s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

the hoffiburs.
Finding a posting station was not easy, for I had made up my mind to continue by zorca. I did not have
the price of an airboat ticket, assuming I could find a Company of Friends operating an airline here. The
oldster with the stubbly chin scratched that stubble, and spat in the straw, and sized me up. My beard
had been trimmed neatly. But folk in Vomansoir were clean-shaven as a rule.
 You must be in a mighty hurry, dom.
 I am. The zorca will be safe, for I am accustomed to riding them. Here. I held out coins with the
portrait of the man I wished to see.  What will it cost?
Strange words, those, for Dray Prescot on Kregen!
In the event I hired a zorca and left a whacking deposit as a guarantee of my honesty. Vallia has a
functioning banking system, as must any country which trades at such a high intensity, and I could collect
the deposit when the zorca was either returned or unsaddled at the Vondium stables. I bought some
food, and with a few silver coins left clanking rather dismally in the lesten-hide bag, I set off.
Vallian roads are foul. They are better now, but I speak of the time when I rode south through the
sun-drenched land seeking an interview with my prospective father-in-law. The zorca made good time,
considering, and I wended my way south through towns and cities, crossing the canals, watching the lazy
progress of the narrow boats, spurring on harshly when I saw a gang of hauler slaves dragging an
Emperor s barge, giving a quick sailor eye to the boats sailing on the Mother of Waters. I passed huge
cornfields that took a day to traverse, immense dark forests, where twice I fought off footpads. This
made me frown, for I had taken Vallia to be civilized. I would not allow myself to become fatigued. The
zorca held up wonderfully well, and I fancy he recognized he had a zorcaman on his back.
The twin Suns of Scorpio chased in jade and crimson across the sky each day, the nightly procession of
moons cast down their pinkish light, and I hurried on.
I reached Vondium.
I will say nothing of that altogether marvelous place now, and, truth to tell, at the time I scarcely heeded
all its marvels. It was all too easy for me to hear the news. It was the subject of conversation in all the
myriads of pleasant open-air restaurants along the quays beside the canals and waterways.
 The Emperor? Oh, that naughty daughter of his! He is not in Vondium. He has gone to Delphond to
teach her a lesson!
CHAPTER TEN
From Delphond to the Blue Mountains
Delphond is a delightful, charming, cozy land of small fields and secluded hamlets, of winding brooks and
gentle undulations of ground clad in the brilliant green of Kregan grass speckled with the prodigious
abundance of Kregan flowers. It is a warm land, a soft and safe country, a place for lazy retirement and
idle amusements, happy and carefree and going the old ways of its people. Tucked away in a southern
bend of the coastline of the main island of Vallia, it receives all the benefit of the Zim Stream, that warm
current sweeping up through the Cyphren Sea from the unknown southwestern oceans. From Delphond
comes the finest vintage claret in all Kregen, or so I believe. Also there are apples, pears, gregarians, and
squishes, and the people there rear a kind of ponsho whose fleece, besides being as soft and silky as any
in two worlds, provides chops and shoulders and legs of a succulence not to be believed until eaten,
fresh, crisp, and savory, with liberal helpings of mint sauce and with the small round yellow momolams, a
tuber that Zair put on Kregen in holy wedlock with roast ponsho.
Also in Delphond are fat cattle, very like our Earthly bulls and cows, and the cream they make there . . .
it is of a triple consistency, rich and thick and fit for Opaz himself.
Such a meal I ate in a pleasant raftered alehouse, with the twin suns slanting in at the open window and
the bees busy about the mauve and white loomin flowers in a pottery jar of Pandahem ware on the
windowsill. The good-natured innkeeper s wife bustled, bringing me her best, and I ate well, for the
journey had been swift and eating of secondary importance. My booted feet stuck out across the
polished sturm-wood floor and in other circumstances I would have been content. I munched a handful of
palines after the meal was finished, considering.
In my lesten-hide bag there now reposed but three copper obs . . . I had squandered all my slender
resources on this last meal. The people of Delphond are jolly, given to laughter, happy, tucked away in
their corner of Vallia, secure in the knowledge that they own fealty to Delia of Delphond as their suzerain,
than whom there is no more fair or perfect a girl in all their world  and, as I know, in two worlds.
But I was not pleased.
The Emperor had indeed visited Delphond and been received with the pomp and ceremony fitting to his
exalted majesty. He had come by water, as was fitting, in a long train of narrow boats, traveling with a full
thousand of his personal bodyguard, the Bowmen of Loh, and with many retainers, servitors, and slaves.
Delia, like myself, recognizes that in certain circumstances slaves can be economical, but that in many
areas of the economy they are not; effective or otherwise, slaves are not for Delia of Delphond. There
had been trouble when she had emancipated the whole of Delphond, as soon as the gift of the estate had
been received from her grandmother, as there had been trouble of a different kind when she had
emancipated the slaves of the Blue Mountains. Now the country was in apple-pie order. The colors worn
banded on the shirt sleeves of Delia s retainers were lavender and laypom  the laypom is a fruit rather
like a peach but of a pale subtle yellow color, delicate and exquisite  and her servitors moved with the
springy step and open shoulders and frank faces of free men and women.
But this could not charm me now, for the Emperor had not found Delia in Delphond. She had gone, and
so he had followed her, I was told, to the Blue Mountains.
The Emperor could simply wave a hand and the haulers would take up their ropes and away would glide
his whole caravan. I must fend for myself. Well, I had done that often enough before, and was like to do
it often enough again. So with a good meal of the products of Delphond inside me I stirred up my faithful
zorca and set off westward for the Blue Mountains.
There was in the character of the folk of Delphond a gentleness and a happy laughter, too, that I knew [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]