Free A Victory for Kregen by Alan Burt Akers

“as your comrade — and thus taking full advantage of being rude or overweening to you — I would counsel you most seriously not to go to Vallia to fight.” He shook his head and his turban did not so much as quiver. “No, Tyfar. I am a Wizard of Loh — and I say to you with all the force at my disposal, do not go to fight the Vallians.”
    “Why?”
    That was your Prince Tyfar for you. Straight out, direct, to the point. It was a damned good question and a damned hard one for Quienyin to answer.
    I studied their faces by the lights of the moons and the erratic flickers of ruddy light from the fire.
    Quienyin and I were wrapped up in what underlay our words; Tyfar was in the middle and slowly becoming aware of what was not being openly spoken of. He could become exceedingly angry, a prince being treated like a child. But he was Tyfar. He spoke evenly.
    “You have no answer for me, Quienyin? I think you are being mysterious on purpose — but what is your purpose?”
    “It is simple. It is to save you much grief.”
    Tyfar sucked in his cheeks. Then: “So it is true. You Wizards of Loh can see into the future?”
    “Perhaps.”
    At that I smirked. No Wizard of Loh was going to reveal any of his secrets, and the worse that was thought of them the more their power and the dread they invoked in the hearts of ordinary folk.
    “You spoke of Dray Prescot, the vile emperor of a vile empire. Why should I not go up there and chastise him for the evil he has wrought?”
    “Do you know of this evil? Can you show it to me?”
    Tyfar spread his arms. “Well — all men know—”
    “All men hear tales. Dray Prescot has the yrium, he has that special power, that charisma that marks him out among men and—”
    “The yrium!” Tyfar was incensed. “Rather he has the yrrum, the evil charismatic presence, the vile leading the vile, rotten clean through, decadent—” He was panting.
    I said, and I spoke gently, “I think the Empress Thyllis would joy to hear you speak thus, Tyfar.”
     
    That sobered him.
    He stared toward Quienyin and then toward me. I say toward. I don’t think he saw us, not then, for he was looking with his inward eye at past events and conversations and trying to grapple with the problems he now saw more clearly than, probably, he had ever seen in his life before.
    At last he said, and his words were still breathless, “So you tell me Dray Prescot has the yrium and not the yrrum, that he is not evil clean through, that he has not brought shame and misery to Hamal, that—”
    “I tell you, Tyfar,” interrupted Quienyin, “only to search your own ib for the truths in these things.”
    “And I,” I said, “tell us all it is time we departed.”
    Whatever was going through Quienyin’s mind would have to wait. He was Up To Something, as he would have said in his Capital Letter Days. But I banished all that from my own mind as we rose into the air.
    Ah! To fly free on the back of a great bird, soar through the sweet air of Kregen, with the blaze of the stars and the fat, serene moons shining down! She of the Veils and the Maiden with the Many Smiles shone refulgently, pink and gold, shining down on the fleeting surface of Kregen passing swiftly below.
    The windrush in my face, blowing through my hair... The feel of the rhythmic rise and fall as the fluttrell bore me on with wide pinions beating... The whole sublime sense of flight and motion and headlong movement... Yes, flying over the face of Kregen beneath the moons, there is very little in two worlds to equal that, by Zair!
    And, as for the fluttrells themselves, they were the big birds with the silly head vanes that were always in the way, it seems. Well, there is a simpleminded saying among the simple folk of Kregen that sums up the magic in simple terms. Of the birds’ flight through the air, they say: “They can do it because they think they can do it.” A pathetic little bit of philosophy, perhaps. But it rings, all the same, it