Tolly, the squat little Hoboling who knew these islands, took the lead and we hurried into the interior. We met up with the passengers and I was reunited with my three traveling companions. Tolly led us to a safe resting place and then went back to reconnoiter the coast. Inch, with a somewhat sour comment to me about staying with our charges, went with him. When Tolly and Inch returned they reported the argenters about stripped and the swordships preparing to leave.
After that, feeling empty and let-down, we trailed off to a fishing village Tolly knew, where we were welcomed by the headman, who looked remarkably like an older version of Tolly, and where we were able to obtain food and drink and a roof for the night. That bur or so of darkness had passed and now the moons of Kregen shone refulgently in the sky. Tilda and Pando fell asleep at once. I stayed up with Inch talking with Tolly and Captain Alkers and some of his mates with the headman, one Tandy. Tandy expressed a deep hatred and contempt for the swordships.
“They ruin trade,” he said. “And our fishing. We are simple people and we live simply. But we are never likely to make contact with the outer world while the swordships by their depredations prevent commercial contact.”
We argued and talked into the night and then I slept. But I made it a point to give Tandy a fine jeweled dagger I had picked up — I had severed it and the fist grasping it from its previous owner’s arm — and tried to smile at him. I felt that he and his people would be valuable, situated as they were on an island in the midst of this strategic but isolated sea battleground. They’d be down to the stranded ships first light tearing them to pieces. The sea brought them harvests.
We made the necessary arrangements to secure a passage to the nearest port fortress of Tomboram, situated on an island a little to the southward. They existed in an attempt to suppress the swordships, an attempt, I fear, largely futile. They ran their own little fleet of swordships which flew hither and yon chasing the pirates — a thankless life.
From there we shipped aboard Pride of Pomdermam, Captain Galna, and made an easy passage direct to Tomboram’s chief port and capital, Pomdermam, and so I sailed into the next period of my life in Pandahem. Vallia lay to the north. I would reach there, one day, soon. That, I vowed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pando had a toothache.
His face looked like one of those lusciously overripe gregarians grown in the lush gardens of Felteraz, a species of fruit of which both Nath and Zolta had been fond and so had converted me to their taste. A toothache in my own time on my own world was a serious, painful, and dreary business. On Kregen, of course, Pando saw a dentist who neatly twirled a couple of needles into his ankle and then yanked with professional skill. As first teeth, these should have given Pando no trouble in coming out and, normally, none did; this one had gone bad on him. The acupuncture gave him a completely painless time of the dentistry, and we came out and ate huge helpings of palines at the first restaurant we ran across. But all this domestic business had blurred the edges of just why I was in Pandahem at all. I told Tilda. I explained reasonably that she had asked Inch and me to escort her to her home; this we had done, and therefore it was time for me to be pushing on. Inch, when sounded out by me, had made the same reply he had made back in Pa Mejab.
“I’m a rover of the world, Dray, a wanderer. As a mercenary guard I can earn an honest crust I’d as lief stay with you as not.”
“I am heading for Vallia.”
He whistled. “Vallia! May Ngrangi aid you! From Pandahem they’d as soon send you to the Ice Floes of Sicce as to Vallia.”
“I know. Please don’t mention our eventual destination. We have to push on. We’ll find a ship, somewhere, never you fear.”
Now, when I told Tilda as we squashed down ripe palines and Pando explored his cavity with a pink tongue, Tilda exploded.
“You ingrate, Dray Prescot!” Her fine ivory skin flushed with blood and her violet eyes clouded. She put a hand to her bosom, over the orange robe, and grasped the golden locket there. “You were to be our champion, Pando’s and mine. And now, just when it is all to do, you are deserting us! Is this friendship?”
I sighed.
Tilda had made not the slightest sign of any advance toward me and I was comfortable in her company. Poor Thelda, now, had been all gushing, pushing and eagerness and help, and had thereby been a confounded nuisance.
Sosie, of course, had had her own secrets, and I felt a twinge of bafflement when I thought of her sweet black face and her great eyes and Afro hair. She had presented her own brand of problem. I got along with Tilda perfectly.
“What do you mean, Tilda? It is all to do? Surely, you are in your homeland-”
“Do you think this great untidy port of Pomdermam is my home?”
“Bormark?”
“Of course. Bormark lies on the extreme western border of Tomboram, and the lands run border with those of The Bloody Menaham. We have to reach Bormark, Dray, before Pando can claim his rightful inheritance.”
I looked at Inch. He rubbed his ear and popped a paline into his mouth, and chewed, and refused to meet my eye — a mean and despicable act in a comrade.
“Is there no one here who can help?” I shot a shaft at a venture. “The king in his capital-”
“Him!” Scorn flashed from those lovely violet eyes. “King Nemo? He would as soon lock up Pando and me deep in a dark dungeon and throw the key away. I am sure he hates us, for being the relatives of his brother, Marsilus.”
“All right, then. Anyone else?”
She picked up a paline and began to roll it on her palm. “I was an actress, Dray. Oh, I came from a famous theatrical family, we played all the best houses, and my way seemed set to follow in my family’s footsteps. Then Marker came to the theater one night — and-” She looked at Pando, who was gazing at her, his mouth and eyes wide and the rich paline juice dribbling down his chin.
“Wipe your face, Pando! You look like an urchin!”
All the old adjustments had to be made by me. I was an urchin, a powder monkey who had climbed up through the hawsehole and trod the quarterdeck, bedecked with gold lace and a pair of shoes, cracked and with steel buckles, true. But urchins, to me, are comrades the two worlds over. Tilda watched as Pando wiped. Then she said: “There is the Pallan Nicomeyn. He is old and wise. He was always fond of Marker — he tried to mitigate Marker’s father’s wrath; but uselessly.”
A Pallan was the Pandahem equivalent of a minister of state, a name used, I discovered, also in Vallia.
“The Pallan Nicomeyn, then,” I said. “Let us go and see him.”
It was not as easy as all that to contrive a meeting, for we traveled under assumed names. But, eventually, we were shown into a small and windowless antechamber of the palace where guards -
humans — stood at the folding doors. Presently the Pallan Nicomeyn entered. He was old, for his hair was gray and his face lined, destructions of time that do not overtake a Kregan until he is well past his hundred and fiftieth year. Whether or not he was wise remained to be seen. As soon as he saw Tilda he turned and made a quick motion to the guards. Obediently they closed the folding doors and we were alone with him in private.
He wore a long gown of blue, girdled by a golden chain set with rubies, and he wore on his gray hair a flat velvet cap of a bright blue adorned with the blue tail feathers of the king korf. He carried a book which, I noticed, locked with a hasp and a golden padlock.