A Victory for Kregen (8 page)

Quienyin took his penetrating gaze from my leem’s-head of a face and stared questioningly at Tyfar.

“Yes?”

“By Krun! The rast deserved what he got, did he not?”

“He deserves all he gets,” I said.

“But, all the same...” And, again, Prince Tyfar did not complete his sentence. I wondered if he was unwilling to face the consequences of his own thoughts, or unwilling to reveal them to us.

He pulled his shoulders back and threw the branch on the fire.

“Anyway, Quienyin. Why do you question me, now, about the great devil Dray Prescot?”

The nasty suspicion gathered in my mind that I knew the answer to that. But, then, why was it nasty? If Deb-Lu-Quienyin had discovered the truth about Phu-Si-Yantong, then surely he would understand the horrendous problems confronting Paz? Yantong’s insane dream was to encompass all of Paz, to take over and control and dominate all of the grouping of continents and islands on our side of the world of Kregen. He had made a start with Pandahem and other places, was destroying Vallia even now, even though we Vallians fought back, and had, under the alias of the Hyr Notor, achieved much with Hamal.

If Quienyin knew all this, as I now suspected he did, then of a certainty he must see the justice of the fight being waged by those opposed to Phu-Si-Yantong.

One of the chiefs of that opposition to the maniacal Wizard of Loh was Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia. This, I believed, was what Quienyin was leading up to, what he was telling me in this way. And, cunning old leem-hunter that he was, he had his reasons.

“Well, Quienyin? I fly to join my people. We have been through much together, surely you can find a more enjoyable subject of conversation?” Tyfar stood up and stretched his legs. “By Krun! When Princess Thefi hears what has been going on—”

“Will you join the army of Hamal, or the Air Service, and fight in Vallia, Tyfar?”

Quienyin’s question drew a down-drawn and hesitating look from Tyfar.

“We are comrades, Quienyin, and therefore — for anyone else to question me thus would touch—”

“Your honor?”

And then, characteristically, Tyfar laughed. “I do not know! My whole view of the world has changed.

What is honor? It can get you killed, that is sure, certain sure.”

I said, “But that knowledge would not stop you from acting in honor, Tyfar? You would not let those vakkas be hounded to death by the flutsmen without an effort to help them.”

“That is true. It was foolish. But Jak, and you know it, I would do it again.”

“Then,” said Quienyin, “as your comrade — and thus taking full advantage of being rude or overweening to you — I would counsel you most seriously not to go to Vallia to fight.” He shook his head and his turban did not so much as quiver. “No, Tyfar. I am a Wizard of Loh — and I say to you with all the force at my disposal, do not go to fight the Vallians.”

“Why?”

That was your Prince Tyfar for you. Straight out, direct, to the point. It was a damned good question and a damned hard one for Quienyin to answer.

I studied their faces by the lights of the moons and the erratic flickers of ruddy light from the fire.

Quienyin and I were wrapped up in what underlay our words; Tyfar was in the middle and slowly becoming aware of what was not being openly spoken of. He could become exceedingly angry, a prince being treated like a child. But he was Tyfar. He spoke evenly.

“You have no answer for me, Quienyin? I think you are being mysterious on purpose — but what is your purpose?”

“It is simple. It is to save you much grief.”

Tyfar sucked in his cheeks. Then: “So it is true. You Wizards of Loh can see into the future?”

“Perhaps.”

At that I smirked. No Wizard of Loh was going to reveal any of his secrets, and the worse that was thought of them the more their power and the dread they invoked in the hearts of ordinary folk.

“You spoke of Dray Prescot, the vile emperor of a vile empire. Why should I not go up there and chastise him for the evil he has wrought?”

“Do you know of this evil? Can you show it to me?”

Tyfar spread his arms. “Well — all men know—”

“All men hear tales. Dray Prescot has the yrium, he has that special power, that charisma that marks him out among men and—”

“The yrium!” Tyfar was incensed. “Rather he has the yrrum, the evil charismatic presence, the vile leading the vile, rotten clean through, decadent—” He was panting.

I said, and I spoke gently, “I think the Empress Thyllis would joy to hear you speak thus, Tyfar.”

That sobered him.

