by Джеффри Лорд
«My name is Richard Blade,» he said slowly. «My own people are called the English.»
«I have never heard of them,» said the woman. «Are they beyond the mountains?»
For a moment Blade couldn't understand what she meant. Then he realized she must mean the mountains that bordered the high plateau where he had landed. No doubt they marked the limits of the known world for these people.
«Yes, the English live far beyond the mountains.»
«How far?»
«Why do you ask that?» Blade countered.
The woman bit her lip and lowered her eyes. Apparently she hadn't expected him to be that much on the alert for trick questions. He could see her debating in her mind how much to tell him.
Finally she bit her lip again and said slowly, «You are the mightiest warrior ever seen in Chiribu or even in Gonsara.»
«Gonsara?»
«The kingdom that lies farther down the Great River, farther to the south toward the Dark Sea.»
«I see.»
The woman went on. «Suppose all the English were like you? A thousand English warriors could sweep away any army we could put in the field against you. Ten thousand could conquer both Chiribu and Gonsara as easily as a farm-girl taking an egg from under a setting hen.»
Blade smiled. He like the woman's honesty, and would repay it in kind. «England is so far away that no English army could ever reach Chiribu.» Unless and until Lord Leighton worked out the technique of transporting men by the hundreds into Dimension X, that was certainly true enough. «Even if an English army reached the mountains, it could never climb over them. We have sent explorers to those mountains several times, but if any of them reached Chiribu, certainly none of them ever got back to England.» That was not strictly true, but it supported his first statement. «I am a much better fighter and warrior than most of the English, in any case.» As far as the kind of fighting he would be doing here in Chiribu and elsewhere in this dimension, that was certainly true. There had not been very many people in the Medieval Club when he was at Oxford. And none of those could beat him with any of the Club's weapons-broadsword, axe, mace, morningstar, and so on.
Blade's words seemed to settle the woman's mind. She smiled again. «I thank you, Richard Blade. What you have told me is most welcome. And what you may be able to do for us is even more welcome.» She turned to go.
«Wait a minute,» said Blade sharply. «I have told you a great deal about the English, and some things about myself. Who are you, that you can come into my room and ask me these questions?» He almost added, «And obviously expect an answer,» because her cool poise had irritated him almost to that point. Instead he added, «Are you a girl sent to find out if I am a strong spirit, like the girls in the temple mounds of Ayocan?»
The woman stopped dead in her tracks and turned around. To Blade's surprise she did not seem angry. In fact, she was smiling. Then she started to laugh. She laughed so long and so loudly that tears started streaming down her face, and she had to clasp her hands over her stomach. Eventually she had to sit down on the foot of the bed, her laughter finally subsiding into an occasional giggle.
At last she turned back toward Blade, wiped the tears from her eyes, and smiled again. «Richard Blade, English warrior, I think you are not entirely well yet. Otherwise I much doubt if you would have said such a thing.» She rose. «You will see me again when you are better. I am the Princess Mirasa, wife to Kenas, First Prince of Chiribu, heir to the Serpent Throne.» And she slipped out onto the balcony and was gone before Blade could get his tongue untangled enough to say anything.
He was certainly off to a fine social start in Chiribu, mistaking the Crown Princess for a harlot! Then he also laughed. He remembered what his drill sergeant had always said any time something went embarrassingly wrong during training. «There's worse things as 'appens in war, Mr. Blade!» Besides, the princess was almost certainly right. He was far from well yet, and the wisest thing to do for the moment was to relax and let the healing extract of the «tree of life» do its work on him.
He spent most of the next two days and nights sleeping for long periods and waking for short ones. No one came into the room during any of the waking periods. Gradually he felt the pain of his wounds fading away under the bandages and pads, and knew that the extract was doing its work. The room was cool from the arched doors that let in fresh air without letting in insects. He was not fed, but his water jug was never empty and his bed linen was always fresh.
