Malkus cackled again, his thin screech of indecent mirth echoing through the chamber. "Behold virtue aroused," he mouthed in glee.
I rounded upon him swiftly. "You mock me, my Lord?"
He shrugged but vouched me no other answer. I rose to my feet. With steady hands I unfastened the buckle of my sword belt and drew it from around me.
"Since, Great One, it seems that I am no longer worthy of your trust, I will give back into your hands this symbol of my office. I was naught but a plain soldier, and a soldier am I content to be. Little do I know of government policies, but in my thoughts it is clear that a scapegoat is desired for some matter of state. If I can serve Yu-Lac best by my personal disgrace, I stand ready for orders. For I know that I have been faithful in all things to the best of my ability."
"Now that, my Lords, can be said by few in Yu-Lac today," a voice sped clear across the room. I turned.
In the doorway stood a man of my own years, a Learned One by his dress. But even among the Great Ones I have known but three others with his air of powerful self-control. The Lady Thrala had it, and the Emperor, and—Kepta. But the Koomian's was an alien power unlike the others. Who this newcomer might be I did not know, but that which is the innermost part of me, the indestructible part, recognized and hailed a leader of men.
"Greetings, Thran," the Emperor arose.
"And to you, Sire, be peace. Let all be well with you, my Lords.”
With easy grace he crossed the room to stand beside me.
"And now what is this I have chanced upon? Why does the noble captain hand back his sword? With what may any man living reproach Garan of Yu-Lac?"
"But a short while ago," I said bitterly, "I too might have asked an answer to that last question of yours, my Lord."
His eyes met mine and I felt a certain warmth spread through me.
"I have watched you, Lord Garan. And speaking freely before this council I say that there is no other man within the bounds of the inner sea in whom I would sooner place my trust. Thran of Gorl says it!"
The Emperor smiled, a wintery cleft in his mask. 'Take up your sword, my Lord. Where proof of wrongdoing is lacking, there can be no arguments for or against a man. But it would be well to get to the heart of this matter, for your own sake. A word spoken into the ear of a wise man is more to be heeded than the whisper of a passing breeze."
Thoroughly bewildered by this sudden about-face, I buckled on my belt and dropped to one knee to touch the floor before the council.
"Have I your leave to depart, Great One?"
The Emperor nodded. I turned to go but somehow I knew Thran's eyes were on my back until I stepped from the chamber. Some game, whose stake or purpose I could not fathom, had been played, or perchance the play had just begun. But that I was a piece in the game I had no doubt.
Still puzzling over that strange meeting in the Hall and the Emperor's parting words, I turned aside into the gardens instead of returning directly to the landing stage and my flier.
Clearly I had been ordered to set my house in order and produce the person or persons responsible for the appearance of the Koomian documents among my records. I must, without delay, set in motion my secret machinery of observation and deduction.
But my thoughts kept wandering back to the idea that someone had attempted to discredit me with the council, tried to so force me out of my position. That could mean only one thing—I was a menace. The Air Ministers, with their ever-growing power, or Kepta of Koom, from whom every drop of blood within me shrank in revulsion—which moved against me now? For the past year I had been burrowing into the secrets of both, striving to uncover the mysterious something which I knew lay there waiting to be discovered.
Somewhere on Krand there was a center of disturbance responsible for every frontier outbreak, every rising of the city mobs, even for the infrequent air accidents, of that fact I was firmly convinced. But—proof? What man may summon a shadowy feeling to testify in his behalf?
That thought brought curiosity in its wake. Why had Thran of Gorl, whom to my knowledge I had never before set eyes on, come at the exact moment when his speech in my favor could most aid me? I had thought that I was familiar with all the Lords of the Learned Ones, but he was a stranger. And yet a man of his personal magnetism and powers should be widely known. Gorl was a rocky island far to the north; it contained no cities of any importance and its population was mostly made up of needy fishermen. Who was Thran of Gorl?