He stared toward Quienyin and then toward me. I say toward. I don’t think he saw us, not then, for he was looking with his inward eye at past events and conversations and trying to grapple with the problems he now saw more clearly than, probably, he had ever seen in his life before.

At last he said, and his words were still breathless, “So you tell me Dray Prescot has the yrium and not the yrrum, that he is not evil clean through, that he has not brought shame and misery to Hamal, that—”

“I tell you, Tyfar,” interrupted Quienyin, “only to search your own ib for the truths in these things.”

“And I,” I said, “tell us all it is time we departed.”

Whatever was going through Quienyin’s mind would have to wait. He was Up To Something, as he would have said in his Capital Letter Days. But I banished all that from my own mind as we rose into the air.

Ah! To fly free on the back of a great bird, soar through the sweet air of Kregen, with the blaze of the stars and the fat, serene moons shining down! She of the Veils and the Maiden with the Many Smiles shone refulgently, pink and gold, shining down on the fleeting surface of Kregen passing swiftly below.

The windrush in my face, blowing through my hair... The feel of the rhythmic rise and fall as the fluttrell bore me on with wide pinions beating... The whole sublime sense of flight and motion and headlong movement... Yes, flying over the face of Kregen beneath the moons, there is very little in two worlds to equal that, by Zair!

And, as for the fluttrells themselves, they were the big birds with the silly head vanes that were always in the way, it seems. Well, there is a simpleminded saying among the simple folk of Kregen that sums up the magic in simple terms. Of the birds’ flight through the air, they say: “They can do it because they think they can do it.” A pathetic little bit of philosophy, perhaps. But it rings, all the same, it rings...

Our flying mounts skeined through the air and we drove on through the moons-washed night. When by the feel of the birds’ motion and the little draggling skip to the wings we knew they had had enough, we descended in a grove of tuffa trees, for we had flown past the end of the Humped Land and left that desolate landscape astern. The fluttrells had been hard-driven by their former owners. It is the habit of flutsmen to use their mounts to the utmost. We had a distance to travel and wished to husband the fluttrells’ strength.

All of us, I feel, had been touched by that night flight.

We spoke softly, doing what had to be done in the way of caring for the birds and of brewing up. Then the wine was passed around. We spoke quietly, not just because we were somewhere in Havilfar none of us knew and therefore must expect the eruption of danger at any moment. As I say, we had been impressed by that flight under the moons.

Prince Tyfar did not raise our previous subject of conversation. I, for one, by Vox, was happy to let it lie.

Nodgen, as a bristly Brokelsh, was content to dunk his head in the stream and splash water vigorously all over himself. Hunch, being a Tryfant — and you know how foppish they can be on occasion — had to go the whole hog and give himself the full treatment. Mind you, although I say I have no feelings one way or the other for Tryfants, I had seen enough of Hunch by now to have summed him up better, I fancy, then he guessed or knew himself. And Nodgen shared my opinion. Hunch was a Tryfant, sure enough, not above four foot six in height and full of quivers and quavers and always with an eye open for the nearest bolt hole — but he had gone with us through the horrors of the Moder.

“Jak,” said Quienyin as I turned away from the stream, shaking myself like a collie.

“Aye,” I said, blowing water. “Aye, Quienyin. What you have to say is overdue.”

“Come a little way apart. Much Is To Be Said.”

Those capital Capital Letters, as it were, alerted me. I followed the Wizard of Loh into the shadows of the tufa trees and we settled down, facing each other so that we might keep an eye open on each other’s back.

I said, bluntly, “You have sussed Phu-Si-Yantong and you do not care for what you have found.”

He rubbed his fingers through that reddish hair, shoving the turban aside, uncaring if it fell to the ground.

“We Wizards of Loh set store by certain standards. We have power and we try not to abuse it.

Certainly we lust after gold and gems and suchlike baubles — or some of us — but it is the pursuit of knowledge and its manipulation that is our goal and that sustains us. We do not seek petty princely dominion.”

“But...”

“But, Jak the Sturr, I have been overcome. I entertain the liveliest respect and admiration for San Yantong. He represented all that was fundamentally encouraging about us Wizards of Loh. He would make a stir in the world, we all said—”

I stared at Quienyin. “He was your tutor.”

