Chapter 13 Trans-Titan
Simone lay on her back on the deck of a moving ship and looked up at a million stars. In her dream, she knew that she had been on the ship for many days and that she was going to a place of Answers. As the ship gently beached at her destination, it began to be morning, and she saw a great mountain dominating the land. She left the ship—which seemed to be empty except for her—and walked slowly inland over small hills until the sea was no longer visible.
The land was green, fresh, and cool; the grass short; the sunlight cheerful without being too warm. Nothing mattered and all was well. As she rounded the shoulder of a hill, she found someone seated in the grass nearby, a dark haired girl of about her own age, wearing a rich gown of green and black. The girl was slim, pretty, and blue eyed. She smiled at Simone. With nothing else to do and nowhere to go, Simone sat down with her. Neither spoke for a long time.
Then Simone found herself telling the girl everything.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I want to sleep in my own bed, and I want to take a bath. You wouldn’t believe how filthy I am and how dirty my clothes are. The knees of my pants are literally rotting. And I’m so tired, and I hurt.”
The girl looked at her affectionately and nodded for her to go on.
“OK, I want a cheeseburger, and I want fries and a milkshake on the side. Then I want to have Sarah over and we’ll make popcorn and watch TV. Mom and Clay will both be there, so I want Clay back.”
Now she began to falter for words. “And I want—not to be a murderer. I killed a second man this morning; that is, I think he’s dead. I had to, you know, because Zatur’s band was trying to catch us, so we had to fight. But it’s a horrible memory to have stabbed someone. I can’t live with that baggage. I want to be sweet inside. I’m not asking to be pretty like you, but I have to deal with this blood on my hands, or die.”
She paused in confusion, wondering how she could have poured all this out without first discovering if the girl spoke English. She glanced up the mountain. “Can you—can you tell all that to whoever should hear it?”
The girl gave her hand a squeeze. “Nosky,” she said in Gellene. (He knows.)
Simone thought that over. “Will it be all right?”
The girl nodded.
“Because I just want to go back. This tunnel I’m in, this Leb Nashraksa, heads toward the valley where the Door is. If I tell the others to go that way with me, they’ll have to do it. Oh, don’t look at me that way! I want to go home and get a job—I’m through with high school now. And I want Carl Besanto to date me and to marry me, and then we’ll have kids, and we won’t ever get divorced.”
She paused, feeling unsure of herself. What about Athlaz?
“You want that?” the girl questioned, still in Gellene.
“Yes.”
“It’s not good for you to lie.”
“Who’s lying? I haven’t lied.”
“But you keep telling me what you want, and yet you don’t come to the most important thing. Isn’t that a form of lying?”
Simone thought this over much more calmly than she would have in the waking world.
“I came to the Great Tunnel in the first place,” she said, “because I thought my journey would please Him, I mean Ulrumman. But He seems to have abandoned us.”
“Never mind the abandonment,” the dark-haired girl said matter-of-factly. “Your intent was to please Him whom your soul loves. Stick to that. So do you please Him?”
Hesitating, Simone met the girl’s eyes and saw something in them she had not expected: something of kinship, of sisterhood. She knew that this girl had suffered for Ulrumman. That was good enough. No more conversation was necessary.
“I have to go now,” Simone said. “You’ve been good to me, thank you. Um, may I ask who you are?”
The girl laughed a jarring sort of laugh and hugged Simone. “I’m a kind of mother to you,” she said. “My name is Lila.”
Simone woke in the dark with such a sense of blessing that she was not much alarmed to see a faint light at the back of the room. Rising without disturbing the others, she found her way to the bottom of the little stairway. The light was coming from up above. She loosened her sword in its sheath, drew a dagger, and started up. She was unafraid, for she considered with a smile that she was unlikely to meet with anything more deadly than herself.
In a few moments she stood behind the throne she had seen from below. Its black bulk was outlined by the light, which seemed to come from the floor in front of it and out of Simone’s line of vision. Slipping to the left, she saw a few pieces of burning wood and, crouching low before the throne, Blumma. The Ulriga was scrubbing the stone seat with a rag.
Simone came closer. “Nice night, huh? Not many stars.”
The Ulriga paused to wet the rag from a skin bag that lay at her side. “I was lying awake thinking of how dirty this must be, so I nosed around and found some unburnt wood and wetted it to make it burn more slowly. And then I always carry a bit of everything in my belt pouch. I had this cloth and a water bag.” She rubbed again at the back of the throne.
