Introductions were made, and I noticed the courtly way in which Zenkiren treated my Delia. He did not miss our own heightened emotions, so that when I asked him of Mayfwy he replied she was well, that her son and daughter prospered, that she remained still a widow, not remarried, and that she missed seeing me. Nath and Zolta I heard, to my disappointment, had gone a-roving aboard a swifter into the western end of the inner sea. I would not achieve this joyful reunion with those two rogues here, then. Seg, who I felt with an uncomfortable start of guilt, must have been feeling a little left out in all this handshaking and greetings, said: “Mayhap you will see them on your way through the Grand Canal and past the Dam of Days.”
I looked at him, bemused for a moment. Then Delia nudged me and I managed to reply something and went on to tell Zenkiren of all that had happened to me since we had said “Remberee” in Sanurkazz. We went into the palace and were served wine and we helped ourselves to a heaping pile of palines from a silver dish. Time passed most pleasantly. I urged Zenkiren that now was the time to strike at Magdag. He agreed, and immediately sent off messages to the king, Zo, in Sanurkazz.
“My duty lies here, Dray, to help our Pattelonian allies against their foes and the devils from Magdag. I urge you, Pur Dray, now you have found your Delia of the Blue Mountains, to remain here. There is much to be done. We are pushing them back. Our army has gained success after success. Soon the call we all long for will go out, and all the men of Zair will rise and go up against the evil of Grodno.”
“Greatly would I desire to do that, Zenkiren. But-”
The twin suns were slipping into the sea, far away across the western horizon. I persuaded Zenkiren to order a fleet liburna out. As we stood on the poop — she had no quarterdeck — and watched the single banks of oars, three men to an oar, pulling in that metronomic rhythm inseparable from the ideal of the swifter, I waited with apprehension.
That apprehension was for what I hoped would not occur.
But it did.
The wind roared, the sea got up, the thunders and the lightnings cracked and fizzled about us. We turned for the harbor and the gale dropped.
“I do not care to inquire too closely into these things,” said Zenkiren, with a gravity habitual to him in weighty affairs. “No doubt Pur Zazz could fathom the meaning. But I take your point. You are fated to travel east — away over The Stratemsk, over the Hostile Territories. I wish you well, Brother, for the way is difficult, Zair knows.”
“Pur Zazz has told me of many marvels and wonders in the Hostile Territories. I am happy to know the Grand Archbold still lives.”
“Zair has him in his keeping, Dray. I pray he will live until my work here is accomplished.”
I knew what he meant.
“When you are Grand Archbold, Zenkiren, and the call comes for all the Krozairs of Zy to answer — I will not fail.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. But he was a sad man that I could not go with him on this last expedition against the forces of Magdag arrayed against us in the eastern end of the Eye of the World. I believe that Delia took an opportunity to speak privately to Zenkiren, and can guess at some of the many questions she asked about my life on the inner sea, and that she asked about Mayfwy, too; I am glad that when we two spoke of these things together we could be absolutely frank with each other. Mayfwy, the widow of my friend Zorg of Felteraz, was a wonderful person and a glorious girl; but there can only ever be one woman in my life — my Delia, my Delia of Delphond!
Still and all, I gave Zenkiren the charge of making sure that my agent Shallan got the best price for the prize swifter Sword of Genodras and that all my shares should be paid to Mayfwy.
“After all, young Zorg will be growing up soon, and he must command the finest swifter that can be provided,” I said. My old oar comrade Zorg — I would not let his widow or his son or daughter suffer if any way lay open to me to prevent it. I knew my two rascals, Nath and Zolta, felt exactly the same way. During the short time we spent at Pattelonia, in a sense getting our wind for the next stage of our journey to Vallia, Seg kept much to himself. He was still trying his best to win some sign of recognition from Thelda, but she persisted in her fussing smothering of me, much to my annoyance and Delia’s hidden and mocking amusement.
Seg came in one day bearing a monstrous stave of wood of so dark a green as to appear black. He flicked it about, speaking slightingly of it, but he was pleased.
“This is not true Yerthyr wood,” he said. “The Yerthyr tree is deadly poisonous to the weak animals hereabouts, and the people do not like to grow it. In Erthyrdrin our nimble thyrrixes are able to digest the wood and bark and the leaves in their second stomach.”
“So?”
“This stave will make a passable bow-stave after I have dealt with it.” He ran his thumb along it, feeling.
“But had I my own longbow — ah, then, Dray Prescot, you would see!”
A commotion broke out at the door, for we had by Zenkiren’s kind invitation removed from the hostelry and quartered ourselves in commodious suites in the governor’s palace. A Sanurkazzian guard — a young lad in a new hauberk and with a shiny new long sword, a parting present from his father -
jumped back as a voluble, gesticulating, furiously angry Proconian popped in. Orange and green sunshine lay in slanting stripes on the patio outside the doors, and exotic blooms depended on vines from the white walls.
“Vandals! Pirates! Thieves!” the Proconian spluttered. He was plump, flabby, with ringed hands and a nose which wine had coarsened into a knob, and he wore no sword. His robes were twisted about him in the fury of his movements.
“I am sorry, Pur Dray,” said the guard. “He insisted — and short of cutting him down there was no way of stopping him. .”
“It is all right, Fazmarl,” I said, turning away from Seg and his bow-stave. “Let the gentleman in.”
The gentleman shook a fist under my nose, saw Seg and let out a screech. “There he is, the plunderer, the reaver, the barbarian! He holds my property, Pur Dray — and he has destroyed the finest tree in the women’s quarters-”
“Oh-ho!” I said. I looked at Seg. He gripped the stave with the clutch of a man sliding over the side of an airboat.
“I did but cut the best stave suited to a bow.”
The little man danced and spluttered and shook his fist.
“Only! And ripped it out of the heart — the very heart — of the tree that gives shade to my favorite wife-”
The Proconians believed in the quaint habit of marrying three wives. They were a punishment-loving race.
“Is the tree mortally wounded, sir?”
“Mortally! It has suffered a wound from which nothing can save it. My tree — my favorite wife’s favorite tree!”
“Then, if nothing can be done to save the tree, I think it best to uproot it and plant another.”
He gobbled over that, and wiped his forehead, and found a chair and collapsed into it. I nodded at Seg and that reckless man had sense enough to fill to brimming a silver-chased goblet with noble Chremson wine and hurry it across. The Proconian wiped his lips and gulped the wine, and gasped and palpitated, a hand to his heart, and gulped some more.
“Very good,” he said, looking at the wine afresh. “Booty from Chremson, I take it?”
I inclined my head, but the word booty had inflamed him anew. “Plunderers, reavers — that is all you red-raiders from Sanurkazz are! You tear down my best tree, leave it in shattered fragments across my tessellated pavement so that my second wife barks her pretty shin and removes at least a palm of skin-”
“Come, sir,” I said, putting the merest fraction of that rasp into my voice. “You have not yet favored me with your name. I do not know it was your tree. You could be fabricating the entire story to gain my sympathy — and my wine!”