Chapter one

Absolute dismay gripped me. I had failed the Star Lords! Utter disaster!

Those unpredictable and intolerant superbeings did not tolerate failure.

Blueness grew around me in that bed-chamber of death. I swear blueness grew and thickened around me. I stood there, empty-handed, my sword still buried in the throat of San Hargon who slumped by the bed. Beside him, the still form of Pulvia lay face-down on the floor. On the bed rested the body of San Mishuro, freshly slain, the man I believed the Star Lords required me to protect. So I stood there waiting for the enormous spectral blue form of the Scorpion to materialize and seize me up into the whirling coldness between the stars. The Everoinye would send their Scorpion to snatch me back to Earth, to leave all I loved on Kregen — perhaps forever.

I swear that bedchamber was irradiated with the blue radiance.

Perhaps I could defy the Star Lords, not as I once had done, stubbornly, foolishly, and so been banished to Earth for twenty-one years. Perhaps I could this time fashion those defenses of the mind I had been working on to deflect the wrath of the Star Lords, divert their desires? As I stood there, panting, seeing the corpses and the blood as through a blue mist, I screamed silently inside my head: “No! No! I will remain here on Kregen!”

After all, the Star Lords required my help here. They had told me that. There were so many things to be done the problem was where to begin.

A voice, shrill with passion, ripped through my tangled thoughts.

“There he is! He has killed the san! Cut him down!”

The blueness vanished and the mist cleared.

Through the open door of the bedchamber leaped two black-clad men disguised in black masks and brandishing swords. San Hargon, sprawled by the bed with my sword through his neck, had, indeed, brought reinforcements, and here they were ready to avenge the death of their employer.

The sword sticking in Hargon was a local weapon, a Lohvian lynxter, given to me by my fellow kregoinye Mevancy. The two assassins must have seen my empty hands as they rushed on me, and no doubt this pleased them.

I must admit I felt the blood in my head. I ripped out my rapier, a foreign weapon in these parts, and charged full tilt at the assassins. I admit it. I yelled with ferocious venom, charged with the awful anticipation of a horrendous future parted from Kregen, I shouted like any frightened spear-carrier in the ranks. I was considerably wrought up. I still believed I was due to be hurled contemptuously back to Earth and I didn’t intend to land up there badly wounded, no by Vox!

So I just tore into these two assassins, stikitches of some quality, and our blades met in that spine-tingling scr