“This is the ken,” Charya said. He turned, stepping down into the hole, and commanded, “Follow me!”
Shea’s hair stood on end, but the rajah very calmly stepped down into the hole as Charya sank from sight, and the robber behind Shea growled, “Hurry up! I thirst!”
“If they’re eager for it,” Chalmers murmured, “it can’t be all that dangerous.”
Shea nodded reluctantly and stepped forward. As he came to the hole, he saw a ladder stretching downward. It was made of bamboo and looked entirely too flimsy to hold him, but both the captain and Randhir looked to be heavier than he was, so he swallowed heavily, braced a band against the trapdoor, and stepped down onto the ladder. It held — It didn’t even sway — and he descended a rung at a time, Chalmers following him.
He stepped off and turned around to find himself in a large cave with troughs of water against the walls and suits of silk and fine cotton hanging on racks. Charya began to wash away his night makeup, and Shea’s hair tried to stand up as he realized part of what was flowing off the man’s hands was dried blood. Randhir started washing, too, then stood back and watched philosophically as the robbers filed down off the ladder and went to wash off the dirt and brick-dust of the night’s work — and the dried blood. That done, they took off their turbans, and Shea found out why the fabric rose so high — it was concealing a heap of hair, The men started to comb out their long, disheveled, dusty locks, then to rearrange them and wind clean, colorful turbans around it. Recoiffured, they turned to annointing their clean skins with perfumed oil.
“Come, strangers! Refresh yourselves!” one man cried.
“A chance to acquire local dress, Harold,” Chalmers muttered, and Shea called, “Why, yes, thanks! Don’t mind if I do!”
As he washed. Shea kept an eye on the men around him. Some had long, slender daggers hung to lanyards lashed around their waists, some had little bags slung under their left arms, and some, oddly, wore kerchiefs around their necks.
As they finished dressing, the gang members leaped through a curtained archway with whoops of delight. Charya took his time, though, robing himself in splendid brocade over silken trousers, and Shea wasn’t about to go through the curtains ahead of him. Nether was Chalmers, of course, and It didn’t surprise Shea to see that Randhir waited upon the robber-captain’s pleasure, too. He began to suspect that Charya was dawdling, and sure enough, most of the gang had gone before he led the way through.
They came out into a huge cavern, lighted by torches fixed to the stone walls — and if they gave off light they gave off smoke as well, but that didn’t matter much, because the floor was crowded with men sitting cross-legged with water pipes before them and bumpers of something alcoholic by their sides. Carpets of every kind, from the choicest tapestry to the coarsest rug, were spread out under the smokers, and were strewn with bags, wallets, weapons, heaps of booty, and here and there, a grappling couple — for them were women among the men, carrying trays and mugs, and dispensing kisses as freely as food and drink. Here a thief made a ribald comment at a waitress, and she answered him back with both sauciness and earthiness. Here and there a waitress gave a shriek of delight — at least Shea hoped it was delight — as one of her “customers” pulled her down from a contest of wits to a wrestling match.
A pretty young woman saw Charya and struck a gong beside the archway. At its brazen note, all the robbers stopped what they were doing and turned to him, clapping. The captain stood there with a glittering grin, drinking in the applause. As it slackened, he threw out an arm toward the Rajah — and, incidentally, Shea and Chalmers — and cried, “Make shanti to our new companions.”
“Shanti!” the robbers cried with one voice, and suited the action to the word. Randhir smiled and bowed to them. Watching him in the lamplight, Shea could only think It was lucky for him that the light was so dim — even this close, he couldn’t make out the horsehair that flattened his nose.
“What of the score of the evening, Captain?” one man called out.
Charya grinned. “I’ve scarcely had time to count it all — but I have numbered the bags of loot. There are twenty, and at a guess, we have hauled more booty tonight than ever before!”
The robbers gave shouts of approval, applauding and hooting.
“Eat, drink, and be merry!” Charya cried. “You have earned it!”
The robbers answered with a shout of agreement and settled down to some serious debauchery.
But even the most decadent must grow sleepy, and these particular debauchers had put in a hard night’s work before they began debauching. It took four or five hours, but the flaring torches began to burn out, and one by one, the robbers began to nod, then to lie down and pull up a cushion for a pillow. Some rolled themselves up in the rugs and covered their heads; all fell asleep right where they lay. They dropped off by twos an threes, until only the thieves right next to the wall were still sitting upright, and that was only because they were leaning back against it. Even they were nodding drowsily or leaning to one side; they might have been technically awake, but they were too stupefied with opium or hashish to really be aware of anything.