On the third day an excessively solemn man with a white beard in vivid contrast to his red robes examined Blade from head to toe with tedious thoroughness. The examination made Blade feel like a prize steer being examined before being entered in a livestock competition, but it did assure him that he was recovering well. More than well in fact-the extract seemed to work even faster here than it had in the temple mound. Bringing a sample of it back to Home Dimension would be an epoch-making breakthrough in medicine.
It was two more days after that before anything else happened. During those two days Blade spent less and less time in bed. His wounds were almost healed, leaving behind them unblemished skin where normally there would have been scars. Blade now felt more in need of exercise than of bed rest, so he put himself through an increasingly vigorous program of calisthenics.
He was doing his exercises on the evening of the fifth day, when the tramp of approaching feet sounded on the balcony outside. Six brawny soldiers of King Hurakun's army strode into the room.
«Richard Blade. It is the wish of the Princess Mirasa that you attend dinner in her chambers this night. We have come to take you there.» As far as Blade knew, only the Princess Mirasa here in Chiribu knew his name. But he preferred to be on the safe side. He stepped over to the corner of the room, and reached for his sword, axe, and weapons belt. The leader of the soldiers shook his head.
«You will have no need of those.»
«Perhaps.»
«Do the English trust no one?»
«The English trust as readily as the next man. But no warrior of my people ever goes from his chamber without his weapons. To ask me to do that would be dishonor.» He hoped the word «dishonor» would get the message across — try to take my weapons, and I shall fight you.
Apparently there were brains behind the warrior's abrupt manner. He nodded, and Blade picked up his weapons. The soldier held out a kilt-like garment to him, dark green with as gold-embroidered border and a glossy black leather belt set with semiprecious stones. Blade put it on and hooked sword and axe to the belt.
The soldiers seemed to approve of the results, and quickly formed around Blade and led him out of the room. Down a short flight of stairs they went, and then through a lush garden. The odors from the masses of tropical flowers that spread across the ground and climbed up the stone walls and tree trunks were almost overpowering. Birds shot like brightly colored rockets through the treetops with screeches and twitterings. The garden was well guarded. Blade saw three different squads of soldiers as his own escort hustled him along the gravel paths among the trees and bushes.
Finally a silver-gray mass loomed through the trees ahead. «The Palace of the First Prince,» said the leader of the soldiers. They led Blade through a low-ceilinged entrance hall and up a dark stairway lit by the anemic glow of rush torches. At the top of the stairway they left him. «The chambers of the princess are beyond,» said the leader.
«What of the First Prince?» asked Blade. The leader said nothing, but the look on his face confirmed a suspicion that had been growing in Blade's mind for some time. Without fail, in every dimension, sooner or later he was called in to play stud to some highbom female with an urge she wanted satisfied. He was too much of a romantic to find that sort of thing entirely satisfactory-but he was also too much of a professional to let his inclinations stand in the way of doing what his job required. And if the road to success in this dimension led through Princess Mirasa's bed-well, he would take that road as far as it led.
The room he
entered was all shimmering red and bronze — red tiles on the floor, red paint on the ceiling, bronze paneling on the walls. At a low wooden table in the middle of the room sat Princess Mirasa, in a flowing red gown. This one was also semitransparent-and this time Mirasa was not wearing anything under it. Blade had guessed at the grace and beauty of her body the day he first saw her. He was glad that his guess had been correct. Then he realized that he was indicating that gladness in a very direct way.
Fortunately the kilt was loose about his waist, and Mirasa did not notice his reaction to her. Instead her eyes roamed up and down his body like the hands of the surgeon, but not with a clinical air. Definitely not. They came to rest on his belt, with the sword and axe hanging from it. Her eyes widened.
«Did you think you would need those weapons tonight, Blade?»