Intent upon this and other problems, I had wandered deeper into the gardens than I had intended. And now I came upon a wide, smooth lawn of thick yellow moss where were gathered a group of ladies watching the antics of a pair of those tiny creatures called Anas. I would have retreated at once but one of the maids, catching sight of me, called out:
"My Lord, take pity on our plight. San-san's Ana has fled into the bushes and will not come out because these two evil ones have pulled its fur. There it lingers crying. Will you rescue the poor thing for us?"
It was Analia who so called to me, Anatan's younger sister, the daughter of an old and noble military family. Now, at her asking, I dropped my hindering cloak and doffed my helmet before, encouraged by their cries, I pushed into the thick bushes.
The Ana came to me without urging and I brought it out in triumph, my hair sadly ruffled and a couple of long scarlet scratches across my forearm. These Analia was pleased to exclaim over and nothing would do but I must be borne off into a neighboring glade where there was a fountain and my trifling hurts could be looked to.
In their artless company I forgot something of my ever-present worries. I had never really been young or enjoyed the delights of thoughtless youth. On my fifteenth name day I had assumed the place and troubles of a man, and since that day I had never relaxed for a single hour my vigilance against a world which I knew by hard-won experience to be a difficult place in which to exist. But now, for a short half hour, in the company of the court maidens, I recaptured a slender portion of that unexperienced youth.
It was ended all too soon. But I did not begrudge it because of that ending. Through the slender fronds of the fern trees came one I knew well.
Thrala of the Learned Ones stood smiling at us.
Every ripple of her black hair seemed to net itself about my heart and the wonder of her held me numb. I was content to stand and watch the play of expression on her face as her ladies with cries of joy-filled pleasure gathered about her.
Chapter Three
The Sotan Pleasure Palace
"Greetings, my Lord Garan." She smiled into my eyes.
"And to you, Flower of Yu-Lac." I touched the hand she held out to me to lips and forehead.
"You have neglected us, my Lord. Do the cares of your office weigh so heavily upon you that you cannot grant us an hour or two of your company?"
I stood agape, unable to summon my wits in quick reply to this gentle mockery. "I am, as always, at your command, royal Lady," I stammered.
"Then you will obey me now," she countered swiftly. "Attend me to the Blue Pool, my Lord. I have need of another pair of hands to aid me there. Nay, little ones, stay you here."
So dismissing her maids she led me away with her. But instead of following the path to the Blue Pool, she sought a tiny rockery and there took her place upon the stone bench.
"Sit down, Garan; I have much to say and little enough time in which to say it. First—let me look at you. How long? Three years, is it not? I can even tell you the number of hours in the days. Why were you not born—? But enough! You have done well for yourself, Garan."
"Only because—" I began eagerly, but her soft fingers flew to seal my rebellious lips, barring a rush of rash words.
"Not that, Garan, not that! It is of other things we must speak. You seem to have delved in dangerous pools of knowledge, asked awkward questions of the wrong people. And what have you learned?"
I shrugged. "Little enough. Each path ends at last in a blank barrier."
She nodded. "Oh, they are cl
ever, clever. But you have made something of a beginning. For that—well, watch behind you of nights, Garan. You walk a rotten bridge; be sure that it does not break to plunge you into a gulf. But from this hour forth you shall not fight alone, soldier. Do you know one Thran of Gorl?"
"I looked upon him for the first time an hour ago."
"Thran, like you, has been laying his ear to the ground and so has heard things not meant for him. Twice has his path of secret watching crossed yours and thus he learned that there was another who mistrusted the future. For all of us, Garan, are not idlers and children playing in the sun. Some of us prepare for the coming storm—"
"Then you have some definite idea of what comes?" I broke in eagerly.
"Not yet. There was a new pleasure palace opened in the Sotan district a week ago."
I frowned, bewildered by her swift change of subject "So my aide told me."
"It might be well for you to visit it, Garan."
"But—" I began a hasty protest.
