I knew, I supposed, when I heard the birds singing.
We burst in, and the place was empty. We scoured all the tumbled ruins, peering and prying, prodding with our swords. Nothing. Not a single thing gave any evidence of a soul having been there for a thousand years.
“It seems, Prince, we have had a wasted ride.”
The hikdar spoke a little sourly. His head was still ringing, I judged, from the party of the previous evening.
“The birds have flown, hikdar. I’ll grant you that. But as to a wasted ride, I think you’ll eat a better breakfast this morning than you would otherwise have done.”
He made a face, but bellowed out, “Too right, Prince!”
It was so, of course.
There, was nothing here. I had failed in this night’s business. Then I walked quietly around to that crumbled corner of masonry and bent among the dew-bright ferns. The hikdar stared at me curiously, hands on the hilts of his weapons, his booted feet thrust wide. I straightened up. In my hand I held the scrap of rusty black feather.
“Not altogether wasted for me, hikdar, either.”
Then we mounted up and I shook the reins and turned my zorca’s head for Arkadon and the Running Sleeth and this Rafik.
Eight
Sleep would have to take its turn. I’d been up all night haring about Delphond. If I bothered to ask myself why I should care tuppence about this Koter Rafik Avandil, I suppose, then, I would have answered that the fellow had conceived he was saving my life. And a lone koter against a rascally gang of Rapa masichieri demanded a high brand of courage. So I banished the idea of sleep and rode up to the inn run by Larghos, the inn with the revolting name of the Running Sleeth. One positive thought I had. I would question Rafik about the airboat that had taken off just before the Rapas attacked. It seemed perfectly clear to me that Phu-si-Yantong had observed me in his trancelike state of lupu and had then whistled up his gang of bully boys to take me. The airboat had dropped them to lie in wait. Rafik might have seen something useful.
All the same, although I kept my usual careful lookout as I rode, I remained firmly convinced that the wizard’s orders that I was not to be killed remained in force. His ludicrous desire to rule, physically and in person, vast expanses of Kregen and to set up puppets to carry out his orders told most eloquently that he must be mad. Mad in that special sense, of course, a kind of madness which afflicts people in certain ways. He was clever, brilliantly clever, and fiendishly ruthless, as I knew. He was an opponent to reckon with. Apart from anything else, his sorcerous skills gave him an advantage almost impossible to conceive of on this Earth. I must look to my own defenses within the mystic realms, that was for sure, and get Khe-Hi-Bjanching to earn his keep, although that was hardly fair. Khe-Hi had done wonders. His own powers had grown over the years. He would, if he lived, prove a most potent ally to me and adversary to Phu-si-Yantong.
Thus thinking, I dismounted from the zorca and tied him to the hitching rail. Pulling my tattered brown cloak around my shoulders and with a touch of the fingertips to the bamboo stick, I went into the Running Sleeth.
The brightly painted wooden sign over the lintel had been carved in the round and showed a sleeth running, the reptile’s powerful back legs fully extended, its silly front claws curled, its dinosaur-head thrust out, the forked tongue — a strip formed of brass wires — twitching out most realistically. The craze among the young bloods of Hyrklana and Hamal for owning and racing sleeths had not yet extended to Vallia, I had thought. In this I was clearly wrong. The reptilian sleeth can run reasonably fast, not as fast as a zorca, but it is a damned uncomfortable ride, waddling along on those two massive hind legs, with its tail stuck out aft to balance itself.
So the name told me the kind of inn this would be.
The place had been tarted up. Smoky old beams had been painted over. Garish pictures filled every corner. Instead of quaffing ale from jacks or flagons, the customers were drinking parclear or sazz from thin glass goblets. The smells of cooking told me that the over-refined food served here would be all fashionable rubbish, not fit to last half a bur in a man’s stomach. Still, it takes all kinds to make a world. Small round tables on spindly legs, elegant chairs with needlepoint covers, flowers in pots of chunky ceramic — well, flowers are a boon to tired eyes — all gave the impression that this Larghos who owned the place must be a man of taste, well able to satisfy his provincial clientele that they were being entertained in the best fashion of the capital.
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with sazz or parclear or elegant chairs and furnishings. It is when these appurtenances to gracious living are pushed blatantly forward as an end in themselves, catering for empty-headed gadflies, that the ordinary man must recoil. I say must. Some do not see things in this light, and as I went in and sat down in a chair with my back to a wall facing the door — an instinctive action, this, done without thought — I was prepared to let any man enjoy whatsoever he wished within reason. So I scanned the people there and then prepared to ignore them. Farmers, stockholders, breeders, they were unlikely to be found here. Here in the Running Sleeth would be found those men’s sons, eating up the family wealth. One or two soldiers of the garrison who fancied themselves men of culture, an artist and poet or two, if they had little talent but large incomes, light ladies and fashionable damsels, the would-be cultured layer of provincial life would come here to ape the ways they imagined to go on in Vondium.
And then, well, I admit it fully and freely, I could not find it in my heart to blame Larghos, the owner and landlord. After all, into this place of conscious refinement and culture stumbles an unshaven common fellow, a wandering laborer, with a raggedy old brown blanket cast over his shoulders and a mop of untamed hair, and puts his odiferous sack on the beautiful embroidered tablecloth and sticks his naked feet out over the charming rugs woven in imitation of Walfarg Weave. Well!
Larghos, slender, oily, charming, with wavy hair, trotted over and his face showed such outraged fury that I almost laughed. I couldn’t see what was setting him going.
“Out, fellow! What do you think you’re at! Schtump!”
“I only wanted-” I began, beginning to understand.
“You’ll have a broomstick over your head! Schtump!”
I made a solemn promise to myself. I would not allow myself to become angry. No. No, this Larghos was right. I had no business bringing my old blanket cloak and my sack into this temple to culture and gracious living.
I sighed. “Is Koter Rafik Avandil here? I am supposed to meet him.”
“He is gone out! Paid his bill and gone. Now you go!” Then he lifted his voice and shouted squeakily,