The Tides of Kregen Read Online Free

chief opponent being Delia herself.
    She rather fancied Can Drak, but then again perhaps Leladrin would be nice, or maybe . . . and she would pause and put her chin on her fist and gaze around the table, her laughing eyes sizing us up, one by one, until those solid, respectable — aye, and some ruffianly too! — men of mine would shuffle their feet and then, despite all, smile broadly in response. I think we had a good life then. I know it. I knew, very positively, that I did not wish to leave.
    So we discussed and decided on the cares of statecraft until a messenger burst in, wild-eyed, disheveled, thrusting past the guards who had the sense to let him pass.
    "My Prince!" he bellowed. Blood stained down his face, brown and cracked, oozing where the sweat ran across the bright wound. "Leem Lovers! They have razed Fossheim! The village burned —
    burned—" He staggered and would have fallen but a guard caught him and quickly carried him to a seat. Delia brought wine herself. He swallowed painfully. "My Princess—"
    "What of Fossana?" I said. I spoke more roughly than I intended, for the man braced up in the seat staring with wild eyes.
    "The island—" He choked and swallowed and began again. "We fought. There were ten of us, ten and a Deldar — lookouts — we fought — Deldar Nath the Shiv — they were devils, devils! Fishheads! They cut us down!"
    Tom Tomor ti Vulheim, an old blade comrade and a man with whom I had happily fought when we took Valka from those damned aragorn, was already running for the door, the sword on his hip banging. He was yelling. Tom, whom I had made take the name of Tomor from the battle we had fought under Tomor Peak, and who was the Elten of Avanar, was now the general of my armies of Valka. I could trust him to take what were the immediately necessary measures against these fishheads, these weirdly repellent diffs sailing around the curve of the world from the other grouping of continents and islands of Kregen to rape and plunder and burn.
    The full significance of this latest assault was not lost on us. We were to the north of the equator, and the Leem Lovers sailed up generally from the south, to attack the continent of Havilfar and its associated islands down there. They had penetrated to the north of Havilfar and over to the west up the Hoboling Islands. For them to have come this far north could only mean they had stepped up their activity. Why they had done so still remained a mystery. Our immediate task was to drive them back and prevent their making a base on the sweet little island of Fossana.
    Delia glanced at me and I saw that she was moved.
    There was more than mere agony over the despoiling of one of the islands which looked to us for protection. For the island of Fossana, to the south and east of the island of Valka, had been marked out by me as so charming and delightful a spot that the title of Amakni of Fossana should be the proud title of our daughter Lela, to match her twin brother Drak. But Delia had put a slender finger to her lips and shaken her head and said, "Not yet, my great grizzly graint of a husband. You always rush into things headlong. Let Drak have the glory for a space, for he will . . ." And then she had paused and bit her lip. So I finished for her: "One day, if we were ordinary people, he would take my place." But, speaking thoughtlessly, she had forgotten that by virtue of a dip in the Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph of far Aphrasöe, she and I were assured of a thousand years of life. The fuller implications of that situation must wait their rightful place in this telling of my life on Kregen. For now Delia was indicating to me that, had we let Lela become the Amakni of Fossana, she might have been there now, when the shanks came in their swift strange craft. She might have . . . I said, "We must drive them out of Fossana rapidly. I believe they seek a secure base here." I looked down on the swod and his blood-caked face. "You have done well to