The Tides of Kregen Page 4

  A bur ticked by, then a quarter of a bur.

  Below me the sea clumped with the Nairnairsh Islands.

  Not long to go now! My men must resist. They must hold out until I was once more back among them to lead them to victory.

  So puffed up with pride are the princes of the two worlds.

  A shadow fleeted across me. I looked up. The scarlet and gold messenger of the Star Lords swung up there, circling lazily, riding the air currents. He was watching me, I did not shake my fist. I ignored him.

  Frail hope!

  He stooped, swooping down on the voller. He screeched.

  "What is this thing you do, Dray Prescot?"

  I said nothing.

  "Onker! You destroy yourself!"

  I flared back at him. "You great nurdling onker! Do you think I can leave my wife and my child in mortal danger for you?"

  "Yes."

  I hurled abuse at him, shaking my fist, screaming. The voller surged on. And there, below me the village of Panashti!

  I slanted the voller down headlong through the air.

  The shanks had put in an attack, for bodies sprawled before the stockade. Activity in the forest edge indicated a fresh attack at any moment. I had to be there, leading my men, fighting to protect my Delia and my son!

  Even as the Gdoinye swooped in fast, I saw the scaled and fishy forms leaping forward with a shower of arrows to cover them. And, among the arrows, there blazed forth fire-arrows. Pots of fire were being hurled. Wisps of smoke lifted from the huts as the fire-arrows struck, as the pots of fire burst. Men and women ran with their water buckets to douse the flames.

  Almost there! I was yelling and shouting and beating my fist against the speed lever. I scarcely heard the Gdoinye.

  "Onker, Dray Prescot! This is not for you! This is not the way of the Everoinye!"

  "Get away, rast!" I bellowed. "I am needed below!"

  Part of the stockade was burning. The shanks were making a determined attack there. They were running with ladders made from cut branches. I saw men struggling, the flash and wink of steel. Faintly through the wind’s rush I could hear the bestial screams and shrieks. My fist beat the lever, I shouted and the Gdoinye swerved in and alighted on the very gunwale of the voller. I had never seen him so close before. He was truly magnificent, full of throat where the golden feathers encircled him, his scarlet feathers ruffling in the slipstream. His predatory black talons fastened on the wood and canvas of the voller. His black eyes, lit with inhuman intelligence, regarded me implacably.

  "You are to be given another chance! Dray Prescot, get-onker! You are to serve the Star Lords. They grant you a boon, a boon never granted to you before."

  "Keep your boons, nulsh!"

  The burning corner of the stockade was down. The shanks were smashing in with axes. Men were running. My Valkan Archers were running up to reinforce this threatened corner. The swordsmen were already in violent combat inside the palisade. More and more fishheads were clambering over the ruin of the walls. I screamed in baffled fury and swung the voller to alight directly on their heads. I would smash down from the sky clean on top of them. That should give my men a chance to rally.

  The moment was coming. I measured the drop and checked the speed of the flier.

  In a knot of struggling men I saw the glittering armored figure of Balass the Hawk, striking fishheads down. Turko the Shield appeared from a hut, struggling — struggling with Delia! She was trying to run after Drak — and Drak was racing headlong to hurl himself into the fray!

  I shrieked — I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair Of Zy — I shrieked like an insane man.

  Melow the Supple and her son Kardo appeared, raging, striking down fishheads with the awful venom of the manhound. Their jagged teeth ran green with the spilled blood of the Leem Lovers. All the others were there, battling desperately to protect Delia. The voller slowed, for if I smashed headlong into the shanks I’d as likely kill myself as well as them. Any minute now. I perched up on the gunwale just abaft the windscreen, ready to leap into the fray.

  Turko still held Delia and his great shield deflected two arrows that caromed away, spinning.

  "Remember the great gift the Star Lords bestow on you, Dray Prescot, you onker!"

  And then the scarlet and gold bird shifted and changed and flowed and the blueness of the Scorpion enfolded me.

  Falling . . . Falling . . . Dropping down and down . . .