Shea and Chalmers still sat with the Rajah, not feeling at all safe, the more so because they were among the few still awake. “Feign drowsiness.” Randhir muttered to them, “or our heads will be forfeit.” He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the smoke coming from Shea’s hookah. “What manner of hashish is that?”
“One that couldn’t stupefy a mouse,” Shea didn’t bother telling the king that he had chanted a singing commercial for a brand of cigarettes while he was lighting up.
A servant woman strolled by them, looking about for anyone needing attention. She glanced at the rajah, then looked again, staring in alarm. Randhir tensed for action, but the woman gave a quick, furtive glance about her, then knelt down by the rajah and busied herself tidying up about him. “Maesty!” the hissed. “O Rajah! How came you with these wicked men?”
Shea looked up, affronted, but Chalmers murmured, “She means the thieves, Harold, not necessarily us.”
“You, too!” the woman said. “If you are with the Rajah, you must be his guards, or at the least, men of goodwill. Do you run away as fast as you can, Majesty, or they will surely kill you when they awake.”
“Many thanks for kind wishes, woman,” Randhir answered, his voice as low as hers “but I do not know the way; this cave is a veritable maze, and I could not say how to find the trapdoor. In which direction am I to go?”
“Follow me!” the woman hissed, and stood up, hands full of dirty goblets. She threaded her way through the confused mass of snorers, The Rajah followed, walking as lightly and deftly as a tiger. Shea followed, trying to put his feet exactly where Randhir had, with Chalmers behind him. An inch to the left or right, and he would have stepped on the sleepers, who were likely to resent being awakened so suddenly and unpleasantly. He had a notion that they would show their resentment with knives or clubs, and wasn’t eager to try to reason with them about channeling their aggressions.
The woman pulled the curtain aside, and they stepped into the robing-room again. There stood the ladder, rising up from the floor to lean against the foot-thick rim of the hole.
“Here stands your escape.” the woman whispered. “Go now, my Rajah. and quickly?”
“I shall remember you for this,” Randhir promised her. “You shall be rewarded.”
“The only reward I crave is rebirth in a higher caste, my rajah, and to that I bend my efforts as well as I may. Forget your lowly handservant, and go!”
“May this good deed bring you great karma,” Randhir said, and climbed up the ladder, Shea followed, reflecting that the woman was clearly a slave; she was doing the best she could to fulfill her dharma, her role in the order of the universe, but certainly had no choice in being maidservant to a sang of thieves.
Randhir crowded himself up against the trapdoor, hunched over, Shea wondered, but as the Rajah straightened with a grunt, heaving up,
he saw the sense in the man’s strategy; the heavy stone trapdoor swung up ever so slowly — but the ladder dipped and swayed, and Shea clung for dear life, thinking that the rung on which the rajah stood had to snap, it couldn’t possibly hold against such pressure. . . .
It did hold, though, and with a final thrust, Randhir straightened. The door shot up, then fell open with a thud that made Chalmers wince, Randhir climbed up and out of the hole, then turned to heft the trapdoor closed . . .
. . . and saw Shea’s head just above the opening. “What” he hissed, “are you still here?”
“And just as eager to get out of here as you are.” Shea sidled over to the edge of the ladder, lifting one foot off to leave as much free room as possible, and beckoned to Chalmers, below the rim where Randhir couldn’t see it. “We need to get out in a bad way, because if those bad men find out we’re not bad too, then we’re going to be in bad trouble.”
Chalmers squirmed up past him.
“You put me in a dilemma,” Randhir said, scowling. “If you are truly thieves, you could raise the alarm and bring down an ambush upon me, for surely there must still be guards about!”
“If I were a thief,” Shea retorted, “I would have raised the alarm long ago, and they would have killed you while they had you in their hall.”
“There is some sense in that,” Randhir allowed, “Still, I cannot Ho! Stop, you!”
But Chalmers threw himself over the rim of the hole and rolled out from beneath the trapdoor.
“Tricked!” Randhir snapped. “By Indra, if I suffer you to . . . Pah!”
