by Джеффри Лорд
At that point the priests of Ayocan in Chiribu began protesting. They proclaimed in mighty voices that the unbelieving King of Gonsara was persecuting the priests and followers of mighty Ayocan. This, of course, was undeniable. So equally well organized mobs in Chiribu began attacking Gonsaran merchants and travelers. The Gonsarans replied with more attacks on the temples of Ayocan. The priests of Ayocan began to agitate for the stationing of Holy Warriors in the temples of Gonsara. King Thambral refused, not very politely. A delegation of Elder Brothers waited on King Hurakun, demanding that he force Thambral to accept temple garrisons under threat of war. Hurakun refused, trying to be polite but not succeeding very well. He knew perfectly well what game the priests of Ayocan were playing.
Unfortunately, King Thambral did not. He did not accept garrisons for the temples of Ayocan, but he did stop watching them closely. For the moment the danger of war receded, but Hurakun, Mirasa, and their allies knew it would not be for long. To embroil the two kingdoms in a war and then use their network of temples to seize control of the ruins of both-that was the only game the priests of Ayocan could be playing. And they could play it best in the unwatched temples of Ayocan in Gonsara. Drugs, prostitutes, whole armies of the Death-Vowed-no one knew what lay in those temple mounds. And King Thambral no longer seemed to care.
«Doesn't Thambral think the priests are dangerous anymore?» asked Blade.
«Ask of Higher Powers for the workings of the minds of kings,» said Mirasa with a shrug. «Like Hurakun, Thambral has reigned long and has greatly loved peace. He would not see his forty years on the throne end with a futile war against Gonsara's great and honored neighbor.»
Blade sighed wearily. «I have known such rulers, too many of them.» In both Home Dimension and Dimension X, he added mentally. «Can he be moved to action?»
«He must be!» said Mirasa fiercely. «If he does nothing, he will wake one morning to find the Death-Vowed swarming through Gonsara and slaughtering his subjects before his eyes. Then his subjects will fight back and fall on the priests of Ayocan. The High Priests will call on Hurakun to march against Gonsara. He will refuse, and that will be the signal for his death-his and Kenas'. Piralu will rule in Chiribu, the two kingdoms will fall on each other, and Ayocan's priests will rule the ruins of both!»
«So I am to go down the river to Gonsara, and discover what the priests are doing there. What then?»
«Then you find some way of coming before King Thambral and persuading him to move against the temple mounds and the cult of Ayocan.»
Blade grinned. «You don't expect much of me, do you? What makes you think I can do that-or can even be trusted to try it?»
Mirasa shrugged. This gesture imparted a most interesting movement to her half-visible breasts. «I would like to believe that you will do it for the love of Chiribu and hatred of Ayocan. But you are not of our people, and I have lived with the deeds of power too long to believe that anyone's motives can be pure. So I will ask you. You are a marked and terrible enemy of Ayocan. How long do you think you can live here in either Chiribu or Gonsara, unless you help us destroy the temple mounds and their priests? It would not matter whether you fled or hid; the Holy Warriors would seek you out and the priests would drag you to the block of sacrifice. You will aid us not only because you love Chiribu, but also because you love your own life.»
Blade nodded. He liked Mirasa more and more. Perhaps she lived by and amid intrigue, but she could be honest-disarmingly honest-when she chose. He would have to be even more on guard because of that, however much he liked her.
Before he could think any farther along those lines, she rose and came around the table to stand behind him. Her hands came down and stroked his cheeks lightly. She smiled, this time with no bitterness in the smile. «And perhaps you will aid Chiribu against the priests of Ayocan for love of me also.»
Blade's erection, which had quietly expired during the long discussion of politics, came quickly to life again. Mirasa's hands on his face, her firm taut breasts against his back, her perfume in his nostrils-all combined to arouse him instantly, completely. He could have turned in his chair, thrown Mirasa down on the table, and taken her then and there.
