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glared up murderously. The gag stifled me. I saw Reterhan lift the thraxter and I saw his wrist turn so as to bring the flat alongside my head.
    The twin suns of Kregen and the seven moons all spurted up and were gobbled down into the blackness of Notor Zan.
    The last thing I saw was the glorious and divine face of my Delia as she stared out, so woefully troubled, over the quarterdeck rail.
    If I was to go down into the great darkness and find my way to the Ice Floes of Sicce, then I would take with me that last look of longing that contained all of love. So I fell into the blackness, and the darkness was irradiated for me by Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The ways of the aragorn
    I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy and Lord of Strombor — and much else besides — came back to consciousness sluggishly packed among my fellow slaves in an open flier. The stink and the groans and the shrieks were all familiar to me, not from this Earth but from Kregen, and I knew I must endure. I was still alive, which surprised me only a little, for slaves equate with money. We were worth many golden deldys and silver sinvers almost anywhere in Havilfar.
    A dead Och lay at my side, his four little arms shriveled and wrapped around his wasted body.
    The flier remained firm and solid in the sky with that peculiar way of a certain kind of voller which travels independently of the wind, and there was no pitching and rolling to add to our discomfort. The flier was of that kind I was to come to know well later, but which until then I had not encountered. She was long and wide in the beam, but shallow, being open and without a deck. A tiny cabin had been perched amidships to house the controls and crew. The slaves lay jammed like logs. They call these barge-like vollers
weyvers
in Havilfar, and sometimes they refer to them as Quoffas of the Sky. They are designed simply to cram as much cargo as possible into a flat space, without niceties of careful loading in tiers. The slaves were mere lumber.
    Fanal lay miserably at my other side.
    He would not meet my eye when I stirred.
    He understood what I had asked of him, back there in the fishing village, and he had failed. I could not blame him. All men are not built in the same way, and Kregen, let alone the Earth of my birth, would be a strange place if all men were alike. And as for all women . . . !
    Presently he said in a whisper, “I am glad you are not dead, Horter Prescot.”
    “What happened to the flier?”
    “The Kataki Notor convinced them he was a harmless old fishing man, who needed no assistance with the plague. They flew away.”
    They flew away.
    Well. It was a disappointment, but also it was a relief. I had, in the instant of awakening, been horrified that I would turn and see my people, my Delia, wrapped in chains and thongs and wedged in among the mass of slaves.
    “The flier flew well?”
    “I have not seen many vollers. She flew low away to the west, as though she were searching for this Hyr-notor — this man with the yrium — of which the lady apim spoke.”
    He looked at me then, a real Lamnia look, shrewd, sizing me up anew.
    “You are the man they sought, Horter Prescot?”
    “Yes, Horter Fanal. I am the man.”
    “I think perhaps if the aragorn realize this they will sell you for ransom.”
    “It would be paid,” I said. I did not boast. I knew what I knew. To my shame, I knew that the coffers of Valka and Can-thirda, of Zamra and Delphond and the Blue Mountains, would pour forth gold and jewels and treasures if by those means my Delia could once more clasp me in her arms.
    And if they were not enough, then Seg’s Falinur and Inch’s Black Mountains would bring more gold and jewels. And, if necessary, Delia would go to Strombor, my enclave in Zenicce, aye! and to the Clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm to take of their treasures for my release.
    These thoughts brought me no elation. I knew that the treasure of a country is not