The Quest of Kadji

And what if death be dark and near,

And we be toys wherewith Cods play?

Though night be cold and filled with fear,

A man can die but once, they say!

—Road Song of the Kozanga Nomads

i. The Dreams

THE DARKNESS was deep and numb and thick, and in it there were no sounds or sights or feelings. Not even memories could penetrate the numb black womb which cradled him. It was like what a tree must feel in the blind and tongueless silence, in the deep slow half-sleep of vegetable existence.

After a time there were visions, or dreams, but they were confused and scattered and meant nothing to him. There were faces that bent over him through a red blur, the white face of a girl with frightened eyes, and an old man’s face, long-jawed and knobby and remarkably unhandsome, with yellow skin and sad, slant black eyes.

And voices, too, dim whispers, like the echoes of far converse. It seemed that people were arguing, something about whether or not to move him or to let him lie. The girl was saying that they must get him under shelter or he would freeze to death on the cold ground; the little old man said that be was nine-tenths dead as it was, for the point of the sword had nipped the lungs, and with every breath he was drowning in his own blood, and that to move him even a little would be to kill him on the spot; no, no, they would have to drag a tent over him, and leave him lying where he was … and then the voices faded away and although he could blurrily see the lips moving he could bear nothing, nothing at all.

THEN, A LONG while later, after he had spent a measureless eternity of frozen cold, there was warmth, slow golden warmth, baking deep into the chill that bound him. He basked in it thankfully, feeling the cold seep out of his body, drop by drop and he drowsily let his eyelids flutter and fall open and he could see warm red firelight dancing against the roof of a tent and painting huge monstrous black moving shadows. And there was someone by him, someone near, and he looked up at a long grey-furred muzzle, a wet black nose, and an open mouth with white fangs a-glisten and a long pink tongue.

The grey-furred face looked down at him with mute, questioning eyes, and sniffed at his face, and then the rasping pink tongue licked his face and he laughed a little weakly … but that started the coughing again, the slow horrible racking coughing that he had lived with so long and had forgotten between sleeps, and a dirty, thin-faced girl with unkempt red hair came quickly to shoo away the dog—or was it a wolf ?—and to hold the wet cloth at his nostrils so that he breathed again the good, clean, astringent spicy smell that seemed to dull the red pain in his lungs and to sooth the slow, racking fit of coughs… .

THEY WERE very strange, the dreams, each one different from the one he remembered before, and somehow he could not seem to summon the wits to piece them together into a fabric of meaning. It was like one of those painted puzzles sawn in many small segments that children piece together in play: but he could not seem to fit the pieces together. They remained bright, meaningless scraps.

There was another dream, filled with pain. He could not breathe; it was as if a hill was mounded upon his chest, and the pain of it, the heavy crushing weight, the close, stifling warmth, forced him to struggle up from the black sleep into the light again. And there was a girl bending over him, the same girl from before, he thought, although much thinner, with great dark hollows beneath the eyes, and a thin, pinched, colorless mouth. She held a bright thing in her hands, cradled it, like a glowing coal. And behind her was the thin sallow-faced little man, mere skin and bones he was now, and there was fear written on his face. He was saying that it could not be done—whatever it was—and the girl, grim and tight around the mouth, kept repeating that it could and that it must, for he was drowning in his own blood … she kept muttering that strange phrase over and over again, like a curse, or a prayer.

The old man was trying to stop her, to seize her wrists, but she turned a fierce bright intolerable gaze on him that; made him shrink away into a huddle.

“I am guilty,” the girl said in a hard voice. “If he dies, I have killed him. For I was stupid and wrong and stubborn, and he was right—we should have left the camp at once, not lingered arguing until that black rogue of a Perushka dog struck him treacherously from behind with a knife.”

And then she bent over him and did the thing she meant to do, and he felt a pain beyond all of the other intervals of pain, bright, blinding, incredible … and the blackness came again, and the deep sleep, and there were no dreams for a long time thereafter.

HE FELT like a drowning man must: the sleep that engulfed him was like a black, lightless sea, from which he emerged at intervals into the dim light of day, to gulp a breath or two of air before sinking below the suffocating waves again.

Once again he came swimming slowly up out of the black sea of sleep into the daylight, they were arguing.

