?"