by Laurence Yep
But the prince’s confidence was unshakable. “You go on ahead and locate the secret passage. I’ll join you when I can.”
Urmi cocked her head to the side as if pleasantly surprised. “So you’re not nearly as selfish as you pretend to be.”
The prince raised and lowered his shoulders. “Every [70] now and then I get an attack of high ideals—usually at an inconvenient time.”
She gave him a grudging smile as if he had just gone up in her esteem. “No, beneath all that foolishness, there really is something there.” She suddenly placed a hand beneath her throat and gave a mock cough. “And I think it must be catching. I’ll go with you.”
The prince saluted Sulu with his sword. “Coming, d’Artagnan?”
Sulu’s instinctive reaction was to say yes; but, much to the prince’s disappointment, Sulu was disciplined enough to glance at Mr. Spock. And the Vulcan was frowning in disapproval. “Your Highness, our small group can do little to stop the slaughter in the palace. We can do far more when you are safe in Kotah.”
The prince lowered his sword self-righteously. “But I might be able to save a few people. And what value can you place on a life?” He started down the corridor. “Shall we proceed, Urmi?”
Jata let out a whoop. “Now there’s a real emperor.” He fell in behind Urmi and beckoned to the rest of the Hounds to join him.
“Children think they’re invulnerable,” Bibil sighed to Sulu and Mr. Spock. “So I guess older, wiser heads ought to go along to pick up the pieces.”
They ran for several hundred meters down dusty, dimly lit corridors until they turned into a long hallway with false pillars set into the walls. Between the pillars were niches with dust-covered busts that frowned at the group racing by now.
Urmi, who was in the lead by then, slipped as she reached the end of the hallway. At first Sulu thought that she had simply lost her footing on the slick marble floor. But she rose from her hands and knees, wriggling [71] the fingers of her free hand uncomfortably and looking about for something on which to wipe them. Impulsively she went over to the left half of a set of drapes that covered the exit and wiped her hand across the blue material, leaving behind dark, red stains.
She was using one of the drapes to wipe off her knees as they crowded toward the entrance to a large, domed room some fifty meters in diameter. Only a few of the fat yellow candles had been lit in the chandelier and the few pieces of furniture in there were covered by old cloths as if the room were rarely used. But some twenty-odd corpses lay scattered across the floor so that the white marble tiles were now covered with large red pools.
Right at their feet lay a man with his eyes opened in terror, his mouth contorted for an angry shout that would never be sounded now. Urmi took a ragged breath and nodded to the corpse. “He was one of the men from the kitchen.”
Chit carefully stepped into the room and paused beside the body of a young woman. “And this was one of the nursemaids. What harm could she do to anyone?”
“Let’s ask her killers, shall we?” Despite the uncertain footing, the prince hurried across the room toward another hallway from which the screaming sounded.
When they rounded the corner into a wide corridor, they found a dozen sinha using a bench as an improvised battering ram as they tried to break down a wooden door. Behind the door, they could hear people begging the warriors to go away. But that only made the sinha swing the bench even harder against the door.
Bibil tried to yank the prince back behind the corner. “Get back, you young fool, before they see you.”
[72] But it was already too late. “There’re more of the traitors,” one of them shouted. The others dropped the bench with a crash and swung round. Swords hissed out of sheaths. “Rahu, Rahu!” the sinha shouted as they came charging down the hall.
Bibil came on guard. “We’re in for it now.”
Chapter Three
The Hounds ranged themselves on either side of the prince and Bibil, leaving only a few meters on the right. “Come along,” Urmi said to Sulu and Mr. Spock. “It looks like we’re to have the flank of honor.”
Sulu stepped up between Urmi and Mr. Spock and swung his sword up. In his nervousness, he glanced at Mr. Spock, who was waiting as calmly for the charge as he would have for a meal. Sulu looked back at the sinha. “It’s strange,” he said out of the side of his mouth to Mr. Spock. “I’ve never actually seen an opponent in the flesh before.”