“This person must remind the young woman that she has not slept in two days. She cannot long continue in this manner, or old Akthoob will have two invalids on his hands… .”

“I am fine; this is the crisis; if he comes through this night safely, then he may yet mend … but it takes great concentration … I must guide his sleeping body to repair itself, for flesh can heal, and bone can mend, but the lung …”

The girl, he saw fuzzily, was kneeling beside him, her face blank and dead, her gaze turned inwardly. A small spiral of green smoke crept from a pot clasped between her knees and as she breathed in this spicy smoke it seemed to him that her spirit departed from its house of flesh and left only—vacancy.

Over her thin shoulder he saw the long bony face of the old man. Slitted black eyes were narrowed thoughtfully, and his mouth was pursed as in distaste.

The old man said, in a low muttering voice: “Zoromesh … Zoromesh … it must be that … but why did the girl lie to us?”

None of this made any sense to him, so he let go and sank effortlessly once again down into the black sea of sleep whose smothering waves rose hungrily about him to suck him down to silence and restful ease.

And after this there were no more dreams at all.

ii. Zoromesh

HE OPENED his eyes and gazed incuriously upon strangeness.

There was a rough rocky roof above him, and stalactites dangled therefrom like pendent spears of stone.

Curled up against his side, the great grey wolf slept, its nose buried in its tail, like a huge friendly dog. Bazan, that was the brute’s name, he remembered.

He lay quite comfortably on folded blankets, and saddlebags were heaped behind him, and be felt warm and cozy. A great lassitude enveloped him. There was no urgency in anything, no importance, and no hurry. He did not even feel curious, although nothing of what he saw around him did he at once understand.

Somewhere behind him, further back in the cave, a horse blew out its breath and stamped restlessly. He remembered that he had owned a horse once, a black Feridoon pony, but he could not recall its name or what had become of it.

The air about him was pleasantly cool and fresh, although it did savor somewhat of unwashed wolf, horse, and man-sweat. A fire was crackling off to his left, and he turned his head to look at it. Someone with patient labor had scooped out a hollow place in the hard-packed, rocky, earthen floor of the cave, lined it carefully with smooth flat stones, and a small neat fire of spicy wood and dry leaves crackled merrily thereupon. The blue smoke that rose from the flames smelled deliciously of pungent herbs.

A bracket of tough black wood was built above the flames, and a thick earthenware pot was suspended just above the fire. Within it some fluid seethed and bubbled. It was a good sound; a pleasant, homey sound. He remembered his mother’s cookfire, that time the sword-brethren had wintered in the black mountains of Maroosh, where the Kozanga clans held a permanent settlement for the womenfolk and the younger children. Her hearth had been like this: warm, clean-swept, good-smelling.

Then a girl, bent over, came through the low opening of the cave, which was covered by a hanging fur. She came into the cave, glanced at him, saw that his eyes were open but made no comment, bent over the fire and examined the contents of the earthen pot.

She was thin and gaunt, as if she had not eaten well in some time, and there were dark hollows and circles under her eyes as if she had gone long without sleep. Her thin body was muffled in heavy glossy furs, but the crudely made jacket was open, so it was not very cold outside. Beneath the furs she wore a threadbare man’s tunic, much too large for her, and very patched.

Using her fur mittens for pot-holders she took the earthen container from its hook above the fire and brought it over to where he lay. She muttered a curt word, and the grey wolf stirred, got up, and slunk out of the cave, nosing its way through the flap of the fur covering that shielded the entrance. Then the thin, worn girl knelt at his side and held the pot to his lips.

“Drink,” she said, and he drank. The fluid was steaming hot and had a rich, spicy taste, and green flakes of some herb were thickly scattered over the surface of the fluid. He drank in slow, deep gulps, and the drink was pungent and volatile. It seemed to explode to hot piney vapor the instant it touched his tongue, and the steaming vapor filled his head—he could feel it clear back in his sinuses—and then expanded through his brain until it seemed that his skull was a tight-stretched balloon filled with hot, pungent smoky flavor. His mind, which had been sleepy and blurred, cleared magically. His eyes brightened; blood pulsed through his body, carrying the influence of the magic herbal tea through every portion of his being, until from head to toe he felt tinglingly alive.

