"Sit down, Gadak — wine? There is a matter I wish to tell you, and, after that, another matter."
"I await your commands, gernu."
A Fristle slave girl dressed in bangles and pearls poured wine. Gafard waited until she had finished and then waved her away. We were alone. He handed me the wine goblet; it was all of gold with great rubies set about the bowl and stem. I sipped, making the sign to him of salutation and thanks. It was Zond.
"When we used to drink this, gernu," I said, wishing to get him started on this interview, "we would say:
’Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that.’"
"Those days are best forgotten." He drank quickly. He looked not so much agitated as keyed up. "You, Gadak, will carry the standard of my Lady of the Stars."
I gaped at him.
"Close your mouth, you fambly, and listen."
I shut my mouth with a snap.
"My Lady will accompany me on this expedition. She will dress and travel as a man, a great gernu. This for reasons that need not concern you. Arrangements have been made for her cabin in Volgodont’s Fang. She will not be seen. But, as an overlord, she must needs have her deviced banner. This will be your charge."
I knew what was required of me. I bowed my head, and then looked up. "The honor is undeserved, but I will serve till death."
To a Green Grodnim, such a promise meant nothing; it was rote.
"Good." He stood up. "I have taken a liking to you, friend Gadak. After this expedition, who knows, you may well be Gadak of some honorable title. Come — there is that I would show you." He led me toward a tall single door, which he unlocked with the bronze key on his belt, and we went through into a tall narrow room lit by lancet windows. The room flamed’ with color. Red!
Banners and standards of all kinds hung from the walls. There were stands of arms of Krozair manufacture — although there were no Krozair longswords I could see — and I looked.
"Aye, Gadak. This is my trophy room. These are the trophies of my battles and actions." I swallowed down hard. I recognized some of the devices.
There was much there I was dismayed to see. This man, this King’s Striker, had roamed the inner sea like a leem. I walked slowly along, looking up. At the far end in a small alcove stood a balass-framed glass case. The light struck across it and lit its contents. I looked. A scrap of red cloth, not eighteen inches square, with faded gold embroidery, and, along one edge, a strip of yellow cloth. Also in the case lay what was clearly a fragment of mesh mail. Also a main-gauche.
A main-gauche? The left-hand dagger was not a familiar weapon in the inner sea, for they were not rapier-and-dagger men.
I looked back at Gafard. He stood there, one hand to his beard, staring at the case with an expression I found hard to read.
"You wonder at these pitiful relics, Gadak?"
"Trophies of your first action?" I suggested, doubtful.
He smiled. "No, Gadak. My first victim sank in a bubble and all was lost." He came closer and stood looking down at the red cloth, brooding. "No. These are precious to me. Most precious. You will not understand, and yet, I sense in you a spirit, a spark that can ignite if fanned with skill."
"Swifter actions are violent and bloody-"
"Aye! And the man who owned this red flag, and this mail shirt, and this dagger, was violent and bloody above all."
So I knew.
I looked closer.
Well. . the bit of red cloth with the yellow edging could be a quarter ripped from my flag, that yellow cross on a scarlet field fighting-men call Old Superb. The colors were faded and, like museum pieces, gave a fusty, dusty faded look. The mesh mail, a scrap from a left shoulder and breast, might also have been mine. As for the main-gauche — my mind went back fifty years. . Yes, I was almost sure it was one given to me by Vomanus, the young man who had so recklessly come seeking me in the inner sea because he had been told to do so by Delia. He was Delia’s half-brother. He was now Vomanus of Vindelka. I thought he was a good friend. Yes, it could be his. A spot of dirt about the ornate hilt where the metal had corroded bore that out, for he was always careless of his weapons. And damned funny it was, to be sure, to stand and look down at bits of one’s own belongings all solemnly laid out in a glass case in a museum, relics to be sighed over with awe. I tapped the case lightly. "How can you be sure these belonged to Pur Dray?" He smiled, and the smile was neither ironic nor wolfish; it was the smile of the collector who has paid a price for a dearly desired object of his affections.
"I know them to be. I have been given proofs."
I decided I had best display some of the chauvinistic ignorance of the warriors of the Eye of the World.
"This dagger. It is of strange design." I put my hand on the glass and twisted it about — my right hand.
"You would hold it, but with difficulty."
He laughed. This, the first genuine laugh I had heard from him, for he could contort his face to a polite grimace when the occasion warranted, sounded light and happy and carefree.
"Your left hand, Gadak."
So I went through the pantomime of putting my left hand on the glass and holding the main-gauche. I was suitably amazed.
"You have heard of Vallia? The king no longer desires to trade with them, for now we are allied to the empire of Hamal, wherever that may be, and the ships of Menaham ply here. But there are many things of Vallian make in Magdag. This dagger is one, and it was owned and used by the Lord of Strombor." He did not offer to take the precious objects out of the glass case. I hadn’t the heart to ask him. I could feel the weight of all those years rolling down on me, like the peaks of The Stratemsk toppling upon me, and I felt my spirit reducing, as though Grotal had me in his grip.
Truthfully, I, an Earthman, had not yet adjusted to the normal and accepted life-span of two hundred years usual to the people of Kregen, let alone the thousand years that stretched ahead. To Gafard as well as other Kregans, the past fifty years was like twenty to an Earthman. And I knew what twenty years trapped on Earth was like, Krun rot the Star Lords!
Gafard was speaking again, and I roused myself to listen.
". . honor of the most high. She will be waiting in my saloon now. Show no surprise, Gadak, I caution you, for she has chosen this from the Vallian goods I have told you of. It is a bauble, but it augurs well for your future with me."
Not quite sure what he was talking about I cast a last look at the scraps and relics of what once were mine, and went with him back to the saloon.
My Lady of the Stars waited for us.
I bowed deeply, very deeply, going almost into the full incline, and this I did without conceit or embarrassment.
"Rise, Gadak, for I think you would be a friend to my lord Gafard and to me." Her voice, musical, filled with light, entranced me.
"I will serve you, my Lady. Your standard shall never be dishonored." She wore no veil. She was dressed, as was Gafard, all in white. Her black hair was piled in ringlets upon her head, and she held that head erect and yet, although she held herself with pride, there was nothing of arrogance in her. I looked at her, drinking in her beauty, and then looked away, for I felt the desolation within me.