The Mask of Loki

by Roger Zelazny

  Pierre Bord made his way over the half-empty benches to take the floor in the shaft of morning sunlight. By putting his head just so, he knew, he could light it like an angel's in a triptych and thus, on some deepest level, awe the members of the gallery.

  "To revise the calendar in names is one thing: weeding out the dead Roman gods and misplaced Roman ordinals, replacing them with words the people can understand, borrowed from the temperate seasons and from the phases of agriculture. This is an admirable work, one which I surely can support.

  "But to revise it in meter is quite another thing. Who can live by an hour of one hundred minutes? Who can work for a week of ten days, from which that last day of perfect rest has been abolished on atheistical grounds? Is the weary peasant to be given no cease from his labors? The shape of this new Republican calendar is a monstrosity, patched and splinted like the barbaric Moors'. What next? Would you have us pray five times daily during those hundred-minute hours to the Republican virtues of Labor, Work, Drudgery, Chores, and Sweat?"

  That line met with modest laughter—but by no means from the whole assembly.

  "No, Citizens. This calendar will unsettle the nation, disrupt trade, disquiet the people, and destroy the economy of France. I urge you to reject it, one and all."

  Clap, clap... clap.

  In the voting, the new calendar passed by all but six votes.

  Robespierre came up to Bord at the adjournment.

  "Well spoken, Citizen Bord." The smile, the hand on the shoulder, seemed genuine enough.

  Bord tried to return the smile. "I fear that pride of reason forced me to speak out against your own proposal, Citizen."

  "No matter, no matter. Every good idea needs a foil to test it, you know. Otherwise, how will men know its greatness? And your little mutiny did no harm, for the measure passed."

  "It did."

  "And now to a hearty lunch."

  "May I join you?"

  "Ah!" The delicate brow wrinkled in concern. "I fear that others claim my attentions, Pierre. It would not be convenient."

  "I understand."

  "I'm sure you do."

  * * *

  The knock on the door came at midnight.

  The trial came at dawn, two months later.

  It was a long two months that Pierre Bord, now officially "du Bord" again, spent in a dripping cell below the river level. The space was a meter wide and high—such a useful new measurement his National Convention had introduced for gauging such things—and two meters long. He lay in it as in a coffin, fighting the rats with his fingers as they tried to get at his daily ration of hard bread. He lay in his own filth and tried to clean himself with those same fingers. And water, that was the hard choice: to expend his cup for thirst or for the vanities of hygiene.

  On the sixty-sixth day, the wooden door of this tomb opened for only the second time—the first being to admit him. When they brought him forth for trial, unshaven and unwashed, ulcerous wounds from the bad food covered his mouth and impeded his pleading.

  The charges were absurd: that Scholar Pierre du Bord had, under the ancient regime, educated the children of that same Marquise De Cheneye whom he had exposed. To teach the aristos in the time of their ascendancy was the same thing as teaching the benefits and rightness and goodness of that aristocracy—or so the court had determined.

  It was a ragged thing that rode that same morning, tied backward in the red tumbrel, to the Place de la Revolution. A priest stood beside du Bord in the cart and hummed psalms through his nose as a supposed comfort to the condemned.

  Pierre's head was down, avoiding the rain of rotting fruit and vegetables that pelted his chest and shoulders. If he raised his head to look around, a softened apple—or worse offal—might catch him in the eyes or mouth. And yet he did look around, seeking the Watchers.

  The Watchers, who had protected him for so many months, would rescue him once again. Pierre was sure of it.

  When he ventured a peek against his shoulder to the left or right, he fancied he saw a dark, stubby form among the crowd. It neither screamed nor threw anything, but watched him with an intent stare from beneath a broad hat or hood.

  Even the Watchers could not move against this crowd.

