“Do I know the person?”
I took out Saffi’s silk scarf. “If you do not, this is her scarf. I ask of you, San, tell me where she is!”
For a moment I thought he would refuse. But I think he caught something of my urgency, though I had myself well under control now. He stood up and stretched, and I swear his old bones creaked, and he looked down at me, pondering.
“Very well, Bagor ti Hemlad. For the future, then.”
This business of going into lupu both fascinated and repelled me. I had seen the wizard Lu-si-Yuong do this thing in the Hostile Territories of distant Turismond. Images of Lilah, a Queen of Pain of Loh, and Seg Segutorio, my good friend, ghosted up in my mind. Then I came back to the present as Que-si-Rening went through his ritual.
Squatting down on a ponsho-skin and covering his eyes with his hands, Que-si-Rening threw his head back and sat silent and unmoving. The samphron-oil lamp glistened its light across his red hair. This is the first stage of lupu, when the ib is rendered powerful and the cords binding the immaterial to the material attenuate.
Saffi’s golden scarf lay draped across his bent bony knees, a glittering gossamer wisp of beauty. Presently the wizard began to tremble. His thin body shuddered so that his ornate silken robes shook. Slowly he drew down his hands from before his face. His eyeballs were turned up, all but invisible, the whites twin crescents eating at an onlooker’s sanity. His clawlike hands fell to the scarf, began to stroke it, pulling through one fist and then the other.
An eerie, funereal cry broke chillingly from Rening.
Tottering, he stood up, his arms widespread, and he began to gyrate, faster and faster, like a whirling Dervish, spinning around and around. As he reeled Saffi’s scarf whirled about him, golden and streaming in the oil-lamp’s gleam.
Abruptly, Que-si-Rening sank to the ground, placed both hands flat against the ponsho-fleece, and, throwing back his head, stared at me with his eyes wide and drugged and
knowing.
The wise men who study the literature of Kregen often divide the sprawling confused mass of myth and legend into three distinct classes. One class consists of those great stories known all over that marvelous world: fables like
The Quest of Tyr Nath
and
Canticles of the Rose City.
Another brings together the local legends applicable to certain areas of the planet, song-cycles of tongues attributable to localities, of which
The Triumph of the Gods
from Djanduin is a fair example. But all classes of myth and legend possess a sub-classification: the legends in which a Wizard of Loh figures always command a special and respectful place in the tally of Kregan lore.
Despite my pragmatic adherence to known facts, I had to concede that this wizard, looking at me so shrewdly,
knew.
“What do you see, San?”
If I spoke more roughly than a Wizard of Loh might expect, Que-si-Rening understood, for he himself had been subjected to indignity enough in this forced exile from his homeland to recognize another in the same straits. He must, I considered, know enough about this uncouth Bagor ti Hemlad to understand he was no ordinary slave, no ordinary Horter or noble. For a Wizard of Loh, these distinctions verged on the hazy line of indifference.
He handed me the scarf.
“I have seen the person who had worn this scarf. I recognized two of her companions.”
I did not speak.
“Vad Garnath. I saw him standing with the wind in his face, the stars above, the great wastes burning beneath. And with him stood that evil Kataki with the bladed tail.”
I waited.
“They fly north.”
I said nothing.
“They take the girl for their own purposes far to the northwest. There is more I cannot tell you of, for it lies between Phu-si-Yantong and me. The girl is of no importance, a cipher. She is being sold to the masters of the Manhounds of Faol as a mere bargaining piece.”
Flutsmen guard the skies
The Manhounds of Antares!
Saffi would be callously driven through the jungles and the plains in a vain pathetic effort to outrun the jiklos and the hunters who sought their pleasure in this vicious sport. The Manhounds of Faol with their jagged fangs and sharp claws would rend her soft golden body, and the quarrels from the crossbows of the mighty hunters would plunge bloodily — No! I would not allow Saffi to be used as human quarry for the Manhounds of Antares.
I wrenched the door open not knowing how I had crossed the carpeted floor before Que-si-Rening spoke again.
“Bagor!” He stretched out his hand as I glanced back. “Take care. The Queen keeps me secret. If you betray me it will be the Heavenly Mines for us both.”
“What do you know of the Heavenly Mines?”
