A Fortune for Kregen Read online

  She bit hard. He managed to drag his hand back and he stuck it in his mouth. He did not look so drunk or so amorous now.

  In the confusing lights of the moons reaching ghostly pink and gold fingers into the courtyard the girl tried again to draw away. Her baby-face glistened with terror.

  “You leave off, Granoj, you hear! You keep away—”

  Granoj shook his head, took his hand out of his mouth and leaped on her. She kicked and struggled and screamed and I slowly straightened up from leaning against the tree. He wore a sword, a thraxter, the straight cut and thruster of Havilfar, and he was probably a soldier off duty, judging by the belt and his boots.

  And then, so swiftly I was almost too late, his mood changed. He saw, clearly, that the girl Mindy was not going to do as he wished, and he turned ugly. And, too, she had hurt him. She had kicked him shrewdly.

  “I’ll show you, you stupid Sybli! You can’t make a fool out of me—”

  He ripped his sword free and swung it up. That he was going to strike her with the blade was crystal clear.

  I stepped out, with a sigh, and caught his arm.

  “This has gone far enough,” I said, and I tried to put the old snap into my voice.

  But I felt that treacherous light-headedness, I felt the weakness, and with an oath he stepped back, having not the slightest difficulty in breaking my grip on his arm.

  “You rast! You first — and then the girl!”

  With that, he charged full at me, the sword upraised.

  My own thraxter cleared the scabbard with what seemed to me agonizing slowness.

  He was bull-strong, enraged, the drink lending him a reckless passion. He swung and chopped and hacked, and I had to dance a right merry little jig evading his savage attacks. The girl stopped screaming.

  The swords rang and clashed. He forced me back, and I felt the tree at my back, and I could not retreat any farther. And he laughed and taunted me most vilely, and rushed in. His words boiled around, his sword flickered cleverly, and he used a swordsman’s trick that is well-known in fighting circles, and he would have had me had I not known the trick.

  Without thought — for thought was too laggard now — my own sword arm did what a sword arm must do if it wishes to retain a body from which to hang, and this Granoj staggered back, suddenly, and as he staggered back so he pulled free of my blade. That steel glimmered darkly wet. He put a hand to his side, and he looked down, and lifted the hand, and the blood dripped, dripped...

  So Granoj fell.

  Whether or not he was dead I did not know. I felt the weakness on me, and I staggered and the Sybli was at my side and I thought she would berate me, and attack me for the deed. She put her hand around my waist, and held me, and said, “You must hurry, Jikai! You must go away from here, quickly, and go with the thanks of Mindy the Ennschafftena. Hurry!”

  The walls of the courtyard wavered like curtains in a breeze. The whirlicue stump ends of the bottles of the door gyrated at me. I choked up phlegm. I fancied my wounds had opened and were bleeding again.

  “Yes — must go — you are — all right—”

  All the frivolity of the night’s proceedings had turned nasty and ugly.

  Death beat his black wings — as the quondam poets say — and I was feeling like one of the warmed-over corpses served up fresh from the Ice Floes of Sicce. If I did not get away, and me with a gray cloth mask over my head, I’d be done for.

  “I am all right, Jikai — hurry, hurry — there is a wicket and stairs — the Street of Candles — there will be no one there now — my thanks—”

  Staggering, sword in fist, hardly seeing, I was steered toward the little wicket in the corner. She threw open the gate and the slimy stairs led down, little used. I started at the top and the next moment I was at the bottom and with a pain there, too. I clawed up to my hands and knees and looked back. I could just see her outline.

  “Remberee, Jikai — again my thanks — hurry!”

  The wicket shut with a flat slap, like curtailed applause.

  An arched opening gave egress onto the Street of Candles. No one was about, as Mindy the Sybli had promised. The shuttered doorways and windows added a ghostly note of desolation. A stray gyp went whining along, his brown and white coat wavering through the shadows. First things first. I wiped the sword on the gray cloth mask and then carefully folded it, bloodstains inward, and thrust it into my shirt.

  Clues... clues...