  I felt the dusty earth at my back. I heard the shrieks and cries of battle and I knew that this battle was not the one into which I wished to plunge but that other, strange, uninteresting, unwanted battle on the island of Vilasca.

  I sprang up.

  Then, instantly, I realized this great gift of the Star Lords.

  For the very first time on Kregen I had been transported and had not arrived naked. I wore all my battle gear, the trappings in which I had flown off to fight the shanks.

  "I curse you, Star Lords! This small thing is no great gift to me! I defy you! I defy you!"

  Without a thought, without a prayer, I sprang into the second voller.

  She went up at full lever, and I did not even bother to look back.

  Again I set her toward the east and south and this time I did pray, pray that I could arrive in time to see my Delia and Drak alive, to hold my dear Delia in my arms once more.

  A ripping sound brought me around, the rapier instantly in my fist. The long barbed serrated head of an arrow thrust up through the floor of the voller. I cursed the thing and thrust the rapier back.

  Bending to pick up the arrow, dragging it through, I thought to assuage the pangs of agony tearing at my mind by learning what I might of the shtarkins.

  The hateful voice croaked by my ear as I straightened up.

  "The Star Lords are most wroth. You have sinned mightily."

  The Gdoinye perched on the rim of the voller. His feathers glittered in the light of the suns, glittering golden and scarlet in that streaming opaline radiance.

  I said nothing. I whipped the longsword from my back, hefted it in that cunning Krozair grip, swung it full-force horizontally.

  Had the Gdoinye been a mortal bird he would have been sheared in two.

  He skipped lightly away and the great blade hissed through thin air.

  "You have made a mistake, Dray Prescot, and now you must pay. No man defies the Everoinye!"

  "I do! I, Dray Prescot, onker of onkers, defy any man who seeks to destroy my Delia!"

  "Then are you a doomed man!"

  The Gdoinye vanished. The blueness swelled. The enormous form of the Scorpion swooped upon me, radiant blueness washed all around me, washed me away, washed my senses away so that as I fell I fell soundlessly and hopelessly, for the very last words of that inhuman bird were: "Back to Earth, Dray Prescot, get-onker of onkers, back to Earth — to stay!"

  Chapter Four

  Soldiering, science and secrets

  Back to Earth — to stay!

  What a fool! What a fool!

  Yet I could not have done other than I had.

  I should have helped those poor devils of Vilasca. The island owed allegiance to Trylon Werfed, a man I knew only moderately well, a man against whom I had heard no whispers of plots against the Emperor. I should have jumped in and helped them beat off those damned Leem Lovers and then I could have taken voller for Delia.

  But I am me, Dray Prescot, as thick-skulled a man as ever lived on two worlds. As I made my way back to civilization I reflected that I could not have done other than I had, and to pretend otherwise was folly. Dangerous folly. I admitted that I must have grown mighty proud and aloof in all these ridiculous titles and ranks I had amassed through no fault of my own. Well, leave out that I had deliberately made myself King of Djanduin. That is true. But the reasons for that decision were rooted in Khokkak the Meddler at first, and then in a sober understanding of a duty laid upon me. No, I had grown fat and comfortable and supine, and now I must pay the price of arrogance and prid
e.

  But to stay on Earth — to stay!

  I reflected on that. The Star Lords had dumped me down all naked and miserable in Morocco, which was in a fine old state of unrest. The locals were standing up for their rights, and the French from Algeria, which they had taken in the 1830’s, were trying to take over there. By virtue of my tutor Maspero and the genetically coded language pill he had given me in Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, I could understand and speak the languages of people with whom I came into contact. The Moors — although that is hardly the correct term for the Sharifs, for the Moors were a light-skinned people — would no doubt have cut up a European dumped among them naked and defenseless. But I was enraged, and I used fury as a weapon to drown my maniacal despondency. I simply treated them as I would a people among whom I found myself on Kregen.

  It has to be said that if a man can survive on Kregen he can find survival much easier on this Earth. I exclude from that the refined life of cities which in its artificiality can destroy more surely than sword thrust or ax bite.