“Enough to know I would prefer to die torn to pieces in the Jikhorkdun than labor in the Heavenly Mines.”
“Then you are a wise man.”
There was no more time for talk. Much must be done, and at once. I did remember to thank the Wizard of Loh. When I prowled back down past the sleazy lower levels of the palace, which supported in the physical and laboring senses the sumptuous and decadent magnificence aloft, I had scarcely a care for whomever I might meet. I have no recollection of slaying a soul, and of sending only one overpompous and inquisitive slave overseer to sleep. I tapped him on the skull with great moderation, I believe. But my next coherent memory is of dragging myself up out of the water of the Havilthytus and, hitching up my rapier and pulling my boots on, of racing through the paling light toward Rees’s villa.
They let me in as the twin suns fully cleared the city skyline.
The news must be told, no matter how cruel and bitter.
Rashi shrieked and fainted away into the arms of her maids.
Roban brandished the main-gauche and swore to accompany me.
I said to Jiktar Horan: “See that this imp remains safely indoors, Jiktar.”
“Aye, Notor.” This Horan, a ferociously maned Numim, pulled his golden ruff of hair. “But the manhounds are a bad business. We will need a larger voller than any here.”
“No time for that, Jiktar. I am leaving now. I will take provisions.” I bent my eye upon the slave who had been appointed overseer, and he ducked his head and caused a great scuffle among the others as they ran to provision Rees’s small flier. This voller would take me, and me alone. He travels fastest who travels alone. That is not always true, but, by Zim-Zair, it would be true now.
I gave Jiktar Horan precise information on the island of Faol and of the whereabouts of the infamous manhounds. This so-called sport of hunting humans is kept veiled, half hinted at, not openly discussed in Havilfar. Encar Capela, the Kov of Faol, still remained a mystery to me, for I had never met him. I promised myself a much needed meeting one of these fine days. This Capela held a fanatical pride in his packs of bloodthirsty jiklos, and, as I well knew, the rich from all Havilfar patronized his devilishly planned hunting expeditions. I told Horan that if he ran into trouble he could do worse than seek assistance from the Trylon of South Faol, below the river, for this Trylon — and I did not know if he was truly aware of what went on in North Faol across the river — held himself and his people aloof from Encar Capela.
“I have heard whispers, sniggers, obscene hints about this hunt they call the Great Jikai,” said Jiktar Horan. “This nulsh of a Kov of North Faol requires to see his head jumping about on the floor, by Krun!”
‘Tm with you in that, Horan.”
Among the provisions piled into the little voller were crossbows, sheaves of quarrels, thraxters, shields, stuxes, so that when I took off and shouted down Remberee I felt I sailed into action with a veritable arsenal about me. This was no mere fad, no stupid overkill; every weapon might be essential. On that beautiful yet harsh and cruel world of Kregen a man’s weapons stand between him and ever-present death.
My course lay northwest across Hamal until I reached the southernmost limit of Skull Bay, where I would turn almost due west with just enough northing in my flight to take me over the jungles and past Hennardrin to the island of Faol. This route avoided the difficult passage of the Mountains of the West, where even now the armies of Hamal clashed with the wild men from the wastelands beyond. The voller would carry me to the north of Paline Valley.
Thrusting the speed lever fully forward I let the flier pelt ahead through the thin air. The magical power contained in the silver boxes hurtling me on was the secret that had brought me to Hamal. I had willfully neglected that duty. I do not think I spent a pleasant flight, but I managed to doze off from time to time, for I had not slept for many burs. By the time I reached Gilmoy and saw again that fantastic finger of scintillating white rock thrusting upward stark into the air I had regained some little grasp on sanity.
The White Rock of Gilmoy, famed throughout Havilfar, passed away below and I headed directly for the foul dens of the Manhounds of Faol.
It took me a complete Kregan day and night to fly from Ruathytu to Faol, and I admit I pressed the voller harshly, the speed lever over to the full all the way.
It was a handful of burs into the morning when I slanted down over the river separating Urn Faol from Thoth Faol. I flew on more carefully now, on the lookout for fliers above and riders below.
