Chapter one

The whiptails carrying Delia off were now spurring down the street, I could see no one else in view. I gave the zorca the flat of my blade and he started and neighed and then went hell for leather after the others.

I’d catch them. I’d catch all seven of them and I’d slay all seven of them. No one was going to take my Delia from me, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

The zorca ran because he understood a demon sat on his back and would unhesitatingly lash him without mercy. I hit him again. We were catching the Katakis. One looked back and yelled.

The stench of battle, the noise, the sights, all flowed away into a hollow silence between my ears. I could see only Delia and the Katakis. A blue mist hovered before my eyes. I felt cold.

I did not want to believe.

“No!” I screamed it up as I’d never shrieked at the Star Lords before. “No! Give me time, give me time!”

The blue mist thickened. I lost sight of the whiptails and Delia. All around me the blueness grew. The shape of the phantom Scorpion hovered above, gigantic, absolute, not to be ignored.

Up I went. Up and up, drawn into the blueness of the Scorpion of the Everoinye. There was no arbitration. The Star Lords wanted me.

Screaming incoherently, I felt myself flung into the gulfs of nothingness, bathed in cold, destroyed to my heart, whilst my Delia was hurried off into a captivity I could not contemplate in reason.

Delia! Delia! Delia! Ahead of me lay only a black nothingness.

The feel of the zorca between my knees remained one sensation among the many battering at my consciousness. Blueness twined about me. The Star Lords through their blue phantom Scorpion had hauled up the animal in addition and as I felt as though I was strapped to a giant Catherine Wheel that tiny touch remained a reminder of common flesh and blood.

Delia was being carried off into an all too easily imagined horror. If I went mad I could be of no further use to her. The vital necessity of keeping fast hold of all my faculties must be my sole aim now. I had to deal with the Star Lords and get back to Taranjin as fast as possible, otherwise — I must not, must not, think of the otherwise.

I, Dray Prescot, Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy and Lord of Strombor, after the first decision to retain my sanity, must think solely of handling the Everoinye and of returning from whence I had been brought.

Of course, there was a horrific chance that the fumble-fingered Scorpion might drop me as he had once before.

The blueness, a continuing symptom of my travels with the Star Lords, lasted for a very short