“I am not of Hamal,” I said. I know I spoke breathily, caught up in the wonder of a girl of the SoR being here, here in the capital of Hyrklana.
“A cowardly lie to save yourself. You are Hamalese and therefore you will die.”
“You are wrong on both counts.”
I moved away, circling, the rapier up. I was ready for her next spring, rapier and claw working together sweetly, to lunge and to rip.
“Your armies have laid waste to my land and you, at least, will pay the price, here and now. Die, Hamalese!”
The rapier moved with precision, the feint lunge coming in exactly so, and the claw striking across with a glitter of steel. I made no attempt to parry but leaped away.
Again, we fronted each other.
“You are a man. Why do you not stand and fight? Do you fear my claw so much?”
“I am a Vallian—”
“You lie, rast! You lie!”
“I know you are of the Sisters of the Rose—”
“That is easy enough to discern. It is common knowledge, who I must be. Even you cramphs in Hamal have heard of the SoR — to your sorrow!”
This was becoming farcical. Here was this splendid girl trying to send me down to the Ice Floes of Sicce, and her deadly companions were off chasing Tyfar and Jaezila, and who knew how many more of them there were waiting below? I had to settle this, and settle it fast.
“Look, Valona the Claw—”
“That is not my name.” But she hesitated.
“Valona, then. Listen, girl. Forget your preconceptions. Yes, the two who came here with me are Hamalese. But I play them, as I must. There is much at stake — you are here, far from Vallia. You must understand that... Perhaps you know of Naghan Vanki?”
“I know the name.” Now her rapier lowered.
Naghan Vanki was the chief spymaster of Vallia. I wasn’t going to say that, just in case she did not know. If she did not know I did not want her to have that information, and should she know, then Vanki was probably her employer. I knew he had spies in every country of importance to us. And if she was one of Vanki’s people, she would understand what I was talking about.
She swung the razored claw about. “My father has a friend called Naghan Vanki. Not that my father knows much about what I do. But I do not think I believe you. I think you are a damned Hamalese spy who knows more than he should. It is the Ice Floes of Sicce for you, Jak the Hamalese rast!”
She was going to spring in the next instant.
I said, “There is no time to waste any longer on you, young lady. I know that you have been through Lancival...” Lancival was the place where the Sisters of the Rose were trained up to use the claw, those that did so, for not all the girls of the SoR wore the claw. No one would tell me where the place was, would not even tell the Emperor of Vallia. But the name itself, alone, might cause this Valona, who was not Valona the Claw, to stop and think.
The hammering on the door that was subdued red baize with brass studding on one side and solid iron on the other increased. The door shook. It had been designed to keep out thieves from this store chamber, but Barkindrar and Nath and Kaldu would break it down in only heartbeats.
“I have met young ladies who have been trained up at Lancival before. I am honored they count me as a friend. Now do you—”
She had stopped dead when I used the name of Lancival. Now she broke in, roughly, flourishing her claw. “What do you know of Lancival? How could you know...?”
“Because I am what I told you I am! It is in my mind I know your father, for you bring someone to my mind. But there is no time for that now. I give you my most solemn oath, as the Invisible Twins made manifest in the light of Opaz are my judge! I am Vallian and dedicated to the Empress Delia.”
“The Empress Delia! You dare use
her
name—”
“Stand aside from the men who are breaking the door in. For all your claw — and you have no whip? I see not. For all your razor-talons they will eat you up and spit out the pips. Now I am going down to try to stop honest Vallians from murdering those two poor damned Hamalese down there.” I couldn’t say that I was in agony for the fate of my blade comrades, my friends, Tyfar and Jaezila.
“I cannot believe you! You must give me more proof!”
“No time, no time.”
I had worked us around during this conversation so that the open trapdoor lay at my back. I lifted the rapier in salute. She anticipated an attack and came on guard instantly.” Then she saw what I purported — too late. She tried to get at me before I retired from the scene. Her exertions during the pseudo-fight had broken the latches of her tunic and as it gaped I caught the sheen of black leather beneath. A real she-cat, tiger-girl, this Valona!
I could not refrain from calling, “You fight well, by Vox. Take your friend the guide and go, for those men breaking the door down will deal harshly with you. Remberee!”