But from his experience with women he sensed that Mirasa demanded deference from her lovers, as well as virility. He rose slowly from his chair, feeling Mirasa's fingers trailing down over his chest as he did so. He turned, gently took her by the wrists, then ran his hands up her arms under the sleeves of her robe. His touch was as light as hers, but he saw her mouth open and heard a little gasp. Lovers were few and far between for Mirasa, it seemed, and the fires burning in her were seldom quenched.
Before he could move again, she had seized his hand and was drawing him to the door that loomed beyond the table. Blade was hardly surprised when the room on the other side of the door turned out to be Mirasa's bedchamber. The great bed in the middle of the room was canopied, and hung round with gauzy red curtains.
Mirasa skimmed across the black rug on the floor soundlessly and so fast that her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. She jerked the bed curtains aside and turned to face Blade. «Ah, Blade,» she said, in a voice that was halfway between pleading and passion, «you must be as powerful here as you were fighting the Holy Warriors. Nothing but your best can be enough for me.»
A randy princess indeed, thought Blade. A type he knew well. But also a type he had never failed to satisfy. This was not a boast, it was merely a fact stemming from his own vigor.
Mirasa licked her lips. «Your garments, Blade, your garments-off with them! I want to see that magnificent man's-flesh of yours doing what is fit and proper. And I want to feel it.»
«You will,» said Blade. At least he was able to keep his arousal out of his voice.
He stripped off his kilt and let Mirasa's eyes take in his upstanding and engorged phallus. From the way her dark eyes widened, it seemed to pass inspection, and more. He stepped toward her, arms outstretched. She thrust him back, but there was no strength in her pushing. Blade sensed she wanted him to ignore her protests, to literally sweep her off her feet. The time for deference was over.
His powerful hands went down her body and clasped hard under her buttocks. She gasped again as he tightened his fingers, pinching and plucking flesh that was warm and pliant under the thin material of the gown. Then his hands drifted down farther, and suddenly he jerked them up under the gown, clasping her bare thighs.
Mirasa stiffened as though he had given her an electric shock, and gave a little whimper. Her hands rose to the back of his neck and tightened there so hard that for a moment he thought she was going to strangle him. He kept his own hands in place, moving them up the insides of her thighs until he felt her curly dark hair between his fingers. Curly dark hair that was already damp, and became not just damp but sopping wet as his fingers probed and pressed and squeezed. Now Mirasa's eyes were closed tight, her mouth wide open, and her breath coming in short, quick pants.
Then her body was jerking and her eyes rolling up in her head. Blade saw her nipples standing up so hard and far that they thrust out the fabric of the gown. On his still moving hands he felt the sudden outpouring of her spasm, and he heard her sob and whimper.
There was no romance in that kind of desperate hunger in a woman. But it took more than a little lack of romance to impair Blade's abilities in the presence of a woman so fiercely aroused. Much more. He was still solid and rigid as he stripped the gown over Mirasa's head. He ran his fingers over the graceful body now fully revealed, noting the firmness of the flesh, the incredibly few sags and wrinkles to suggest oncoming age, the enormous nipples, engorged almost to blackness and standing up an inch from the tips of her breasts. He raised a hand to one breast, lowered his lips to the other, heard Mirasa give a gasp that was almost a scream. She was going to reach another spasm soon if he kept up his work on her breasts much longer. But he alternated lips and fingers on her breasts until she was shaking like a sapling in a gale. Her hips were going through intr
icate motions of their own as he lifted her and laid her on the bed. And he was still as firm as ever as he plunged into her.
She began kicking and jerking under him almost from the moment of his first entrance. But her second spasm passed more quickly than her first, and did nothing to slow or stop Blade. He held back nothing, plunging deep into her dripping canal until her pubic hairs and his were tangled together. He withdrew until he was almost free and she was arching her pelvis frantically upward to recapture and retrap the marvelous phallus that had been driving into her. Then he would sink into her again. And as he did so, his lips roamed over her face, and one hand was roaming over her breasts, cupping them, tweaking and caressing the monstrously risen nipples, stroking their upper slopes. She was no longer gasping because she seemed to have no breath left in her body. Instead she made a low, continuous moan.
