And all the time the slaves and workers continued their labors on the great halls. Now work was concentrated on just finishing the nearest-completed hall. It was necessary, as I understood, that at least one new hall be finished for this time of the Great Death. It took season after season to complete a hall, of course, within the complex of the massive buildings that could have swallowed all the pyramids at a gulp.
Having discussed the question of overlord spies among us, I had been reassured by my group leaders. We could carry on our work within the complexes of the warrens and lookouts would warn us of any onslaught from the overlords. Of spies, the slaves had experience. A man, acting the slave, acts differently from one who had felt old snake on his naked back, or so the men said. I was not so sure, but in this had to trust those on the spot.
I was aware that despite their willingness to drill and march the slaves were irked by the enforced discipline. Their ideas of rebellion consisted of snatching up a sword and a torch and running like crazy through the streets. Clearly, they became more difficult to hold in check as the time for the Great Death approached. It was also apparent that Pugnarses and Genal were irked. They had drawn closer together of late, and this pleased me. They were often in long, involved, passionate discussions, which would break up as soon as I appeared. I was glad they were more friendly now than they had seemed to be. Bolan was a tower of strength, his bald head covered by a massive yellow-painted vosk skull. He was manipulating the pikemen into a force I considered might just have a chance against the overlord cavalry. Just a chance, before they were cut to pieces, but that single chance would be all we would have. Although I had felt it desirous not to use either red or green as colors for the slave army — yellow and blue and black were the symbols and badges we used — the aspect of a religious war was fading. I did not see this clearly then. Zair forgive me — I actually thought I was extraordinarily clever in thus turning the Grodno-worshiping workers against their Grodno-worshiping masters. As the majority of the slaves were for Zair I had even further vague and nebulous plans I could not even acknowledge to myself, and as a consequence I completely overlooked the character of class war that had taken over. I was for Sanurkazz and Zair and the Krozairs of Zy. In that, I failed. I should have taken the longer view. . One night, returning after a crossbow session with the sextets handling the steel bows, I halted on the threshold of the hovel. Genal was grasping Holly in his arms, pushing the shush-chiff she wore down over her shoulders, his lips seeking her soft flesh. Why she should wear a shush-chiff at this time I did not know, but apparently it had inflamed Genal. Holly was gasping.
“No, no, Genal! Leave off! Please-”
“But I love you, Holly! You know that — you’ve always known it. I’ll do anything, anything at all, for you, Holly-”
“You’re tearing my shush-chiff!”
Genal’s voice broke into an impassioned sob. “And was it for Pugnarses-”
“No — no! How can you say it! I don’t love either of you!”
I made a noise outside, and shuffled and dropped my long sword — a thing a warrior only does if he is troubled or scheming or dead — and then went in. We all acted as though nothing had happened. I am sure they did not know I had eavesdropped on their pitiful little scene. If I had taken more notice. . But I considered this affair none of my business. They were both adult; they should be able to handle their amorous problems like adults. Perhaps I was too concerned over trivia like steel crossbows instead of looking at the springs of motivation of those around me, on whom the success of the revolution would depend.
We were all waiting now with a heightened expectation, for daily the green sun Genodras dropped lower and lower toward the red sun Zim, and the time of the Great Death was at hand. Each day brought the two closer together with an almost visible rate of closing. The moment Genodras dropped out of sight behind Zim would be the time we would rise. The workers had no care, now, in their passion, that they, too, were thought to own allegiance to Grodno. For them the seasons of oppression at last were to be broken. The whip and the chain were to be banished. No superstition would prevent that.
On what we all knew was the last night, Holly came to me. She had donned her shush-chiff, and oiled her body and hair, and she looked very delectable. She laughed at me in her own seemingly modest way, and all the blood surged into her innocent face.
“Why, Holly,” I said rashly. “You look charming.”
“Is that all, Stylor? Just — charming?”
The hovel did not seem to stink quite so badly in the sputtering, fluttering light of the candle. Genal and Pugnarses were out somewhere. I knew we were making last-minute attempts to create a line of underground communication with the slaves in the dock areas, where the bagnios would provide stalwart fighting-men once the initial attack had begun.