“Why clean it?” Simone asked. “No one’s going to sit in it.”
“It may be that no one ever has, Empress, but you could. You’re the only one with the right, you know, because you’re the descendant of the one it was intended for. It’s a bit late perhaps, but someone ought to get some use out of it.” The Ulriga laughed a little at her own small joke.
Simone touched the high stone back. “Not very comfortable.”
“The one it was intended for was ka Sisska,” Blumma went on. “The Torch. You humans call him Quintus. He brought to us the fire of Karasis, Son of Ulrumman, teaching us from the Book of Books. Since then the Sarrs have known the true way, though not all accept it.”
She beat her rag against the low stone balustrade to knock off some of the grime, and the moving air made the fire flare a little. By the brighter light Simone saw an open doorway on the opposite side of the throne. She went over and looked in.
“Bring some light, Blumma.”
Blumma took up a stick burning on one end, and they went together down a short passage to another room in which the walls and ceiling were very irregular. Simone took the crude torch from Blumma and held it close to a wall. To her astonishment, she found there the imprint of a hideous face, the same sort of bat-face she had seen carved on a chair in the hall of council in the Palace Of Reflections. The face of a Vult. Moving the light around, she discovered many more impressions of Vult bodies, hundreds of them, leading off down a narrowing tunnel. There seemed to be no end to them.
“Blumma, did someone carve these?”
“No, Your Eminence. You’ve found the Vultlag of our legends, the place where the Vults slept for many hundreds of years. The Great Tunnel was purposely built to pass by here so that the Sisska, when he would come, might see them in their sleep. He did not come. But ages later the Emperor Kuley spoke to the Vults and woke them, and they flew out to join the waking species. When they pulled free from the tunnel walls, they left behind these impressions.”
Simone shuddered. “They’re horrible.”
“Don’t be afraid. They sleep again.”
“Where? Nearby?”
“No one knows, Empress. Some say to the north across the Sidder-Phar.”
They quitted the place and returned to the throne balcony. Simone had been a little afraid of the throne, but compared to the Vultlag it looked homey and inviting. She sat down on its newly cleaned surface and drew her legs up. Blumma found her rag and seemed ready to use it on one of the arms, but the Ulriga paused and stood back, staring at Simone in the waning light of the fire.
“What is it?” Simone said.
Slowly, Blumma prostrated herself at Simone’s feet.
“Oh, come on, knock it off.” Simone nudged the Ulriga with a boot toe. “Do I look like an empress? More
like a grimy grasshopper wearing a helmet.”
Then something about the positions of the two of them fell into place in her mind, and Simone had a vision. The darkness fell away, and the area beyond the balcony was lit by a thousand lamps. The Leb Nashraksa was clean and shining, no broken masonry or blackened walls. Down below, filling the tunnel so thickly that not an inch of floor was visible, were the Sarrs, thousands of them, all bowing low, all chanting, “Sisska! Sisska! Sisska!”
All the Sarrs were there. She saw Ulrigs, Dragons, Loopers, and Lusettas. She saw the cat-like Mangars and Mangarees and the lizard-like Silbs. There were the Vults, newly awakened by the voice of the Sisska, exulting in his presence. There were the Fijats: she saw them, for in her vision no one had cursed them with invisibility, or ever would. And she saw the Hagards, spare and tusked, still alive and never to be exterminated, bowing with the rest.
Upon the throne was not a weary and wounded teenage girl but a man in the prime of his strength and wisdom. He looked out over them with understanding. He spoke to them. Their wars were over, he said, their security established. Now had begun the Kingdom of the Karasis—the Trunk-fire from heaven....
Simone came out of it with a start. Blumma still knelt before her, barely visible in the light of the worm-like embers. Simone reached forward and held the Ulriga under her muzzle.
“Now I understand, Blumma, now I see it! You weren’t ready for him, you poor, poor Sarrs. You could have had your Eden, your—your Atlantis, your Camelot. But you broke it all to pieces with your own paws before Quintus ever came. No wonder you still go half mad over a True Descendant.”