Mr. Spock turned sideways and swung his blade up. “And if you wish to glimpse another opponent, I suggest you concentrate, Mr. Sulu.”
Sulu watched the sinha run toward them. The eyes of one sinha seemed to lock on him and Sulu watched as the angry, scowling face grew closer and closer. He had fought and killed before, but that had been done at [74] astronomical distances with the Enterprise’s weaponry, not at arm’s length.
Sulu had thought, perhaps, that at some magical moment—perhaps by the grace of some fencers’ angel—he might receive all the buoyant confidence of a d’Artagnan or a Cyrano. At the very least, he thought he would feel the competitive excitement and determination he felt during a tournament. But he felt neither—only a tightening of his stomach as if someone were drawing his bowels into a knot. He could feel the sweat on his palms loosening his grip slightly and he had to remind himself to breathe.
“Rahu! Rahu!” The sinha swung his blade in a waist-high arc and Sulu swung his blade down in a parry. It was a shock when the blades met. It seemed as if Sulu could feel not only the strength of the other man’s wrist but his determination—even his eagerness to kill Sulu. The sinha almost immediately disengaged and stepped back, eyes appraising Sulu for some weakness or flaw.
Sulu should have been doing the same, but instead he could not help glancing at Mr. Spock, who was fencing capably if not brilliantly. But then, Sulu realized, Mr. Spock was probably treating this as some new problem of mind-and-body relationship. He was simply letting his body move through the motions it had been taught.
The hiss of a blade slicing through the air brought Sulu back to reality. He saw the glint of something silver coming down at his head from his left side. He parried the blow, knocking the sinha’s blade further to the left, away from the sinha’s side.
What happened next was more instinct than plan. While the sinha was recovering for another blow, Sulu [75] dropped his left shoulder low and whipped his sword down and around almost in a full circle so fast that his wrists began to ache with the strain. And then the sword seemed to be rising of its own will as if it were drawing Sulu’s arms up with it.
And for a fraction of a second, the sinha did not seem to know what to do against a blade that was coming at him so close to his body from beneath. The angle was too awkward to knock Sulu’s blade to the outside away from his body. The sinha tried to bring his own blade down, but it meant raising his own sword at an absurd angle so that his parry lacked real strength. When their blades met, Sulu did not feel the stiff resistance of before and he let his blade slide off the sinha’s sword and into the sinha’s body.
Sulu’s blade caught the rim of the sinha’s cuirass and it served as a guide as Sulu swept it across. The sword paused for a moment as it sank into the sinha’s flesh, but then its sharp edge sliced easily across the belly as if it were slicing silk.
With a scream, the sinha toppled backward. And Sulu was standing there with his blade hovering in the air. He stared at the blood on the sword, realizing that he had really killed a man. He felt more shame than elation.
And then Sulu’s own awareness began to expand outward again so that he began to hear the clashing of weapons around him. He looked to his right. Mr. Spock was still fencing with the other sinha, who was content to wait till his superior reach gave him an opening. Mr. Sulu brought his blade up over his shoulder, timing his blow for when the sinha was exposed and then he struck. Blood covered the sinha’s shoulder and he stepped back.
[76] “It’s not tournament rules,” Sulu said to Mr. Spock, “but I guess t
hat doesn’t matter.”
“Survival is what counts,” Mr. Spock said with a slight smile.
And then Sulu turned to see what had been happening around him. Urmi had killed her own opponent, and two more sinha were dead. But three Hounds had also died and Chit was down with a slash across his leg. In the meantime, the prince was being pressed back by two sinha.
One of them squinted at the prince and then gave a sudden, exulting shout. “It’s Prince Vikram. Hey, we’ve got the prince.”
Urmi’s slash caught the shouting sinha in the throat. But too late, excited shouts answered from a nearby corridor. Bibil lunged past the prince and the sinha barely escaped being skewered. He parried Bibil’s thrust, but left himself open to the prince’s sword. And the prince didn’t hesitate to lay his chest open.
Bibil yanked at the prince’s arm. “Come on.”
