The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid

by L. Sprague De Camp

  “Oh, yes, of course,” said Fallon. “I swear.”

  Privately, Fallon suspected that Kir’s departure from the world of the living had been hastened by Chindor himself, who might also have coerced the other ministers at sword’s point to accede to his dictatorship.

  Passed by the guard, he rode at a reckless speed through the narrow streets to his own house. He feared that his landlord might have moved new tenants in, as his rent was in arrears. But he was pleased to find the little house just as he had left it.

  His one objective now was to collect the other two pieces of Qais’s draft, by fair means or foul. Then he’d go to Kastambang’s and collect the remaining third of the draft, perhaps with a plausible story of Qais’s having given him the paper in token of his indebtedness before fleeing the city.

  Fallon hastily washed up, changed his clothes, and stuffed such of his belongings as he did not wish to abandon into a duffel bag. A few minutes later he went out, locked his door—for the last time, if his plans worked—strapped the bag to the aya’s back behind the saddle, and mounted.

  The gatekeeper at Tashin’s Inn said that yes, indeed, Master Turanj was in his quarters, and the good my lord should go right up. Fallon crossed the court, now strangely deserted by Tashin’s histrionic clientele, and went up to Qais’s room.

  Nobody answered his stroke on the door gong. He pushed the door, which opened to his touch. When he looked in, his hand flew to his hilt, then came away.

  Qais of Babaal lay sprawled across the floor, his jacket stained with blue-green Krishnan blood. Fallon turned the corpse over and saw that the spy had been neatly run through, presumably with a rapier. His scrip lay on the floor beside him amid a litter of papers.

  Squatting upon his haunches, Fallon went through these papers. Not finding the slip that he sought, he searched both Qais’s body and the rest of the room.

  Still no draft. His first foreboding had been correct: Somebody who knew about the trisected draft had murdered Qais to get it. But who? As far as Fallon could remember, nobody knew about this monetary instrument save Qais, Kastambang, and himself. The banker had custody of the money; if he wished to embezzle it, he could do so without written instruments to authorize him.

  Fallon went over the room again, but found neither the piece of the draft nor clues to the identity of Qais’s slayer. At last he gave up, sighed, and went out. He asked the gatekeeper: “Has anybody else been in to see Turanj recently?”

  The fellow thought. “Aye, sir, now that ye call it to mind. About an hour or more ago one did visit him.”

  “Who? What was he like?”

  “He was an Earthman like yourself, and like ye clad in civilized clothes.”

  “But what did he look like? Tall or short? Fat or thin?”

  The gatekeeper made a helpless gesture. “That I couldn’t tell ye, sir. After all, all Earthmen look alike, do ye not?”

  Fallon mounted his aya and set out at a brisk trot to eastward, across the city to Kastambang’s bank. This trip might well prove a sleeveless errand, but he could not afford to pass up even the slightest chance of getting his money.

  A subdued excitement ran through the streets of Zanid. Here and there Fallon saw a pedestrian running. One man shouted, “The Jungava are in sight! To the walls!”

  Fallon rode on. He passed the House of Judgment, where the execution board seemed to have more than its normal quota of heads. He did not look at the gruesome tokens closely, but as his eye swept down the line he was struck by the feeling that one of them was familiar.

  Jerking his gaze back, he was horrified to observe that the fleshy head in question, its jowls hanging slack in death, was that of the very Krishnan whom he was on his way to see. The board under the head read:

  KASTAMBANG ER-’AMIRUT,

  Banker of the Gabanj,

  Aged 103 years 4 months.

  Convicted of treason on the tenth of Harau.

  Executed on the twelfth instant.

  The treason in question could be nothing but Kastambang’s banking for Qais of Babaal, knowing the latter as an agent for Ghuur. And since torture of convicted felons—to make them divulge the names of their confederates—was a recognized part of Balhibou legal procedure, Kastambang in his final agonies might well have mentioned Anthony Fallon. Now Fallon had a reason for getting out of Zanid even more pressing than the prospect of the city’s being surrounded and stormed by the Qaathians.