  At the scaffold in the center of the square the soldiers, now openly wearing the brassards and rosettes of the Committee of Public Safety, untied him from the post in the cart but left his hands bound. They walked him up the steps, because his knees had gone strangely loose and weak. They tied him at chest, belly, and knee to a long board, which came only up to his collarbones. But Pierre hardly noticed. He could not take his eyes off the high, pi-shaped framework with its angular blade suspended between the uprights.

  "It will not hurt, my son," the priest whispered in his ear—the first non-Latin he had spoken since the ride began. "The blade will feel like a cool breeze on the back of your neck."

  Pierre turned and gaped at him. "How do you know?"

  The soldiers tipped the board forward and ran it toward the uprights. Pierre du Bord's view of the world contracted to the worn grain of the wooden bed of this infernal machine, followed by the crosswork pattern of a basket made of rushes. The rushes were golden yellow. Pierre stared at them hard, looking for traces and flecks of reddish brown—the same color in the defect of that crystal that had cut his finger. When was that? Seven months ago. But this basket was new and unstained—an honor for him, courtesy of his friend, Maximilien Robespierre.

  The priest was wrong.

  The pain was there to be felt, sharp and definite, like the cut of that crystal. And then he was falling, face first, into the basket. Its pattern of reeds came up to meet him, struck him in the nose. The golden light flared behind his eyes, then faded to blackness as his lank, long hair settled about his face and closed it out.

  * * *

  "Where is your boyfriend?"

  "He had to make a call to his agent or something. He said he might be a long time at it."

  "Good. We have much to discuss."

  "You bet we do, Hasan. The Frogs are trying to kill him now, and that's never happened before."

  "What is this?" The man's dark eyes blazed, depth-less irises drilled into balls of eggshell white. Then his eyelids closed fractionally, smooth silk petals coming together without a trace of wrinkle or line. Each lash was perfectly curved, like a thorn of black iron. "Explain, please."

  "One of them was waiting in his apartment when he went back there. He tried to take Gurden out with a knife, one of those knives. I had to call in my shadow, Ithnain, for help."

  "And?"

  "We were forced to leave the body inside the apartment, in messy circumstances, and flee."

  "Not Ithnain's body?"

  "No, the other. He might have been a skilled assassin, but not as skilled as Ithnain."

  "Did Gurden get a good look at Ithnain?"

  "Not particularly." Alexandra slipped out of her molecular scarf-wrap and laid it across the bed. She sat down beside it. "Tom was recovering from a knee in the groin, still breathing shallowly."

  "Good, then I can use him yet again with Gurden."

  "Use Ithnain? You mean, to protect Tom?" She started to work her boots off, one at a time. Hasan knelt to help her with the buckles.

  "No. I'll use him to sharpen Gurden. I have begun providing, ah, 'experiences' for your young man. Access to his past through the dream therapy has not brought him along, or not fast enough. And deprivation from your charms—" Hasan slipped her boot off and ran a hand up the back of her calf, cupping the fullness of the muscle where it bulged."—seems only to have allowed him more time for his piano playing. A new direction appeared to be called for."

  He rose up and, with his other hand, pushed gently against her breastbone. She let her body fall back on the bed.

  "If Gurden has to fight for his life," he said, "even just a little, it helps to, um, 'coordinate' his attention. And that in turn will serve to wake hi
m. That is clearly the scene that you and Ithnain stumbled upon."

  Hasan sank back down to the floor at her feet.

  Alexandra tugged at the fullness of her dress, raising the hem above her knees. His hands crept across the flesh of her thighs and began peeling back her monofilament tights.

  "I wish you had told me sooner," she sighed—although whether with frustration or pleasure, even she could not be sure. "I did think your man was one of the French. Otherwise, I would have warned Ithnain to be more gentle with him. Now we have wasted one of our own agents."

  "Do not worry. I have more."

  She slid her arms up and around to cup the nape of her neck. One elbow dislodged the scarf; it rustled off the end of the bed.

  "But wait!" Alexandra exclaimed, arching her back and half sitting up.

  Hasan's hands paused obediently, held still and hot between her legs.

