“I should hope you think the last, if you are her husband,” Randhir said with a smile. “Well, I shall have my spies seek troughout the city for any word of such folk — but I am certain that if a woman with brown hair had appeared, word would already have come to me. They are not unknown, but they are rare in Chandrodoya.”
“I shall he grateful for whatever boons you may bestow, O Ocean of Compassion.”
The Rajah smiled with grim amusement. “Only remember that those boons require I remain alive, O Magus. Remember it well, and guard me closely.”
* * *
Charya’s last day began with a bath at the hands of servants who were guarded by vigilant soldiers. They dressed him in fine clothes, then turned him over to the soldiers, who mounted him on a camel and led him parading around the city, followed by the Rajah with Shea and Chalmers right behind him and in front of his bodyguard. In front of the thief marched a herald who proclaimed, “Who hears! Who hears! Who hears! The king commands! This is the thief who has robbed and plundered the city of Chandrodoya! Let all men therefore assemble themselves together this evening in the open space outside the gate leading toward the sea. And let them behold the penalty of evil deeds, and learn to be wise.”
“What is the penalty, O Cleaver of Criminals?” Shea called to the monarch in front of him.
“He is to be nailed and tied to a scaffold, with his hands and feet stretched out at full length in an erect posture until death takes him,” Randhir answered. “He shall have everything he wishes to eat, so that we may prolong his life and misery — but when death draws near, melted gold will be poured down his throat until it bursts from his neck and other parts of his body.”
Shea shuddered. “Talk about royal treatment!”
“I would just as soon die by a more lowly, but faster, method,” Chalmers said grimly. “It would seem the Romans were not the only ones who practiced crucifiction.”
Shea stared. “Why, that is what he’s talking about, isn’t it?” He turned back to Randhir, “Is that the usual punishment, O . . .” He swallowed, thinking up an appropriate honorific that wouldn’t be too insulting. “. . . O Hammer of Retribution?”
“Impalement is more common,” the rajah replied, “but since this man has caused so much suffering, he should endure a longer death — and since he has slain so many, the manner of his own dying should be as painful as possible.”
“But why so expensively?”
Now Randhir turned back to give Shea a wintry smile. “He wreaked misery upon his victims, and slew so many for no better reason than to gain gold, Shea. Now let him drink it.”
Shea had to admit that the punishment did fit the crime. That however, did not make it any less gruesome.
* * *
The evening was still hot when they led Charya out to his execution. Crowds lined the streets, Jeering and making obscene gestures. Their jostling and stamping churned up an amazing amount of dust, and between that and the heat of the setting sun, Charya and those who followed him were soon stifling and coughing. The air was probably rich with the scents of curry and cardomoms! but all Shea could smell were the horses of the soldiers who mounted guard on the prisoner through his long march.
Now the procession turned into a broad boulevard, passing beneath the windows of some of the wealthiest merchants in town — and the ones who had lost the most to the thieves. Revilement and abuse poured from the windows above, turning into a chant:
“This is the thief who has been robbing the whole city! Let him tremble now, for Randhir will surely crucify him!”
Unfortunately, the man didn’t look like the villain they described — anything but. Now that he was cleaned up and riding tall, straight and proud in the ruddy light of sunset, that light showed him to be handsome, very handsome, carrying himself with pride and bravery, meeting the jeers of the people with a faint sneer. Wicked or not, everyone knew of his strength and courage, and in the silks and satins the king had put on him, he looked like a prince himself His gaze was calm and steady as he glared with disdain at the tormentors about him.
They saw, and redoubled in their rage. “Let him tremble now! Let him tremble now!”
But Charya did not tremble; Instead, his lips quivered, his eyes flashed fire, and deep lines gathered between his eyebrows. Finally, his face creased into a sardonic smile.