Blade grinned, to show he understood her double meaning, then shrugged. «I have survived many dangers only by having my weapons always close at hand. I could not be sure that your soldiers were not those of the priests of Ayocan in disguise, sent to snatch me away to another sacrifice or some less dignified way of dying.»
Mirasa grimaced. «I told them to use your name, Blade, so that you would know that the message was from me. I am the only one in all the Garden of the Kings who knows it.
«Perhaps. But I could not be sure. Secrets have a way of leaking out.»
Mirasa looked at him with a new respect. «Indeed they do. And particularly in this garden, with the Second Prince's spies everywhere. You are wise to recognize the fact.»
«Warriors of the English have many occasions to deal with secrets, Princess.»
«Then you will be even better fitted for the mission King Hurakun has planned for you.»
So he was about to be drafted into the service of the King of Chiribu, was he? He could think of a good many worse fates in this dimension, including the one from which Hurakun had rescued him. So far, this was not bad news. But. .
«What is this mission, Princess?»
«To go down the Great River into Gonsara, and spy on the temples of Ayocan there.»
Chapter 11
Blade could not help laughing. For the first time in all his travels into Dimension X, he was going to be used as a secret agent-just what he had been in Home Dimension for nearly twenty years! He had been pirate and messiah and soldier and revolutionary in Dimension X, but never what he had been trained to do and had lived by doing.
Then he sobered. After his dealings with the cult of Ayocan, he could and would be a marked man for the priests of the bat-god. They would be looking for him, and if they found him around one of their temple mounds, whether in Chiribu or Gonsara, he might not live long enough to carry out any missions for anybody. He said as much to the princess.
She nodded. «King Hurakun has thought of all these things. But you will be heavily disguised, so that your own mother would not recognize you, let alone a priest of Ayocan.»
«My height cannot be disguised. And I have not seen anyone here in Chiribu as tall as I am.»
«That is true. But the Gonsarans are tall and bearded, and there are some men in Chiribu of mixed blood. You will be disguised as one of those.»
«I speak no Gonsaran, Princess. That will certainly make people suspicious.» He was deliberately testing her now, to see how thorough their planning was. With the alterations the computer made in his brain, it was a pointless question. But he was not going to try to explain Lord Leighton's computer to Mirasa!
She passed his test with flying colors. «The Gonsaran language is not so different from that of Chiribu that it is difficult to learn. Particularly for one who speaks the tongue of Chiribu as well as you do. It is interesting that you do that.» Blade tensed. Was he going to be asked how he had learned to speak Chiribuan so well? Mirasa was sharp-witted enough to try trapping him that way, he suspected. But she let the matter drop. Instead she said, «You will have some weeks to learn Gonsaran from the best teachers in all of Chiribu.»
«Good,» said Blade. «I have done this kind of work before, in England. It is dangerous enough at best. And it is foolishly dangerous if the people who send the spy do not prepare him for his journey.»
«We are not fools, here in Chiribu,» said Mirasa briskly. «And still less so in the Garden of the Kings. There are those who say that the First Prince is a fool, because I am wiser than he. But he follows where I lead, and is it the act of a fool to follow one wiser than himself?»
That question obviously demanded yes as its answer.
«And you are a wise man and a warrior, so mighty that there is nothing like you outside of legend,» she went on. «It would be the act of fools to throw you away like a child throws away a toy that it wearies of. No, you will be prepared as well as possible. I, First Princess of Chiribu, swear it. And I will see it done even if I must go openly against Second Prince Piralu.»
«Why should the Second Prince Piralu wish to see me thrown away?» asked Blade. Mirasa's swearing to help him was reassuring, but her motives for that were obvious. He badly needed to find out more about the political ins and outs of Chiribu, Gonsara, and the cult of Ayocan.