  Then, sword scabbarded, all of Jikaida City going up and down and corkscrewing around me, I lurched off. By the time I had reached an avenue I recognized and could take my bearings the city was coming alive and the thin radiance of Zim and Genodras pulsed warmly in the sky to the east.

  Chapter Three

  I Hear of Moderdrin

  “Now you’ve done slallyfanting around, Jak,” said Pompino, crossly making his most cunning move in the Game of Moons, “perhaps we can get down to some serious thinking about getting out of Jikaida City.”

  “Oh, aye,” I said. “I’ve done slallyfanting around for a time.”

  The bed with its yellow sheets was cool and wide and the loomin flowers and the flick-flick on the windowsill splashed bright color into our room. Pompino’s move received my expected counter. He still disdained Jikaida and Jikalla, and was most wary of Vajikry, which, as people who play it thoughtlessly discover, is an unforgiving game. He would have indulged in King’s Hand, but we were one die short and you cannot play good games of King’s Hand with only four dice. As for Skull and Crossbones, you can enjoy so fearsome a mental bloodletting in that unholy game that I had cried off as being too weak.

  We were settled into a reasonably priced and comfortable tavern in the Foreign Quarter. At the lady Yasuri’s expense, I might add. I mended. She had pursed up her lips and told us that if we stayed at The Plume and Quill we would attract less attention than if we baited at her Star of Laybrites. As The Plume and Quill catered to the superior tradesmen of foreign parts who visited Jikaida City to do business, I didn’t quite follow her reasoning; but she was paying. The lady Yasuri was the reigning Champion, and the Mediary Games had begun, and day by day they played Blood Jikaida, and, every now and then, Death Jikaida.

  Pompino, who was, like me, an agent of the Star Lords, had berated me silly for getting mixed up in the schemes of other people, when we should be bending all our energies to doing what the Star Lords wanted. I didn’t argue. I was as weak as a kitten, and the wounds had opened and the doctor, a shriveled little needleman with a brusque way with him, had cautioned me to stay in bed — or else. With a sniff he packed up his bag and his balass box of acupuncture needles and took himself off. His bill, too, would be paid by the lady Yasuri.

  He had said, this Doctor Larghos the Needle, “I did not have the felicity of seeing the Death Jikaida in which you fought, young man. But I have heard of marvels.” He shook his head. “It was said no man in all the world could best Prince Mefto the Kazzur at swordplay.”

  “I did not best him—”

  “I know, I know. But he is minus his tail hand now, and there are only two places in Kregen that I know of where he may have a new hand graft. And he may not know of them.”

  “I hope the cramph doesn’t!” said Pompino, most menacingly.

  “Would you tell me of them?” I was thinking of Duhrra.

  “No. Idle questions deserve sharp reprimands—”

  “It was not an idle question.”

  He glanced at me, still stuffing his medical kit away, a glance that said eloquently that, as I had not lost a hand I had no need of the information. He probably thought I was making conversation. “The nearest is in the Dawn Lands and is rumored to exist in the country of Florilzun.” He snorted. “But try to find that country on any map — try to find it. Hah!”

  So I was left to look at the loomin flowers and get well.

  Pompino was wearing a smart pale blue lounging robe and he took from a pocket a small brush and started to preen his Khibil whiskers
. His sharp foxy face was engrossed. Because he was a Khibil, a member of that race of fox-faced diffs who are keen and smart and superb fighting men, he rather fancied himself. I did not mind. He was a good comrade although setting too much store by his understood duty to the damned Star Lords, the Everoinye, whom he thought of as gods.

  To me they were just a pain, superhuman entities who eddied me about Kregen on a whim, and who might, if I rebelled, hurl me back four hundred light years to Earth.

  “Had you stolen the Hamalese airboat and taken off, Jak, do you think the Everoinye would have allowed you to depart?”

  “I do not know.”

  “But you had to try?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you will try again as soon as you are well?”

  “If that cramph Prince Nedfar has not quitted the city by then.”

  I had told him just enough about my escapade to answer the most obvious inquiries. I had not mentioned Lobur the Dagger. Pompino, who was a shrewd fellow, imagined I hailed from Hyrklana, a large island off the eastern coast of the enormous southern continent of Havilfar. I had been a kaidur in the arena in Huringa, the capital of Hyrklana, and could pass myself off as a member of that nation without trouble.