  With language no barrier it was easier, of course. Even as I talked with these dark-bearded, hawk-faced warriors of the desert, after I had shown them I was not a man to be lightly killed, I could still hear the hissing shrills of the shanks as they swarmed to the attack. "Ishtish! Ishtish!" they shrieked as they charged forward. And as my men shot them down or struggled hand-to-hand with them, so my archers shouted: "Vallia! Vallia!" Or: "Valka! Valka! Prince Dray!"

  Well, I was a prince no longer. I was a foolish European among the Arabs and I had to fend for myself. I made my way to Fez and from there to the sea where I took passage for Marseilles. Once there I arranged with London for funds. I do not reveal the name of the bankers who looked after me. I had saved the founder of the bank from a nasty experience on the field of Waterloo; now his sons merely took me for my own son. But they were a closed-mouth lot. I do not think a great deal can discompose a tight-fisted, crafty, elegant banker of the City of London.

  Through canny investment by these same people I was now a wealthy man. Of course, it meant nothing.

  Every day those dread words echoed in my obstinate skull: "Stay on Earth — stay!"

  I had to take it for granted that Delia and Drak and the others were safe, that they had repelled the attack from the village, and that Tom had come sweeping back to look for his prince and so brought my fighting men down in their regiments to save the day. I had to assume that. Any other course would leave me more of a madman than I already was.

  The bankers, cool, assured men though they were, looked at me askance as I did business with them. I took myself off to become a solitary. A year passed, then another. Despair clawed at me. But I did not know how long that damned bird meant by his infernal "Stay!" It could be forever.

  One foggy day as I stared out from my narrow leaded windows at the hurrying people passing in the London street, the carriages burning their lamps in spectral glimmers, each a little circular glow isolated from the others, with the moisture hanging on the trees and the railings, I made up my mind. One day, I said to myself, one day I would return to Kregen. I would take up the broken threads of my life. Why, then wouldn’t it be a fine thing to learn all I could, here on this Earth, against the time of my return to all that I held dear? I needed a purpose in life, here on Earth. I would make that purpose a conscious effort to learn all I could. I would return a master of statecraft, of science, of engineering, of war. I would seek the answers to the questions on Kregen that had plagued me, and I would seek what I could here.

  Foolish, pathetic, ludicrous even. Oh, yes, all of those. But it gave me back a semblance of sanity, for by studying I assured myself that I did have a future on Kregen to which to return one day.

  So rousing myself from my lethargy, I left London. On Magdalen Bridge in Oxford I stood and gazed up at the stars.

  That upflung tail of the Scorpion was barely visible, but even if it was not, I could visualize it clearly. The red star that was Antares, the huge red star and the smaller green companion — I imagined I could see the constellation of Scorpio, and I would stand gazing up into the star-speckled night. I know the look on my face must have been one of infinite longing and infinite regret.

  I am sure you can see that the idea of secrets on Kregen plaguing me was a fallacy, for I had long since felt that my life with Delia and my family far outweighed anything else on Kregen. But to bolster my resolve and to give a neat scientific and logical approach, I set down in tabular form the questions to which I would like answers.

  The very first name was, of course, the Everoinye, the Star Lords.

  Next the Savanti, those mortal but superhuman people of Aphrasöe.

  Then the Todalpheme, the meteorologists and tide-watchers.

  Then followed a list of various strange peoples, of whom I have introduced you so far to only a fraction. These included the volroks, the flying men of Havilfar.

  Then the Wizards of Loh.

  The secrets of the silver boxes of the fliers, of course, had to figure, for we in Valka were still only able to produce flying craft which could merely lift and must find their propulsion from the breeze like sailing ships.

  As to unfinished business, well, there was indeed a formidable list of that, as you who have listened to these tapes must be aware.

  Various religious cults were written down, and chief of these was the abominable practice of Lem the Silver Leem.