The last was said in disgust as Shea rolled free, too, then rose, dusting off his hands. “Can I help you lower that thing? It won’t do any of us any good if It goes ‘boom’ as it falls.”
Rhandhir stood a moment irresolute, Shea’s offhanded offer taking him by surprise. Then he sighed and accepted the fait accompli. “Aye, it is well thought. Aid me, then, for the trap has grown heavy during this chatter.”
Shea laid hold of the iron ring too, and together they lowered the trapdoor until it closed with a muffled thud. Then Randhir cast about him, doubled over, searching. Shea was just about to ask what was going on when the Rajah straightened with a soft exclamation of satisfaction, holding the plug of grass in his hand. He tamped it carefully back over the iron ring.
“He does replace his divots,” Chalmers muttered to Shea.
“Sure he does,” Shea whispered back. “He owns the whole golf course!”
“Come — away!” Randhir whispered, and turned to plunge back into the woods.
Shea hurried to catch up with him and said, keeping his voice low, “I think you said something about there maybe being guards still posted?”
“We shall deal with them when we must.” Randhir drew his dagger. “If we are going to travel together, we must know one another. I am Matun.”
Shea held his face neutral for a moment, thrown by the alias — then realized that a man in disguise certainly wasn’t about to use his own name. “I’m Shea, and my friend is Chalmers.”
“Shea and Chalmers — well met.” Randhir gave them each a curt nod. “Let us hurry, now! We would be well advised to be clear of this wood while it is still dark!”
“And the sentries sleepy. You are very brave,” Chalmers said, coming up on his other side, “this this very night, we have learned an incantation that makes people invisible.”
Randhir halted. “Why, so we have! Indeed, I made shift to memorize it as soon as I heard it! But can I remember it now?”
“We should be able to, between the three of us,” Shea said, “but will it work if we don’t cover ourselves with oil?”
“The coconut oil was to aid the robbers in slipping through tight places,” Randhir told him, “and to prevent a man of the Watch from gaining a hold on them. Still, you may be right; we can only attempt it.”
“There were gestures that went with it,” Chalmers informed him, “like this” He made a circle above his head, then drew his hand flat down in front of his face, palm toward his eyes, and on down along his whole body. “Do that as we recite!”
They all pantomimed as they chanted the words together. They were meaningless. incomprehensible, but Shea felt sure that if he had ever learned Sanskrit, they would be poetry of the highest order. He looked up at Chalmers and Randhir . . .
Just In time to see their forms waver, glow transparent and disappear. “I can’t see you at all!”
“Nor I you,” Chalmers’ voice answered out of thin air, “nor His Majesty.”
Shea looked closely at the space where the rajah had been. Sure enough, he was completely invisible. No, wait . . . there was a gleam of light, a ray, a straight line. . . .
The horsehair. Randhir really ought to do something about that.
* * *
Dawn was breaking as they came to the city gate, so they didn’t have to wait long until it opened. The invisibility spell had worn off after the first couple of horns, so Shea had no trouble seeing Randhir as he said, very casually, “It would be nice if there were somebody here who could simply command the porters to open the gate for us.”
“It would,” the Rajah agreed in a wooden tone.
“But there isn’t, of course,” Shea sighed. If the guards recognized the “thief” of the night before and heard him issue a royal command, they would run for their lives the second the king was through the gate — and probably keep on running all the way to the ken and warn all the other thieves, too. The king was out to capture them, not just inconvenience them.
So they waited until the gates opened, three travelers among the many who gathered, waiting. When the huge panels swung wide, they poured into the town — and Randhir led Shea and Chalmers unerringly toward the gleaming dome of the royal palace.
As they came up to the gates, Chalmers dropped behind Randhir a few steps and pulled Shea alongside. “He is going to reveal his lofty station to us, Harold. Be suitably impressed.”
“Oh! Yes, of course,” Shea smiled brightly.
Randhir marched right up to the gates, and the guards stared, amazed at the insolence of the “peasant.” Then they clashed their spears together, blocking his way. The Rajah halted and told them, “Summon your captain.”
The guards began to look angry, and the older of the two said, “We take no orders from ruffians!”
“You do not know me, then?”
“Know you?” the younger cried. “We have never seen you in our lives.”
