He staggered upright with the assistance of the chair back. He tried to speak and his fat lips popped and blew and his cheeks turned purple and his eyes stood out. Then: “By the fair hair of the Primate Proc himself! I am Uppippoo of Lower Pattelonia! I am respected in this city, with wide lands on the mainland beyond Perithia, owner of ten broad ships, and with three of the most delectable wives a man could boast — and now they have kicked me out because their shaded garden has been ruined!”
Seg couldn’t hold himself in and spilled wine trying to stop from bursting a gut laughing. I remained severe.
“Very well, Uppippoo of Lower Pattelonia. I would not wish a man to suffer, particularly from three wives. Rest assured, I shall make complete restitution.” A thought occurred to me. “Can another tree be procured?”
A kind of frenzy possessed Uppippoo. “You imbecile! Those trees take a hundred years to grow!”
That was half a lifetime or so on Kregen.
“In that case, my friend here, who comes from Erthyrdrin, will be returning to his country shortly. I know he will immediately take steps to have a fresh tree prepared and shipped out to you. There, sir, what can be fairer than that?”
Uppippoo merely goggled at us.
“In the meantime, if you would accept a little common gold, which is nowhere as romantic as a tree, you could purchase a length of colorfully-striped awning, and thus protect your charming wives from the suns.”
And I put down carefully onto a table a handful of gold scooped out of my waist-belt — for I had now, in the city, perforce to dress as a citizen with tunic, apron, and accouterments. Uppippoo looked at the gold.
“An — awning?”
“Why — yes.”
“An awning.” He considered. “But a tree is alive, it looks beautiful, it soughs in the wind and its leaves create the most delightful patterns of shade and light upon my pavements — and the tesselae are renowned in Pattelonia, Pur Dray, renowned.”
“Quite so. Take the gold. Buy an awning or buy a new tree of a different kind. But, Uppippoo, I would wish you to leave now. Do you understand me? The gold is fair payment, I think.”
Uppippoo for the first time took care to look at me, instead of raging and roaring and blow-harding and glaring at Seg and the offending dismembered limb of his wife’s tree. He saw my face. I was not conscious of any change in my countenance, but Uppippoo’s snorts and ragings and breathy threats halted as though he had been gripped by the throat.
He backed a step. He bent his back, stealthily, reaching forward to take the gold from the table. He backed away. His protruding eyes were fixed on my face; his tongue kept licking his fat lips.
“Fazmarl!” I called. “The gentleman is leaving now.”
The young guard showed the Proconian gentleman out.
He had not uttered a word since he’d had a fair sight of my ugly face. Seg collapsed moaning onto a chair.
“As for you, Seg Segutorio, you should be ashamed of yourself. Cutting a stick from a tree — that’s what kids do.”
“Aye!” he roared joyously. “Just as I did when I cut my stave from Kak Kakutorio’s tree! Hai — I could hurt myself laughing.”
I must admit that I felt like allowing myself a laugh, also.
The incident of Seg’s bow-stave and the shade tree of Uppippoo’s wives convinced me that I had no need to worry so much about Seg Segutorio. He was still in form despite his conspicuous lack of success with Thelda.
Delia was anxious to leave, and now that I could not serve a useful part in the campaign I had nothing to tie me here. I told Seg, somewhat brutally, I fear, that he would have no time to put his new bow-stave into pickle. He chuckled with a grim sardonic humor that made me stare at him.
“You have a poor opinion of the bowmen of Erthyrdrin if you believe they are unable to fashion a bow-stave anywhere on this earth — aye, and pickle it, too. Put me thigh-deep in the mire of the Marshes of Malar with a stave and I’ll fashion you a bow that can split the chunkrah’s eye.” He was as good as his word. He contrived a tall narrow tube of treated leather, well-stoppered, and into this with his precious stave he poured a concoction of his own — that stank to Zim itself — and shook it up and glared at me with a satisfied defiant stare on his face.