  Fallon speeded up to a canter, determined to dash out the Lummish Gate and leave Zanid behind him without more delay. But after he had ridden several blocks, he realized that he was passing Kastambang’s counting house, which lay directly on his route to the gate. As he passed, he could not help noticing that the gates of the bank had been torn from their hinges.

  Overpowering curiosity led him to pull up and turn his aya into the courtyard. Everywhere were signs of mob depredations. The graceful statues from Katai-Jhogorai littered the pave in fragments. The fountains were silent. Other objects lay about. Fallon dismounted and bent to examine them. They were notes, drafts, account books, and the other paraphernalia of banking.

  Fallon guessed that after Kastambang had been arrested, a mob had gathered and, on the pretext that a traitor’s goods were fair game, had sacked the place.

  There was just a chance that at least one of the thirds of Qais’s drafts might be found here. He really should not, Fallon thought, take the time to search for it, with Zanid such a hot spot. But it might be his final chance to recover Zamba.

  And what about the mysterious murderer of Qais? Had this character preceded Fallon here to Kastambang’s?

  Fallon went around the courtyard, examining every scrap of paper. Nothing there.

  He passed on in, finding the battered corpse of one of Kastambang’s Kolofto servants sprawled just inside the main door.

  Now where would these fragments of the draft most likely be? Well, Kastambang had stowed his third in the drawer of that big table in his underground conference room. Fallon resolved that he would search that room; and if he failed to find the paper there, he would leave the city forthwith.

  The elevator was, of course, not running, but he found a stairway that led down to the lower level. He took a lamp from a wall bracket, filled its reservoir from another lamp and trimmed the wick, and lit it with his pocket lighter. Then he descended the stairs.

  The passage was dark except for that one lamp. His footsteps and breath sounded loud in the silence.

  Fallon’s bump of direction carried him through the sequence of doors and chambers to Kastambang’s lair. The portcullis had not even been lowered. A couple of coins that the mob had dropped winked up from the floor; but the door to the lair itself was closed.

  Now why? If the mob had stormed in and out, they would not likely have taken the trouble to close doors behind them.

  The door was not quite closed, but ajar, and a thread of light showed under it. Hand on hilt, Fallon put a foot against the door and pushed. The door swung open.

  The room was lit by a candle in the hands of a Krishnan woman, who stood with her back to the door. Facing Fallon on the other side of the conference table stood an Earthman. As the door opened the woman spun around.

  The man whipped out a sword.

  The wheep caused Fallon to snatch out his own blade as a matter of reflex, though when he got it out he stood holding it, his mouth gaping with astonishment. The woman was Gazi er-Doukh and the man was Welcome Wagner, in Krishnan costume.

  “Hello, Gazi,” said Fallon. “Is this another jagain? You’re changing fast nowadays.”

  “Nay, Antané—methinks he doth indeed have the true religion, that for which I’ve long sought.”

  As Gazi spoke, Fallon took in the fact that the huge table had been assaulted with ax and chisel until it were a mere ruin of its splendid self. The drawers had all been hacked or forced open and the papers that had lain in them were scattered about the floor. In front of Wagner on the scarred surface lay two small r
ectangular slips of paper. Though Fallon could not read them from where he stood, he was sure from their size and shape that they were the fragments that he sought.

  He said to Wagner, “Where’d you get those?”

  “One from the guy that had it, and the other outa this drawer,” said Wagner. “Sure took me long enough to find it, too.”

  “Well, they’re mine. I’ll take them, if you don’t mind.”

  Wagner picked up the two slips with his left hand and pocketed them. “That’s where you’re wrong, mister. These don’t belong to nobody—so if there’s any money in it, it’ll go to the True Church where it belongs, to help spread the light. I suppose you got the other piece.”

  “Hand those over,” said Fallon, moving nearer.

  “You hand yours over,” said Wagner, stepping out from behind the table. “I don’t aim to hurt you none, Jack, but Ecumenical Monotheism needs that dough a lot worser’n you do.”

