I was held in a paralysis. Conscious, helpless, I just slumped there. The dip in its niche in the stone wall quivered and spider-shadows ran. I lay there, too astonished to swear. By the time I had worked out that the water had been drugged — why? why? — and had made stupendous and entirely useless efforts to move, I had also come to the grim conclusion that I could do nothing until the effects of the drug wore off.
A face peered suspiciously around the door. This face bore a huge badly sewn scar across the right cheek, the nose, and the left eye; the blade that had caused the damage had gouged out that eye, so that this guard was known as Derson Ob-Eye. He withdrew, I heard a faint whistle, and then two guards clanked into the room, lifting me, stiff and stark and paralyzed, carrying me out like a side of roast vosk, bound without cords!
They moved furtively. Derson Ob-Eye led the way by shadowy runnels, down winding flang-infested stairways, under low arches where the cobwebs brushed and caught and streamed from the guards’ steel like Spanish moss. At a small postern stood a bulky man swathed in a massive gray cape. He turned as we approached and I saw it was King Doghamrei.
So that was one little mystery solved.
Ob-Eye grunted and lifted a butt end of a torch from its becket, held it against my face. I could not blink, could not so much as twitch a muscle.
King Doghamrei smiled.
“I know you can see and hear me, nulsh. I will not strike you, for you will not feel it.” Doghamrei was really enjoying himself now. “You will be taken well out to sea. You will be dropped from that great height you promised to have Havil the Green pour on me. I shall not be there. But it will be done. Ob-Eye and my guards know the penalties for failure.” He was trembling, and sweat dewed his upper lip and forehead. “Take him, and go, and your Kuerden the Merciless will seem to you a kind and tolerant mother beside me if you fail!”
This Derson Ob-Eye was an apt pupil to a vile master. He chuckled, with a brown snaggletoothed smile.
“The pleasure will be ours, King, when he pitches overboard and makes a coffin-sized hole in the sea!”
“Far out, dolt. Far out, so that no one will ever look upon his filthy face again.”
I tried to speak. I know my face remained stony, but some hint of the effort I was making must have shown in my eyes, in the veins of my neck and forehead, for King Doghamrei laughed again, bending close in the sputtering torchlight to gloat upon my helplessness.
“There will be no escape for you, rast! The Queen even aids my scheme, for she sends sky ships to deal with vermin off our coast.” He was thoroughly enjoying himself, and reluctant to see me go. “I use my own ship in a dual purpose this day! Now may Lem the Silver Leem be praised!”
Well. That did, of course, explain much. .
Brisker now, exultant, King Doghamrei tongue-lashed his men into action. “And tell Hikdar Hardin well out to sea, mind, Ob-Eye! I want no trace of this kleesh ever found again.”
“As you command, King.” Ob-Eye let his single eye’s gaze wander toward me and he sniggered. “And I have a scheme that will delight you, great King.” The two guards hefted me and carried me off, and so I had to wait to hear Ob-Eye’s little scheme. When I discovered it I knew he was right: it would delight the great cramph King Doghamrei. How I wanted to yell at him that if he thought Queen Thyllis would tolerate him alongside her on the throne of Hamal for an instant, he was so great a get-onker as to be ineffable. But I could not move.
They took me in a little flier out to the coast in the dawning light as the emerald-and-ruby glory broke over the land, and we slanted down to a vast flat area of dust and scrawny grass where row after row of monstrous Hamalese sky ships were lined up. I watched everything with feverish eyes. Ob-Eye had me loaded aboard a giant of the skies, a veritable aerial fortress. Thick were her timbers, massive her upperworks, profuse her provision of varters and catapults, her ports for bowmen. All this was a revelation to me, accustomed to the small vollers and airboats; the greatest fliers I had seen had not even approximated in size to these monsters. I saw then something of the awful power of Hamal. Two sky ships lifted off as the twin suns cleared the horizon, and as we rose, so the suns raced up the sky. Ob-Eye had the complete confidence of his master, and I saw and heard him giving intolerant and contemptuous orders to the captain of the ship, this Hikdar Hardin. This ship sported the colors and insignia of Hirrume. The lead ship showed the purple and gold of the Queen. In trail we flew out over the sea.
A hexagonal structure mounted on stilts just forward of the center allowed an uninterrupted sweep of deck fore and aft beneath. Other towers of various shapes and sizes housed artillery, the varters and catapults; this hexagonal bridge was the center of command, and there I was carried. The sky ships are built in a number of different fashions and styles, in the never-ending effort to achieve better efficiency. High in the control area, with Hikdar Hardin most uneasy, with Ob-Eye chuckling away, chewing cham and thoroughly enjoying himself, I waited like a chunk of frozen beef. When a lookout shrilled, high and fierce, everyone, including me, felt a climactic moment had arrived. Under Ob-Eye’s malicious eye the guards hoisted me up. They unlocked my chains and threw them on the deck. They stripped off my gaudy and humiliating clothes — for I had not had time to remove them after my regretted drink — and they dressed me in a gray shirt and blue trousers. Ob-Eye explained. He wanted to distill every moment of horror thrice over.
“When you fall into the sea, rast, those onkers aboard the Queen’s ship will think you a crewman and will suspect nothing.” Then he nearly split a gut laughing. “But, cramph, you will not be falling into the sea, will you?” And he guffawed his merriment to the skies.
Over our heads fluttered the bright colors of Hamal, and I realized we had slowed. Ob-Eye gave curt instructions. I was lifted and twisted so that I could look forward and down. I saw — and, seeing, I understood — and the full horror of what these cramphs from Hamal were doing drove coldness between my shoulder blades and a painful cramp into my stomach. Below on the blue glittering surface of the sea sailed two beautiful ships. I recognized one for sure; the other I did not know. They foamed along, their sails stiff and curved, proud, and from their trucks floated the yellow saltire on a scarlet ground that was the flag of Vallia.
Vallian galleons!
Oh, yes, it was perfectly plain what was afoot here. If Hamal would not sell vollers to Vallia, then Vallia must try to buy them elsewhere. Never before, I had been told, had Vallian galleons been allowed farther south than the towns of the northern coast of Hamal. They were restricted to the westward of the Risshamal Keys. The deputation to Ruathytu had been exceptional. And now here were these two gorgeous galleons, their sails proudly billowing, the spume flying, their forefeet crashing through the blue seas, driving on southerly to Hyrklana!
Like an onker I wanted to yell a warning to those two galleons down there, small with the distance and yet clear in every detail. The suns blinded from their paintwork, their gilding caught gleams from the ivory curve of their sails.
The Queen’s sky ship from Hamal was Pride of Hanitcha, and she had drawn out ahead of us. I watched in pure horror as she circled twice, coming up with the wind on the wake of the nearest galleon. I knew, then, and I felt the surging blood clashing and clamoring in my skull.