  "We did not know where, exactly, Gurden was staying," she said. "Did you?"

  "No," he whispered against her skin.

  "So how could that Assassin be yours?"

  He raised his head above the ruck of her dress and looked into her eyes. "It... may not have been."

  "So the attack was by the Watchers."

  "An interesting development." Hasan blew out his cheeks, a kind of facial shrug. His mustaches bristled like an alarmed caterpillar. He dropped his face into her lap and began tickling her with the bristles.

  "And I may have helped move things along too fast," she whispered.

  "Hmm-mm?"

  "While Gurden was weakened and distracted by the blow, I took the opportunity of introducing him to the crystal."

  Hasan's head moved so fast that his chin struck the front of her thigh, digging into a nerve point between the muscles. The shock of it entered her belly in a sick-making wave.

  "I did not authorize that!" he hissed.

  "Of course not, Hasan. But, in the field, I must have some latitude for making decisions."

  "How did Gurden react to it?"

  "Violently. I saw the tremor pass through him, stronger than ever before."

  "Too many stresses," he said, mentally weighing this information. "The crystal itself will awaken this Gurden sooner than we expected."

  She started to sit up again, but he rose over her and pushed his face into the silk of her bodice. His hands sought the snaps that held its two halves together. Her hands came down to help him.

  "Too much awake," Hasan mused, "and this man can be more dangerous than if he's too much asleep."

  "Wake him, and wake all the Watchers around him." She pulled his head down onto her. "But that was always the game."

  Hasan stopped his tongue for speaking. "Except that now the Watchers play at being Hashishiyun, too."

  "Assassins," Sandy repeated, gasping. "Or perhaps they are moving the game to a new level of protection."

  "A prophylactic assassination? Would they sacrifice him to put us off the trail for another thirty or forty years?"

  "You have the time."

  "Once, while events developed at their own slow pace in our part of the world, then I did have time. Now—" He lowered his chest, belly, hips down on top of her."—I want results."

  "So do we all."

  She pushed against him with her hands, twisting and pulling at his clothing. "Agh!" he gasped as, in rolling away his trousers, she bent and twisted him.

  For a space of minutes, they said nothing more.

  For a longer time, there was nothing to say.

  Finally, he stirred and lifted his head. "You are sure of his reaction to the crystal?"

  "Gurden is the strongest one yet," she replied. "I am sure of that."

  "And so must the Watchers be—sure enough that they would try eliminating him."

  "They might get to him and use him before you do. They are bound to try that tactic at least once."

  "Not with the guard I can mount. Not with the price I will pay."

  Alexandra made space alongside herself on the bed and rolled Hasan's limp body into it. She cuddled his head against her breast.

  "Can we really raise him far enough through the veils," she asked, "for him to give you the secrets you desire... without raising him into the joining?"

  "We must play him, Sandy. Like a fish on the line, we play him." Hasan's finger brushed against her soft nipple with its generous areola. "Pull him to the surface, but not so far he leaps free." The finger moved up. "Let him plunge into the depths, but not so far he can gain strength for an escape." The finger moved down. "Play him, wear him out, buy time. But do it delicately." Her nipple hardened with this renewed exercise.

  "All right." She pushed his hand away. "We play him. And when you have the secret of the Stone? What then?"

  "We use it for the end that Allah has always promised."

  * * *

  Sura 3

  Behind Closed Doors

  Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small

  That stood along the floor and by the wall;

  And some loquacious vessels were; and some

  Listened perhaps, but never talk'd at all.

  —Omar Khayyam

  * * *

  The Knights of the Temple almost never marched in procession, except at the coronation of a king—and then only for a king whom they supported. When Guy de Lusignan was crowned King of Jerusalem, the Templars marched.

  The bright-burnished mail felt alien to Thomas Amnet, so long had he worn the linens and silks of a counselor who drifted about the halls of the Keep and advised the Order on matters of trade and finance. The weight of the steel bore down on his shoulders and its links rasped across his ribs, buffered only by a jerkin of raw white lambs wool.