A scream echoed above the clamor of the crowd, a scream that pierced their noise enough so that many of them broke off, staring upward at the window in the grand house that the procession was passing. There, at a second-story window, stood an unveiled woman, very young, who was staring straight into the robber’s eyes, for on his camel, he was only a few feet below her, and not a dozen feet away. She went pale, and quivered as though his glance was a flash of lightning Then she broke away from the fascination of his gaze and turned to the old man beside her, saying something with great force as she pointed at Charya. As the procession moved on, Shea came near, and heard her say, “. . . Go this moment and get that thief released!”
But Shea looked at the old man’s face and gasped, “Malambroso!”
So it was, or his exact double, Shea grabbed Chalmers’ shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other. “Look, Doc! Our kidnapper!”
“No,” Chalmers said, his eyes on the woman, “my wife.”
Shea stared at him, then whirled and looked again at the young woman. It was Florimel — except that she had black hair and a much darker complexion. But hair could be dyed, and so, For that matter, could skin — not that an enchanter of Malambroso’s stature would need to resort to such crude techniques to change a persons appearance. “You’re right, Doc! That’s either Florimel’s exact double, or Florimel herself in disguise! But why would Malambroso . . .” His voice trailed off as the answer struck him.
“Yes,” Chalmers said grimly. “How better to hide her from us? We would be seeking reports of a fair-skinned, brown-haired woman!”
“And, of course, that would be the only way to make her fit in with the local populace” Shea nodded. “Good hiding place, now that you think of it — but it seems to have backfired on him.”
Malambroso was pleading with Florimel. “My darling Shobhani, that thief has been pilfering and plundering the whole city, and by his command scores of citizens were killed! Why, then, at my request, should our must gracious Rajah Randhir release him?”
Almost beside herself Florimel exclaimed, “If giving up your whole property, you can induce the Raja to release him, then instantly do so — for if he does not come to me, I must give up my life!”
She turned away, covering her head with her veil, and sank down weeping, while Malambroso stared down at her, wounded to the core.
So was Chalmers, at seeing Florimel so obviously in love with another man.
“He called her ‘Shobhani’,” Shea said quickly. “Maybe it’s not Florimel after all, just her double!” Then inspiration struck. “Maybe each universe has analogs of the people in our universe! Maybe that old man is just an analog of Malambroso!”
“No,” Chalmers said, his face turning wooden. “That is Malambroso, and the young woman is indeed my Florimel.”
“Oh, yeah?” Shea, in another fit of inspiration, turned him and pointed at the thief, whose face was in profile to them as he stared at the young woman. “Think of him without the beard and the muscles! Think of him as a withdrawn young scholar! Who does he look like?”
Chalmers stared, and turned ashen. “He is me!”
“A younger analog of you,” Shea said quickly. “The real you is still here! But this is what you would have looked like if you had been born a Hindu outlaw! No wonder she fell in love with him!”
Chalmers’ face sagged. “I feel very old, Harold!”
“You feel old! How do you think Malambroso feels?”
“Very angry.” Chalmers turned back to the window, suddenly afraid for Florimel — or Shobhani, whichever she was. Sure enough. Malambroso’s face was suffused with rage — but even
as they watched, all the fight went out of him as anger gave place to misery. He nodded with resignation and said, “I shall try to give you what you want, my child.” He turned away from the window, and Shobhani looked up in sudden hope.
“He does love her,” Chalmers said in surprise. “Her happiness means more to him than his own!”
“I never would have guessed it of him.” Shea agreed. Malambroso came running out into the midst of the parade and threw himself to his knees in front of Randhir’s horse. The Rajah necessarily reined in — why lose a perfectly good taxpayer? — and Malambroso cried, “O great king, be pleased to receive four lakhs of rupees, and to release this thief!”
But the rajah replied, “He has been robbing the whole city, and by reason of him my guards have been destroyed, I cannot by any means release him.”
“Alas!” Malambroso cried, and scuttled back into his house, his face in his hands.
“I never thought I would feel sorry for the man,” Chalmers murmured.
