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judged and condemned.
I would not plead.
But through all the agony of spirit I felt the fire in my blood. The agony refreshed itself at the wellspring
of a new agony.
I knew.
We hustled toward the rock of the side wall. The guards spoke in harsh whispers. "Keep quiet," and
"Careful with the light," and "He should be thrown to the chanks." I stumbled along. A lenken door
opened and closed, silently. An iron bolt dropped into place, silently.
A pitchy darkness confronted my groping fingers. My chains clanked. I heard a panel squeal and a
voice, hoarse, say, "One bur only, my lady. Not a mur more."
A form moved. A soft pearly light shone across a littered floor of discarded impedimenta, fishing gear, a
broken trident, crumbling floats, a scattering of canvas, wooden tubs and withy baskets. The light
wavered.
I looked up.
It is a long time ago, I was in torment, I do not recall  I remember her soft arms, her lips, the touch of
her hair, the thrilling whisper of her voice. Oh, I felt as poor and downtrodden and useless there as ever I
have felt. That it should come to this! A beaten man, chained, thrown out of all he held dear, yet daring to
clasp in his arms the most wonderful woman in two worlds!
"Dray, oh, my heart . . ."
No, I cannot tell more.
Delia  my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.
Of all we babbled I remember little. She said these terrible Krozairs of Zy were incapable of being
bribed. Nothing would move them to deny their duty. I could have told her that. There was no easy
escape through gold here. She was well. She held a great pride in her sons and daughters. Krozairs,
Sisters of the Rose, Princes and Princesses of Vallia. I could hardly talk. She wanted to talk of the
youngsters, but I kissed her and we clung together, warm, warm, and again she wailed that there was no
way of contriving my escape.
I do remember, in a pale pathetic reflection of my old arrogance: "I will win free, my Delia. I will. And I
will tell you why sometimes I go away even if you do not believe."
"If you tell me I will believe."
I was charged afresh with a ludicrous determination.  I will win free. I will prove I am a true Krozair."
She held me. "Yes, yes, that is what you will do. I know. They are wrong . . ."
"It is a thing I must do. I must."
How different this, from all my grandiose expectations! I had waited twenty-one dreary years, and all for
this! My Delia, the most perfect woman of two worlds, how cruel that she should thus be tormented on
my account. I held her close and my thoughts were clouded. I remember . . . I remember little then.
No, I cannot tell more.
The panel scraped and the pearly light strengthened. I held her close, but she was gone, gone, and the
panel closed and the light darkened and I was alone.
The outer lenken door was flung back and rough hands grasped me and, with my chains clanking about
me, I was led down to the stone quay and up the gangplank. So once more I entered on the life of a
galley slave of the Eye of the World, which is the inner sea of the continent of Turismond on Kregen,
spinning beneath the Suns of Scorpio.
A galley slave may survive if he can last out the first week.
My memory of that time remains hazy. I recall that the work came as a shock; I had grown slothful. My
strength remained, but it was not as easy as I might have been forgiven for thinking. It took me some time
to regain all my old toughness and hardness, to endure the incessant toil, and all that time I remained sunk
in a spiritless slough. I cared little for anything. I even came to regard that dark meeting with my Delia as
an hallucination. Had I really once more clasped Delia of Delphond in my arms? Could it truly have been
my Delia of the Blue Mountains? Or was I gripped by the Drig-driven phantasms of the madness I know
claimed me?
Reason had fled. I pulled my oar. I lived like a vosk sunk in swill. I endured.
Even thoughts of Zorg of Felteraz, and Nath and Zolta, my two oar comrades still living, penetrated like
a nightmare, so that often and often I would call their names, thinking them laboring at the loom at my
side.
As for the five other wights on the loom with me, I knew nothing of them nor cared how they regarded
me. I was the madman of the benches. I shouted for Zorg when the swifter went into action, yelling for
Nath and Zolta, cursing the Overlords of Magdag, pulling with frenzy so that I could drown out the
blackness of a despair I had forgotten tormented me, or why, or how, sunk in the blazing mania of
madness.
When I had been a slave in the Magdaggian swifters I had gradually surfaced from near-insanity. I had
taken an interest in what went on, noting the galleys, their construction, their methods of working and
sailing and fighting. Now I cared for nothing. I pulled. When the lash fell on me I yelled out in abandon,
uncaring, all pride forgotten.
It is all a fragmentary scattering of scarlet memories.
One time we were rammed and the apostis crumpled in deadly splinters and the side caved in and three
of the poor devils chained with me were crushed to red pulp. One time arrows sought down into the
slave benches, for this craft was rigged anaphract, and I saw a shaft sprout suddenly from the back of the
slave in front of me. I saw with perplexity and no sensations of pain an arrow pinning my foot to the
deck. I wrenched the thing out with a jerk of my leg, seeing blood, feeling nothing, pulling, pulling, pulling.
I must have been sent down to the sickbay and recovered of the wound. I remember nothing of that.
There was a space when I felt the rain and the wind on my face, and the heat of the suns, and then a
space when I did not. Now I realize I must have been transferred from the upper bank to the lower; it
made no difference to my madness.
Once, I dimly recall, I awoke to look up and see the immense arch of the rock harbor of the Island of
Zy above my head and I cried out "Krozair!" in a terrible voice. I strove to rise and could not, for I was
chained and manacled and the chains were stapled to the deck.
Now, later, I know it was after that experience that I was vaguely aware of people bending over me, of
shadowy forms, of a shielded light, of whispers. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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