I felt uneasy and put that down to Holly’s presence.
A foot scraped at the door, but Holly did not hear, for she came to me, pouting, forcing herself to declare something that her nature made of tremendous difficulty and tremendous significance for her. I moved away, as though casually. I had no desire for Genal or Pugnarses — or Bolan, for that matter -
to stand in the role of eavesdropper on me as I had on Genal and Holly.
“Oh, Stylor — why are you so blind?”
Her gentle birdlike movements made me step back again, away from the bed where my mail coat and my long sword were hidden beneath the straw, but with the hilt of the long sword ready to instant hand.
“It will soon be time, Holly,” I said.
“Time for war, yes, Stylor. But is war all that obsesses you?”
“I should hope not!” I said.
I looked at her, at her bright eyes, the soft and supple figure beneath the shush-chiff, and the men who entered almost had me. They wore the slave gray, but they had fierce faces of overlords with the down-drooping Mongol moustaches, and they carried swords in their hands. There were four who had wrapped gray cloths about their faces so that only their eyes showed. My lunge for the long sword was made — I was on my way when the first arrow thunked into the wood
— and I did not stop then. I whirled with the long sword — and froze.
“That is better, cramph.” The overlord sneered the words.
The bent bow, the nocked arrow, the barbed head — they did not stop me, for the Krozairs make religious sport of striking flying arrows from the air with their swords. No — the arrow aimed directly at the heart of Holly, who shrank back, her hands to her mouth, her eyes enormous, choked with horror. I dropped the long sword, kicked it under the straw. They took me then, without a struggle, and all the time that merciless arrow remained pointing at Holly’s heart.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“A Krozair! You — the Lord of Strombor!”
I have sojourned for a spell in many prisons in my long life and the one beneath the colossal Magdag Hall na Priags was no worse than most and a lot better than some.
Stripped naked, spread-eagled out against a damp wall, my wrists and ankles clamped in rusty iron rings, chains dangling infuriatingly from the iron hoop about my waist, I waited in the half-darkness partly lit by a ruddy radiance streaming in through the iron-barred grille. All thought of the rebellion had fled from my mind. This was not because I despaired, but because I had seen a jumbled pile of my group commanders outside my hovel, dead, hideously dead. Bolan, I had seen, running shrieking into the warrens, his bald head glistening in the streaming radiance of the fourth moon, She of the Veils, and with the arrow striking through his left shoulder. All revolt, surely, would be crushed when the green sun reappeared.
The jailers took me up to judgment. They were men, for no half-human, half-beast mercenaries were allowed in the sacred halls of Magdag during the time of the Great Death and the Great Birth. Overlords of the second class, they were of a kind with that Wengard who had so viciously ordered me a touch of old snake.
The room into which I was conducted — pushed and shoved an
d pummeled — was walled and roofed in uncut stone. A sturm-wood table crossed an angle. Behind this the guard commander sat, all in mail, his long sword at his side. He stroked that ugly drooping Magdag moustache as he spoke.
“You will tell us of the final plans for the rebellion, rast. Otherwise you will die unpleasantly.”
I suppose he saw that this did not convince me; he knew as well as I that they would kill me out of hand. In this, as you shall hear, I was wrong.
“We know of your schemes, you whom the slaves call Stylor. We have samples of your pitiful slave-made weapons. But we would be more exact.”
They had been incautious enough to leave me with a bight of chain between my ankles. The chains around my bound wrists would, of course, serve as a weapon. I did not bother to kick the guards next to me. I went straight over the table, wrapped my wrist-chains around the guard commander’s neck, and hauled back.
“I will leave you enough air to tell these cramphs what to do,” I said, in his ear, low and venomous. He gobbled out a shrieked order to his men to stay back. Impasse.
The door opened and Glycas walked in.
He was speaking in his abrupt, authoritarian way before he was fairly through the opening.
“Send for the prisoner, Stylor. There is a mystery about this slave I would-” Then he saw me. His breath hissed in his throat. His long sword flashed clear of his scabbard.