  But Pompino would wonder why a Hamalese — even one whose life I had just saved — had made no greater demurral about letting me away scot free.

  Pompino himself, who came from South Pandahem, hated all Hamalese with the vigor of any man who has seen his country overrun and despoiled.

  In the quiet backwater of The Plume and Quill I lay abed and mended. Being situated in the Foreign Quarter the tavern was outside the hurly-burly that continually bustled in the twin cities, Blue City and Yellow City. Jikaida dominated all. Jikaida, that greatest of board games of Kregen, was here played with fighting men, played in blood and death. To be of the Blue or to be of the Yellow, to win — and not to think of losing — these were the vital facts of life here.

  “I,” said Pompino, who like Lobur the Dagger had no head for Jikaida, “am thoroughly sick and tired of this city and Jikaida! By Horato the Potent! What in all Kregen has that stupid woman Yasuri got that we must protect her at the orders of the Star Lords?”

  Maliciously, I said, “You question orders from the Star Lords, Pompino?”

  He jumped. His foxy face bristled. “No! Of course not. Who said so?” And I laughed.

  Slowly, I mended. Slowly, my strength came back. Truth to tell, I recovered full health and strength far more quickly than anyone could who had not bathed in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph of far Aphrasöe. All the time I lay there, uselessly, I fretted over Vallia, and over Delia, Delia, Empress of Vallia. Was our son Drak doing the right things? Was Delia well? Oh yes, I fretted. But I had had an assurance from the Star Lords, delivered by their spy and messenger, the gorgeous scarlet and gold raptor called the Gdoinye, that Vallia did not succumb to her enemies and that Delia thrived and was well. This, I had to believe.

  To do anything else would not only make me go off my head, make a lesser man of me — it would destroy me.

  One day when I had demolished a whole vosk steak, a heaping pile of momolams, an equally heaping pile of steamed cabbage, had wolfed down a handsome squish pie — with a mental genuflection to Inch standing on his head — and was popping palines into my mouth, Pompino bustled in. And, I may add, that was the third such meal of the day and the time only just gone the bur of mid. He started without preamble: “Jak, tell me what you know of Moderdrin, the Humped Land.”

  “The Humped Land? Never heard of it — wait a minute.” I chewed a paline, savoring the flavor, feeling the goodness refreshing every part. “I heard a couple of rat-faced fellows — they were gauffrers —

  arguing in a tavern about going to a place that might have been Moderdrin. I paid them no attention, minding my ale, for Dav was yelling for his stoup—”

  “Yes, yes. But you know nothing of the Land of the Fifth Note? Moderdrin?”

  “No. What of it?”

  “Gold, Jak, that’s what of it.”

  I sniffed, and popped another paline. The yellow berry tasted just as good as the last. Never satiated on palines, no one ever can be, an impossibility. Palines had sustained me on my very first visit to Kregen.

  They tasted just as good now.

  “You may scoff. Gold, jewels, treasure — unimagined treasure—”

  “Just lying around for you to stroll along and pick it up?”

  His foxy face twisted up in fury at my obtuseness and his whiskers quivered.

  ‘There is more. More than gold and treasure — there are magic arts to be won — secrets that wizards would give their ibs for — sorceries that will transform your life—”

  “So?”

  His eagerness switched into a comical surprise.

  “So — what?”

  “So — when do you start?”

  “Who says I am going? There is danger — well, there must be danger, else everyone here would be rolling in wealth and all be as clever sorcerers as any Wizard of Loh.”

  “The point is, Pompino, my fine friend. You have two counts against you. One is you want me to go with you. And, two, you don’t know if those onkers of Everoinye will let you go.”

  His concern was genuine.

  “Jak! Jak! How many more times? I pray you, do not contume the Star Lords so! If they punish you—”

  “Yes, you are right.”

  His punishment would be of and on Kregen. My punishment would be off Kregen and back to Earth as quick as a gigantic blue Scorpion could whisk me across the interstellar gulf.