Blumma pawed at Simone’s knee. “It’s up to you,” she quavered, “to save us, to heal our land and our hearts. Save us, O Great Simone, by the hand of Ulrumman. Keep us Sarrs from destroying one another and the humans too. There is such a darkness in our minds that we could eradicate every living thing on the face of the land. Even the little stickstar. Where’s the light? Come between us and our own murderous hearts, Simone.”
‘And how,’ Simone thought, ‘can I do that when my own heart is murderous?’ But she could hardly answer Blumma with that. She stammered something about doing her best.
Long before daybreak Mald came back from a trip to the surface and reported that all was clear above, with no trace of Zatur’s men. He had even found Misu waiting for them in a tree nearby; and she reported that she had somehow stolen back from the bandits two of their backpacks—unfortunately empty. The travelers now made the long climb back up the ventilation tunnel and emerged under a nearly full moon. Blumma, Snag, and Snart fetched food and gear from Blumma’s cave, and they all ate a cold meal before going on. Blumma remained behind rejoicing—for in the first light she saw that her stickstars had bloomed at last.
The travelers still had some money and soon bought the things they needed to continue. Why Zatur had not set a watch for them they never learned, but they were untroubled by him or anyone else as they covered the last marches down to the gates of the Sidder-Phar, or Iron Valley. Everyone cheered up except Abram, who was troubled by his wound, and perhaps something more. He no longer chattered. He trudged along as doggedly as ever but with fingers that twitched at his sides and a pale, sorrowful face. He seemed to be listening for something—perhaps some strange music in the wind.
During these October days, Simone had time to mull over many things. If she could somehow get back to Viola, she told herself, and if her mother was unharmed, then she could try to live as she had before—only without Clay, she remembered with a pang of misery. She had finished high school, but the family did not have money for more than her first semester of college expenses, so she would get a minimum wage job somewhere. She would continue to try to attract the boys, probably with the same lack of success as before. She would be lonely, write poetry, row on the cemetery pond—eventually be Sarah Overby’s bridesmaid.
In contrast, life in the Fold was very dangerous but had a zesty flavor. She began to wonder if Athlaz might be persuaded to change his mind about her supposed exalted status. Yes, maybe if this mission was over, and they both were still alive, she could go back to Ursala with him and become his wife. They would honeymoon in Ruin, making merry with the Loopers, and have a happy, peaceful life in the Forest. She began to pick out names for children.
In the late afternoon of October eighteenth, they drew near to the Mountain Gate, highest of the gates in the Long Wall that crossed the Sidder-Phar from north to south. This had been built long before to keep the Pergs within the Land of Freedom, and was guarded by armed soldiers. Non-Pergs might pass by paying a toll. On the other side was Trans-Titan, in which lived a Perg people who long ago had had their schism with the majority to the west. The Trans-Titanites believed themselves to be the only true followers of Tiras. The western majority believed that the Trans-Titanites would, of course, burn in eternal torment.
Before the travelers reached human habitations, Snag and Snart took temporary leave of them, striking eastward to enter the Ulrigs’ mountain tunnels. So hated are the Sarrs by the Pergs that no Ulrig may safely show himself beyond his mountain strongholds. Snag and Snart would therefore take the shorter route to a rendezvous at Mount Rinna on the far side of the Iron Valley. Misu would fly there directly.
“We’ve paid your extortionate toll, so why don’t you let us through?” Simone asked.
The ugly, dark bearded guard stared at her with piercing eyes. “Take off your helmet,” he grunted.
Simone obligingly removed her helmet, and her long, dirty hair fell around her shoulders.
“A girl,” he laughed to the other soldiers. “Not the one we’re looking for.”
Simone and Athlaz exchanged glances as they stood at the great gate with its pointed arch. Abram stood behind them, his dull eyes staring ahead.
“Is it all right if I ask who you’re looking for?” Simone said to the guard.
Unexpectedly, the man felt like talking.
“A blond haired boy who pretends to be emperor. Our country’s prince has offered a fortune to whoever will capture him. We know the boy was here in Prowts not many days ago, in the city of Dowerkass, but he’s disappeared. Well, I swear he won’t get through this gate without getting caught.”
“I believe it,” said Athlaz smoothly. “you don’t look the sort to let anything get by you. But speaking of getting by....”
The guard laughed, showing bad teeth, and stood aside. “You’re no Pergs, so you’re free to go—and blacken your souls to damnation.” He gave Athlaz a parting prod with the butt of his spear.