“I shall cut you down, slave, whether you strangle that miserable guard commander or not.” He laughed, his silky, snakelike laugh. “Perhaps I will have him strangled, anyway, for allowing you this much effrontery.” He glared around at the paralyzed jailers. “Seize him!”
The death of this Magdag overlord of the second class would benefit no one. I let him go, regretfully, to be sure.
My brown hair had grown long, my trim moustache and beard a trifle shaggy, I was filthy, grimed and mucky with sweat. I stood clear before the table. Glycas kept his sword pointed.
“I am Stylor,” I said.
“Your friends have told me a great deal. But they know little of you, slave. You will tell me all I want to know.”
“Like, perhaps, where I came from? Where I vanished to? Like, perchance, that you are a foul green-scummed risslaca, Glycas?”
He gaped. For an instant, his composure deserted him. With a jerky strut he bore down on me, the long sword pointed at my breast. He took my filthily-bearded chin in his hand and twisted my head up into the lantern light. Again he drew that hissing breath between his teeth. His fist gripping my chin shook.
“Drak, Kov of Delphond!”
“And now, perhaps, you will free me from these undignified chains, let me have a bath and scented oils, and then provide me with an explanation and an apology-”
“Silence!” he roared. He stood back and still he did not lower the long sword. He would not risk his neck in the same position as the guard commander’s. “Enough. That you are Stylor, the wanted slave traitor, is enough for me. What else you have done to my sister, is between us, not of Magdag.”
“I have done nothing to the Princess Susheeng,” I said, before he hit me. “That is her trouble.” Then he hit me.
I was to be used in the rituals to insure the return of the green sun, Genodras, and the rebirth of Grodno. A medley of emotions tortured me. If I say that in some odd and hurtful way I was glad that this was to happen, I do not believe you will understand. Since this, my third period on Kregen, I had not been myself. Always, I had felt the unseen compulsion of the Star Lords — possibly, I thought then, of the Savanti also — forcing me into actions and deeds that were not truly of my nature. The suffocating sense of that shadowy doom I knew was reserved for me had inhibited me. Strange and mysterious powers had torn me from my own Earth, and I had responded eagerly, gladly. But the doom-laden feelings I could not shake off had soured all my thoughts and actions. Clearly, here in the great Hall na Priags of Magdag, I had been abandoned by the Star Lords, their plans for me betrayed, my usefulness at an end. I felt, suddenly, free, lightened, ready to be once again plain Dray Prescot, of Earth, and to face that menacing doom with all the callous courage I could summon up.
Captives of the highest rank were used in the ritual games of Magdag to propitiate, entreat, and insure the return of Genodras. We were bundled into iron-barred cages overlooking the great Hall na Priags so that we might see what awaited us and shudder at our fate. I stood gripping the bars, staring out on that fantastic scene as the lamplight and torchlight flickered and flared on the massive walls with their festoons of paintings and carvings, their murals exalting the power of Magdag, their sculptures of the beast-gods, the overwhelming decorative detail.
What I saw astonished me.
Around the cleared area where we would be tortured to death in manners weird and horrible to the mind of a sane man the rows of Magdaggian overlords waited. They waited for the entrance of the high overlord of this Hall na Priags, who was Glycas, in ceremonial procession. A sigh went up as the smoke swirled and lifted and the priests and the sacred guards walked sedately into that vast chamber. Glycas, as square, as hard, as corrupt as ever marched with the sacred golden covering held above his head by four nobles. I looked about. I was astonished.
Every single person present wore red.
Clad all in red, they waited or walked in a rhythmic swing toward the dais, all in red, and at their sides swung long swords, broken in half, their jagged edges protruding past the ripped-away ends of split scabbards.
All in red.
Here, in the heart of Magdag, stronghold of Grodno the Green!
Here, then, was part of the secret, part of the reason why only overlords and nobles were allowed to witness these rituals to insure the return of the green sun. We sacrifices, of course, were not expected to live. And I guessed at a part of that secret.
