“Yes. Consider that well. With a family to sustain you, you will seem an even better choice to the people and the Presidio.”
“And you?”
“Me? I want only your well being — as for the emperor — throne, crown, title, wealth — they are all gewgaws. I have enough of that kind of thing already.” Here, again thinking of Djanduin of which land I am king, I paused. “At least, if it comes to it, and if your mother agrees, why, then. .”
Drak set his glass down carefully. He was worked up, his handsome face, dark and powerful, set in harsh lines of determination that, I suspected, were very like those lines I see in the mirror when I shave.
“I do not anticipate becoming emperor while you or mother live.”
He went out then, quickly, and the sturmwood door slammed somewhat too hard.
“I really do not know what to make of that boy,” I said.
Delia laughed: “You do realize, my heart, that because of our dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism, we are younger than he is?”
“Deuced odd that, by Zair!”
She became grave, on a sudden. “They — the Savanti — they would not let me go — you remember
— and you — it was a dreadful journey to the pool-” She bit her lip, and said, on a rush: “Suppose they will not let father be cured?”
“I have thought of that. We fly directly to the Pool of Baptism. Once we are there and your father is cured, it will be too late for the Savanti to interfere.”
So we agreed on the plan between us. I felt some confidence that with the tearaway bunch of ruffians with us, and with the fine navigation of Vangar — I would help, of course — we ought both to find the River Zelph and the Pool and take care of any opposition along the way. What the Savanti might say I did not much care. I own I felt some concern over what they might do. But they were, as I knew, a civilized people who wanted to make of Kregen a world fit for people to grow into fulfilled lives without the dark fears that plagued them now. The stakes were too high to draw back now out of phantasmal fears of what might be.
We went up on deck into the clean swift rush of wind.
Our friends were peering ahead from every flier. Wersting Rogahan, who could shoot a varter and hit the center of the Chunkrah’s eye every time, had been the man they had found to guide them to the Yuccamot island in the Risshamal Keys. He had been shipwrecked with me in the old Ovvend Barynth, a rough-tongued rapscallion, an old sea-dog; but he was a man I fancied I understood and could rub along with. He had advanced just one step in rank since I had had him made up to so-Deldar, and was now a ley-Deldar. He still wore that dark strip of chin beard under his jaws, his lean knowing face was just the same with the broken nose and the mahogany tan of a life spent at sea. Up here in a flying craft he had donned a buff shirt where normally he went bare-chested, and the old buff trousers cut off at the knees might have been the same pair he’d worn when we’d shot our varters in competition against the pursuing shanks.
“Land ho!”
The shrill yell skyrocketed up from Oby, perched high. He pointed ahead. Soon we all saw the low dark outline of coast, with hills beyond, and the cream of surf and the wink of rivers. Bet-Aqsa was a sizeable island, triangular in shape and some one hundred eighty or so dwaburs across at the widest part, smaller than the forbidden island of Tambu to the north. Kytun Kholin Dom, my fearsome four-armed Djang comrade, bellowed across the wind-rushing gap between fliers: “So that’s where those Drig-loving reivers live, is it? Now we know, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! we will pay them a visit and return their gifts to us in fire and the sword!”
Well, knowing my Djangs as I do, and knowing of the raids they suffered from the sea people — not the Shanks — I could not be surprised.
If the inhabitants of Bet-Aqsa as distinct from the Todalpheme of that place made a habit of raiding the western coasts of Havilfar, secure that their home was far enough west to deter anyone reckless enough even to think of sailing that far into the Ocean of Doubt, then they would be in for a nasty shock. The place was secretive enough, Zair knew. Events were changing fast on Kregen, and the world would never be the same again.
Over the horizon to the north and east the forbidden island of Tambu presented no lure. I had met men who claimed to have been there and the stories about the place, not all apocryphal, I feel sure, were calculated to curdle the blood. Gruesome, distasteful, the stories, most of them, as I was to discover. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps the forbidden character of Tambu could be explained away by the unsuspected presence there of the Savanti.
That, we would soon discover.
Over the island we flew, seeing towns and villages of peculiar aspect, and long rolling downlands, forests, marks of cultivation. A few fluttrell patrols winged up after us; but we flew vollers high and fast and left the laboring saddle birds far below. Also, there arose other flyers riding beasts new to us, flying steeds of remarkable appearance, all speckled with ruby and amber feathers, with gappy jaws and long whiplike tails. Still and all, despite their efficient wingspan, long and wide like an albatross’s and despite the gesticulating figures upon their backs, they were outdistanced also.
“Straight to the Western Akhram, Vangar,” I told the captain of my Valkan Fleet, admiral, Chuktar, flag-captain and skipper of whatever voller I happened to be flying in all rolled into one efficient, loyal, great-hearted man. He nodded and bent to his map, the self-same map I had drawn out for him from my memory of the one shown me by Akhram of the Todalpheme of Denrette.
Soon at the best speed of our vollers the western coast came in sight, a green-blue glittering expanse of water stretching out beyond the last fingerings of land, a vast mass of empty water stretching out no man knew whither. This was the Ocean of Doubt.
“There!” screeched Oby, pointing, the wind in his hair.
A collection of yellow-green onion domes rose from the edge of an inlet. Ships lay moored and signs of activity from what were clearly dockyards showed that these people kept themselves busy, an impression heightened by the size of the town strung along the water’s edge. The low yellow fortress guarding the mouth of the inlet was not lost upon us. These folk trafficked upon the sea, and yet they built defenses. We all thought we knew for whom those stout walls had been built.
The Akhram stood aloof from these mundane pursuits, the cluster of onion domes glistening in the limpid air.
How far we had come! Right to the edge of the known world — over it, for all we had previously known of these foreign parts. Where one might have expected to discover an uncouth half-savage people, it was clear there was wealth down there, industry and commerce — and, for sure, a deal of loot from the coasts of Havilfar, including Djanduin.
I had argued with my friends and overborne them.
Delia said: “But I should go with you! I have been to Aphrasoe before. Therefore-”
“Therefore you will stay here, with the fleet.”
She pouted at me, making a mockery of my heavy-handedness. But I would not be swayed. I had brought a fleet and a large body of fighting men, for that is the best way to travel on Kregen when you are in a hurry and will meet foes — and carry a bedridden, dying emperor. The very best way, of course, is alone, like a savage clansman in hunting leathers — and, truly, better even than that, is just the two of you, just the two, alone in the whole wide world of Kregen. .
So I would not be swayed now. Nath the Needle said he dare not leave the emperor. The poison wasting away the once stalwart frame was insidious, and any cure that might once have been possible was long since too late, by far. All he could do was administer what antidote he could. Every bur the emperor had to take a teaspoonful of the nauseating mixture Nath prepared, swallowing it down past clenched teeth we had gently to prise open with silver levers. Also, acupuncture needles had to be used, carefully inserted in the right nodes and along the correct lines to ease the increasing pain. I had studied assiduously with Nath the Needle as well as other eminent doctors to discover all I could of the arcane mysteries of the needleman’s art. I could insert a needle now and know with sure certainty that it would do the work intended.