On the other side Athlaz said to Simone, “I’m surprised you didn’t try to learn more from him.”
“What, and find out it is Clay? And the whole Prowts army hunting him down? No way, I’d rather not know.”
“There’s some wisdom in that,” Mald agreed from Simone’s shoulder. “If your brother is in a desperate fix, we can’t do anything to help. So best to make plans for ourselves and leave Clay to Ulrumman.”
They stopped speaking as another group of travelers passed them, toiling up the steep road. No one must hear Mald’s raspy voice coming seemingly from nowhere.
“Yes, what is our plan now?” Athlaz asked when the group had passed.
“The hardest part of our journey is over,” said Mald, “the part that Dramun and Grall said was impossible. Now we pass through little Trans-Titan and into the northwest of Anatolia. It’s a long way to Colonia on the coast, but every mile is through peaceful, well governed land. No bandits, no plague. True, Grall feared that Simone’s identity would have become known by now, and that, exposed to her enemies on the plain, she would be taken. But she’s as unknown as when we started. Probably, no one will pay us any attention all the rest of the way. What’s that, Abram? Nothing? So as I say, if the Ulrigs have allowed any Forest soldiers to pass north through the mountain tunnels—which I think high
ly unlikely—then they won’t be needed.”
“Abram, are you all right?” Simone said, for the little man was muttering to himself.
“I just don’t think it will be as easy as all that,” he said with an apologetic laugh.
Simone ignored this. “If the Forestmen do come,” she said, “Snag and Snart will tell us when they rejoin us at Mount Rinna.”
“Yes, Empress.”
“So anyway, we walk hundreds more miles to Colonia, and then what?”
“That’s what I keep asking myself,” said Mald. “How do we present you in Eschor with the slightest hope of your being accepted as Empress? Many Sarrs are willing to take the word of the Fijats, master genealogists that we are, and so do the human Forestmen; but here in the North, Fijats count for nothing. And then there’s the problem of Solomon, who currently sits the throne at Colonia. His family has for many decades claimed descent from Lila, so he styles himself the Emperor. It’s a fraud, of course, and one that the rest of the Fold sees through; but I can hardly imagine Solomon standing aside for you. More likely he’ll ignore you—or imprison you.”
“Well, you must have thought of something,” said Simone lightheartedly.
“Actually, I haven’t. I keep praying for wisdom, but nothing suggests itself. We can only hope that Colonia, when we get there, is in the grip of some dire crisis, perhaps with Zeeba’s Dragons at the very gates. Then the people might be willing to turn to a stranger, one who commands at least some respect from the Dragons themselves.”
“Not much, I don’t. You’re really reaching for it, Maldy.”
“Well yes, I know it’s pretty thin.”
“This could be good fun in a way,” she said. “Finally, I’ll be in a place where they take my claim to the throne as unseriously as I do. Free at last!”
“It won’t be fun,” said Mald sternly, “if the Eschorians are slaughtered by Dragons simply because they won’t believe you.”
“No, I suppose not. But if this prophecy about me is going to come about, then shouldn’t we be able to see some way it could happen? I mean some tiny, small chance of it? I’m not saying I don’t believe it, but—”
“Exactly,” said Athlaz. “We don’t doubt, but if no one in these lands accepts Simone’s claim, then she can, at any rate, still be recognized as Empress in the South. So then we’d go back, if that’s how things are. We certainly shouldn’t take the chance of her being imprisoned in Colonia.”
“Let’s go ahead and see how things are,” said Mald firmly. “And remember, in the meantime, that the fire we want to put out might easily spread across the whole Fold. The safety even of Ursala can’t be guaranteed, no, nor even of the Nasseelkir of the Fijats. Also, you got here with some little difficulty. Do you think it will be easier to return? Trust in Ulrumman, and don’t look back.”
Simone was tired of such gloomy talk. She made a silly face at Athlaz, and he laughed.
Mald sighed. “You humans....” he began, but stopped himself.
“What?” said Simone. “We humans what?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it!”
“All right, I will! You’re half silly Looper and half pitiless Dragon. Crazy, bare apes who tie cloth on their slick pink hides and march off to conquer all creation. You’re gods, but when your godhood gets to be too much for you, you fling it aside and make stupid jokes like those scarcely out of the egg. You live like fools, but sometimes you die like—like....
“Like noble Fijats,” said Simone quietly.