The procession moved on, but Shea turned back in his saddle to watch the end of the domestic crisis. Malambroso appeared again in the window and explained, “Shobhani, I have said and done all that is possible, but it avails me naught with the Rajah. Now, then, we die — for I shall not outlive you!”
“Father, you must not!” Shobhani/Florimel cried, taking his hands.
“You are dearer to me than life itself and I made plans weeks ago for the manner in which I would slay myself if anything brought about your death.”
“You must not!” she cried again, “but I must! I must follow my husband and die when he dies!” And she darted away from the window. Malambroso stood a moment in shock, then ran after her, crying, “No, Shobhani! Stop!”
But Chalmers was trembling. “Husband? How can Florimel have another husband? Even if Shobhani is only Florimel’s analog, how can she be married to a thief?”
Shobhani darted from the house to take up her place by the side of Charya’s camel.
“Away!” snapped a guard, riding up beside her.
“I cannot,” she replied. “I fell in love with him at first sight.”
The guard drew back, aghast, and Randhir moaned faintly. “The poor child!”
Malambroso burst from the house to fall on his knees in front of Shobhani. “No, my child! Come back inside!”
“Away, old man!” The soldier raised his spear-butt, threatening. “How dare you dissuade her from her pious duty!”
“Pious duty? What is he talking about?” Chalmers demanded, white showing all around his eyes; but Shea, more practical and less involved, leaned down to catch Malambroso by the arm and haul him up to his saddle. Okay, Malambroso? Explain — and it better be good!”
The enchanter looked up at him, then stared in shock, “Harold Shea!”
“And Reed Chalmers,” There was a note of incipient mayhem in Chalmers’ voice, and Shea realized with a shock that even the gentle Reed might be capable of a crime of passion. “Explain what we have seen! Is that Florimel, or not?”
“She is, she is!” Malambroso yammered. “I enchanted her body into the coloring of the local people, I enchanted her mind into forgetting that she was Florimel, to believe instead that she was the maiden Shobhani, reared out of sight of men, never being allowed outside the high walls of the garden, because her old nurse, who died when she was only five, gave me, her father, a solemn warning — that Shobhani should be the admiration of the city, but should die a sati-widow before becoming a wife. A harmless piece of nonsense, surely — but reason enough for her father, who kept her as a pearl in a casket.”
“Sati!” Chalmers stared in horror. “Ritual suicide when her husband dies? Letting herself be burned alive on his funeral pyre?”
Malambroso shuddered. “That is one of the ways, yes.”
“You mean she’s following that scoundrel to his execution because she’s planning to die when he does?” Shea cried, aghast. “But how can she think he’s her husband if you’ve got her hypnotized into believing she isn’t even married?”
“It is this confounded belief in reincarnation,” Malambroso groaned, “and in the events of one life affecting the next life! Having begun life anew in this universe, she is reincarnated in its terms — but the only previous life she has had was the one we all know, in which Reed Chalmers was her husband!”
“Is her husband,” Reed said in an iron tone.
“Not in this universe! By its rules, this is a new life!”
“But she’s been in half a dozen universes!” Shea protested. “Was each of them a previous life?”
“Yes, as far as this universe is concerned,” Malambroso moaned, “and in each of them, Chalmers was her husband! But here in Chandrodoya, Chalmers’ analog is the robber chieftain, so she fell in love the moment she set eyes upon him.”
Shea stared. “You mean that, in Hindu terms, the robber chieftain was her predestined husband?”
“Yes, unless she had seen Chalmers first! Oh, how I wish I had not kept her so well hidden!”
“But why does she have to commit sati?” Shea demanded. “Nobody would have known if she had just kept quiet! She could even fly in the face of convention and stay alive even now! They weren’t married — no one would blame her!”