“But the people—” The prince pointed his bloody sword at the room.
“Can’t you get it through your thick skull?” Bibil snapped. “We’ll be lucky if we get out alive ourselves now.”
A dozen more sinha had appeared at the opposite end of the corridor. And there were more shouts in the distance. Chit had torn off part of his ragged soropa and bound it around his leg as a tourniquet. “Go on, Your Highness. We’ll hold them off.”
“I can’t leave you like this.” The prince shook his head. “I’m the one who led you here.”
“We didn’t have to follow.” Having found some last new source of energy, Chit slowly shoved himself [77] upright with the help of his halberd. “Your Highness, we’re as likely a crew for the executioner’s sword, but we do know how to die gloriously.” And though he was too proud to beg out loud, his eyes pleaded silently for the prince to understand.
“I won’t forget you.” The prince raised his sword in a mock salute.
“Why? We’re just some old fools who outlived their usefulness.” And Chit turned to meet the new group of sinha.
“Come on, lad.” Bibil pulled at the prince’s sleeve. The prince turned, stumbling into his servant. Tears had half blinded him. Sulu hooked his right arm through the prince’s left arm. “I’ll lead you.”
Halfway back to the chapel, the prince shook off Bibil’s hand. “I can see now.” He drew a long, shaky breath. “But I’m not sure I want to. How could I have led those men to such senseless deaths?”
“Well,” Bibil sighed, “keep that in mind next time you want to play at being a hero. People can die for your mistakes.”
Sulu hadn’t expected the Hounds to hold the sinha for more than a few seconds, but they seemed to be giving a good account of themselves, if the clashing of steel behind them meant anything.
“There wasn’t any reason to die for me. I’m just a creature like any of them.” The prince rubbed his forehead as if both puzzled and pained.
“That you are,” Bibil said, “but sometimes a person represents an ideal.”
“But it’s foolish.” The prince glanced behind them as if he could see through the stone to where the Hounds were making their last stand.
“Then we should all be such fools,” Bibil panted. [78] “Do you think they’re dying just so you can become a ... a professional student?”
Mr. Spock paused in front of Bibil and the prince. “Your Highness, you cannot help what sentiments other people might project onto you.”
Bibil jerked his head at Mr. Spock. “What do you know about it?”
“I speak from experience,” Mr. Spock said coldly. “People are continually asking me to play roles in petty emotional melodramas in which I have asked neither to be cast nor directed.”
Urmi came up to Mr. Spock. “What kind of offworld double-talk is this? Just a while ago, you said some illusions were necessary.”
Mr. Spock’s nostrils widened slightly in annoyance at having his own quotes thrown back at him. “Whether the prince wishes to participate in the illusion is quite another thing. I was merely providing him with enough information so he could make his own decision.”
Bibil took the prince’s arm and tried to guide him around Mr. Spock; but the prince refused to budge. “Well, the prince also has responsibilities.”
“Which have to be determined by reason and logic,” Spock stated firmly. “Not by one’s emotions. It is morally repugnant when you try to bully someone, using guilt as a club.”
The prince perked up. “Well, if it’s been done to you, you certainly don’t seem any worse for wear. But tell me the secret, Mr. Spock.”
Mr. Spock hesitated—as if he felt he had already inadvertently confessed too much. “One uses logic and reason to make objective choices.”
“Don’t use objectivity as an excuse for selfishness,” Bibil insisted stubbornly.
[79] Mr. Spock, however, could be just as stubborn in his own way. “The same might be said of responsibility—or rather what people try to claim your responsibilities are.”
Bibil leaned his weight on his left leg and cocked his head to the side. “Are we discussing the prince’s predicament, or your own?”
Mr. Spock lowered his hand. “The terms of the argument may change, but not the argument itself.” Mr. Spock leaned his head forward as if to emphasize his point. “Emotions can be worse tyrants than any emperor and they provide the excuse for the most terrible abuses. I am merely asking you to respect the prince’s decision.”