The green sun Genodras had been swallowed by the red sun Zim. What more natural, therefore, since there was now only a red sun in the sky of Kregen, that the worshipers of Grodno should seek to placate Zair, the deity of the red sun Zim! What, indeed! But, how shameful a fact to own in the world. How they must hate what they now did, clad in the hated red, parading to the glory not of Grodno, but of Zair. Begging, pleading, entreating, not Grodno, for the return of Genodras — but Zair!
“The blasphemers!” A naked man with the marks of the whip on his back clawed at the bars, cursing. The others with me in the sacrificial cages shouted and yelled, but the men of Magdag were accustomed to that. They ignored us.
In that moment had I any pity in my heart for the men of Magdag surely, then, I would have felt a pang, condemned as they were by the laws of astronomy to lose their godhead at each eclipse. But very quickly they were taking the sacrifices out, poking them with sharp swords, forcing them into the center of the cleared area where the torturers waited. What was done was fiendish, diabolical; and it was all done in the name of religious superstition.
The stink of incense, which has always sickened me, the noise of shouting, the resonant chanting rising ever and anon, the shrieks of the victims, the harsh feel of the iron bars in my fists, all melded into a hideous series of concussions in my brain. Around the hall were sited huge banners, of red cloth, embroidered with the devices and blazons of Sanurkazz, and of other southern cities, Zamu, Tremzo, Zond, and of citadels like Felteraz, and of individuals like Zazz, and Zenkiren — and Dray, Lord of Strombor! — and of organizations and orders like The Red Brethren of Lizz, and the Krozairs of Zy. Then I noticed the diabolical cunning in the thinking. As each victim fell to his death one of the red banners was removed, torn into pieces and cast upon the sacrificial fire. Here was an example of the twisted logic available to the fanatical mind in pursuit of a single desired object. And yet each ritual test was designed so that there was a chance, a slim one, perhaps one in a thousand, for the victim to escape and come through safely. If he did so the banner he had saved from the fire was relegated, but he was returned immediately to the cages to await a further trial. This
was leem and woflo with a vengeance!
I had a hope I might come through safely.
My test was devilish and simple.
Over a gangway beneath which a series of razor-sharp knives moved jerkily, I had to run carrying a squirming half-grown leem. The leem is furry, feline, vicious, with eight legs, and sinuous like a ferret, with a wedge-shaped head equipped with fangs that can strike through lenk. When full-grown it is of a size with an Earthly leopard. This one was about the size of a spaniel; at once it sought to sink its fangs into me. I gripped it about the neck and started ruthlessly to choke it to death even as long swords prodded me over the gangway. I ran. Men and women of Magdag, laughing, swayed the gangway about so that I staggered and almost lost my footing to plunge bodily onto those circling scythe-like knives. But I gripped the leem which struggled and flailed its eight legs. It could not shriek, for I gripped it. Oh, how I gripped it! And I ran. When I reached the far side men with swords met me and I flung the leem full at them. They cut it down instantly, and sword points prodded my breast, forced me back to the cage. But I saw the deviced banner of Pur Zenkiren moved away from the sacrificial fire, and I exulted. I would await my next ordeal.
Feasting, singing, and ritual dancing went on all the time the sacrifices underwent their ordeals, and died. Slowly but remorselessly the victims and the brave red banners lessened in number. The hideous burs passed.
Then, as though in a daze, I saw, sitting at her brother’s side, laughing and drinking wine from a crystal goblet from Loh, the Princess Susheeng. Barbaric and gorgeous, she looked, clad all in red, the blood coloring her face, her eyes brilliant with kohl and her mouth a scarlet pout of sensual desire. She had seen me run. She had seen me, naked, the sweat pouring down my chest, my muscles bunching with frenzied energy, as I gripped the leem and ran above that pit of death. When I looked again, after the agonized scream of a poor devil who had failed to draw his head back in time so that the buzz-saw-like wheel of knives had decapitated him, Susheeng was gone. The sacrificial cages opened by small and well-guarded barred gates onto the great hall. To the rear lay the entrances through which we had been escorted. Beyond them lay the complex of this megalithic structure, one with possibly a score of halls like this, where even now other rituals were being played out in death.
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