“That is reassuring.” The Rajah took out his knife and cut the horsehair. His nose, freed, swelled back out to its royal proportions, somewhat resembling a cross between an eagle’s beak and a seaside promontory. “Do you know me now?” he demanded.
The men stared, then bowed low, “My King and sovereign!”
“I am indeed. Now summon your captain.”
One guard ran to call his boss, and Chalmers leaned over to mutter, “Most interesting. He made sure neither had been among the thieves last night, before he risked revealing his identity.”
“Very wise,” Shea agreed. “Of course, they might have been lying.”
“Quite so, but I’m certain it was only double-checking; he would have recognized them if he had seen them last night.”
“If he could have,” Shea said. “He’s got a much better memory for faces than I have.”
“Well, yes,” Chalmers agreed, “but that would not take much, would it now?”
Shea turned a look of indignation on him. “Well, thank you, Mr. Memory Wizard!”
Chalmers was saved from an answer by the arrival of the guard captain, who took one look at Randhir and blanched. “Seize him,” the rajah commanded.
The captain reached for his sword, but the guards managed to react to their surprise fast enough so that it never cleared the scabbard. A spear-point touched his chest, and he froze; then a fist cracked into his jaw, and he folded.
“Chain him in the dungeon,” the rajah commanded, “and bind hi
s mouth; make sure he speaks to no one. He is a thief, and has betrayed us all.”
As the guards carried the man away. Shea conceded, “I guess he does have a good memory for faces.”
“Yes,” Chalmers agreed, “but very poor recruiting procedures.”
Finally, Randhir turned to Shea and Chalmers. “Now you know whom you have accompanied this evening.”
Shea stared and took a step back — right into Chalmers, who muttered, “Pure ham.” It was a good thing — Shea had been on the verge of sticking his hands in the air and crying, “I surrender Sheriff!” Instead, he risked a glance at Chalmers, who was simply staring, pure and simple, then began to tremble ever so slightly.
Randhir saw and smiled, sure of his power and majesty. “Do not be afraid, for we have been comrades in danger. Come with me now and refresh yourselves.”
He turned and marched before them. As they passed through the gates, Shea suddenly became sure of safety, and felt himself go limp — limp with relief, but also weariness.
“Do not relax yet.” Chalmers’ voice was heavy with exhaustion. “One misstep, and we could still lose our heads.”
“That’s right — the Rajah has no reason to think were not foreign thieves.” Shea managed to muster a few grams of remaining strength, enough to imagine the Rajah’s face swollen with anger and his voice shouting, “Off with their heads!” The result was remarkable — adrenaline surged through him, stiffening his backbone and brightening his eyes. He managed to keep his step brisk as he followed Randhir.
Into the palace they went, but by a side door that led into a room with long tables adorned with knives. For a moment, Shea thought the Raja had led them to his torture chamber, Then he saw the garbage bins, and realized they were in the kitchens.
The light of dawn showed him an old woman who was snoring in a chair by the window. “Up!” Raodhir commanded, but his voice was gentle. The woman’s eyes snapped open; she saw the Rajah, and pushed herself painfully to her feet. “Water,” Randjnr commanded and the woman hobbled away to dip water from a bucket into a silver bowl. She hung a clean cloth over her arm and brought both to her King. He peeled off false eyebrows and washed his face thoroughly, taking away some of the coloring, then dried it and began work on his moustaches, twisting them down from the corners of his eyes to blend in with his beard. The woman handed him a comb, then went to bring a richly brocaded robe. Randhir combed his parted beard back into one single, well-trimmed mass, then doffed his rough tunic and slipped into the robe the old woman held out for him. He tied a sash about it, then exchanged his black cotton turban for one of purple silk with a peacock’s feather held by a golden brooch to the front and turned to face them, magically transformed into the very image of a Hindu king. Come, friends of my night’s adventure! You must tell me what you have seen, so that we have as full an account of this nights work as we may!” But he didn’t give them a chance to talk, only led them out of the kitchen and through a narrow hallway into a broad one, then up a broad flight of steps and into a room floored with cool marble and roofed by an azure dome upheld by columns of alabaster. At the far end, on a dais surrounded by more columns, stood a great chair covered with gold. Randhir stepped up and sat in the throne as casually as Shea might sit in his office chair. “Now, my guests! Tell me what you have seen.”
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