Oh, yes, I knew her.
She had changed since I had last seen her. Plumpness had softened the lines of beauty in her face, making her appear more petulant than ever. But she remained superbly beautiful, still lithe and lovely. Her dark hair had been dyed the fashionable green. Her kohled eyes regarded me and I kept my face blank. The last words we had exchanged — so long ago here in Magdag as my old vosk-skulls surged forward to the victory that was surely theirs, that victory so cruelly denied — had been words of anger and unfulfilled yearning. She had said I looked ridiculous, standing there with an old vosk skull upon my head. She had slashed at my face with her riding crop, and I had ducked and the blow had glanced harmlessly from the vosk-skull helmet.
The princess Susheeng.
Oh, yes, I knew her.
Would she know me?
How she had recoiled when she had learned I was a Krozair of Zy, the Lord of Strombor!
I stood dumbly and looked away, daring in the parlance of the overlords of Magdag to lift my eyes to the radiance of the king.
He was a man, this king Genod. I saw at a glance the fire in him, the fierce energy, the deep-banked fires of genius that could flame and flash as he led his men, driving them, leading them, inspiring them with all the magnetism of his powerful personality. And yet in those deep dark eyes I saw the callous cruelty of a leem. I saw in the bladelike nose, the arrogant jut of jaw, and the thinness of the lips signs that, brush them aside as you will, denote the man who puts himself and his own purposes always foremost in all he does.
He sat brooding upon us, and all the gaudy glitter of his clothes and jewels and arms paled beside the sullen power of that face.
"Lahal, Gafard."
"Lahal, majister."
That was all, between these two. Yet I swear I understood a little more of the bond between them. Master and servant, brain and tool, they complemented each other. Between them they could take the inner sea and wring it dry.
The princess Susheeng, who had once knelt weeping, beseeching, supplicating before me, naked but for the gray slave breechclout, did not move. I flicked her a quick glance and saw no outward change in her demeanor. It had been a long time, and that notorious Krozair Brother, the Lord of Strombor, was long dead and gone to his grave. And, perhaps I, too, had changed over all those years. Also, Gafard’s shadow from the clerestory windows fell across me, and my green silken turban wound around the plain iron helmet draped half across my face. I breathed more easily. Impossible to imagine she would recognize in this new renegade seeking admission to the king’s armies a man she had once known so long ago and who was now dead.
Gafard had warned me that this audience would form the public initiation. From this time on I was Grodnim. Later the king would see me privately, and there I might form a better opinion of what was required of me.
I recognized that Princess Susheeng had achieved much of her heart’s desire. She and her brother, that devil prince Glycas, had planned and plotted to raise themselves even higher in Magdag. Now this storming genius Genod Gannius had appeared on the scene and had led his armies in triumph over Magdag and ruled here in the city of megaliths. And he had chosen Susheeng as his consort. She, at least, had achieved much.
The thought that Glycas must be here, if he was not dead, made me realize the latter alternative to be far more preferable.
The short ceremony of admission was about to begin.
The chamberlains unhitched the Genodder from the high belt and carried it toward a Chuktar, a Chulik, who stood enormous and impressive in armor and green. He took the sword. After some mumbo-jumbo, the Genodder would be blessed by the priests, waiting in their green robes at the side, the king would kiss it, and I would receive it back, to kiss it and so hang it once more upon my person. The admission would have been completed.
So I stood there, waiting for the next move in this charade.
No one moved.
No one stirred.
I looked hard at the king. His right hand was half lifted in the sign to begin. That hand did not move, did not waver, did not tremble. The old wise man’s mouth was half open. That mouth neither opened nor closed. Susheeng’s hand turned at the wrist and fondled a golden brooch upon her breast. Nothing moved.
So I knew.
Not a sound rose from the mass of courtiers in the bright reception chamber, not a person moved. I shuffled my feet and turned around, nastily, to face the tall double doors. Now, I said to myself, now what does she want?
Zena Iztar walked in through the opened double doors and past the lines of petrified people. She looked, as always, supremely imposing. She wore her crimson and scarlet and golden robes, with a narrow green sash, and the jewels flamed from her to drown in magnificence the suddenly tawdry splendor of King Genod’s glittering reception chamber.
She halted a little way off from me. She shook her head.
"Dray Prescot!"
"What do you want, Zena Iztar?"
"I seek to know what you do here."
"It is obvious."
"Not to me, not to the Star Lords, not to the Savanti."
"Then are they — and you — of little wit."
That calm face, imperious, proud, beautiful yes, all those things, but also maternal and wise and sorrowing, did not smile. Again she shook her head and the jewels of her headdress flashed and sparkled. "If we used our wits, as you suggest, we might believe you did an evil thing here."
"Of course it’s evil!"
A tiny line dinted between her eyebrows.
I said, "We have met three times, Madam Ivanovna, Zena Iztar. Do you not yet understand I am an evil man?"
"Yet were you chosen by the Savanti and after they cast you off, by the Everoinye, the Star Lords."
"That was not of my seeking."
"Yet were you chosen."
I wasn’t fool enough to ask why I had been chosen. The Savanti, those superhuman men of Aphrasoe, the Swinging City, selected many men from Earth and subjected them to a test and so, accepting them, trained them to become Savapim and go forth upon Kregen to uphold the dignity of apims, of Homo sapiens. I had been found wanting and so had been kicked out of paradise. I had fought and worked and created my own paradise upon Kregen. All I held dear lay with my Delia. The Star Lords used me when they willed for their own ends. The reasons behind the selection of myself were obvious; the ramifications of the conflicting desires of others were the causes of the way my life had gone upon Kregen. I had no stupid delusions that I was in any way special, destined for a great and glittering fate in this world four hundred light-years from Earth.
"I warned you, Pur Dray," said Zena Iztar, "that you would not be allowed to leave the Eye of the World."
"I am no longer Pur Dray."
"That is sooth. But I would like you to become Pur Dray again, once more to take up your rightful place as a member of the Krozairs of Zy."
"I’m finished with all that!"
"You will never leave the inner sea until you do."
All along, all during the time of my boasting and planning, when I had ridden to Magdag, when I had taken the argenter, all the time, I must have known — had known — that I could not leave the Eye of the World. Those vast and implacable forces operating outside of the time and space I knew held me fast caught. Until what they desired occurred I must remain here, a free man within the confines of the inner sea, but imprisoned here as I had been imprisoned on my own Earth.
"The Krozairs of Zy mean nothing to me now. I am Apushniad. Had you forgotten?"
"I do not forget important things so lightly."
"It’s not important! Not any longer!" I was shouting. "I have put the Krozairs behind me, cast them off, shed them as a snake sheds a skin. There are other places of Kregen I hold more dear." She bent her gaze upon me. "As a snake, you said. ."