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Authors: Alan Burt Akers
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loathed. Yet the necessity remained. There are many foes in Kregen who will cheerfully sail up over the ocean rim, or drop down out of the skies, and seek to take whatever portable property is lying around not chained down. My duty as a prince was to protect my people. And, equally, when I called on them for help, their duty was to help me protect them. But of course it is not as simple as that.
Jiktar Glendile of Zamra went on to tell me more of what was transpiring in Vondium, and I listened and ate my fruit and quaffed tea and finished with a handful of palines.
The clepsydra indicated half a bur to go.
Delia came in looking radiant. I rose. Glendile straightened to ramrod attention.
Delia looked at me accusingly.
“And have you kept the Jiktar standing all the time?”
I gaped.
Neither Glendile nor I had noticed. We were warriors.
So the moment passed and Jiktar Glendile finished up his report sitting down, drinking, his booted feet stuck out, his rapier cocked up and his tail curled decorously around the chair legs. That tailhand could whip a long blade up between his legs and have a foeman’s tripes out in a twinkling.
When the Pachak had gone I said to Delia, in more of a groan than I intended, “There is so much to learn! By Zair! Things have moved on Kregen since I have been away!” [1]
She laughed and tinkled a fingernail against the clepsydra.
I stood up.
“Then let us go and see how the Sans have got on with that damned black idol.”
So as I stood up and spoke I saw Delia, half turned in the doorway, looking back at me, and the breath caught in my throat.
Often and often I have tried to find expression to convey some sense of the beauty of my Delia. How impossible a task! As she stood there, half laughing at me, the sheer ivory-white gown relieved only by a small brooch of brilliant scarlet scarrons, her brown hair with those shimmering tints of chestnut striking through and making a wonder and a halo around her head — yes, I felt my flinty old heart thump and the blood pulse through my veins. By Zair! Was there ever a girl like Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?
Sweetly she looked at me, mocking, knowing very well what thoughts were prancing through my mind.
I scowled. What chance of that! The scowl died and I realized I was smiling, grinning away like a loon.
“There will be plenty of time, my love,” said Delia, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, “for you to catch up.”
If I do not give my reply to that I fancy each of you, in his or her own way, will furbish up the retort suitable. The effect of all this was that we were smiling foolishly away as we walked through the hall of the images toward the laboratory. These images, of ivory and bronze and precious stones, commemorate the Stroms of Valka. I still had not made up my mind if I relished their presence forever lowering down on me, the latest Strom, or if I resented them as reminding me of past glories and past shames.
We had just passed the bust of Strom Natival, I recall, around whom legends clustered, when we heard the explosion. For a single shocked instant I thought gunpowder had been touched by a spark. But gunpowder was not used here. All my old training in a wooden ship of the line, with felt slippers and flash curtains and water buckets and hoses forever at the ready, reared up in me. With a curse I leaped forward and the billowing mass of black smoke choked around the far corner and boiled swiftly forward. The black smoke engulfed me. I swung about, reaching for Delia, waiting for the blast to take us. It was all a screaming nightmare with the concussion still ringing in my ears.
The smoke roiled and eddied. I blundered into Strom Pagan’s bust — I knew it was his by the size of the vinous nose — and it went over with a smash. Delia clung to me, saying nothing. Our eyes and noses ran with the stink. This was not ordinary smoke. There was about it a charnel tang, a foul-tasting vileness
Jiktar Glendile of Zamra went on to tell me more of what was transpiring in Vondium, and I listened and ate my fruit and quaffed tea and finished with a handful of palines.
The clepsydra indicated half a bur to go.
Delia came in looking radiant. I rose. Glendile straightened to ramrod attention.
Delia looked at me accusingly.
“And have you kept the Jiktar standing all the time?”
I gaped.
Neither Glendile nor I had noticed. We were warriors.
So the moment passed and Jiktar Glendile finished up his report sitting down, drinking, his booted feet stuck out, his rapier cocked up and his tail curled decorously around the chair legs. That tailhand could whip a long blade up between his legs and have a foeman’s tripes out in a twinkling.
When the Pachak had gone I said to Delia, in more of a groan than I intended, “There is so much to learn! By Zair! Things have moved on Kregen since I have been away!” [1]
She laughed and tinkled a fingernail against the clepsydra.
I stood up.
“Then let us go and see how the Sans have got on with that damned black idol.”
So as I stood up and spoke I saw Delia, half turned in the doorway, looking back at me, and the breath caught in my throat.
Often and often I have tried to find expression to convey some sense of the beauty of my Delia. How impossible a task! As she stood there, half laughing at me, the sheer ivory-white gown relieved only by a small brooch of brilliant scarlet scarrons, her brown hair with those shimmering tints of chestnut striking through and making a wonder and a halo around her head — yes, I felt my flinty old heart thump and the blood pulse through my veins. By Zair! Was there ever a girl like Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?
Sweetly she looked at me, mocking, knowing very well what thoughts were prancing through my mind.
I scowled. What chance of that! The scowl died and I realized I was smiling, grinning away like a loon.
“There will be plenty of time, my love,” said Delia, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, “for you to catch up.”
If I do not give my reply to that I fancy each of you, in his or her own way, will furbish up the retort suitable. The effect of all this was that we were smiling foolishly away as we walked through the hall of the images toward the laboratory. These images, of ivory and bronze and precious stones, commemorate the Stroms of Valka. I still had not made up my mind if I relished their presence forever lowering down on me, the latest Strom, or if I resented them as reminding me of past glories and past shames.
We had just passed the bust of Strom Natival, I recall, around whom legends clustered, when we heard the explosion. For a single shocked instant I thought gunpowder had been touched by a spark. But gunpowder was not used here. All my old training in a wooden ship of the line, with felt slippers and flash curtains and water buckets and hoses forever at the ready, reared up in me. With a curse I leaped forward and the billowing mass of black smoke choked around the far corner and boiled swiftly forward. The black smoke engulfed me. I swung about, reaching for Delia, waiting for the blast to take us. It was all a screaming nightmare with the concussion still ringing in my ears.
The smoke roiled and eddied. I blundered into Strom Pagan’s bust — I knew it was his by the size of the vinous nose — and it went over with a smash. Delia clung to me, saying nothing. Our eyes and noses ran with the stink. This was not ordinary smoke. There was about it a charnel tang, a foul-tasting vileness
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