Then I leaped into the open trapdoor and fell headlong into blackness.
Froshak the Shine
The thump of landing was not overly painful. The place was little more than a closet, dark and dank. I kicked out and a wooden panel nearly broke my toe. The square of light over my head remained clear: I half expected Valona to jump down after me. I kicked again at the next wall, more cautiously. A distant crash from above was followed by voices raised intemperately.
“Where are they?”
“There goes someone — after them!”
“Get on, get on! The prince is in danger!”
I leaned more gently against the third wall and fell all sprawling out into a lighted corridor. I did not want Kaldu and Nath the Shaft and Barkindrar the Bullet with me now. I did not want those three blade comrades, Hamalese, assisting me to slay Vallians.
The panel revolved and shut. I looked up and down and saw a dead man slumped against the wall. He sat with his head on his chest and his arms lax at his sides. He wore inconspicuous clothes. I did not know him. I hoped he was not a Vallian and guessed he was probably the Hamalese spy Tyfar had come here to see. Valona and her merry men had gotten wind of the meeting, had slain the spy and sent their man as a guide to bring us to the trap. Well, the trap had not yet failed. I ran full speed in the direction pointed by the dead man.
I wondered how Erndor, whom Valona had sent off after Tyfar, would fare against that puissant prince of Hamal. The guide must have been shaken into sense by Valona and the pair of them run off to a prepared bolt hole as our three comrades burst in. Now, Erndor is a Valkan name, and I am the Lord of Valka. But, equally, as the Strom of Valka I cannot know the face of every Valkan, as everyone of that superlative island cannot know the face of his strom. The likenesses on coins are not reliable guides to recognition. If Erndor and Tyfar clashed, rapier against axe, it would make a pretty fight, a fight that would chill me to the core. I had to prevent that confrontation if I could.
The corridor ended at a door and I simply bashed it open and roared through. Torches in bracketed sconces lit up an area that curved in a subtle way like a crown rink, so that I guessed I was over the side porch of the great hall of Malab’s Temple. Dust choked everywhere. I saw no more bodies, for which I was profoundly grateful.
A distant noise, like a clink of metal against stone, floating from the opposite side made me hare over the shallow dome, kicking dust. By the time I reached the opposite door, passing the ranked cubbyholes stuffed with skulls and skeletons, there was sign of no one. The torches were all burned low, some guttering. No doubt they afforded light to the watchkeepers of the dead. The believers in the power of Malab’s Blood wished to remain in his temple when they were dead and not to be buried in the ranked mausoleums of the Forest of the Departed. As for Malab, your ordinary uncouth fellow like myself will quaff a good measure of Malab’s Blood, and comment on the quality of the wine. Such is one belief to an unbeliever. As for Malab’s Blood itself, as a wine I drink it when there is nothing finer to be had.
Stairs led down beyond the door. They would open up to the little porch that gave ingress to the major porch on this undamaged side of the temple. I rattled down the stairs quickly, but I went silently and my rapier snickered out before me as I went.
No one waited for me at the foot of the stairs.
Another damned door and this time I was out in the street.
The side alley was shadowed in the lights of the suns. I ducked back and went the other way, skirting around behind the pierced traceries, searching the ground floor of the temple. I could see no one, yet there had been that clink of steel on stone.
Back and forth I went, and nothing. Again I climbed, this time creeping out along the crazy half-exposed stairway where the other side wall had fallen away. Nothing. Back again in the vast and shadowed Great Hall of the temple, with all the fine furnishings removed, the idol missing from the alcove above the altar, the floor dusty and slick, I stared about.
Three men advanced toward me in the shadowed light.
I said — very damned quickly! — “It’s me. Jak.”
Barkindrar’s sling stopped its whirling, and Nath’s bow lowered.
“You were nearly feathered there, Jak,” said Nath.
“After my shot had squashed his brains in,” said Barkindrar.
“This is no time for a professional argument.” I spoke more sharply than I intended. But I felt the pressures. “Where are Tyfar and Jaezila?”
They did not know.
So, once again, we went through Malab’s Temple. Nothing.
At last I said, “Very well. They are not here. They will have escaped. They must have!”