  Fallon took another step. “You killed Qais, didn’t you?”

  “It was him or me. Now do like I say. Remember, I used to be pretty hot with these stickers before I seen the truth.”

  “How did you find out about him?”

  “I went to Kastambang’s trial and heard the testimony. Gazi knowed about the check being tore in three parts, so I put two and two together.”

  “Cease this mammering!” said Gazi, setting down her candle on the table. “Ye can divide the gold, or fight your battle elsewhere. But with the city on the edge of falling, we’ve no time for private wannion.”

  “Always my practical little sweetheart,” said Fallon, and then to Wagner again: “A fine holy man you are! You intend to murder two men and run off with the loot and the lady, all in the name of your god . . .”

  “You don’t understand these things,” said Wagner mildly. “I ain’t doing nothing immoral like you did. Gazi and me are gonna have strictly spiritual relations. She’ll be my sister . . .”

  At that instant Wagner leaped catlike, his rapier shooting out ahead of him. Fallon parried just in time to save his life; Wagner stopped his riposte-double with ease. The blades flickered and gleamed in the dimness, swish-zing-clank!

  The space was too confined for fancy footwork, and Fallon found himself hampered by the lamp in his left hand. His exertions scattered drops of oil about. Wagner’s arm was strong, and his swordplay fast and adroit.

  Fallon had just made up his mind to throw the lamp into Wagner’s taut, fanatic face when Gazi, crying: “Desist, lackwits!” caught his tunic from behind with both hands and pulled. Fallon’s foot slipped on some pieces of paper. Wagner lunged.

  Fallon saw the missionary’s point coming toward his midriff. His parry was still forming when the point disappeared from his view, and an icy pain shot through his body.

  Wagner withdrew his blade and stepped back, still on guard. Fallon heard, above the roaring in his ears, the clang as his own sword fell to the stone floor from his limp hand. His knees buckled under him and he slid to the floor in a heap.

  Dimly he was aware of his lamp’s striking the floor and going out; of an exclamation from Gazi, though what it meant he could not tell; of Wagner’s fumbling through his scrip for the fragment of the draft; and lastly of the retreating footsteps of Wagner and Gazi. Then everything was dark and quiet.

  Fallon was never sure whether he had lost consciousness or not, and if so for how long. But an indefinite time later, finding himself asprawl on the floor in the dark with his tunic soaked with blood and his wound hurting like fury, it seemed to him that this would be a rotten place to die.

  He began crawling toward the door. Even in his present condition, he did not mistake the direction. He dragged himself a few meters before exhaustion stopped him.

  A while later he crawled a few meters more. He made a fumbling effort to feel his own pulse, but failed to find it.

  Another rest, another crawl. And another, and another. He was getting weaker and weaker, so that each crawl was shorter.

  Hours later, it seemed, he found the foot of the stair down which he had come. Now, could he even consider crawling up all those steps, when it was all he could do to pull himself along horizontally?

  Well, he would not live any longer for not trying.

  XX

  Anthony Fallon came to in a clean bed in a strange room. As his vision cleared he recognized Dr. Nung.

  “Better now?” asked Nung, who then did to him all the things that physicians do to patients to determine their state of health. Fallon learned that he was in the consul’s house. Sometime later, the doctor went out and came back with two Earthmen, Percy Mjipa and a leathery-looking white man.

  Mjipa said, “Fallon, this is Adam Daly, one of my missing Earthmen. I got them all back.”

  After acknowledging the introduction in his ghost of a voice, Fallon asked, “What happened? How did I get here?”

  “The Kamuran saw you lying in the gutter in the course of his triumphal procession up to the royal palace and told his flunkeys to toss you out with the other offal. Lucky for you, I happened along. As it was, you were within minutes of going out for good by the time I got you here. Nung just pulled you through.”

  “The Qaathians took Zanid?”