  If I fail to mention anything in connection with the inner sea of the continent of Turismond, the Eye of the World, it was because I ached for that locale and for the Krozairs of Zy.

  All the titles I had won on Kregen could be stripped from me and I would not care a jot. But I was a Krozair Brother, a Krozair of Zy, and that did mean something.

  How often I had planned to revisit Zy, that magnificent island fortress of the Brotherhood, or Sanurkazz, the chief city of the Zairians of the red southern shore of the Eye of the World. Well, something or other had always cropped up to prevent me. Now, back on Earth, that something had turned out to be the biggest obstacle of all.

  The list did not satisfy me. Nothing satisfied me. Oxford at this time appeared to me to be an intellectual desert, its ancient halls given over to mindless pursuits after false doctrines. The studies pursued here seemed to me to offer no help or guidance to the things a man needed to know in the real world, for all its products strutted the preeminent stages of this world here on Earth. Through my accrued wealth and the machinations of powerful friends on my bankers, doors were opened to me that would, had I remained simply Dray Prescot, lieutenant in the Royal Navy, have remained firmly closed in my face. I tried Cambridge with a similar result. The best hope of education in these times lay with the Dissenting Academies, although my knowledge of the Greek Heroes was furbished up, for although, as I have said, I have always considered Achilles to be a poor show beside Hector, the sheer rage and panache and barbarity and honor of those times bears some pale reflection of times on Kregen that go on to this present hour.

  The Star Lords had dumped me down on Earth after what has since come to be called the Year of Revolutions. For a time I was too nearly a madman to bother with the world and its doings. There had been a king come and gone on the throne of England and now we had a queen. I knew about queens. The one at this time, though, bore no possible connection with any of the queens I had known, and I thought longingly of the fabled Queens of Pain of Loh. Queen Lilah, Queen Fahia and Queen Thyllis, she who was now the Empress Thyllis. By Vox! What a spectacular collection they were, and all up there on Kregen waiting, waiting . . .

  As for the kings, because of my connection with the July days in Paris in 1830 and the dismissal of Charles X and the installation of Louis Phillipe, I sought as a change from universities and academies, and as an anodyne to my agony, some light action, as Prince Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic for three years, overturned that Republic and obtained election as President for ten years. I did not then think that I would
still be on Earth when his term came up for renewal; I saw him made Emperor, Napoleon III, and I cursed the day I still remained on Earth.

  The attempt of Russia to dismember the Sick Man of Europe and the involvement of France and England are well known. As they affected me, however, I let events take their course. The Crimean War, it seemed to me, a fighting man, might give me fresh opportunities to bash a few skulls and so in my sinful way find a trifle of surcease from the despair and anguish consuming me.

  My part led me to action earlier than the Light Brigade on that fateful day of October 25. As a participant in the Heavy Brigade charge I believe we did a more thorough job than the more highly publicized Charge of the Lights. Three hundred British heavy cavalrymen charging uphill against three thousand Russian cavalrymen. It sounds as maniacal as events on Kregen. The Grays were in the thick of it. General Scarlett’s second line came on, piecemeal, driving through and through the thick gray ranks. The Russians, incredible though it sounds, had enough and broke and scattered and fled.

  The Light Brigade fiasco — however glorious — followed later. I fancied that even on Kregen soldiers would look askance at generals who had last fought forty years ago, or who had never fought, or who were often so old and doddery, without any clear understanding of what they were about, that they were as much a menace to their own men as to the enemy.

  After that came the Indian Mutiny and I went to take a part. I have said that I do not intend to dwell on those portions of my life spent on this Earth. But on this occasion the years ticked by and I grew ever more morose and savage, bitter with the bitterness that eats the spirit, and it is right that you who listen to my story should understand.

  My studies progressed by fits and starts. The marvels of steam and engineering and iron ships and the industrial changes that shook and transformed England were absorbed. I followed closely all the developments of science and philosophy and the arts of war I could. Agriculture also repaid study. But through all this I was aware that I was like a man asleep, merely walking through a part on a dimly lit stage.