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Pompino. “If they drop firepots on us—”
    The breeze blustered the shattered aerial vessel over our heads. Very few of the folk aboard had seen one of these flying sailers before. They were not vollers. Vollers contained power derived from their two silver boxes that could drive them through thin air, up and down, forward and backward, soaring immune to gravity and the bluster of the wind. The flying sailing craft, which we in Vallia called vorlcas, did not possess in their silver boxes all the necessary magical mix of minerals. They could lift up against gravity and by exerting power on what the wise men called the lines off ethereal magnetic force, could tack and make boards against the wind. The vessels of this kind were known as famblehoys in Havilfar.
    We in Vallia had made great use of them in our wars against the Hamalese.
    “Bad cess to her,” said Naghan the Pellendur. “She is Vallian and up to no good here.”
    “Look!” called Quendur the Ripper, pointing. “There is an airboat!”
    Lying alongside Vol Defender and in her shadow, revealed as the vessels flew past, a voller snugged tightly. She was not an airboat built in Hamal or in Hyrklana. From her lines I fancied she’d been built in one of the countries down in the Dawn Lands; I could not be sure.
    Dayra said, “But the Pandaheem do not have vollers!”
     
    I looked at her and spoke up quickly: “Pandrite the All-Glorious has seen fit to provide us with one at least, Ros.”
    She did not put her hand to her mouth or stutter out some fatuous remark; but she got the message all right.
    The sight of solid objects floating in air fascinated these folk of Pandahem. Hamal and Hyrklana refused to sell their vollers to Pandahem or to any of the countries of the continent of Loh. They had sold to us in Vallia, for we were a thorn in the flesh of Pandahem. Only — in the old days the vollers we bought from Hamal continually broke down. That was policy on the part of Hamal, and one of the contingent reasons for the wars — apart from the insane ambitions of the Empress Thyllis, who was now dead and wandering about the Ice Floes of Sicce. No one would take a wager on how long it would take her to reach the sunny uplands beyond.
    The two vessels, the enormous vorlca and the smaller voller, blew away before the wind. We watched until they vanished out of sight among the clouds. Then, as though a spell had broken, we could return to our normal tasks.
    Yet the aerial vessels remained the subject of talk for some time. Pandaheem were unused to flying ships.
    As to the business that had brought a Vallian here — that was easy to guess.
    One interesting item was that the Pandaheem had little idea of the difference between a voller and a vorlca. To them both were simply magical. They were vessels that flew. I managed to have a quiet word to Dayra — to her, for she flared up at once.
    “I know, I know! But I am learning and soon I’ll be as good a Pandaheem as you! The thing is — she was one of ours and she’s been captured! That’s the important thing!”
    “She looked in a sorry mess. That’ll be the gale. Jiktar Nath Fremerhavn was in command the last I heard. He’s a good sailor. Something else happened, that’s certain sure.”
    “Yes, but what?”
    “One thing, Ros. We’ll have to act as though we, too, are overjoyed that a Vallian has been captured.
    We’re always in danger. It’s no good forgetting—”
    “I know.”
    Her color was up, her head high and her eyes bright. Useless to push anymore, as I well knew. She was my daughter all right, by Vox!
    We took turns hauling at the oars, shift by shift, and our vessel slowly forged upriver. The banks proliferated with vegetation of wild and exotic varieties; the birds flocked in prodigious numbers, fish leaped in the water, and the suns shone. Here, between two provinces who were not on friendly terms, the land, quarreled over, went its own way. The king in far off Pomdermam might rule his