“There are fields of labor that demand other skills than brawny shoulders.” He picked up his satchel. “I labor with words, and damned intractable beasts they can be, as well as singing with golden wonder. Why I do so is beyond my limited understanding.”
He mounted up on his hirvel. The animal was a fine beast, superior to Whitefoot, whom I had slapped on the rump and sent off, knowing he would find his own way back to his owner. Covell eyed the zorca.
“You are well mounted for a laboring man, Nath the Gnat.”
“The zorca came to me by way of a bequest from a dead man.”
He laughed again at this and shook his reins; together we rode gently along the dusty white road. He carried a long-knife like Oby’s and, as far as I could see, no other weapon on his person, although a short blade mounted on a shaft some six feet in length was stuck down into a boot on his stirrup. His scrip and staff were slung onto the hindquarters of the hirvel, and rode a trifle awkwardly. So we rode along talking. It is not my intention to regale you with all we spoke of, but you may be very sure I soaked up all the information he gave, and as it bears on this my narrative I will tell you, all in due time.
Covell mentioned the concern felt in Vondium over the continual unrest in the northeast of Vallia. Up there the folk were of altogether a more down-to-earth character, blunt, hardheaded, out for red gold and self-determination.
Using some little skill I introduced a query about black feathers into our talk. He replied as an educated man interested in literature would reply, quoting The Black Feathers of Ulbereth the Dark Reiver, giving a stanza or two of that old epic fashioned from the legends of olden time. But that is another story.
I judged that he did not dissemble and had not encountered the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. But I would not completely trust anyone in this thing.
So, later, I mentioned the craze for flying fluttrells in Vondium, and suggested that flying a chyyan might be interesting. Whereat he said: “I have flown a fluttrell owned by a comrade, Nath ti Havring — and an experience it was, too! — but I am told by those who know about these things that chyyans are unridable. Surely, Nath the Gnat, it is zhyans you mean?”
“Perhaps it is,” I said. “They are all foreign, out of Hamal. Give me a zorca.”
“Aye. But one day these great soldiers of ours will go up against Hamal, and we poets will be forced to sing their praises. I prefer to tune my songs to sweeter themes.”
“Amen to that.”
I pressed him to recite a line or two of his own, and nothing loath, for he loved an audience, he declaimed his “Ode to Dawning,” in which the red sun Zim and the green sun Genodras are apostrophized as mere balls of colored fire, without sentience, marvels of nature, bringing light to all men over the whole of Kregen. He added, when he had finished, that translating Zim to Far and Genodras to Havil ruined the feel of the piece. “I have a large contempt for religiosity in pious hypocrites. Opaz is well enough, I suppose, given as a sop. But a man’s heart is his true religion.”
I made no direct answer. Rafik trusted in a right arm and a sword, and Covell in a man’s heart. What, then, did I trust in? Anything at all apart from my Delia and the Krozairs of Zy?
When I had first returned to Kregen after that hideous expanse of twenty-one years on Earth I had fancied Kregen had not changed. The more I learned the more I discovered that this marvelous world had changed, was changing and was like to change even faster as the days wore on. When Covell spoke of the emperor he simply laughed and made witty jokes. He did say that the taverns reeked with plots, and then contemptuously dismissed them as wine-soaked dreams. “Trouble is coming to Vallia, Nath the Gnat, and all men can see that plain. There is the northeast. There are the racters. There are other parties and plots. I want none of them! By Vox! I am a poet and as a poet will I live and die a happy man. All else is illusion.”
“You do not share the fear of the locals to travel alone?”
“Do you?”
“Ah, well, I was not fully aware of the situation, being a simple wandering laborer. If there is no work here by reason of the troubles-”
“There are no troubles in Delphond, at least not yet. That is why I chose to travel here. But the lonely traveler is not as safe as he once was and isolated houses, like the inn where we met, are no longer little fortresses of peace. The damned aragorn prowl all the land — aye, and the racters aid and abet them. That is where their money comes from.”
“You do not like the racters?”
“I dislike all political parties. I am an individual.”
“The people take precautions against drikinger.”
“Yes, but Delphond is not an easy province for bandits.”
“So it is the slavers they fear?”
“If the emperor and the Presidio do not act soon no one will be safe. Vallia is like to be torn asunder.”
Deliasmot was its usual charming, smiling self, a typically beautiful, easygoing, life-loving Delphondian town. Yet even here the new edginess was apparent, the more anxious demeanor, the stricter controls at the gates. Here Covell of the Golden Tongue and I parted, for he was contracted to give a recitation of his poetry, a declamation he called it, and I was for the canal and for pressing on to Drakanium where I would meet Delia.
We made our Remberees and I expressed my disappointment at missing his declamation, for he was truly a golden voice, and then I hurried to the canal to make travel arrangements. The zorca ensured a ticket in a narrow boat. I found a quiet seat where I might watch the passing banks, sliding along all green and golden under the suns, and I dozed and took my meals with the best of them and kept to myself, tolerated here in Delphond, and so came at last gliding with the canalfolk all hauling lustily away under the stone vaulted archways of Drakanium’s watergate.
As a city, Drakanium was simply a larger edition of a Delphondian town, clean, neat, sparkling, bowered in vegetation, filled with the prosperous bustle of a contented folk — at least it had been. The city was just as clean and neat and the flowers bloomed magnificently and the fountains played. But the people hurried about their tasks with worried looks. A regiment of totrixmen were exercising on the parade ground and I judged by their antics they were newly formed. The Jiktar was near to apoplexy as he bellowed orders, and the awkward six-legged totrixes tangled up and squealed and the lances all slanted at odd angles. But they flew nice banners and flags.
I had agreed to meet Delia at the best inn, instead of her villa here, to keep my cover. A hostler took in my message, giving me a sharp look as he went in through the lenken door under the glowing tiles, where the moon-blooms clustered thickly. Bees droned and the shadows lay across the stone-flagged court. I sat down on a bench and a serving wench brought out a flagon of best Delphondian ale. I quaffed it gratefully.
To these people I was a mere wanderer, a tramp, and if the Princess Majestrix wished to speak with me she would, and that was her business, and if she did not, then I would be told and seen off the premises. They are civilized in Delphond.
The hostler came back. He wore a frown.
“I gave your message to the landlord, dom. He says to tell you the Princess Majestrix is not here.”
“When is she expected? Maybe I am early.”
“Oh, she’s been here. You were expected.” He did not add that he couldn’t for the life of him understand why a great and glorious princess should worry her beautiful head over a dingy tramp. He went on, almost casually, imparting his news: “She has had to return posthaste to Vondium.”
I stood up.
“Did she say why?”
He took a step back. His coarse sacking apron rustled as he switched his arms out. “No. She did not say. Just that she had to go to Vondium on a matter of extreme urgency. A courier came in an airboat. From the emperor, it was said. The princess went with him and her suite with her.” He rolled his eyes with the memory of a great dread removed. “She had a ghastly creature with her, a most bloodthirsty monster, all claws and fangs and hair, but they all went in the airboat to Vondium.”