Quienyin did not flinch back. “No. We do not work on that basis in Loh, where we are trained. Not at all. And, also, we never discuss this training. But our comradeship down the Moder has—”

“It seems to me, Quienyin, there has been altogether too much talk about this comradeship. Methinks there is too much protestation going on.”

He would not know my source for the adapted quote; but Nalgre ti Liancesmot expresses similar sentiments in Part Three of the Seventh Book of The Vicissitudes of Panadian the Ibreiver.

He nodded again; but it was not an unthinking nod. Rather, it was the expression of a man who has reached a conclusion.

“Now that I am a little aware of the quality of person I am to do business with, I agree with you.”

“So you think you know who I am?”

“Certainly. You are Jak, calling himself the Sturr, claiming to hail from Hamal — or Djanduin or Hyrklana if the mood takes him — a paktun, probably a hyr-paktun. Is there any other quality you would wish me to assume you possess?”

The old devil was thrusting the gimlet right in, well enough. I warmed to him.

“I have had dealings with Wizards of Loh before. I respect their arts. I respect their integrity insofar as I have met with it. I own to a grievous debt outstanding to a Wizard in Ruathytu—”

“You refer to San Rening? Que-si-Rening who was resident and secret Wizard of Loh to Queen Thyllis?”

I shook my head in amazement. “I do. He assisted me and I promised to aid him, and I have not done so.”

“Do not trouble your head over San Rening—”

“No!” I said. “He is not dead?”

“No. He effected his escape. It was prettily done. I did not know you knew him. He lives now in safety and practices at a small court in the Dawn Lands. It is not a useful thing for you to know which—”

“No. I agree. But I am glad he is a free man again.”

“But San Yantong...”

“Do you also know Khe-Hi-Bjanching?”

Bjanching was that certain Wizard of Loh with whom Delia and I and others had gone through the adventure of the doors and the test — and the pit, too, by Vox! — and he had taken up residence in my home of Esser Rarioch. Now he had been banished back to Loh by superior sorcery and I wondered if he was well, as I wondered if all my friends who had been sent sorcerously packing off to their homes were well.

“I have heard the name, only. He is a new and young adept and has his name to make.”

“If you contact him on whatever astral plane you go wandering in when you are in lupu, tell him he is missed.”

He inclined his red-haired head.

“As you please.”

“And now — about this kleesh Yantong.”

He talked, slowly at first and then warming to his subject as his indignation overcame him. Yantong had been defying the sacred tenets of the Wizards of Loh. Always the Sans exercised their power from the background, from the shadows. Now Yantong wanted to strut forth and hog the limelight, to take the power and be seen to take it. slaying all who stood in his path. Quienyin was quite clearly shattered.

He told me a few things I did not know; but generally he merely recited what I knew of Yantong’s sins against humanity.

“And yet,” I said, “he is a man. There must be something of good in him. Surely, everything has not been thrown away?”

“I would like to think that, Jak. But if there is aught of goodness left in him, I have not descried it.”

I let out a breath.

“Well. I’ll put a blade through his guts if we meet, if I can; but I’ll still like to think he’s not all evil. Can there be such a thing as a totally evil man?”

“Theory says not. But we have to test that theory.”

“Yes — and my Khamorro?”

“You mean, of course, Turko the Shield?”

I refused to be amazed.

“You know much. I accept that, and I respect your still tongue and your friendship. Yes, I mean Turko.”

“He quitted Herrelldrin. You will not be surprised if I tell you he attempted to reach Vallia—”

“Attempted?”

“He is down in South Pandahem. As a Khamorro he works in a booth in a fairground—”

“My Turko!”

“It is a common occupation for the Khamsters—”

“Aye, it is. And they do not like anyone but themselves calling them Khamster.”

“So I believe. He is well, and seems to be resigned to his fate. There is a girl and a man — but they veil their emotions.

If you go to South Pandahem you will find him at the Sign of the Golden Prychan in Mahendrasmot.”

“I’ve never been there. But I shall go.”

Quienyin shifted around. He licked his lips. If he weren’t a Wizard of Loh I’d have thought he was nerving himself to ask something. We spoke a little, then at random, waiting for the burs to pass so that we might resume our flight. At last he said, in a straight, fierce voice, “And if I went to Vallia, you believe I would be well received?”