“Of course,” said Kaldu in his heavy assertive way. He was Jaezila’s personal retainer, a big-boned, powerful man, who wore his brown beard trimmed to a point. He was capable of such anger when aroused in defense of his mistress that he could tear a savage beast in half with his bare hands, or so it was said. “All the same,” said Kaldu, looking about. “It is passing strange.”
“Deuced strange.”
“They could have gone back to the tavern,” said Nath. “But it is hardly likely—”
“They would not run off and leave us,” said Barkindrar.
That, we all agreed, was most unlikely.
So, once again, we searched.
This time, in that same damned crown rink of a place above the porch, where the moldering bones glinted in the light of guttering torches, we heard a choked cry. Instantly Kaldu was tearing at the nearest heaps of bones, flinging them about in careless savagery. He hauled a pile of skulls away and Tyfar’s face showed, the eyes fairly sticking out, the cheeks scarlet, and the gag partly wrenched away from his mouth. He was making the most ferocious sounds beneath the gag.
I stared at him. As they hauled him out I saw he was unharmed, if covered in skeleton dust. I felt such a heart-melting sense of relief I took a deep breath. So that made me say, “Just a moment, before you remove the gag. The prince may do himself an injury if he is allowed to vent his feelings too soon.”
Barkindrar and Nath, being Tyfar’s men, could hardly let their amusement appear too obvious. Kaldu, feeling with us all the same sense of relief, allowed a smile to cross his savage face.
Then I said, “Now, now Tyfar, my prince, rest easy. We will take the gag off as soon as we may, although the knot is difficult.”
I thought Tyfar would explode. His eyes fairly bulged. When we got the gag off he took in a whooping breath, and stood up and flexed his arms, and then — and then he laughed.
“By Krun, Jak! You try a fellow sorely!” He looked about. “Where is Jaezila?”
Kaldu let out a screech and began to hurl the skeletons about in a paroxysm of rage. We joined in, searching among all the old bones, not uncaring that we violated sacred remains, since we were forced by the urgent necessities of the occasion. Jaezila was found, at the far end, piled under bones, bound and gagged. We pulled her out. She looked dazed. After a time we got it all sorted out, or as sorted out as it seemed possible to sort out so improbable a tale.
“All I know,” said Jaezila, “is that I fell down a damned great hole and woke up under these skeletons.”
“And I was leaped on by a man with a rapier and we were having a great set to, when three others appeared to assist him.” Tyfar held his axe. The blade was steel bright. “One of them threw a brick at me.” He sounded offended. “I was just about to enjoy showing them how an axeman tackles swordsmen when they ruined it all by throwing the brick. I woke up here, managed to chew or twist some of my gag away and yelled. I heard some fools blundering past three times. Three times. Before they heard me. I think I must still be suffering from concussion. Otherwise I would be extremely wroth with them.”
Nath and Barkindrar found it necessary to study the angle of the roof above their heads with great attention.
Not for the first time I reflected that Prince Tyfar had grown in stature over the time of our adventures together. He had always been a man of honor, filled with noble ideas of virtue and right dealing, but now he was more contained, more sure, and where your run-of-the-mill prince would have lambasted into his men for failing to find him sooner, Tyfar could see the jest and relish it for itself. I looked on him with great kindness, and he looked at Jaezila with emotions far beyond kindness. She looked puzzled.
“I fell down the trap — and if it was a trap, why did they not kill us?”
We couldn’t fathom out the answer to that.
Refusing to become maudlin over my sentiments for these two, I brisked them up. “We are not dead, thank Krun. Why we were not slain must remain for the moment a mystery. Now we had best go.”
“Let us go to The Silver Fluttrell and get cleaned up,” said Jaezila. “I feel positively grimy.”
We were all smothered in dust and festooned in cobwebs. So off we went to The Silver Fluttrell, the quiet inn where they were waiting rather than avail themselves of the mansion they might have used as emissaries of Hamal. Their ambassador hadn’t liked that.
When we were washed and they had changed into clean clothes, although I’d had to make do with giving mine a good brush, we sat in their airy upstairs sitting room, drinking superb Kregan tea, and eating a substantial meal — call it lunch, if you will — and talked the thing through.