Blade felt and heard a third spasm building in her, but he also felt the pressures building up in him. He held on, held back, while Mirasa heaved and twisted frantically for a third time. And he held on and held back for a little longer than that. But in the end there was no more holding back. He plunged deeply into her one final time, and then his control broke and he jetted and poured himself hotly, savagely into her. The hot jetting went on and on until Blade could almost feel that all the fluids of his body were pouring into Mirasa, that she was draining him into a husk.
In time it stopped and he lay on top of her, for she did not seem to know or care that much of his weight was on her. It was a long time before she showed any signs of life. But then she did so with explosive fury, hands and lips roaming over his body. Blade said nothing to discourage her, for he sensed it would not be wise.
And in the end it was unnecessary, for these roaming hands and lips had him aroused again quickly. He was able to do all Mirasa wanted a second time. And then a third, and finally, after a very long interval, a fourth. Perhaps Mirasa did not get what she wanted very often, but she certainly knew how to make sure that she got it when she had the chance. Blade was not modest about his virility, but he would never have predicted that he could do all that he did that night. He was drained and limp in more than one part of his body when Mirasa finally kissed him and told him the soldiers were waiting outside to escort him back to the House of the Pardoned.
«Remember, Blade,» she cautioned him. «You must not let a word drop of this night.» Blade nodded, and Mirasa, seeing that he might misinterpret what she said, continued. «No, it is not that Kenas is jealous. He knows that I take what he cannot give where and when I can, and from whom. As long as I choose men worthy of respect-and of a place in a royal bed-he holds his peace. No, the problem is your mission. You were not supposed to know a thing about it before King Hurakun summoned you. He feared word getting to Prince Piralu. And so do I. What Piralu knows one day, the cult of Ayocan knows the next.»
Chapter 12
Blade went before King Hurakun two days later, and went down the Great River only two weeks after that. He spent those two weeks as securely locked up as if he had been the Crown Jewels of Chiribu. He passed the time pretending to learn Gonsaran, perfecting his disguise and cover story, and considering what he had heard and seen at the meeting with the King of Chiribu.
The night of that meeting warriors in black escorted him through the dark paths of the Garden of Kings to an underground chamber and left him there. The walls were bare, damp, and moldy, the smell of earth and decay overpowering, and Blade's nerves tight. They had left him his weapons, but here in this chamber the weapons could not keep off his fear of a trap. Suppose the ceiling were lowered on him, or water flooded in from the ponds in the garden-perhaps bearing the hungry little fish with it? Sword and axe could do little in that case. He was not ashamed to give a start when he heard a noise behind him. Nor did he mind sighing with relief when a section of the wall slid aside to admit King Hurakun, First Prince Kenas, and Princess Mirasa. She shot a quick glance at Blade, with nothing in it to show what had passed between them. Then she stepped back and left the floor to her husband and the king.
Hurakun spoke quickly, without either losing or standing on his dignity. After a few sentences Blade realized that he was going to learn nothing tonight that Mirasa had not already told him. So he concentrated on sizing up King Hurakun and his elder son.
They made a marked and rather depressing contrast. Hurakun must have been close to sixty, but there were only a few strands of gray in his black hair and even fewer wrinkles in his dark skin. He carried himself erect, as a man who had once been a warrior and could be one again if need be. The sword and the axe he carried on his belt were gilded and jeweled, but sharp-edged and well balanced.
The First Prince looked like a man who had never been a warrior, and never would or could be one. In fact, he looked more like a middle-aged and unsuccessful bank clerk than a prince of any land. If Blade had not known Princess Mirasa's character and determination, he would have despaired for Chiribu at the sight of the heir to its throne: Kenas sagged everywhere-belly, shoulders, jowls — in spite of being twenty-odd years younger than his father. His eyes were small, piggish, and perpetually inflamed-no doubt from too much sitting by night at his workbench. His efforts to project some sort of proper dignity would have been amusing if they hadn't been so pathetic. Blade didn't know whether he felt more sorry for the Kingdom of Chiribu, doomed to be ruled by Kenas, or for Kenas, doomed to have to rule when he would be far happier as a modest craftsman. And with a wife like Princess Mirasa.