“She would,” Malambroso told him. “As a good Hindu maiden, sati is part of her dharma, the obligation of the role in life to which she was born; to refuse to commit sail would load her soul with bad karma — the wages of sin, in our terms — so when she did die, she would be reborn in a lower caste. But if she does commit sati, her soul will gain a great deal of good karma — I suppose the closest equivalent we have is grace — and she will be reborn in a higher caste. She even had the gall to recite Hindu proverbs at me — that there are thirty-five millions of hairs on the human body, and the woman who ascends the pyre with her husband will remain so many years in heaven before she’s reborn — and that, as the snake-catcher draws the serpent from his hole, the wife who commits sati will rescue her husband from hell and will rejoice with him; though he may have sunk to a region of torment, be restrained in dreadful bonds, have reached the place of anguish, be exhausted and afflicted and tortured for his crimes, her act of self-sacrifice will save him.”
Chalmers stared in horror. “And she really believes this?”
“No other effectual duty is known for virtuous women at any time after the death of their lords, except casting themselves into the same fire,” Malambroso sighed. “As long as a woman in her reincarnation after reincarnation shall refuse sati, she shall not escape from being reborn in the body of some female animal. Her only road to rebirth in a higher caste, and to eventual nirvana, is to commit sati when her husband dies!”
Chalmers gave him a very black look. “You have a great deal to answer for, Malarobroso. you and your in-depth hypnotic spell! Certainly you have placed entirely too much knowledge of Hindu dogma in her mind. Whatever possessed you to impose such an asinine scheme of disguise? Your daughter indeed! Oh, I will admit it was far easier than to believe that she was your wife, since you’re such a relic — but how did you think you were going to be able to marry your own daughter?”
“When I was sure you had come and gone, I was going to remove the enchantment from her mind so that she would know I was not her father, then feed her a love phyltre,” Malambroso snapped, “and who are you calling a relic, you antique?”
“Antique! I’ll have you know . . .”
“I’ll have you both know that we only have a few minutes,” Shea interrupted. “We’re almost to the city gate! If you don’t nail down a solution to this dilemma before they nail down the robber, we’re going to be dealing with a barbecue, not a woman!”
“Yes, quite so!” With a visible effort, Chalmers throttled his anger and wrenched his mind back into analytical mode. “So love at first sight was her recognition that the robber was her fated husband,” he summarized, “and because he dies, she must die! Oh, blast and flay you, Malambroso! You h
ave really made a thorough mess of it this time!”
“I know, I know!” Malambroso groaned, “but curse me later if you must! For now, only aid me in finding some way to save her!”
By now, they had come out of the gate, and the robber chieftain saw the scaffold standing upright, waiting for him. His steps faltered, but the guards pricked him with their spears, and he gave them a look of disdain before he marched up proudly and firmly to stand before the giant wooden X He lifted his arms, holding them out to his sides, and the executioners stepped up with hammer and nails.
“If you can do anything to prevent this, do it now!” Malambroso pleaded.
“The invisible shield we put over the rajah when they were fighting?” Shea suggested.
“I have no grass,” Chalmers answered, watching the scene with narrowed eyes, “and Randhir would know in an instant who had done it. No, we must concoct an effect that could be mistaken for something valid, within their own religion.”
The three men stood silent for a long moment as the executioners threw a rope around the thief’s waist and tied him firmly to the middle of the X.
“Iron skin,” Shea said suddenly.
“Of course! From the elbows to the fingers, and from the knees to the toes! Quickly, Malambroso! You take the arms! Harold, take the right leg! I will take the left!”
Malambroso cast a quick look of confusion at Chalmers, then shrugged and turned to business. He drew a few odd objects from beneath his robe, began to manipulate them, and muttered a verse in Arabic. Chalmers took a small knife from his thief’s finery and leaned down to rub it against his shin, muttering. Shea, realizing how his boss was applying the Laws of Sympathy and Contagion, drew his own knife and stropped it against his thigh, muttering,
“Joe Magarac was born in Iron Mountain,
And therefore as he grew, he turned to steel.
Let our bandit chief bathe in his fountain;
The Exotic Enchanter Page 13