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gone to Hyrklana and fought in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa. Then we would not have Tilly and Oby and Naghan the Gnat and Balass the Hawk as friends.”
    “And where they are now, Opaz knows.”
    “We will fetch them back, if they wish to come.”
    “I think they will make their way back here, to Valka, for they are true Valkans now—”
    “And what a sorry mess Valka and Vallia are in!”
    The scarlet and golden bird circled, watching us. I shook my fist at it, and it continued on, indifferent.
    “And when the shanks attacked that little village of Panashti, on the island of Lower Kairfowen, and you fell from the gate and we carried you to a hut. It was all a confusion. The walls and huts were burning. Those terrible Leem Lovers were breaking in — the walls came down and the smoke blew. We fought. Oh, Dray! You should have seen Drak. He was like a young zhantil. You would have been proud.”
    Drak had grown up since then, become a man, a prince, a Krozair of Zy. His life had not been easy. Now Delia poured out all the wonder and the hidden-away hurt, the bewilderments she had felt over the years of our life together.
    “I had gone to see you in the hut and — and you were not there! Only your armor and your weapons. I feared, then, remembering the other times, Jynaratha, over the Shrouded Sea — and then, even your weapons were gone. We fought as hard as we could and then Tom and Vangar came and we were saved. Drak was suddenly aware. Men looked to him. He and I, between us — and there was Turko and Naghan and Balass and all the others. There was such a lot of shouting and confusion. It was given out that you had gone to punish the shanks. Men believed. We were able to leave Panashti without any suspicion that you had died being voiced. Later, it was suggested — but you know — and, anyway, you have gone before to visit other lands, as all men know.”
    “Twenty-one years,” I said, and I shivered.
    The Star Lords had banished me to Earth for twenty-one long and miserable years because I had defied them.
    Delia put her hand on my arm.
    “And then you disappeared from the voller as we flew to Aphrasöe — that was mysterious and terrible—”
    “The Scorpion,” I said. “I will tell you why I sometimes have to go away, and why I have decided to resist in different ways that do not mean I go back to — go away for twenty-one years.”
    She looked at me and a wary look warned me.
    “Back to — where?”
    I did not reply.
    “Back to the Great Plains of Segesthes? To your Clansmen?”
    It would have been only a little difficult to lie. I shook my head.
    “But where, my heart, where? Tell me—”
    “If I do tell you, you will believe, I think, for I love you enough to know that — but it will be hard.”
    She looked at me, and I knew my stupid remark had not only been unnecessary, it showed her how tangled up I was.
    The wind blew the red and white flags of Valka out in a fluttering panoply. We would leave them flying when we deserted this beautiful place. For a time they would convince those rasts below we still resisted them. The red and white of Valka...
    Among the treshes fluttering from the flagstaffs someone had hoisted my own old battle flag, the yellow cross on the scarlet field, that battle flag fighting men call Old Superb.
    I wondered then if I could bear to leave that behind.
    What I did know and with sharp agony, was that if I defied the Star Lords who had brought me to Kregen I would leave more than a flag behind me when I was ejected with contempt from this exotic and cruel world.
    The bird volplaned away, turning in a gentle glide, and the suns sheened a brilliance along his feathers. I wondered what Delia would do, what say, if the Gdoinye slanted back to us and spoke to me. The messenger of the Everoinye usually insulted me — well, we understood each other’s tempers in that. But I did not want to risk what Delia might say if the bird did speak to us. I wanted to move us along. I