“Yes, sometimes,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to crawl into your pack and take a nap.”
As they descended from the Mountain Gate, they looked out over the cropland of these northern plains, dotted by villages. Just below them was a khan—or inn—nestled in a crease of the mountainside. The khan was a rectangle of covered rooms with an open courtyard in the middle. Within the enclosure were sheep and other domestic animals on their way to market. Athlaz also pointed out with delight two of the giant sloths which are used by the Trans-Titanites as beasts of burden. Some of the khan’s visitors were in the galleries that all around separated the rooms from the courtyard. Here and there, oil lamps were being lit, and a wood fire. They remembered that they would sleep in a real human habitation for the first time since they had left the Forest of Darkness two months before. They were met by the innkeeper, a clean-shaven and oddly accented man who wore clothes different from those of the Pergs: a long blue coat with buttons and a leather hat with flaps that covered the back and sides of his head. He was, in fact, a foreigner even to the Tran-Titanites, an Eschorian; and Simone looked with interest at this sample of the people she had come to save. She was pleased with his friendly face and courteousness as he listened to their food order and took payment.
After settling in one of the Spartan, unfurnished rooms, Athlaz and Simone left Abram and Mald and went out to the galleries to look around. Here they found a mixture of humanity, both Trans-Titanite and foreigner, almost all male. More Eschorians were gathered around a fire, chatting and drinking from earthen mugs. A group of Pergs knelt under a hanging lamp and shouted and gestured, playing at dice. Two others played at chess on a board scratched out on the stone pavement. At one corner of the khan several ragged men huddled in chains, watched by armed guards. These were slaves in transport.
The two young people drifted toward the sound of a nevel and found a young Perg bard playing in the midst of a group of ten or twelve. These were gathered around another fire built just off the gallery in the courtyard itself, under the stars.
The bard sang:
The King and Queen are come,
The Sun and Moon shall bless us;
The King a golden Sun,
The Queen a Moon most precious.
The prophet sang,
The words flew true
As arrows through the sky.
Like swords that rang,
The words ran through
The foes of Thoz Most High.
As he went on in this vein, Simone grew uncomfortable. It was embarrassing! What would these folk do if they knew their prophesied, precious-moon Queen stood among them? She gave Athlaz a slight tug and began to move away, but her way was blocked by someone. The fire reflected in the alert gray eyes of a sturdy, middle-aged man in Perg dress.
He looked up intently into her face and spoke crisply, smilingly. “You know the song? It’s new-written since the Emperor passed through Prowts just a few days ago. Lots of excitement now; many songs springing up about that prophecy, and old songs dusted off. What do you think of—”
“We’re not very interested,” said Athlaz, stepping between protectively, “in songs new or old. We’re just going to our room to get some sleep.” He began to brush past the man.
“The young lady does look tired,” the stranger said quietly.
Athlaz and Simone halted as it registered that Simone’s disguise had been penetrated even in the dark.
“Let’s go inside,” the man added in a whisper, “and let me speak to you, great lady, and to you also, Athlaz of Ursala. Have no fear, I’m a friend.”
They led the stranger to their room, now lit by smoky oil lamps, and closed the tall, arched door behind them. Abram they found lying with his head on his pack, resting his wound. He looked up at Simone with feverish eyes and began talking to her without a glance toward the man they had brought with them.
“That song!” he said. “I heard it through the open door, and it set my fingers to trembling for the touch of a nevel. Something’s wrong, Simone. I’ve felt it ever since the Leb Nashraksa. I had strange dreams there of something high and sorrowful. You’ll say it’s my wound, but that isn’t it. Some terrible and great event is approaching, and I’ll have to sing about it. I—I don’t even know whether I’ll be able to play a nevel—but—”
“Rest yourself,” said Simone.
“You’re just a little feverish and—”
“Here in this land,” he went on, “and soon. The gathering of the peoples, of armies. I see blood and fire.”
Simone smiled. “But Mald says these are peaceful lands we’re entering so—” She could not go on, for suddenly she knew with certainty that Abram was right. “Um, wait a minute. No, wait, you’re right. A great batttle here in Trans-Titan. You’ll see it all, just as you say, and make a song about it.”
“Already I can hear it,” he said tiredly. “The notes are forming.”
“How can this be?” Simone asked Mald.
