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come at the right time. Meanwhile, there are the other minerals to be found.”
    “Ornol will be back by nightfall, my Prince.”
    So, with a few cheerfully intended words which sounded dismal even to me, I took myself off. Seg met me in the long hall of the images where, in ivory and chemzite and bronze and marble, the ancient ones of Valka stared endlessly out upon the blue sky of Kregen. His face was reassuring and refreshing to me, but he said, “Dray! The Emperor has arrived and is in a foul temper!”

Chapter 4
    Standards for a regiment and answers for an Emperor
    “We are not well pleased with you, son-in-law.”
    The Emperor looked just the same as when I had last seen him, big and powerful, standing with booted feet thrust firmly on the ground, his back erect, his hands on his hips. He wore a fine Vallian tunic-coat and breeches, and his hat glowed with feathers. He wore a rapier and left-hand dagger, and a cloth-of-gold cape glittered finely, slung from his left shoulder. But the creases at the inner corners of his eyes had grown more deeply etched, and his face showed a pallor that I saw, with a pang, distressed his daughter Delia.
    Across this end of Vorgar’s Drinnik the First Regiment of Valkan Longbowmen stood in their long lines, braced, ready, waiting. They made a fine show. I admit I would far rather deal with them and their like than the gilded popinjays who surrounded the Emperor and his suite, the Pallans and the courtiers, the nobles and the high Koters. I made no direct challenge to the Emperor’s annoyance. He had been feeling his way back to greater power than he had enjoyed for many a long season, and all because I had saved his neck, I and my comrades there in the immortal fight in The Dragon’s Bones.
    So I placidly said, “It is right that the first regiment of this kind formed in Vallia should be honored by their Emperor’s presence at the presentation of the standards.”
    “As to that, Dray Prescot, I agree. But I talk of weightier matters.”
    The zorcas moved gently in the lessening heat of the late afternoon. Soon Zim and Genodras would be gone. Then we could go up into the Great Hall of Esser Rarioch to see what kind of banquet my people could prepare for the Emperor.
    “You do not question my meaning?”
    “I know you have surrounded yourself with men who are not worthy of you.”
    He felt some shock; but I also remembered that this man was the Emperor, the most powerful man in all Vallia, which made him the most powerful man for many dwaburs around in this northern hemisphere of Kregen. He could order me executed. He had already given that order once, and he had not been obeyed. If he tried to tell his men to take off my head now, they would find an abrupt and unyielding wall of Valkan steel — not protecting me but threatening them.
    “You persuaded me to send a great host of men and fliers into Havilfar, son-in-law. A great battle was fought. But what has come of that? Where is the profit? You promised to bring me back vollers, Dray Prescot. Where are they?”
    “You do not speak as I hear the Presidio speaks.”
    The flush in his face deepened. This was an old story: powerful as he was, the governing body held certain authorities that could check him. I knew I had slackened many of those strings — and all men understood the Emperor had been even more firmly seated on the throne — but the Presidio still counted in council. Also, I had to admit I had been rewarded. I was Prince Majister and Kov of this and Strom of that and Zair knew what else in the amazing glitter of titles and lands of Vallia. All this meant nothing. I think he understood me just a little better now and realized that titles meant as little to me as they did to him. Land, canals, corn, cattle, minerals — these were power. He would have added slaves to the list earlier, but he understood the views that Delia and I held on slaves. He did not grasp that being a Krozair of Zy was far more important to