She took the pot away, wiped his lips on a scrap of rag; and he looked up into her face and said, “Thyra.”

She gasped—it was almost a cry—and all but dropped the earthen pot. A rustle came from behind him, and the old man came shuffling out, wrapped in a blanket His queue was disarranged, his eyes puffy, and he looked as if he had been asleep.

“What is it?” the old man demanded querulously. “Is he dead?”

The girl looked down at Kadji, immense eyes shadowed with a wondrous, heartbreaking relief.

“He is well … well … he knew me, and called my name …”

Kadji was about to say something then, but just at that moment he fell asleep again.

WHEN HE next awoke it seemed to be evening, for no light seeped through the fur across the cave mouth to paint the rocky roof with radiance. Kadji found himself stripped to the waist and the old man—Akthoob, he remembered his name now—was sponging his torso with hot soapy water. He blinked at the Easterling and essayed a sketchy grin. It was a feeble excuse for a smile, and it stretched the skin of his cheeks in such a. manner that he guessed it had been rather a long time since he had last smiled, but it delighted Akthoob. The long bony yellow face split in an enormous toothy grin and the slitted black eyes almost vanished.

“This person assumes you are feeling much better, yes?” the old man asked, bobbing and ducking his head happily. Kadji said that he felt fine.

They talked for a little, in a lazy fashion, while Akthoob carefully washed and dried his body and then covered him with soft blankets again. Kadji mentioned something about his dreams, knowing now that they must have been lucid wakeful intervals between coma and fever-spasms.

“I remember one dream,” he said vaguely. “Thyra was performing a sort of ritual or prayer over me, and you were shaking your head in a disapproving fashion.”

“Ah, yes?”

“Umm. You kept saying something, Zoromesh, that’s it; Zoromesh, Zbromesh. I couldn’t understand what you meant, nor why the name of Thyra’s province should disturb you so … it puzzled me for the longest while, in a dim sort of way.”

“Ah. Hem. This person suggests that if you are very careful you might roll over upon your honorable face so that your back might be cleansed,” murmured Akthoob politely, as if he had not heard. His eyes were evasive, and he seemed distinctly uncomfortable.

“Where are we, anyway, old man?” the boy warrior asked dreamily, while Akthoob sponged his back clean.

“A small cave in the Thirty Hills, ten leagues east of the Perushka encampment This person and the lady Thyra carried you here in one of the gypsy wains, when you were well enough to travel. The cold, you see. We feared to expose you to it for long …”

“I would have thought the Perushka dogs would have slain us all, after I fell,” Kadji mumbled sleepily. Akthoob giggled.

“That would have been a very great miracle—this person thinks! The honorable Kadji does not remember, but ere he succumbed to his wounds he slew no fewer than thirty Perushka men … the few that were left bundled up their wives and children into the wains and rode off screaming a demon was among them armed with an awful glittering axe!” Akthoob giggled at the memory.

“Did I … really slay … thirty men?” Kadji mumbled, half asleep. But before hearing the answer he dozed off again, made sleepy by the snug warmth of the cave and the hypnotic rhythm of the old Easterling’s rubbing hands upon his, back.

But he remembered the word: Zoromesh; and he intended to pursue the mystery when next he awoke.

iii. In the Hills

THE NEXT week or so he mended slowly. He did not sleep as much, and they gave him much rare meat to eat, and even a little wine, and he was permitted, after a while, to sit up, to stand, and even to walk a bit, though walking tired him rapidly.

Kadji understood that he had been terribly ill for a long time; so ill that for fifteen straight days he had hovered on the brink of the Dark Kingdom of Death, and the two had labored night and day, sleeping in shifts, fighting to keep him alive.

He assumed it had been Akthoob who had saved him, for he thought a wizard would have knowledge of the healing arts; but no, it had been Thyra. The girl had nursed him with endless solicitude, to the peril of her own health. He felt vaguely surprised that a gently reared Princess of the Blood had such mastery of healing, but he remembered that Zoromesh was famous for its witches—White Witches they were, thinkers and healers, not worshippers of evil—and perchance the girl had learned somewhat of their art in her childhood. Akthoob became very unhappy whenever he raised the question, or mentioned Zoromesh, and when once he let fall a casual word about the White Witches, the old man went pale as parchment and changed the subject so abruptly as to be rude.