The stranger answered first. “It’s not impossible,” he said. “Armies are beginning to move. They say a Farjan army was marching north of Prowts not many days ago.”
Simone looked at him. In the lamplight he seemed far from threatening: rather short, nicely dressed, and with a face that reminded her of her sixth grade teacher, Mr. Baird. “This man knows us, and claims to be a friend,” she said. “But he hasn’t said who he is.”
“I am Minoz, the Unknown King of Trans-Titan,” he said.
“The what?”
“You’ve heard me speak,” said Mald, “of the Land of Unknown Kings.”
Surprisingly, Minoz did not start or even look around as Mald’s voice came seemingly out of nowhere.
“Though it’s far across the ocean in the Ebbil Kir,” Mald went on. “I’ve been there, and not so long ago. From there sail forth the rulers of every nation in the Fold—the unacknowledged rulers, that is. This has been going on for over a thousand years, and as yet only two of them have ever occupied a throne here on the continent; and that was long ago. Hardly surprising. You don’t just walk in and take over a country.”
“Tell me about it,” said Simone dryly.
“I recognize the voice of a Fijat,” said Minoz. “Is it Misar Mald or Misar Razaber?”
“Mald,” the Fijat replied, “but I wonder how you know who to expect?”
“The message I received informed me not only of the route the Princess might travel but also of who would be likely to be with her.”
Simone turned to Athlaz. “Do you know anything about Unknown Kings?”
He knitted his brow. “There’s a crazy, old woman in Skoteine who calls herself the Unknown Queen of the Forest States. They say she lives as a pauper over in Leona. No one bothers her. My father says it’s bad luck to harm an Unknown Ruler.”
“It’s worse than bad luck, it’s courting disaster,” said Mald. “I could name half a dozen nations that once were mighty and now are nothing but names in history books; nations that imprisoned or executed their Unknown Rulers. As for your Queen Clopedra of the Forest States, I know her well, and she’s far from crazy. She has noted the enthusiasm of the iron house Masters toward a revived empire, and has rewarded those states with excellent hunting and special protection from the Vulture’s creatures. But back to the matter at hand. Minoz, you understand that we want proof of your identity? Do you have your crown with you?”
“No,” said Minoz, “it’s inconvenient to carry it with me. Might get stolen. I can’t prove who I am, I suppose, but what’s it matter? I can prove I have a genuine message from the Emperor.” Minoz knelt on one knee and offered something to Simone. “My Princess, I believe this bracelet is yours?”
Simone gasped, for he was holding out her own wristwatch that she had given to the Lusetta Angfetu in the garden of Ursala months before. She held it to the light and looked it over.
“The message is this,” said Minoz. “The Emperor wants you to meet him at Colonia. Also, he is well and misses you. That’s all. However, I should add that, since I’ve been watching for you here, I’ve had word from Unknown King Pindar over in Prowts. Pindar says things have not gone well, that the Emperor was unable to pass the gates of the Sidder-Phar and was in danger of being captured. He has fled northward into the wilderness west of the mountains. That’s all I know.”
Simone still held the watch, her face stonily calm, her eyes narrowed. “What’s this Emperor’s name and what does he look like?”
“That wasn’t in the message, Princess.”
“I wonder why not? Mald, what do you think of this man and his message?”
“I like his looks, or I wouldn’t have spoken aloud to him, Simone. As for the bracelet, if it’s genuine, the message probably is too, for who else but your brother would know whose it was?”
“Angfetu could have been captured and forced to tell,” she said.
“Possibly, Your Eminence, but as a practical matter we are going to Colonia anyway, so we may yet see the sender of this message, supposing he has escaped his enemies. Minoz, do you know anything of Angfetu?”
Minoz shook his head. “The name means nothing to me—sounds Lusettan.”
Simone slipped on the watch, which was still running. “So Angfetu has disappeared after parting with my watch, and I get a vague message from someone claiming to be Clay, but without so much as his name attached to it.”
“Meanwhile,” added Athlaz, “a pretender to the empire is last heard from headed north into the barren lands, and not toward Colonia.”
“Not enough to lose any more sleep over, is it?” Mald said. “Minoz, please remain with us tonight. I want to talk with you about many things.”
That night Mald became convinced that Minoz was who he claimed to be, for the man knew all the ways of the Land of Unknown Kings. So next morning King Minoz accompanied them on the road down to the plain.