Bibil squinted an eye first at Mr. Spock and then at the prince. “I don’t know which is worse: the fool who knows his duty and refuses to accept it or the fool who won’t even admit it.” He jabbed a finger at the prince. “No matter what you claim, I know your heart’s Angiran.”
“But my legs are most definitely not”—the prince began to run as if he wished to escape from all of them—“and they will be carrying the rest of me far away from Angira.”
They raced down the corridors as quickly as they could, arriving at the chapel out of breath. Bibil threw himself at the door and shoved it open, waving them through the doorway hurriedly. Then he shut the door.
The chapel was a small room with a low ceiling, about forty meters square. The walls had been left rough and unfinished, though they seemed filled with a bewildering array of statues jammed together on various altars. The statues were in many styles of carvings from different ages of art, as if assembled through [80] countless generations. A solitary candle hanging from the ceiling cast a dim light over the room.
The prince pointed toward a statue whose soropa had been wrapped about its head so that its face was hidden in shadow. “That’s supposed to be the Lord of the Shadows, the Judge of the Underworld.” In the statue’s hand was a shadow-catcher like the prince’s.
Sulu gave a shiver. “But I don’t think he can tell a joke quite as well as you do.”
“Oh, I think he has quite a sense of humor. Think about the people he chooses to take underground and the ones he chooses to spare.”
Mr. Spock stared about the chapel. “Yes, but which one is the goddess of mercy?”
The prince scratched his forehead. “I don’t know. We’ll have to look. But perhaps there’s something to be said for monotheism.”
“Mr. Sulu and I can try to barricade the door while you search.” Mr. Spock motioned Sulu over to a nearby bench.
Bibil strode forward to the main altar and peered intently at one statue. “By the Many, I never expected to see this.”
“Did you find the goddess of mercy?” The prince swung around excitedly.
“No, your grandfather.” He pointed toward a stern-faced statue holding one hand up with fingers delicately curled around an orb with an eye. “I’d never thought he’d end up keeping company as holy.”
“I rather suspect it was my grandmother’s idea.” The prince began to inspect another side altar.
But the Angirans still had not found the statue by the time Mr. Spock and Sulu had dragged a heavy wooden bench over toward the door. Mr. Spock picked up one [81] of the sacks of food and motioned for Sulu to do the same
. “We’ll be needing candles in the passageways. Extinguish the candles on the right side, Mr. Sulu. I’ll take the ones on the left.”
Sulu had managed to fill his sack full of candles when Urmi gave a shout. “I found her.”
She was standing by one of the side altars, her hand hidden in a regular forest of statues. “But it’s very small.”
“Yes, well, mercy has little to do with Angira,” the prince said as he strode over to Urmi.
Her hand pressed and pulled at one foot. “No, it’s not that one.” She began to push and jerk at the other one.
There was a click and Urmi stepped back from the altar as chains began to clink and old stones began to groan against one another. Faintly, through the heavy door, Sulu could hear excited shouts from the sinha.
“I think they’ve heard the entrance opening,” he said.
“Then we’d better hurry.” Bibil picked up a heavy gold candleholder and waved Sulu and Spock toward the altar.
The marble block that had formed the front facing for the altar was sliding down now, revealing steps leading downward. The heavy bronze door rattled in the doorframe as the sinha tried to get in. First the prince and then Urmi stepped through.
“We’ll have to jam the mechanism if we can,” Mr. Spock said as he crouched down and stepped onto the stairway. The bronze door had begun to ring with a deep, bell-like sound as the sinha tried to batter it down.
Bibil almost shoved Sulu through the opening and [82] followed him onto the steps. Mr. Spock had already found the mechanism that closed the block. He yanked at the chain as soon as Sulu and Bibil were on the steps beside him and then disabled the pulleys.
There was the sound of water dripping in the distance. Bibil held a candle above his head so that they could see the passageway overhead. Small little bumps covered the ceiling and they could see drops of moisture at the very tip of some. The texture gave the red-colored stone the appearance of flesh, and Bibil gave a grunt. “This passageway must have been built back in the first days of the original citadel.”