"Oh, it is well enough known that you enter not into such joys, but allow yourself to be persuaded—tonight. Nay, more I cannot say. Be—careful, Garan. Now go and quickly, before my maids come seeking me. Three years, Garan—" Her soft voice trailed away as she sent me from her. I dared not look back.
In a daze created by my own unleashed emotions, I sought the landing stage and my flier. The black ship from Koom still rested there, aloof and striking among the brightly-colored craft which now thronged the surface of the platform, but I spared it no more than a single passing glance. My thoughts were all for that interview and what might lie hidden within those two words of hero—"three years."
I did not come wholly to myself again until my flier landed upon the stage of the defense tower and I saw Ana-tan's boyish figure crossing hurriedly toward me. Then I remembered the promise I had so lightly made him that morning. The impossibility had become true.
"Zacat of Ru has come in, my Lord. He is awaiting you in the wardroom," burst out the young officer almost before my feet had touched the floor of the landing stage.
"Bring him to my private rooms at once!" I ordered.
Ru was the northernmost colony of Yu-Lac's glittering chain of dependencies. For three months of the year its wind-harried plains were well-nigh uninhabitable. But wealth lay in its stark mountains for the taking so we held it in a jealous grip. A line of fortified posts, tiny oases of civilization, were the bounds we had laid upon that grim land.
Zacat was an officer of the old school who controlled both men and country with a heavy, but always just, hand. I trusted him above any other of my under officers. An event serious enough to bring him to Yu-Lac was grave enough to shadow the future. It was with a feeling of sudden cold that I paced my inner chamber awaiting his arrival.
"Hail, Lord." The burly figure in the doorway drew himself up in formal salute.
"Enter, Zacat. I am glad to clasp your hand again. But what fortune brings you out of your snow-rimmed north unheralded?"
"An ill fortune, Garan." He measured me with his eyes as he replied and then, with an air of relief, he added, "It is well. You are no city-dwelling lordling yet. There is no fat, no quivering hand, no murky eye, to betray you. Are you still the lad who followed me into Ulal in the old days?"
"I have not changed, war dog. Nor, I see, have you. Give me an open fight and I will be glad—"
"An open fight!" He grimaced. 'That is what I cannot grant you, by the Hair of the Dark One! What man can battle shadows and win?"
To hear my own thoughts issue from this northern captain was startling.
"What is happening in Ru?"
"Nothing that I can lay my hand upon or it would speedily end, you may be sure," he said significantly. "But there is a growing uneasiness, whisperings I cannot trace to their source, baseless rumors, mutinous talk. I tell you frankly, Garan, today I stand alone in Ru."
"You want help?" I hazarded.
He shook his head. "You should know me better than that, lad. When was I ever one to run whining to my masters? Nay, no help in the material sense. But sometimes two heads upon a problem think better than one. I want to talk freely to the one man in the Empire I may fully trust. There is trouble in Ru, and I cannot smell it out For the first time my every support has failed me—"
"There you do not suffer alone," I cut in narshly.
"What do you mean?"
"Save for you, Anatan of Hoi, and one other"—I thought of her in the garden—"I, too, stand alone today. This morning the Emperor questioned my loyalty."
"What!" He was on his feet, staring at me in outraged amazement.
"It is true. All because, like you, I have tried to sift to its base this mass of intrigue which grows ever heavier throughout Krand. I, too, have been fighting shadows, Zacat."
"So"—he sank down in his seat again—"that is the way of it, eh? Well, lad, it seems to be Ulal over again, but this time we must fight with our wits—not our fists. Let us exchange tale for tale and discover what has been happening these past years since last we stood together."
"Tell me of Ru," I urged him.
He frowned. "It is hard to put into words the feeling which grips me when I go from post to post. On the surface all is well; there is no trouble. The country is at peace with the barbarians; there is no disturbance at the mines. And yet I feel as if I were passing across a bridge, the undersupports of which had been destroyed. The thought haunts me that the heart of this bad business lies naked to the eye if I were only clever enough to find it. It is a demon-conceived business.