  “So you had best tell me all about it.”

  The telling was brief. All he really knew was that the Humped Land lay to the south and west of LionardDen, that brave men and bold might pluck its treasures, and he was meeting a man who would tell him more later that night at a tavern of ill repute on the edge of the Foreign Quarter. The tavern was called Nath Chavonthjid, after a mythical hero, and was situated very close to a poor quarter of the city where nightly riots brought out the watch with thwacking staves, and sharp swords, too, on many occasions.

  “And are you fit enough to come with me?”

  “Aye,” I said, giving a deep groan. “I suppose so.”

  “It could make our fortunes and give us magical powers—”

  “Or leave us rotting in a ditch with a dagger in our backs.”

  “I think you scoff too much, Jak the Nameless!”

  “You are right, Scauro Pompino the Iarvin!”

  The long green tendrils of the flick-flick plant on the windowsill licked out and scooped up a couple of fat flies which had been buzzing about, and slipped them neatly into the waiting and open orange cones of the flowers. All Kregans are aware of the symbolism inherent in the flick-flick.

  Pompino laughed.

  “Yes, I am right. And tonight you must not scoff. This fellow — he calls himself Nathjairn the Rorvard

  — is mighty prickly and only lets us into his plans—”

  “For red gold, Pompino?” At the Khibil’s abruptly upflung head, and the quick stab of his hand, I nodded. “Aye! He will take your gold for this great secret — and what will you get out of it?”

  “I have asked questions—” He was mighty stiff about the imputations to his shrewd practicality. “Such a land exists. Expeditions do go there.”

  “Do they return?”

  “You have heard of this famous sorcerer of Jikaida City, Naghan Relfin the Eye? Where did his powers come from, seeing he was but a poor saddler five seasons ago?”

  There was truth in the remark. This sorcerer, Naghan the Eye, lived sumptuously, performed magics for large sums of money, and did have real, if indefinable, powers.

  “You suggest Naghan the Eye obtained his necromantic powers from somewhere in Moderdrin, the Humped Land?”

  “And there is the rich merchant on Silk Street who was ready to enlist to play Death Jikaida when he vanished from the city. He
returned with a caravan of wealth — from the south and not the east, over the Desolate Waste.”

  “No doubt he went with a rascally gang of drikingers, common bandits who robbed honest men—”

  “Not from the south and west.”

  I looked at Pompino. Maybe he had another reason for this folderol about magics and treasures to be picked up. “You suggest, do you not, my Pompino, that instead of attempting to steal the airboat, instead of going with a caravan across the Desolate Lands to the East, we strike southwest in order to put this city behind us? Is this not so?”

  “You are too clever for me, Jak. Yes and no. We cannot move if the Star Lords do not permit it. And there is magic and there is gold to be won in Moderdrin. I believe it. Yes, we could do far worse.”

  If we went far enough to the southwest, got over the Blue Snowy River, and continued on we’d come eventually to Migladrin. I had friends in Migladrin. And, of course, if we turned west and carried on, we’d come to Djanduin. I never forget I am King of Djanduin, although, and deliberately with the troubles in Vallia, I had allowed the fragrant memory of Djanduin to attenuate and grow frail. There was no denying the warm feeling that shook me as I thought of Djanduin, and the rip-roaring welcome that awaited me there, the times we could have...

  The superb four-armed fighting Djangs and the clever gerbil-faced Djangs of Djanduin would not forget me, their king, and this I knew with a humility that came fresh each time. Inch had passed on the messages. King of Djanduin I was, and I would be remiss in my duty if I did not visit that wonderful land very soon.

  But, now, until the Star Lords discharged us from our duty to this tiresome lady Yasuri, I was going nowhere. And, truth to tell, Yasuri was not so tiresome, not after what she had been through and was now reigning Champion, Queen of the Kazz-Jikaida board of Jikaida City.

  I said, “We will see this Nathjairn the Rorvard tonight, Pompino, your new friend, and we will measure his words.”

  The upshot was that all Pompino’s avaricious dreams of quick wealth and superhuman powers vanished like smoke in a gale.