Kadji filed this small puzzle away, too, under the heading of Mysteries To Be Explored Later.

He had been ill for two full months. His mouth tightened grimly at the news, and he frowned. Shamad was gone now beyond all hope of finding. There were ten thousand places in the wide-wayed world in which the Impostor could have hidden himself, so the Quest, if not actually ended, was at least made futile now… .

In those two months the worst of winter had passed, and when Kadji was permitted out of the cave he saw that spring was near. Gnarled old treees and withered black shrubs grew near the mouth of the snug little cave, and bright green buds stirred upon them. And here and there upon the rounded low hummocks of the old hills, where patches of dirty snow were slowly shrinking, green young blades of grass were thrusting up through the bare, scabrous soil. Grey skies and lowering clouds were giving way to clear blue skies and the gusty wind brought the smell of fresh grass and sunshine.

Further east by some leagues was a city and to it they intended, when Kadji was strong enough to ride. They had lived through the winter in the cave, Akthoob and Thyra taking turns at hunting, and the great wolf, Bazan, proving himself the finest huntsman of them all. It had been hard—grim and desperate at times—that winter, but it was almost over.

Every day now Kadji exercised in the sun. He had emerged from the darkness of his long sleep as pale as a sickly child; but weeks, of exercise in the sunshine and fresh air put meat on his bones, toughened his weak sinews, and bronzed him with his usual tan.

A tenderness had grown up between the boy and girl. Their eyes met often, and they laughed together much, although they, did not speak to one another for the curious shyness that grew between them. Kadji had no experience with women; Thyra was virtually the first woman since his long-dead mother whom he had known on any terms of intimacy. At times Thyra was gay and laughing with him, her face no longer thin and worn, but flushed and bright-cheeked; at times she seemed sad, moody and withdrawn and even abrupt. It was as if she expected something from him, a word, a look, a touch, that would prove the overture to affection. If so, the gesture was not forthcoming, and at times she seemed puzzled and hurt by his lack of response.

Kadji did not understand her feelings at first; he was baffled by her changeful moods, and grew angry sometimes when she was silent with him. He wanted her always to be laughing, always gay and happy. When it dawned on him that she was waiting for him to make an overture, he became most unhappy. It was not that she did not excite and stimulate him, for she did. But he was sworn to a sacred Quest, and a vow of chastity was upon him. In Kadji’s zealous and perhaps over-strict interpretation of the meaning of that vow, even a gesture or token of affection was forbidden. For it seemed to him that there was no very great difference between the physical act of love and a tender word or gesture of love: hence his vow forbade him from either.

He grew puzzled that she could not understand this, for surely she knew he bore with him the sacred honor of his people and could not act as he wished. He was not a free agent, but a bound man. Why could the stubborn girl not see this and stop mooning at him one moment and snapping rudely at him the next?

From feeling puzzled he came to feel hurt and from thence to feeling angry with her, and he exhibited a bit of rudeness himself, from time to time. Old Akthoob sighed dismally, seeing the growing gulf of silence and misunderstanding between the young people, and reflected sadly that to be young is to be terribly vulnerable; it was better, he thought, on the whole, to be old and be past such storms and furies.

But the wise old wizard said nothing to either of them. He had his reasons. He suspected a terrible truth about the girl but it was not his secret to divulge. Besides, although he did not think so, he might be wrong.

The next morning they awoke to find Thyra gone.

iv. Ambar

SHE MUST have arisen before dawn, saddled her grey mare, packed her clothing, weapons and provisions, and ridden off with the great plains-wolf loping like a shadowy phantom at her side. She had left no message, no explanation.

Kadji was grimly silent. He had by this time recovered most of his strength and expressed his determination to press on to the town of Ambar which lay further east; there they could pause before deciding whether to continue east on a trail now months old, or give up the Quest altogether.

