A Fortune for Kregen Read Online Free PDF Page B

gigantic blue Scorpion could whisk me across the interstellar gulf.
    “So you had best tell me all about it.”
    The telling was brief. All he really knew was that the Humped Land lay to the south and west of LionardDen, that brave men and bold might pluck its treasures, and he was meeting a man who would tell him more later that night at a tavern of ill repute on the edge of the Foreign Quarter. The tavern was called Nath Chavonthjid, after a mythical hero, and was situated very close to a poor quarter of the city where nightly riots brought out the watch with thwacking staves, and sharp swords, too, on many occasions.
    “And are you fit enough to come with me?”
    “Aye,” I said, giving a deep groan. “I suppose so.”
    “It could make our fortunes and give us magical powers—”
     
    “Or leave us rotting in a ditch with a dagger in our backs.”
    “I think you scoff too much, Jak the Nameless!”
    “You are right, Scauro Pompino the Iarvin!”
    The long green tendrils of the flick-flick plant on the windowsill licked out and scooped up a couple of fat flies which had been buzzing about, and slipped them neatly into the waiting and open orange cones of the flowers. All Kregans are aware of the symbolism inherent in the flick-flick.
    Pompino laughed.
    “Yes, I am right. And tonight you must not scoff. This fellow — he calls himself Nathjairn the Rorvard
    — is mighty prickly and only lets us into his plans—”
    “For red gold, Pompino?” At the Khibil’s abruptly upflung head, and the quick stab of his hand, I nodded. “Aye! He will take your gold for this great secret — and what will you get out of it?”
    “I have asked questions—” He was mighty stiff about the imputations to his shrewd practicality. “Such a land exists. Expeditions do go there.”
    “Do they return?”
    “You have heard of this famous sorcerer of Jikaida City, Naghan Relfin the Eye? Where did his powers come from, seeing he was but a poor saddler five seasons ago?”
    There was truth in the remark. This sorcerer, Naghan the Eye, lived sumptuously, performed magics for large sums of money, and did have real, if indefinable, powers.
    “You suggest Naghan the Eye obtained his necromantic powers from somewhere in Moderdrin, the Humped Land?”
    “And there is the rich merchant on Silk Street who was ready to enlist to play Death Jikaida when he vanished from the city. He returned with a caravan of wealth — from the south and not the east, over the Desolate Waste.”
    “No doubt he went with a rascally gang of drikingers, common bandits who robbed honest men—”
    “Not from the south and west.”
    I looked at Pompino. Maybe he had another reason for this folderol about magics and treasures to be picked up. “You suggest, do you not, my Pompino, that instead of attempting to steal the airboat, instead of going with a caravan across the Desolate Lands to the East, we strike southwest in order to put this city behind us? Is this not so?”
    “You are too clever for me, Jak. Yes and no. We cannot move if the Star Lords do not permit it. And there is magic and there is gold to be won in Moderdrin. I believe it. Yes, we could do far worse.”
    If we went far enough to the southwest, got over the Blue Snowy River, and continued on we’d come eventually to Migladrin. I had friends in Migladrin. And, of course, if we turned west and carried on, we’d come to Djanduin. I never forget I am King of Djanduin, although, and deliberately with the troubles in Vallia, I had allowed the fragrant memory of Djanduin to attenuate and grow frail. There was no denying the warm feeling that shook me as I thought of Djanduin, and the rip-roaring welcome that awaited me there, the times we could have...
    The superb four-armed fighting Djangs and the clever gerbil-faced Djangs of Djanduin would not forget me, their king, and this I knew with a humility that came fresh each time. Inch had passed on the messages. King of Djanduin I was, and I