If I allowed myself to be swayed by the megalomania I have been accused of, I could see a clear pattern. But Natyzha Famphreon and the other racters knew of the Black Feathers, and their provinces had been infiltrated also. Makfaril, whoever he was, surely intended to sound the call for the Black Day at the same time all over Vallia. With a little knowledge I have of human nature, with a little knowledge of running affairs of state, and with the knowledge borne in on me by the demeanor of bandits around the campfire, I knew with a dark foreboding that Makfaril might not be able to hold his followers to his timetable. The explosion might erupt at any moment, triggered by any silly stupid event. The day of the Black Feathers could strike tomorrow. .
That ride up through the heart of Valka was all a great foolishness. Bits of it recur to me now. I had hoped the long ride would soothe me and calm me down, but the more I saw and heard the more fraught and tense I became. And the burden of my fear, a true and deeply abiding fear, must be shown by the first words I spoke to Seg after the joyful Lahals.
“And the news from Delia, Seg? Where is her letter?”
He shook his head. “No letter from Delia has arrived here, Dray. There are packages for you forwarded on, flown in from Vondium and Valka, and coming from — well, you know the names.”
I did. There would be estate information from Strombor and chunkrah counts from Hap Loder and the Clansmen. There would be news from Kytun and Ortyg in Djanduin. But I hungered to hear from Delia, for now I knew she struggled against some unknown evil that threatened our daughter Dayra. I asked after Thelda, and Seg spread his hands and said she had been visiting in Vondium and was momentarily expected.
The impression Seg gave was that he wanted to take up his great longbow and go ask the emperor to repeat the words that had banished me. I fancied the emperor would find life exceedingly uncomfortable thereafter if he did repeat them.
“Well, by Vox! how long does he think to keep you banished, the old onker?”
“Only from Vondium. And the Black Feathers have not sprouted there as yet.”
“Come and wet that dusty throat of yours and let us see what we may contrive.”
We went down from the battlemented gateway and so across the outer yard and through the inner walls and up through narrow winding stairways of stone into Seg’s private chambers in the Fletcher’s Tower. Once it had been the Jade Tower, but Seg had changed all that. This castle fortress of his, frowning down over the city of Falanriel, had been built to withstand a protracted siege. Seg kept the place amply stocked. He had a small guard of Bowmen of Loh, backed up by a regiment of Pachaks with a few other diffs in their different specialities. He was no fool, was Seg Segutorio, over these matters, with the wild fey ways and shrewd practicality of his mountain people.
All the same, as we sat and drank in the quiet ease of his rooms, I had to say, “It does look as though we are the high and mighty of the land now, and grind down the poor.”
“To the Ice Floes with that, my old dom!” Seg looked annoyed. “I was a miserable starveling, a mercenary, a slave. I know. If a man works in my province of Falinur he is assured of a living and of comfort.”
“Slaves?”
Seg made a face and drank his wine. “These devils are sly and secret and run slaves no matter what I do to stop ’em.”
“Vinnur’s Garden-”
He did not let me go on. “My nobility here, all owing their fine estates to me, all prate on and on about marching into Vinnur’s Garden and taking it for Falinur. But Vomanus-”
“He is seldom at home. He is almost as much of an absentee landlord as I am.”
“Well, I have put in my stint here. And it looks as though I’d have done better to have stayed in Vondium, or visited Erthyrdrin again, for all the good I have done here.”
When I told him, during the course of our long talk through the evening and most of the night, about Natyzha Famphreon and the chavonths, he grimaced and said, “I’d rather not hear what she did to her slaves. They’d all be punished to make sure the guilty got it in the neck, to the devil with the innocent”
“Aye.”
“And they actually expected you to fight your father-in-law?”
“Not exactly fight him. But certainly not assist him.”
“Remember the Dragon’s Bones?”
“Now there was a bonny little fracas.”
“Bonny little fracas! Dray, Dray! That was High Jikai!”
“I wouldn’t have said so, but it was squeaky, all the same.”
“Those days when you and Delia and Thelda and I marched across the hostile territories! Ah, but they’ll never come again.”
I was not at all sure of that. Kregen is a world of ups and downs. So we talked on through the night, amicably drinking, and our thoughts were as often of the stirring past adventures as of the terrors of the future and the problems we faced.
Two days later Thelda arrived back in Falanriel, flushed, bright-eyed, bouncing, filled with glowing stories of her time in Vondium. She had been desolated that her great friend Delia had not been there. Of all her sprightly babble we took the due meed of attention. “And the dear queen! Queen Lushfymi! What a charming woman she is, and so regal. I own she has quite won me over. And yet the ignorant fools call her Queen Lush. It really is a disgrace.”
Seg asked a casual question about the Queen of Lome and Thelda fired up instantly. “Beautiful, oh, yes!
She is radiant. And so cultured. She is rich too. Lome is not the largest country in Pandahem, but her wealth is dazzling. The presents she brought, the length of the procession — the animals and the people and the displays — you should have seen it all, my dear. You would have enjoyed it.”
“I’m sure,” said Seg, looking at me with a straight face.
Seg and Thelda loved each other; that was true, and gave me great joy. When couples split apart friends are hurt also. I felt as confident as of anything that Seg and Thelda knew each other well enough by now. As for their children, the eldest son, named Dray for some odd quirk of desire on Seg’s part, was off adventuring. The twins were at school. No — here Thelda pursed her lips up most comically — Silda, the girl, was with the Sisters of the Rose.
I sat up.
“But you are a Sister of Patience, Thelda.”
“It’s none of your business, my dearest Dray, for you are a man. But, yes, I am. And Silda hankered so after the SoR I had to let her go. I own it mystifies me.”
In his droll way, Seg said, “Delia was mystified too.”
So, of course, that explained it. It also made me think again about what I both might and ought to do. A very great deal of our conversations concerned Queen Lushfymi, the Queen of Lome. Lome is the country situated in the northwest of Pandahem where the long east-west central chain of mountains sweeps up northwestward and, extending out to sea, forms the straggling line of the Hoboling Islands. Lome is rich although not overlarge, occupying the space east of the mountains to the border with Iyam. East of Iyam lies Menaham, occupied by the Bloody Menahem. Then comes Tomboram where I harbored most guilty memories of Tilda and Pando. And, in the jutting northeast corner of Pandahem is situated Jholaix. One smacks ones lips at the thought of Jholaix.