The old Easterling wizard did not ask why this decision could not be reached here in the hills. He guessed that this cave bore too many reminders of the girl Thyra, too many memories, for Kadji to endure, They rode east on the Grand Chemedis Road under skies clear and fresh and across a world quickening with the green impulse of spring,

Ambar was a squalid huddle of hovels woven through with reeking alleys, dominated by the hulking ruins of a fallen wall and the time-eaten wreckage of a mighty citadel. Once this had been a provincial outpost of the great world-conquering Horde, but that was ages ago, when Chemedis, City of the Kings, had been young and rich and powerful. That age had long-since passed, the two travelers knew, and although a shrunken remnant of the Chemed Horde yet lurked in the half-ruined, half-deserted metropolis of Chemedis itself, many leagues to the east, all of this portion of the vanished empire had been abandoned for centuries and was given over to wilderness.

They found an inn in Ambar where they could stay and house their steeds, but no one knew aught of any travelers before them. They lingered a time, Kadji grim and sullen, old Akthoob dismal and unhappy, wondering what to do. And then occurred a diversion.

Merchant caravans still used the Grand Chemedis Road, of course. The mighty highway spanned half a continent, and on their year-long journeys between the raw young kingdoms of the west and the ancient and decadent empires of the east, there was no better route than the massive way of paven road that had been constructed in the golden days of the first and mightiest of the great Ja Chans of the Horde.

Some of these merchants were of Akthoob’s own people, as their yellow skin, black queues, and slitted eyes attested. During long evenings in the inn of Ambar, the old wizard conversed with his countrymen, and one evening he came to Kadji quivering with excitement.

“It is an odd tale, but this lowly one suggests there may be something of interest therein,” he puffed, black eyes a-glitter with suppressed eagerness. Kadji bade him speak on.

The tale was shadowy and elusive, but it hinted at something that made Kadji’s blue eyes sparkle. Far to the east, in the half-ruined splendor of Chemedis where the vapid, enfeebled, and powerless descendant of the world-whelming Ja Chans of old held his shrunken court, a mysterious and unknown being had materialized out of nowhere and had rapidly risen to a position of enormous influence. No man knew the history of the nameless one, nor from what dim corner of this world of Gulzund he had come, but he claimed to be a messiah returned from out of ancient time to awaken the weak and languid and decadent Horde to its golden days of former greatness.

Old Chemedian prophecies whispered that a messiah would come after ages of time—a Masked Prophet who would rouse the Chemed warriors again, and place the descendant of the Ja Chans upon the world-spanning throne of his ancestors. Kamon-Thaa, the God worshipped by the Hordesmen, would lend him magical powers. And this prophecy had come to pass!

“When did this Masked Prophet appear in Chemedis?” asked Kadji, frowning.

Akthoob told him, and the boy warrior did some quick calculations. The date of the messiah’s appearance was about the time Shamad could be expected to have reached Chemedis, had he in fact traveled on into the east, instead of turning back. And it was not unlike the clever opportunist, having won but failed to hold one throne, to gamble for another… .

“I suppose it could be him,” the boy muttered. “But have you any other reason to suspect the Masked Prophet to be our quarry, beyond the mere coincidence of dates?”

Akthoob had indeed. “As proof of his god-given and sorcerous powers, the Prophet goes ever accompanied by a tame and subservient demon … a Serpent Demon, this person has been told … and Yakthuul the caravan-master, the source of this information, has seen this strange and hellish monster, and describes him shudderingly as hulking and anthropoid, but glittering in blue scales—”

“—Zamog!” Kadji exclaimed. “It must be he!”

Akthoob nodded, a smile of satisfaction on his thin lips.

“So this lowly one surmised,” he purred.

v. Caravan Trail

KADJI WAS elated with this clue to Shamad’s whereabouts, although it would pose a bit of a problem to pluck his enemy from amidst the court of the Ja Chan. That problem, however, they would face when they came to it. But the assumption that the Masked Prophet of Kamon-Thaa and Shamad the Impostor were one and the same man was too logical to overlook, and worth a trip to Chemedis to investigate.

Akthoob arranged passage for his friend and himself with his fellow countryman, Yakthuul, whose caravan was bound east on the Grand Chemedis Road and would pause for a time in the city of the Ja Chan before continuing further east and north to the kingdoms at the world’s remote edge. They had little gold left, but Yakthuul could always use a wizard to read the omens and ward off evil spirits, and another warrior handy with axe and sword was always welcome, as there were bandits aplenty who devoted their time to raiding the infrequent but always wealthy merchant caravans. Thus they rode out of the little town of Ambar under a grey and bleak dawn.