“By the time we are past the Dam of Days she’ll be pickled-”
Even then I couldn’t tell Seg just how we were traveling to Vallia, and there was no reason for this holding back. Delia knew exactly where the flier from Port Tavetus, on the eastern coast of Turismond beyond the Hostile Territories, had been hidden in the foothills which gloamed blue and orange and purple on the far mainland horizon. The people of Havilfar, where airboats are manufactured, did not care to have their products exposed on the inner sea. I gathered the airboats gave trouble, too, as I had before experienced. Thelda cooed over me and ignored Seg and so we passed the last days before we took off. Again it was time to say “Remberee” to Pur Zenkiren.
Everything that should be done was done. Our belongings were carefully packed into satchels and leather sacks, for Delia with a strict flier’s wisdom wanted no sharp-edged packing crates aboard, and were stowed aboard the calsanys that would take them down to the jetty. I detected a strange look of sadness on the face of young Fazmarl as I bid him good-bye. I clapped him on the back — a somewhat awesome experience for so young a would-be warrior of Sanurkazz from a swifter captain and a Krozair
— and felt I must be getting old and walked down with Zenkiren and Delia to the jetty. Thelda had gone with the baggage — riding a calsany — to superintend, although we all knew she didn’t care overmuch for walking. Seg marched behind with his revolting leather pipe of bow-stave-pickling over his shoulder. At the jetty we all climbed down into the boat and this time we were not using our old stolen muldavy which I had made arrangements to have, when possible, returned to its owners with a suitable sum in gold to compensate for those we had smashed. We were using the admiral’s barge, no less, and twenty stalwart wights pulled lustily at the oars. As we cleared the mole and the barge’s head swung toward the mainland, Seg looked back at me, sitting next to Delia. He was puzzled.
“I do not see our ship, Dray. And, why are we heading for the mainland?”
I realized he did not connect the storms that arose when we steered west with our very act of heading on that course, and I had not discussed that problem with him at all, as I had merely hinted at it with Zenkiren. The mysticism of the Krozairs of Zy armored Zenkiren against marvels of that kind. But now the time had surely come when I must be honest with Seg Segutorio and tell him of our means of travel. I told him.
He gaped for a moment at me as the barge pulled through the suns-lit water. Everyone was watching him.
“A flier,” he said, at last, surprising me. “As to them, I have seen them and I welcome the opportunity to fly in one. But-”
“But, Seg?”
“The Stratemsk! The Hostile Territories! Man — do you know what you’re doing? They’re murder.”
Delia said: “We are going home to Vallia, and you, Seg, to Erthyrdrin, if you wish. We would like you to be with us, but if you do not come we understand.” She added, mischievously: “Anyway, that’s the way Thelda and I got here. .”
Chapter Eight
“Ossa they would pile upon Olympos; and upon Ossa, Pelion with its rustling forests, that the very heavens might be scaled.”
This ambition of the Aloadai, Otos and Ephialtes, had always seemed to me a laudable goal, seeing that I myself had scrambled my way up through the hawsehole from the lower deck to the quarterdeck, and, since my startling arrival on Kregen beneath Antares, had fought my way to various arrogant-sounding posts and positions. But I had always thought of the tall twins’ activities of ambition as rhetorical. The actual idea of mountains piled one atop another had always seemed to me figures of speech, devices of the imagination. I have seen the Himalaya — the other mountain ranges of the world are subsumed in the lofty and frightening grandeur of the Himalaya — and I had been suitably impressed and awed. But The Stratemsk — Kabru piled on Nanda Devi upon Kangchenjunga upon Annapurna upon Nanga Parbat — with Chimborazo from the Andes thrown in as foothills — with K2 and Everest lofting beyond reason above — Yes, The Stratemsk, although not the loftiest or most extensive range of mountains on Kregen under the suns of Scorpio, are quite out of this world with the awe-inspiring terror and beauty of outraged nature flaunting her powers. The Stratemsk are big and wide and tall. They shatter reason. Snow mantles their upper slopes and pinnacles in an eternal and unbroken whiteness. The clouds hover around their feet. Savage and voracious animals haunt their lower ranges and gigantic birds and flying animals forever circle their valleys and passes with cruel talons and fangs seeking prey. Above these mind-freezing precipices and crags and icy glaciers we flew, Delia, Seg, Thelda, and I, in our frail airboat through the cutting air.