It became apparent they were delaying lift-off for some reason. The reason arrived a few minutes later: the serving-woman who had warned Sharl of the Monitors entering the bazaar hours ago. She came swiftly in, carrying a bundle, with the small green-and-white bird riding on her shoulder. Once she was in, the young pilot sealed the space doors and activated the gravitron.
Weightless, the ship flashed up out of Omphale’s atmospheric envelope. Planetary drive cut in, and they rode for a time on the proton-jets until the craft was out of the system’s plane of the ecliptic. Then the proton-drive was cut off, and they converted to star drive, with all the familiar tingle of weird vibration down through every particle of the body, and the brief but never-pleasant surge of momentary vertigo.
Soon they were hurtling at the equivalent of a dozen light-velocities through the equivocal moving patterns of eye-wrenching color that made up neospace, Vision-screens cut off, blinding them to the sanity-jarring kaleidoscope of wild hues, and Raul settled back cozily into the leather sofa to do some thinking.
He slept, instead.
When he awoke some hours had passed, and they were approaching their destination. They had already converted to normal space, and the huge, curved forward vision-screens were filled with the wild, seething glory of Thunderhawk Nebula, a parsec-long cup-shaped cloud of free hydrogen, shot through with radiant splendor from the rays of the great nova, IGC 41189, that blazed deep within it.
Raul stretched stiffly (noting that someone had thrown a cloak over him as he slept), rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and went forward to stand silently with Sharl beside the pilot-chair. Ahead, like a black thread winding through the vast, incandescent fury of the nebula, he could see the Rift. Before long it swelled before them into a vast ebon tunnel, a channel of safe passage through the blazing chaos of the great spacecloud. They reached Ophmar a few minutes later.
Swinging in close orbit about its primary, a small, dim red star with an F5 spectrum like Algol C, lonely little Ophmar was the only planet for all the long passage of the Rift. Raul felt an absurd pang of melancholy: sad, dark little world huddled here all alone amid the fantastic splendor of the vast nebula … yet it, too, like greater worlds in the more populous regions of the Galaxy, had its role in unfolding history ….
They swung in close orbit about the small planet, while the pilot exchanged recognition-code and obtained planetfall instructions. Then they spun down in a narrowing spiral, slowing speed, towards their landing-place. Raul got a good look at the planetary surface: a shattered wilderness of naked rock, riven and cleft into deep gorges, stupendous fanged peaks, sheer cliffs, desolate, grim, foreboding. The predominant hues of the rocks were ochre and dark vermilion. The air was thin, but breathable. The temperature was biting and bitterly chill.
They drifted down feather-softly on the gravitron into a deep cleft in the rock that widened, deeper down, into a monstrous gorge. Halfway down the stark cliff a wide low cavern mouth opened in the walclass="underline" the young pilot dexterously halted their descent and floated the ship into the cavern on special chemical rockets, a small spurt of semiliquid fuel at a time.
Then they got out and stood looking about curiously. The enormous cavern arched above them like the inside of a vast bell. Flat banks of illuminants were set at intervals along the roof above them, shedding a soft, even light. And scurrying, hawk-faced Rilké went to and fro, helping the pilot to moor his ship in a small cradle of wooden logs, drawing a tarpaulin over the slim craft.
“Eh, kazar! Welcome to Ophmar,” Sharl smiled. Raul grinned faintly, feeling uncomfortable and somehow out-ofplace. He felt that in some way he had been nudged and maneuvered into coming here, and he subconsciously resented it.
Sharl exchanged a few low words with a small sleek, obsequious little man: not a Rilké but a Chahuna, from his crest of red feathers and liquid sloe-black eyes; the first non-Rilké Linton had seen in league with the Kahani.
Following Linton’s gaze to the lip of the cavern, where the chasm fell sheer, the Chieftain said: “Here, tunneled into the wall of the cliff, we are secure and beyond any eye looking down from above. But come, of gentility, my friend!” He propelled the smaller Chahuna forward with a brown, lean hand on his shoulder. “This is Imeon Bar-Kusac, who will do your bidding during your stay with us, kazar, be it long or be it short, Gods’ willing! He informs me that our arrival is already made known to my lady, and that she will give you audience at the ninth hour—four isata from now.”
Raul acknowledged the meeting, and Bar-Kusac bowed and said: “Of permission, if the kazar and his servant will come with me I will conduct them to their suite. There they may rest, and refresh themselves with wine and food, and don new raiment.”
They bade temporary farewell to Sharl, and followed the little Chalnina into a network of cross-connecting passageways cut through the ochre rock. Obviously the stone-work was very ancient: here and there traces of an ancient script, pictoglyphic in nature and unfamiliar to Raul, could be seen. Raul made a mental note to inquire of Sharl, when next he encountered the Chieftain, of the origin of these caverns.
Old enough, yet they were clean and dry and kept in good repair, well-lit and well-ventilated. All about them, he saw and noted signs of industrious and well-ordered preparation: men in squads going to and fro in good order, busying themselves on various errands. They passed a smithy, where a huge sweaty bull of a man bent over smoldering coals, hammering sword-blades into shape with ringing blows that raised scintillant fireworks. And a brace of storerooms well-stocked with steel weapons, preserved foods, modem radiation guns—both pistol, rifle and semi-portable models, as well as explosives.
The Kahani meant war—and she meant business!
The Chahuna left them at the entrance to their suite, a large and roomy series of chambers, hung with rich carpets and set about with scattered low tables and piles of cushions.
“Here I leave the kazar, of gentility. Rest yourselves in good time. I will return just short of the ninth hour, to guide you thither to the Presence.”
Raul answered his salute, and entered their rooms. He wanted a good hot bath and a half-hour’s nap. He wanted to be at his best, and well rested, with a clear head, when he finally came face to face with this Cleopatra of the Border worlds he had heard so much about.
It was a meeting he was looking forward to with great eagerness….
SIX
SHORTLY BEFORE the ninth hour, the Chahuna came to fetch him to the audience-hall of the Kahani. Raul had bathed and rested, awakening to find a suit of Rilké garments awaiting him, which Gundorm Varl said had been brought by a servant during his sleep. As his own fatigues were unsuited to a royal audience, and somewhat travel-stained, he gritted his teeth and donned them, feeling vaguely ridiculous in such exotic finery.
There were tight trousers of forest-green, which tucked smoothly into calf-high boots of tan suede. Then there was a loose, sleeveless blouse of fine silk, darker green, and a wide plain girdle of brown leather, set with heavy cubes of dull silver. This was topped off with a large, swirling cape of the same supple suede as his boots, but lined with green, silver-shot silk, with a great flopping collar. Thick wristlets of beaten silver went on each arm, and his hair was bound back with a narrow suede strap whose loose ends hung down to his left shoulder. About the edges of the cloak and on the two ends of the brow-band were affixed small copper bells which made faint clashing music when he moved.