Yakthuul the caravan master was fat and sleepy-eyed and rode in a comfortable carriage drawn by the shaggy little ponies of the eastern plains. This was due not only to his fondness for the bodily comforts but because he was too fat to sit astride a horse. Kadji held little converse with the merchant, who had a sort of suave contempt for the raw young kingdoms of the west, and considered Nomads of the plains like Kadji little better than barbarians, devoid of culture or history. But Akthoob was often invited to partake of the merchant princeling’s hospitality and came reeling back to the little tent he shared with the Red Hawk much the worse for liquor, night after night. Yakthuul, it seemed, was given to a potent beverage common in the kingdoms of the east, but unknown in the west. This powerful liquor was distilled from a fruit wine and was a heady intoxicant.

It was on one of these evenings when Akthoob had imbibed a bit more freely than was his wont, that Kadji conceived of a clever plan. The boy warrior thought often of the flamehaired girl, Thyra, and of the mysteries surrounding her, and the enigma of her true identity. He was convinced that the old Easterling wizard knew or suspected her secret, although he concealed it from Kadji and would not divulge it. Thus one chilly night in early spring when they had been riding the caravan trail for two weeks, and Akthoob returned to their tent very much the worse for the potent alcoholic beverage, Kadji got him talking and maneuvered the direction of the conversation toward the girl Thyra and the surprising knowledge of the healing arts she had displayed when he lay ill almost to the point of death from the terrible wounds he had sustained in the camp of the villainous Perushka.

“Odd that a Princess of the Blood should know how to care for an injured man with such skill,” he said, when the garrulous and drunken old wizard had begun to talk of Thyra.

“Ah, more than odd, yes,” murmured Akthoob sleepily. “This humble person knows little enough of the healing science, but he knows that it is performed with herbs and elixirs, not with …” and here he used a word which meant ‘the-sending-forth-of-the-soul’ “…‘twas White Magic the young woman used, not medicine … aii, she is not what she did seem to be, although this one cannot guess why she did lie to us… .”

It came out slowly that Akthoob suspected Thyra was not the Princess she had claimed to be, but one of the White Witches of Zoromesh! Kadji bit his lips, and murmured more questions into the ear of the sleepy old wizard.

“The honorable youth could not speak of his love for the maiden for his vows forbid it … aye, but little did he suspect that the same holds true for the young woman, if indeed she be of the Zoromesh covens … for they are sworn to perpetual virginity.”

Kadji suppressed a gasp of amazement. Sudden understanding flooded his mind: it was not to be wondered at, that a wall of silence and misunderstanding had risen between him and the girl, forming a breach between them.

He, sworn to chastity for the duration of his sacred Quest, could not display the growing love he felt for the flamehaired girl … and She, sworn to virginity by the vows of her sorcerous sisterhood, was equally bound. But—neither had known of the other’s vow; and both misunderstood the silence between them for lack of response!

He groaned and bit off a savage curse. O, the folly of it all!

Each, bound by vows which forbade the expression of the affection they felt, had not understood the other to be similarly bound—had not understood why the other had not expressed that affection—had grown hurt, then angry, then bitter.

Kadji put his head in his hands. Thyra was gone and he would not find her again in the wide-wayed world. She would never realize that he, too, felt the stirrings of love. The irony of the dilemma was cruel. But life itself is cruel, as the boy warrior was beginning to discover.

vi. The White Witches

THE NEXT morning they rose, Akthoob with an aching head and a queasy stomach, feebly swearing that never again would he imbibe so freely of Yakthuul’s fiery brandy.

They breakfasted over a smoky fire and Kadji confessed that he had pried the truth out of his comrade the night before. Akthoob was glum and dispirited, and not entirely from the after-effects of his drinking the night before. He had hoped to spare the boy’s feelings by keeping from him his suspicions that Thyra was an impostor and had lied to them.

Horns blew from the forefront of the caravan, and creaking wains began drawing into line for the days’ journey. They hastily crushed out their fire, saddled up, and mounted to join the wagontrain. As they rode in the wake of a huge wain, Akthoob miserably revealed the full weight of his suspicions.

“This miserable person suspects the purposes of the noble young woman, although he has not dared to give words to them ere this,” he muttered. “Now they matter nor, nor can they deal the honorable Kadji greater hurt than his heart has already sustained.”