Below me were those places where I had run with screaming panic-stricken people about me, helpless quarry for the vicious fangs of the jiklos, sport for the rich hunters in their Great Jikai. But there was no time now to think of all those people, and what had become of them. Now I had to make my way into the barred cages and caves where the people to be used as quarry were kept, and seek out Saffi, and somehow bring her out safely.
Was that arrogant slave-master, Nalgre, still lording it over the miserable people he organized into parties to be hunted to death? Him and his jiklo pet, the lascivious female jiklo with the red bolero jacket and the blonde crusted hair — these two symbolized the horrific power of the Jikai that used manhounds to scent the prey, and that prey as human as the hunters, as human as the jiklos themselves!
Although, I truly believed then, the manhounds were rapidly losing the last vestiges of true humanity and were lapsing back into primordial savagery.
Up here only a few degrees south of the equator the weather was warm enough for me to throw off the blue shirt and trousers, to kick off the boots. Once more I was ready for action clad only in my old scarlet breechclout, my weapons about me, a few oddments of gear in a lesten-hide purse at my waist.
Inquiries made some time ago had given me the name of the Kov of Faol’s capital city, Smerdislad, but I would avoid the place. The Kov’s lands were mainly untended, agriculture existed merely on a subsistence level, but the jungles rioted, for all his wealth came from the manhounds. In his evil hunts and in the breeding and selling of jiklos lay his fortunes. So Smerdislad existed to bolster Encar Capela’s grandiose dreams of power and wealth; the caves and cages of the poor devils who ran shrieking from his slavering jiklos were far removed from his glittering city.
Despite my frantic rush through the sky I had a neat and workmanlike plan arranged in my head. By Zair! If I couldn’t get my fingers around the throat of that arrogant nulsh Nalgre and choke a little sense into him, my name wasn’t Dray Prescot!
Well, man grows corn for Zair to sickle, which is another way of saying man sows and Opaz reaps. I saw the skein of fluttrells, high, as I came over the straggling edge of the jungle. I squinted up against the emerald and ruby fires. Black and ominous, the fluttrells hung there, stark against the radiance. In clear air a fast voller can outrun a saddle-bird with ease; Rees’s personal flier was very fast, as I had proved.
When the fluttrells, their wings half folded to give them extra speed in the dive, slanted in for the attack head on, I thought in my pride at Delia’s masterly teaching of the ways of airboats that I could simply shoot ahead, passing either under them or through them, I didn’t much care which.
The flutsmen up there were reiving mercenaries of the skies, hiring themselves out to anyone who cared to pay their exorbitant fees for dirty work. The weapon-glint brought a rick to my lips. By Krun! If they wanted a fight I’d not oblige them! I wanted simply to burst through and away, to Saffi; I did not wish to have to make a detour here.
The flutleader was clever, I will grant the cramph that.
He split his forces and sent a half-skein to box me in on either side. I bored for the gap. I could see the flutsmen now, astride the fluttrells, and as I neared them, crossbow bolts hissed through the air toward me. I swerved the flier. Another shower passed to starboard. Again I swerved. A third flight of bolts hissed away to larboard.
I felt I was through the gap. I half turned to stare up as the fluttrells opened their wings to plane up out of that mad downward dive; and I never knew, to this day, just what devil it was who chunked a crossbow quarrel through the light skinning of the flier and into the lenk and bronze orbs supporting the flier’s silver boxes.
The voller went mad.
It flipped end over end. I clung on for dear life. It pirouetted up for the sky, and fell on its beam ends, and smashed toward the trees. I gasped as wind buffeted me and tree branches lashed my body. Down through the branches crashed the flier, and the devils up there were still shooting at me, crossbow bolts hissing and thudding into the trunk as I went spinning and crashing down. All the stuffing was knocked out of me. I recall the impression of the jungle coming up like a gigantic green fist.
Notor Zan, with whom I have had a nodding acquaintance in my spirited times on Kregen, came up with outstretched hand. He did not wish to shake hands with me, though; the final blow stretched me senseless across a branch a hundred feet up in the fetid air of the jungle.
Into the caverns of the manhounds
How are the mighty fallen! How ridiculous I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, must appear in this undignified descent to earth. With what furious oaths I had started out to rescue Saffi, the golden lion-maid, and with what painful shamefulness had I carried out that task!