"You call me Dray Prescot, as you always have. It is not of my will that I left Delia — or you — without saying remberee. There are dark and evil forces in my life — but enough of this. Is Delia well? Did she speak of the children? Where did she go? Tell me, Mayfwy, for the sake of my dear friend and oar comrade, Zorg."
"Zorg." She drank then, and it was a benediction. "She is well and she says the children are well, although wild — well, we all know how wild our children are."
"Forgive me," I said quickly — me, that Dray Prescot who never apologized except to Delia. "Young Zorg and Fwymay. They are well?"
"Yes. They are well. Zorg is now a Krozair of Zy, which is as it should be, I suppose. He captains a swifter. He has much of his start to thank you for, Dray."
"Nonsense! A lad like that will forge his own way on Kregen." She looked at me oddly. Well, not so long ago I had been standing in a Parisian hospital with the Prussian guns thundering and Kregen was four hundred light-years away. So I said: "The Zairians will always need men like young Zorg. And Fwymay?"
"She has made me a grandmother twice, the minx. She married Zarga na Rozilloi, who is a Krozair Brother, and a very pleasant young man."
I knew that this Zarga na Rozilloi must be of importance to warrant the na as his connective term, but he was not a Krzy. Had he been, Mayfwy would have said.
"He is a Krozair of Zimuzz." She was looking at me.
"A fine order," I said. But we both knew there was no other order as fine as the Krozairs of Zy. Now the suns were almost gone. The purple shadows dropped across the terrace. Soon the Twins would be up, eternally revolving one about the other, to cast their mingled pinkish light down on Kregen. We moved into the inner room where we had often sat and talked and listened to the music provided by the citadel singers. The room looked just the same, except that a full-length portrait of a splendid-looking man had been added to the other portraits. This must be Zarga, for he wore the symbols of the Krozairs of Zimuzz. I ignored this new son-in-law and walked across, planted my feet on the thick rug and stood firmly looking up at the portrait of Zorg of Felteraz. Mayfwy moved silently away and left me. I looked at this painting of Zorg and I remembered, I remembered the warrens of Magdag and the rowing benches of the Magdaggian swifters, with Zolta and Nath, and I remembered our shared agonies and perils, the onions we had divided up, the lashes we had taken and, finally, Zorg’s death, there in the stench and filth of a Magdaggian swifter. I remembered. And when I turned back to Mayfwy she put a hand to her mouth and did not speak for a moment. I suppose a great deal of what I felt showed on that ugly old face of mine.
Then, as though what she said had been jolted out of her by this reunion, by my abstraction, she said: "I used to hope I could place your portrait there, my Lord of Strombor." I shook my head.
Then she cried.
Afterward I gave her another cup of wine and wiped her eyes with a clean cloth — she wore no makeup and had need of none — and said: "I must press on to find Delia. You know that. It is a fate I cannot — would not — deny. Until I know she is safe I cannot rest."
"I do understand. But please forgive me for saying. . and for crying." She tossed her head back so that the clustered dark curls glistened in the samphron-oil lamp’s gleam. "What young Zorg would say I do not know. No Krozair’s mother cries!"
"I do not believe that. And Zorg, if he is a true Krozair as I know him to be, does not believe it either."
"If only he would get himself married and have children, they would be a comfort to me here." There was more talk after that, and a fine meal which I knew had been especially prepared for me, and more wine — that smooth splendid Zond wine that Nath was so fond of — and Chremson if a difference in the tickle of the palate was needed. But Mayfwy could see the impatience burning in me. Truth to tell, I felt that Delia would understand when I told her that I had broken my journey to see Mayfwy, more so now that these two had met. How I had both welcomed and dreaded that encounter, for I desperately wished for them to be friends. But sober reality would seem to indicate the opposite. I would have to see what my Delia had to say.
I stood up.
Mayfwy rose, lithe as a neemu, her gaze wide on me, a hand to her breast. She wore what I remembered as being her favorite costume, a sheer gown of shimmering silk, white, simple, deeply cut, fastened at her shoulders by golden pins encrusted with rubies. They must be the same fibulae. They would be the same when we were all rotting in our graves or shivering in the Ice Floes of Sicce.
"You must go? So soon?"
"When I find my Delia we will return, Mayfwy. I shall not again be such an onker. Do you forgive me?" As I said the word that must have cut her, that simple "my" Delia, I cursed myself again. It seemed I could bring nothing but pain into the life of this girl. And girl she seemed to me still, despite all the lonely length of time she had lived, for she kept up her appearance out of her pride in being the widow of Zorg of Felteraz, a Krozair of Zy.
Luckily I did not ask her why she had never married again. That would have been the action of a clod; while I am a fine full-bloomed specimen of a clod, I did see clearly enough that the question would have been a slap in her face.
We stepped out onto that paved square high on the flank of the cliff where my voller waited. A guard had been posted around the craft, but no one had ventured near. Perhaps this was the very first airboat ever seen in these parts. I didn’t care if it was or not, and I didn’t care for the Hamalians and their dictates either. There was no remorse whatsoever in me for stopping here. Mayfwy told me that Delia had said she would fly direct to the fortress of Zy to find me. She had not confided in Mayfwy why, after a space of twenty years, she had thus come flying into the Eye of the World. But Mayfwy told me that Delia appeared sad, confirming Panshi’s story.
I would brook no longer delay.
"Delia came riding a sectrix," said Mayfwy. She put a hand out tentatively and touched the leather and canvas of the voller. Her hand trembled. "You will use this marvelous thing?"
"If Delia went by here a year ago and then took ship for Zy, I can catch her all the quicker by voller."
"Voller? Ah, the flying boat."
"Yes."
"There are many of these. . vollers, in the outer world? In the world of Vallia and Valka, of Djanduin and Strombor?"
"Yes."
"It must be a marvelous place."
"It is, but in many things it is not as marvelous as the Eye of the World."
"We have our troubles. I fear for Zorg and for Zarga, my son-in-law. Those horrible greens of Grodno bear down our defenses. We are in parlous case, these latter days, my Lord of Strombor." She went on to tell me in a small voice that the Grodnims pressed hard on the Zairians, that many battles had been lost; the Grodnim swifters might still be kept at bay; but the Grodnim armies swept on, irresistibly, it seemed, from victory to victory. Her son Zorg scoured the seas and gained success in single-ship actions — how my blood fired up at the thought! — but Holy Sanurkazz lay sunk in apathy, awaiting the stroke of doom. I could scarcely credit this. When I had left here the Zairians, under the command of my friend Pur Zenkiren of Sanurkazz, had been pressing on to victory along the eastern shore in alliance with the Proconians, a people distinct from the red and green.
"Proconia?" I said.
She made a little moue. "They keep themselves aloof. They resist any attack on their territory. They no longer wish to ally with us in the fight."
"Then Zair will see they do not ally themselves with the damned Grodnims,"
"That is what we all pray."
I did not tell her that with the politics of this region — politics I had previously regarded as simple and straightforward — if the Grodnims gained an upper hand the Proconians, aye, and all the other uncommitted peoples, would jump in to be on the winning side. Once the slide began it would gain speed with frightful force.