By good luck he had chosen the right question. The problem now was not getting Mirasa started, but stopping her. The explanations came out in a continuous flood, so fast that Blade could barely make a coherent picture out of them. Eventually he assembled a picture something like this-
The cult of Ayocan, though not the official cult of the Kingdom of Chiribu, was by far the most powerful there. Many adhered to it out of genuine belief, more out of hope of being saved by the doctor-priests and the extract if they became ill, and still more simply out of fear. Few dared speak openly against the cult and its growth. So it had acquired temple mounds in every city and town, masses of priests, and an entire army of Holy Warriors.
Those who did speak out against the cult of Ayocan too openly did not live long. Often they died mysteriously, but some of them were found with the mark of the cult's Death-Vowed killers carved in their bodies. According to the priests of Ayocan, the Death-Vowed were men and women inspired by the god to send spirits up for him to feed on. So the Death-Vowed were sacred, their roamings and killings free and unmolested, and the bodies of their victims left in the street until the «spirits» were released. Hence the bodies with bat-wings carved in their flesh that Blade had seen littering the streets of Tzakalan.
But it was impossible to doubt that in fact the priests of Ayocan controlled the Death-Vowed, sending them out when they wished, against whom they wished, to sow terror and death among any opposition. Such opposition had been either dead or silent now for some years, and the cult had won many highly placed supporters. Not least among those was the Second Prince Piralu. Young, vigorous, handsome, masterful, he was more popular with the people than First Prince Kenas. And many people would not in fact grieve at seeing him become First Prince, in Kenas' place.
Now there was nothing terribly bad or evil about First Prince Kenas (Mirasa's lips curled in a smile as she said that). But he cut no figure as a Prince and heir to the Serpent Throne of Chiribu. He was stout, clumsy, undeniably ugly in face and figure, but he was far from stupid. However, he preferred to use his considerable wits working on jewelry. As a jeweler, he could give lessons to half the masters of the craft in Chiribu. But as a prince, Kenas did not make the best impression on the people of Chiribu. There were already many who said that Piralu would make a better king when Hurakun died. It would not take many more saying this to make the Supreme Brother of Ayocan pass the word to the masters of the Death-Vowed. And then some morning Kenas would be found dead, the batwings carved across his stomach. On that morning, the hopes of Chiribu for escaping from the clutches of Ayocan's servants would vanish.
So much for Chiribu itself. But there was also the Kingdom of Gonsara, some days down the Great River that had linked the two kingdoms since World-dawn. Since before men could remember, men and goods had traveled up the river from Gonsara to Chiribu, and down it from Chir
ibu to Gonsara. Both kingdoms were wealthy, each had things for which the other would pay a great price. So there was much commerce, men came and went freely, and for centuries there had been peace between the two kingdoms.
Perhaps there might not have been, in spite of the trade. But the armies of Gonsara depended on cavalry and ox teams. Their horses and oxen sickened and died in their forests of Chiribu. And the armies of Chiribu fought entirely on foot. Their infantry could not stand against horsement in the open plains of Gonsara. So neither could strike into the heart of the other except at the risk of defeat and terrible loss, and both preferred their trade to war.
But now this centuries-old peace was crumbling. During the early years of the reign of King Hurakun, the Supreme Brothers of Ayocan had begun sending missionaries down the river to Gonsara. Their discipline and supposedly virtuous life (again a curled lip) had made a great impression in Gonsara, where a multitude of mostly corrupt priesthoods squabbled over the allegiance of the people. Bribes — in gold, women, and drugs-had won over some of the local priests and many of the local lords. Soon the cult of Ayocan had a foothold of land and wealth and power in Gonsara. Among the mass of the people it was cordially hated, but among the elite it had a solid mass of supporters.
Too solid to please the Kings of Gonsara. The Kings of the House of the Red Ox held no priesthoods in high esteem, particularly not foreign ones with mysterious bloody rites and unapproachable temple mounds. Some of their ministers began investigations-and some of them died mysteriously. King Thambral IV began to hold the priests of Ayocan in still less esteem than before. Suspiciously well organized mobs sacked one or two of the temple mounds.