  His surcoat, more wool, might be fine for a cold night upon the desert, but here in the courtyard of the Palace of Jerusalem, at ten in the morning with the sun beating down, it was a smoldering wrap. The sweat poured out from under Thomas' conical steel helmet, down the sides of his neck to the nape, where the salt streams of Tigris and Euphrates joined to trickle down the cataracts of his spine.

  That was while he stood silently at attention with his brother knights. When they moved forward, new freshets of moisture sprouted from his armpits and rolled across his kidneys. His boots of nailed leather smacked the cobbles and jarred his joints far more than the felt slippers to which he was accustomed. The solid cadence of 200 other pairs of boots echoed as it chased around the high stone walls and found its way out into the alleyways of the bazaar.

  Amnet imagined the effect it had there: the whispers behind dark-skinned hands, the rolling eyes, the turned heads of camels and camel driver. The echo of marching feet, working its way out of the Christian stronghold, would raise an uneasiness among Jerusalem's population. Were the assembled Orders marching to make war and insurrection in the city? None of the natives in this land could ever be quite sure.

  A setpiece of martial pageantry, while a mitered priest held a crown over a king's head—this the Saracen dervishes would never comprehend.

  Across the cobblestones and up the steps into the palace's wide refectory, the Templars marched. A coronation ceremony properly required a cathedral, but no church in the city was quite so defensible as this. The actual placing of the golden circlet upon Guy's head had been done in the palace chapel, with just the King's closest counselors attending.

  One of those counselors now waited inside the anteroom to greet the Templars. Reynald de Chatillon, Prince of Antioch, struck an imposing figure in his red-and-purple silks and velvets, with a light sword hanging from a belt made of plates wrought of gold. As the phalanx of marching, sweating knights of the cross advanced over the threshold and through the enclosed space, he bowed to them with a mocking smile on his lips, as if he played at being steward of the palace. Walking backward before them, he led them into the main hall. His bow became deeper and more arched as he backed up to the stacked tables at its head.

  Thomas
Amnet and his brother knights filled the left and right sides of the refectory and came to rest with a loud stamping of feet.

  "This is an abomination!" The voice roared into the sudden silence which had followed the marching boots. Everyone there knew that voice: Roger, Grand Master of the Order of the Hospital, which was the Templars' chief rival for military and political power in Outremer.

  "Please, my good sir! Your demeanor is unseemly!" And that was the whispery, placating voice of Ebert, the real steward of the Palace of Jerusalem, servant of any who sat on the throne.

  Amnet craned his neck. From where he stood, near the front ranks of his Order and thus at the head of the hall, he could just make out the bulk of the Master Hospitaller, backlit by the sunshine from the doorway. Beyond him, in the courtyard, were the heads of more knights, his own Hospitallers. Cringing at Roger's side was Ebert, a stick of a man in brocaded jerkin and droopy hose.

  A murmur from the Templars in the hall drowned out Ebert's further protests, but not Roger's.

  "King! That piece of bloody offal isn't fit to sit my horse—let alone to crown himself king."

  "My Lord Hospitaller! Your opinion is quite mumble-bumble-bub."

  The last of Ebert's reply was decimated by the growls and muttered oaths from the Templars assembled in the refectory.

  Amnet took two steps backward, removing himself from the forward ranks, and hurried behind their rigid backs toward the door. He heard steps coming in his wake and half-turned to see Gerard de Ridefort also rushing to the focus of disturbance.

  Arriving in the anteroom first, Amnet put his own hands to the double doors, left and right, and pulled to bring their weight around. As they swung to, Gerard moved sideways through the closing crack; they boomed shut behind him.

  Amnet had already turned to confront the steward and the intruding Hospitaller. "What noise is this?" He directed his question to Ebert and not to the rival Grand Master.

  Roger's bulk swung on him like a bull which minded the yappings of a terrier. "Don't meddle in this, Templar."