"Last month the yield from the Sapit mines was less by ten percent than it should have been. And yet the engineers face me with bland explanations which I have not knowledge enough to question. There have been several hundred suicides within the past three months. The new recruits are in bad condition, mentally, morally, physically. Three beast-men were killed near Headquarter's Fort and there is nothing to show how they were able to penetrate so far into the settled lands without being sighted. Unnatural lights have appeared in the sky and twice a dump of highly flammable ore has been set afire by mysterious means. There is a new secret religion being practiced by the mountaineers. Little things all but, taken together, enough to make a man think deep."
"Whom do you suspect?"
He shrugged and then answered me obliquely. "There was a man from Koom who made a journey through the mountains."
"Koom! Ever Koom!" I brought my fist down on the arm of my chair.
"Aye, ever Koom," he echoed me heavily. "And now, what phantoms do you pursue to no purpose?"
"Bread riots in the province of Kut, due to an unexplained failure of the peestal crop. There was rain in abundance, the soil is the richest in the Empire, but this year the fields were strangely barren. And the Learned Ones did not explain it, at least to me.
"Then there is this new cult of the Wandering Star or some such nonsense. I have had to discipline four of my men for attending its meetings and inciting disturbances afterward. Someone has been smuggling bottles of portucal into the barracks and I have had one man hung for introducing the practice of inhaling the smoke of the rait leaves. You know what that leads to?" He nodded and I continued: "Like you, I feel an interest in Koom. So much of a one that I have set certain machinery in motion during the past three months."
"And the result?" There was eagerness in his demand.
"Exactly nothing. And yet I do not think that the investigators I dispatched there were utter fools."
"Traitors?" he hazarded.
"Perhaps. But what can I do? Within an hour I have been warned to guard my own person. And then this business of finding secret Koomian documents among my records. The Emperor ordered me to produce the man responsible for their being there or answer for the deed myself." I went on to explain to Zacat all that had passed when I stood on trial.
"What do you know of this Thran?" I asked in conclusion.
He shook his head. "Nothing. Gorl is insignificant enough, a fish-s
melling outcrop of rock in the upper sea. I was on garrison duty there once shortly after I accepted the brand. There were no Learned Ones there then at any rate. But the Lord of Gorl has interested himself in your affairs to some purpose. I would keep him in mind. Also, what is Kepta doing here? In the past he has had little liking for the company of his caste-fellows."
"When do you return to Ru?" I asked him suddenly.
"Early tomorrow," he replied in some surprise. "Why do you ask?"
I smiled. "Then tonight you shall be the traditional soldier on holiday—"
"What do you mean?" he cut in.
"Tonight we shall visit together a new pleasure palace in the Sotan quarter."
He eyed me with some disgust. Little did I think that Garan of the Fleet would come to the visiting of pleasure palaces—" he began when I interrupted him.
"We go on a mission. I have reason to believe that there may be certain interesting facts for a discerning man to discover. You should know me better than to doubt me so completely, Zacat."
The puckered lines on his forehead smoothed out "Three years of absolute power and soft living often change a man to his hurt, lad. I did not want to believe you were what your words stamped you."
'Then you will come?"
"And gladly. After 311"—there was sly humor in his tone —"I am not adverse to seeing the interior of a pleasure palace at another's expense."
"Good, it is agreed then. And now, what do you say to holding morning inspection with me?"
"Done! That is more to my taste than all the pleasure palaces in this hothouse city of yours."
So with Anatan and Zacat at my heels I set about my daily rounds. And it seemed to my mind, sharpened as it was by the affair of the morning, that I uncovered enough on that tour to arouse suspicion in the mildest of men. A fraction's delay in carrying out a straight order, a trace of slackness which persisted in spite of my rebukes, a faint beginning of blight upon the crack troops, a certain heady recklessness to be noted in the younger men—I saw it all, and the result brought home to me, as nothing else might, how I, and others like me, stood in the growing shadow of some formless danger.