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more deadly this night than a Lohvian longbow although I wouldn t let Seg hear me say that.
I took no shield. The dark russet-brown of the hunting leathers brought back memories of hunting in
Aphrasöe and I sighed. As always, I vowed that when the current excitement was over, I would go and
seek out the Todalpheme of Hamal and find out directions to the Swinging City.
As a final gesture to the fates, I glued a beard onto my smooth-shaven chin. This beard was made up
so Delia had told me with much laughter from hairs I had myself sprouted and she had cut off. She
had saved them and worked them up into a neat daggerlike beard, and used cunning silk bases to hold
them in position. When I looked at myself in a tall pier mirror, I looked much as I had appeared out on
the trail.
Over all I swirled a great dark gray cloak and then I padded out. If mere costume could get me past the
guards, I was in and among the silver boxes already.
My soft leather hunting boots made no sound. I walked steadily across the Bridge of One Thousand
Vosks over the Black River. Here lay rows of dark houses, suburbs where the guls lived.
This kind of dark desperate errand struck me as very different from previous occasions when I had been
about nefarious business on Kregen. Far sooner would I be back in Valka with Delia and the twins. But
what I did now I did from the duty I conceived I owed my people of Valka, and to Vallia, also. In
addition it was terribly clear that the Hamalians were conquest-bent, desirous of creating a huge empire,
perhaps one to rival the old and half-remembered Empire of Loh. That meant the Miglas would suffer.
That meant Djanduin would be overrun. That meant I had to do my utmost to put together some kind of
alliance against Hamal, and equip the fighting forces with vollers that would not constantly break down.
The darkness between moons was not that of Notor Zan, for one of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtled
across the night sky.
Keeping to the shadows and creeping stealthily along the dark streets I avoided detection, a sly furtive
creature indeed. Few people were about, for the guls were working long hours and they needed their
sleep. The gates of the Blind Wall were patrolled by watchful Rapa guards, mercenaries who would not
hesitate to kill to fulfill the terms of their hiring contracts. The strict laws of Hamal ensured the Rapas
would carry out their guard duties with the same faithfulness to orders as a soldier of Hamal.
Slinking along in the shadows, which lay so thick the small fleeting dot of light of the lesser moon merely
served to heighten the intervening darkness, I made my way around the circuit of the walls. The Black
River washed the northern face of the building and here I found the only place I thought might afford me
ingress. Water plants grew along the wall, their hair-fine roots clinging to narrow cracks in the masonry.
Up these vines I went, testing each handhold, my legs kicking free. I can move silently when necessary,
an art learned even before I spent those educational seasons with my clansmen, and the parapet felt hard
under my hands as I looked down from the summit of the wall. Darkness, silence, mystery, lay below.
It did not take me long to find steps down from the parapet and a path across to the likeliest-looking
building. The wooden door was padlocked; but with a muffling fold of my cloak and a savage wrench
with the knife, the padlock snapped. I eased inside.
Well, I will not weary you with a recital of my disappointment. And yet what else was there, truly, to
find? Here lay the piles of boxes, some filled, some waiting to be filled. Piles of minerals, earth, and sand
lay neatly ranked, the scoops and shovels and every one with a stamped number! regimented in
their racks. I sifted the earth through my fingers, barely able to see. I had brought a globe of fireglass
containing fire, with a wood-and-metal carrying box with shutters. I chanced opening one of the shutters
and the firelight within flashed upon the piles of earth, on the ranked rows of silver boxes. I felt anger, and
crushed it down.
With two silver boxes in a voller, you could fly.
By bringing the boxes closer together or moving them farther apart, and by changing their attitude, you
could control a flier, make it rise or fall, move faster or slower.
I knew what the silver boxes contained.
Earth and air.
Air and earth.
I looked around. Dirt and air! How could they be the secret I sought?
This shed contained silver boxes for the mineral half of the controls. The next shed contained silver
boxes that were empty of all but air. The faint smell of tainted malsidges, a fruit of which I am fond, made
me wrinkle up my nostrils. Well, I did not think they crushed up malsidges and somehow conveyed the
smell into the boxes. But they might. Then I forced myself to realize this was in reality a reconnaissance
mission. I was establishing parameters of action here in Ruathytu. Soon, by listening to my rich
acquaintances during the day, and following up the clues by night, I would work nearer to a solution of
the mystery.
Besides being a world of great beauty, Kregen is also a world of great and sudden violence, and there
was no anticlimax to this night s work. Or, rather, the true anticlimax of my failed mission was masked by
a flurry of action as four Rapa guards, carrying flaring torches, burst into the shed as I bent over an
opened silver box.
The sight of them in the torchlight with their ferocious beaked faces, the war-feathers flaunting from their
helmets, and the swords and shields, snapped some link in my brain. I flung myself upon them, ripping the
rapier free, my left hand still cumbered by the small cube of the fireglass box.
They shrieked in their high obscene Rapa way as our blades crossed glittering in the torchlight. My cloak
flared out, swirling, as I spun away, slicing a Rapa beak down, avoiding the vicious thraxter slash, stuffing
the box back into my breechclout.
Apim rast! Die! They were shrilling at me, incensed by the death of the first of them, absolutely
confident they would overpower me. They were making an infernal racket, and as the blades crossed
and rang and screeched, the noise grew and I knew guards would come running to reinforce these three.
I dropped the next, my main-gauche slapped into my hand, and deflected the next one s thrust. My blade
gonged against a shield and I had to skip and duck away. A sword-and-shield-man against a
rapier-and-main-gauche-man provide endless room for argument; but it always all boils down in the end
to who is the better practitioner with the weapons he uses.
Luckily for me I was able to prove superior. The torchlight splintered from the blades as they chopped
and crossed. The two remaining Rapas blades were shining and silver; my blade gleamed starkly dark
with blood.
Yetch! one Rapa shrieked at me, foam flecking from that beaked face. When we take you it will be
the Heavenly Mines for you!
Aye! panted the other, as he thrust up his shield and so managed to deflect my blade. The Heavenly
Mines, cramph, where you will slave until you die!
These guards would know the Heavenly Mines by hearsay only, by their fearful reputation. There was
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