He then, in his flowery and indirect mode of speech, explained the whole story for the first time.

The wizards and sorcerers and magicians of this world of Gulzund, he told Kadji, are organized into various fraternities and guilds, among them being the White Sisterhood of Zoromesh.

Although his homeland lay very far to the east, in the northern land of Zool which lay above the Yan Than Mountains near the Frozen Country, and though he had not previously visited the world’s west, old Akthoob knew by reputation of this Sisterhood.

The motives of the White Witches were shadowy and mysterious, even to their brother magicians. But it was known that from time to time they intervened in the great affairs at the center of the world’s stage, for reasons unguessable, and then returned again to the seclusion of their remote and secret sororities. Akthoob had surmised that for some reason the Sisterhood had interested itself in the dynastic troubles of imperial Khôr, and had dispatched the girl Thyra, disguised as a Dragon Princess, to make contact with the Emperor Yakthodah.

But Akthoob could not hazard a guess as to the purpose of her mission, nor did Kadji greatly care.

It was enough to know that she had lied to him.

But the question remained unanswered, was she his friend or his enemy?

True, she had nursed him back to health, which is something one seldom does for a foeman. But that the motive for that action might have been an obscure sense of obligation, since it had been, to some degree, her fault that he had been cut down by the swarthy Perushka rogues in the first place.

Had she been sent to build an alliance of power between the mysterious White Witches of westernmost Zoromesh and the Dragon Throne? Or had it been her purpose to expose Shamad for a rank impostor?

She had told Kadji she meant to expose and thus destroy him, but Kadji could no longer trust anything she had said to be the truth, since she had lied about being a Princess of the House of Turmalin.

And one lie—discovered—throws question on a thousand truths.

He rode on all that day frowning in sullen thought, his mind a weary turmoil of conflicting emotions. If ever they met again, would it be as enemies—or allies?

vii. City of the Ja Chan

THEY PASSED half a moon on the long road into the mysterious and little-known realms of the east, and early summer was come.

Golden Khôr was far behind him now, and the Nomad plains of his people even further remote. He felt lost and alone amidst an unknown world, as if the plain-lands that had been his home had become lost in the mists of the far distance.

Now he traveled among a people strange and alien to him: a dwarfish folk with yellow faces, slant eyes and shaven pates, who rode curious shaggy ponies with braided manes and who went garbed in fantastic armor of lacquered and gilded leather, with conical helmets of polished copper. They spoke a strange tongue and worshipped alien gods, and among them, in these strange weird lands of the remote east, he felt very much the stranger.

Akthoob, however, was his constant companion, and during the long days and nights they followed in the train of the mighty caravan of Yakthuul the merchant, the kindly old wizard patiently instructed him in the intricacies of the eastern tongue. It was bafflingly different from the language of the west, but he mastered enough of it to hold at least a halting converse with the bandy-legged little men about him.

It felt odd to Kadji to find himself a stranger, for all his life had been spent among people of his own kind who spoke his own tongue and knew the same ways. He recalled when first be had encountered Akthoob, many months ago and many leagues to the west, in the House of the seven Moons in. distant Khôr. Then the little Easterling wizard had been the stranger; now their positions were reversed, and it was Kadji, with his rangy height, his length of leg, his pale skin and straight eyes and starting thatch of yellow hair, who was the stranger.

He felt lost and alone here on the other side of the world. The world was vaster than he had guessed, and amid its endless leagues, he dwindled to a minute fleck upon a huge and unexplored chart. And his all-important mission, the redeeming of the sacred honor of his clan, dwindled into insignificance and he must be constantly reminding himself of the importance of his Quest. In truth it was hard, for now he moved in a world that had never heard of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads, and to whom the holy Axe of Thom-Ra, and in verity Thom-Ra himself, were meaningless names.

IT WAS thus, in a mood of alienage and strangerhood, that Kadji came to the king city of the once-mighty Horde, and found the gates of immemorial Chemedis opening before him.

The city was vast and bewildering, but to every hand lay the evidence of an advanced and glorious civilization. Khôr, for all its imperial magnificence, could have been tucked away in one corner of Chemedis and been easily lost.