But the politics of Chiribu were not Blade's main concern, nor were the domestic arrangements of its royal family. His job lay in the south, in Gonsara. And he remembered one particular thing that Hurakun said, near the end of his briefing.
«King Thambral's queen is his third wife, a woman less than half his age. She is said to have a great influence over him. To gain her ear would be a great victory for you, although I would not be able to suggest ways of doing this.» For a moment Hurakun's eyes rested on Princess Mirasa. Blade suspected that the king made no suggestions about ways of gaining the ear of a dissatisfied wife because he wanted to spare his son's feelings. Or perhaps he suspected Blade already knew more than well enough the solution to the problem.
In any case, the possibility of more bedroom politics was very much in Blade's mind as he boarded the ship Lugsa for the trip downriver to Gonsara. It was an ordinary cargo vessel, broad in the beam and bluff at both bow and stern, with two broad sails to help it downstream. It had ports for a dozen sweeps and benches for the slaves to man them, but sweep-slaves were expensive. They would be rented from a Chiribuan factor in a Gonsaran river port when the Lugsa started her return upriver. On the trip downriver their place could be filled by cargo, so that the ship could carry more, and smell vastly sweeter.
When Blade boarded the Lugsa, he was so thoroughly disguised that he suspected Mirasa had been right. His own mother would have had to look at least three times to recognize him. And no casual observer would have ever guessed he was other than what he seemed-a merchant's agent of half-Chiribuan, half-Gonsaran blood, headed downriver on a master's business. His head was shaved to the skin, and his beard and body hair had been tinted black with a long-lasting dye. They had tried to dye his skin as well, but a spectacular purple rash made it obvious that he was allergic to the dye. Hurakun's men had resigned themselves to letting him go with his natural tan. «If you stay dirty enough,» one of them suggested helpfully, «nobody will notice.»
He also sported intricate black patterns tattooed under both armpits and around his penis. The tattooing had been prolonged and painful. Considerably longer and more nerve-wracking had been the wait to see if the tattooist's needles had been cleaned adequately. Blade had threatened him with blood-curdling tortures if he didn't clean his needles, but he couldn't be sure the man had understood, or obeyed. In spite of their healing drugs, the people in this dimension seemed to have rather rudimentary notions of cleanliness.
Barges manned by teams of slaves towed the
Lugsa out into the river's current. Then the crew, naked except for breechcloths, unfurled the two big ribbed sails. They stiffened as they caught the north wind. Blade saw water begin to curl white at the Lugsa's broad bow.
With wind and current both behind her, the ship made good time. Tzakalan was well out of sight behind them by lunchtime. Blade ate the bean soup and coarse bread, drank the sour beer, and stared at the towns passing by on the shore and the other boats on the river.
One boat in particular caught his attention. She was long and narrow, almost like one of the canoes on the Upper River. With six fast-moving oars on each side and four sails on two masts, she swept past the Lugsa. The other boat was also riding high in the water, so she must have been either heading downriver empty-possible but unlikely-or carrying a high-value cargo. Jewels, drugs, goldsmith's work? All of these were articles in the Gonsara-Chiribu trade. In fact, the boat looked too shallow to even have a real cargo hold. Her rowers sat on the open deck, and a number of bundles wrapped in blue and white canvas were piled amidships.
Blue and white! The colors of the cult of Ayocan! Blade started. Was the fast boat carrying a cargo for the cult? Or did she perhaps belong to the cult? And if so, why was she heading downriver at the same time as the Lugsa with Blade on board? Coincidence, or something more? Blade decided to assume it was something more.
The captain of the Lugsa did not know who Blade was or what he was going to do in Gonsara. But he was a trust-worthy man, known to hate the cult of Ayocan as much as was prudent. Blade had no hesitation in voicing his suspicions to the captain.
«Indeed,» replied the captain. «And I watch her myself. Nothing unusual I see. But warning you give is wise. I have six men on Lugsa to fight if they are needed. But I think Ayocani not become just river pirates.»