  “Surrender on conditions. I arranged the conditions, mainly by convincing Ghuur that the Zaniduma would fight to the death otherwise, and by threatening to stand in front of the Geklan Gate myself while he tried to knock it down with a battering-ram. These natives respect firmness when they see it, you know, and Ghuur’s not such a fool as to court trouble with Novorecife. I’m not supposed to interfere, but I didn’t care to see Ghuur’s barbarians ruin a perfectly good city.”

  “What were the conditions?”

  “Oh, Balhib to retain local autonomy under Chindor as Pandr—a treacherous swine, but there didn’t seem any alternative. And no more than two thousand Qaathians to be let into the city at once, to discourage robbery and abuse of the Zaniduma.”

  “Could you hold Ghuur to that, once he got the gates open?”

  “He lived up to it. His record of keeping his word is better than that of most of these native headmen. And besides, I think he was a little afraid of me. You see he’d never seen an Earthman with my skin color, and the superstitious beggar probably thought I was some sort of demon.”

  “I see,” murmured Fallon. He understood one thing now: that quaint as some of Mjipa’s affectations of superiority to the “natives” might be, they had the partial justification that Percy Mjipa was, as an individual, a superior sort of Earthman.

  “How about the missing Earthmen?”

  “Oh, that. Ghuur’s men had carried them off—another coup arranged by your late friend Qais. The Kamuran has a hideout in Madhiq where he makes arms.”

  “But they’ve been pseudo-hypnotized . . .”

  “Yes, and un-pseudo-hypnotized as well. Seems there’s a Krishnan psychologist who studied at Vienna many years ago, before the technological blockade was tightened up, and he had worked out a method of undoing the Saint-Rémy treatment. He worked his stunt on these three, and—you tell it, Mr. Daly.”

  Adam Daly cleared his throat. “When we’d had the treatment, the Kamuran came to us and told us to invent something to beat Balhibuma, or else. There was no use pretending we couldn’t, or didn’t know how, and so forth. He even had another Earthman—some fellow we never heard of—hauled in and his head chopped off in front of us just to show us he wasn’t fooling.

  “We thought of guns, of course, but none of us could mix gunpowder. But we did know enough practical engineering to make a passable reciprocating steam-engine, especially as the Kamuran had a surprisingly fine machine-shop set up for us. So we built a tank, armored with qong-wood planks and armed with a fixed catapult. The first couple didn’t work, but the third was good enough to serve as a pilot model for mass production.

  “The Kamuran ordered twenty-five of the things and pushed the project with all his power; but what with shortages of metals
and things, only seventeen of them were actually started—and what with breakdowns and bugs only three arrived at the battle. And from what I hear of the musketry of the Balhibou army, I take it that Balhib had been doing something similar.”

  “Yes,” said Fallon, “but that was an all-Krishnan project. Good-bye technological blockade! And I see the day when the sword will be as useless here as on Earth, and all the time I spent learning to fence will be wasted. By the way, Percy, what happened to the Safq?”

  Mjipa replied, “Under the treaty, Ghuur has control of all armament facilities, so when the priests of Yesht closed their doors on his men he had ’em pile the Balhibou army’s remaining store of powder against the doors and blew ’em in.”

  “Did the Qaathians find a couple of Krishnan philosophers named Sainian and Zarrash in the crypt?”

  “I believe they did.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose Ghurr has them in confinement while he decides what to do with them.”

  “Well, try to get ’em free, will you? I promised I’d try to help ’em.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Mjipa.

  “And where’s that ass Fredro?”

  “He’s happy, photographing and making rubbings in the Safq. I persuaded Chindor to give him the run of the place after Liyará the Brazer—for reasons you can guess—prevailed upon the Protector to suppress the cult of Yesht. Fredro’s babbling with excitement—says he’s already proved that Myandé the Execrable was not only a historical character but built the Safq as a monument to his father—who wasn’t Kharaj but some other chap. Kharaj, it seems, was centuries earlier, and the myths mixed them all up. And Myandé was called the Execrable not because of anything he did to his old man, but because he beggared his kingdom and ran all his subjects ragged building the thing . . . But if you’re interested he’ll be glad to tell you himself.”