All of red stone was the old city built, or if not, then the masonry was sheathed in red plaster. The buildings were immense and complicated warrens, almost minor cities in themselves, each crowned with spires and minarets as thickly set as the boles of a forest. The walls of Chemedis were so enormous that entire regiments were housed within them, together with stables and granaries, barracks and kitchens,

The architecture was bewildering in its multiform complexity: great, sleepy-lidded faces of stone gazed down from the eight-sided towers; fantastic dragon-hybrids writhed entangled coils above portal and arch; many-armed and beast-headed gods thronged the paven ways, lining entire avenues in rank on rank of carven stone idols so innumerable as to suggest pantheons as populous as dysasties.

For all its size and splendor, the city was a half-deserted ruin. The entire southern half lay mouldering in decay; kingly mansions were gutted shells; great twisted trees grew in the midst of avenues where once Hordes had marched forth to the conquest of half the world, A once-sophisticated and urban people had degenerated to greasy-faced savages, squatting in filthy hovels built amidst the wreckage of immense palaces their own ancestors had reared. The black oil smoke of cook-fires rose beside ragged tents; naked yellow children ran through paven ways buried beneath centuries of filth; statues lay fallen to fragments; fires had consumed entire suburbs and had burnt out, exhausting their flames against walls of imperishable marble.

Amidst the vast sprawling metropolis rose the Sun Palace, the residence of the Ja Chan. It dwarfed every other structure in all the magnificent city, and it was still an imposing edifice despite centuries of neglect and decay. One entire wing of the enormous palace had collapsed over the interval of ages, and miles of what had once been immaculately tended gardens had been transformed by neglect into an untamed forest, almost a jungle. Kadji and Akthoob strode into the Sun Palace through a portal that reared thirty yards above their heads and into a hall so vast that the eye could not discern the roof thereof. Beggars and shamans camped in the very hall of the monarch, and Kadji saw alcoves that had become reeking latrines, shrines where now unkempt ponies were stabled, and withered crones huddled in filthy tents that had been made out of superb tapestries. The black smoke of camp fires rose here and there amidst the infinity of the colossal hall to add their grime to columns and architraves black with centuries of filth. The squalor and decay was indescribable; the noise and confusion abominable; and the stench beyond words.

The Ja Chan was fat and giggling, painted like a harlot, and covered with flashing gems. He squatted like a huge toad atop a dais covered with priceless carpets, heaped with cushions, over which a golden canopy was stretched. Once that canopy had blazed like the sun and billowed like a cloud; now it was filthy and tattered.

The Ja Chan hardly noticed their obeisance and nodded absently as Yakthuul deposited a silver-bound casket of treasure on the lowest step. He was busy plucking gobbets of some sweet paste from a battered platinum urn with fat, jewelled, dirty fingers, and stuffing them between the rosy painted lips of several beautiful little boys who lolled or squatted nakedly around his cushioned nest. As the boy-concubines giggled and slobbered, licking the sugary paste from his fat hands, Kadji looked away in disgust … and promptly forgot the nauseating squalor and license of this degenerate court in a blinding instant of revelation.

HE QUITTED the presence of the toadlike Ja Chan and happily gained the freshness of open air and clean sunlight again. His head was held high and glory shone in his clear eyes,

The dark time was ended; the feverish and worrisome days, the nights of confusion and torment, of mysteries and enigmas. The enigmas were over and done. The shadows that had clustered about him so long, blurring his sense of purpose, darkening the bright clarity of his mission, all, these were now dispersed as swamp-mists are driven away by the rays of the risen sun.

He stood tall and heroic under the blaze of the eastern sun, and he was fit and whole again. Pattering along beside him, hands tucked in the long sleeves of his capacious robe, Akthoob chattered with excitement and nervousness, for the scrawny, faithful little Easterling wizard had seen what Kadji had seen there in the shadows of that abominable throne.

For there on the right hand of the Ja Chan of the Chemed. Horde had stood Shamad the Impostor … and the Quest of Kadji was nearly at its end!

Shoulders back, head high, one hand resting lovingly on the handle of the Axe of Thom-Ra, the boy warrior, Kadji, the Red Hawk of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads, strode forth under the burning sun of the World’s Edge at last to face his destiny.

Or his doom.