Here Mok sighed and took another drink and wiped at a tear that slid down his blubbery cheek. «A pity, my new friend. Truly a pity. She is a lovely child. So beautiful.»
Blade glanced through a half-shuttered window. It was dark now, but he reckoned on a moon later on. Even here, high on a hill, the odor of burning corpses came to them and there was a fine sift of ash in the air. Blade decided. Why delay? His own danger could only grow with each passing moment. According to Mok, the Wise One had his own police and soldiery and he was sure to hear of Blade’s arrival in Jedd. Perhaps he already knew. Mok had whispered that there were spies everywhere these days. The situation was tense, the rival factions poised and only waiting for the old Empress to die. The sudden arrival of the Yellow Death had only complicated matters, not altered them.
Blade now pretended drunkenness and plied Mok with more and more of the fiery melon juice, interspersed with a host of sly questions. Ooma did not appear again and he saw nothing of the two aunts. By the time Mok gave a last piglike grunt and slid forward to sleep on the table, Blade had all he wanted. More than he needed. He got up and staggered outside, put his ringer down his throat and was sick for a long time. Below him, ringing the city on all sides, fires blazed red in the charnel pits.
When he could spew no more and the retching was over, Blade went back into the house. He went up a ladder and found the two aunts asleep in one room, Ooma in another. She was lying on a crude mat in a corner, curled up in the embryo position she favored, and breathing gently. Blade bent over her for a moment, kissed her lightly on the cheek and decided not to waken her. She could have no part in what he meant to do, was in fact best out of it, and the less she knew the better. If things worked out, if he lived and got on with his work in Jedd, he would come for her or send for her. If not — well, she was scarcely more than a child and would soon forget him. He patted her shoulder and left her.
Mok was sprawled head and shoulders on the table, snoring loudly, as Blade left the cottage. He found the path by which they had come and started down the hill. A pale moon was just rising at the far end of the valley. Blade hiked briskly until he was within a hundred yards of one of the charnel pits, then paused in concealment and took stock.
He had only the rough, scratchy clothes he had been given and the stone knife. Not much with which to begin a career in Jedd. This troubled him not at all — he had been in far worse spots in previous dimensions. Weapons would not be a problem, once he came on them. Mok, without knowing he did so, had informed Blade that Jedd was in the Iron Age. For a hundred years now all weapons had been made of the new and miraculous ore that had been discovered in the mountains. Crude iron. Blade chuckled and shook his head. The iron would be brittle and would not hold an edge, but at least the weapons of Jedd were those he understood: swords, lances, pikes, dirks and the like. And armor. Heavy iron armor that weighed a man down.
Blade moved closer to the charnel pit. Fires blazed high and clouds of stinking smoke drifted around him, but by now he had grown accustomed to the smell of roasting flesh and it did not bother him. He moved again, using the smoke as a screen, creeping closer and closer to the pit where the corpseburners were working.
A cart arrived with a new load of corpses. The attendants swore and shouted harsh insults at the driver of the cart. Blade stopped his advance and watched the driver. The man was dressed the same as the corpseburners — yellow breeches and vest and cap. Blade changed his plan and moved away in the smoke to lie in wait beside the cart track leading back to the city walls.
From behind a cluster of boulders he waited patiently, watching the scene in the charnel pit. Inevitably he thought of Home Dimension and of the inferno in which some believed. It was all before his eyes, like a garish woodcut of Dore — the smoldering bodies, the writhing smoke, the moving and cursing figures of the corpseburners playing their parts as demons. Blade observed and reflected and kept the business part of his mind clear and gripped his little stone knife.
The cart started back toward the city. Blade perched atop his boulders and waited. The cart creaked toward him, the solid wooden wheels squealing for lack of grease, drawn by a slow-moving bovine-like creature that to Blade looked like a water buffalo. Horses were unknown in Jedd. Mok, when Blade questioned him about the beasts, had only looked stupid.
The cart went creaking beneath his perch. Blade sprang and, with no compunction at all, cut the driver’s throat with the stone knife. The man hardly had time to struggle.
There was a single rein leading to the beast’s head. Blade tugged it and the animal stopped and stood patiently. Blade hauled the body into the back of the cart and stripped it. It was the yellow uniform he was after, the breeches and vest and cap. No one in Jedd, Mok had said, would interfere with a corpseburner or even approach him closely if he could help it. The work, and the taint of the plague, made them feared and avoided. A corpseburner could come and go as he pleased. This suited Blade exactly.
He left the naked body in the cart and urged the animal forward, toward the walls of Jeddia, chief and only city of Jedd, where the Empress, or Jeddock, now lay dying somewhere on a pavilion in a lake. Dying to music played by musicians who worked in shifts so that the music never stopped.
The cart creaked onward, the beast plodded and Blade studied the mountains ringing the valley. The peaks glittered in moonlight high above the pall of smoke. Iron. And if there was iron in those mountains — and they but a small part of this dimension — there were certain to be countless other minerals. Perhaps rare ones that could scarcely be found back in Home Dimension. Billions and billions of pounds of treasure just waiting for teleportation. And when that was.one, England would again be the leading power in the world, displacing the United States.
Blade remembered the terrible pains in his head. Damn Lord L and his computer! If only the old man would leave him alone for a time — long enough to get his job done.
But nothing was to be counted on. Blade had to get on with it as best he could and as fast as he could. Establish himself. Take over. Begin his surveys.
That meant risk. To offset the risk he had only his two favorite weapons — bluff and boldness. Always boldness.
He was approaching a gate in the city wall. Soldiers in cumbersome iron breastplates and helmets, wearing baggy, loose breeches and armed with lances and swords, moved back to let him pass through. None spoke or even looked hard at the man in the yellow garb of death. Blade smiled. Fine. Until he was ready for his next step, he would be the man who wasn’t there.
Chapter Fourteen
It was amazingly easy. Blade sent his cart rumbling through the filthy, narrow streets of the city, pausing now and then to ask directions of men and women who fled even as they answered. He in turn ignored those who carried bodies from their houses and implored him to take them as he passed.
An hour after entering Jeddia, he was concealed in a small copse of trees near a lake. In the center of the lake, mounted on stilts, was a large pavilion. Dim lights glowed through its cloth sides and the strains of music wafted plangently over the water to Blade. The same melody played over and over again by horns and stringed instruments. The old Empress had composed the tune, so Mok had told Blade, and had decreed that it be the national anthem of Jedd, and now she was dying to it. Blade, who could take his music or leave it, admitted that the thing had a certain haunting bittersweetness about it and that, once heard, you would never forget it.
He waited and watched. Barges scuttled constantly from the pavilion to a landing near him. Soldiers — most of them officers, judging from the gilded iron breastplates they wore — and solemn men in long, rich robes and skullcaps of what appeared to be velvet. Ministers of state, advisers, lawyers, merchants and the like. Blade paid them little heed. He was waiting for one man. The Wise One.
Whose real name, Mok had confided, was Nizra.
The moon was falling down the sky when Nizra came from the pavilion to the shore. The music still played on and on, so Blade knew th
e old Empress still lived. He moved to the edge of the little wood and stared hard as Nizra, the Wise One, stepped from his barge onto the landing. He was accompanied by a sizable retinue, with servants bearing torches, and in the flaring light it was easy enough to see.
Blade saw at once that this Nizra was a macrocephalic. His head was enormous, twice the size of that of an average man, like a giant, pallid flower blooming on a slender stalk. The head drooped continually to one side or the other, as though the weak spine could not bear the weight of it. Blade observed and whistled softly to himself. It was a giant of a braincase and if the brain in any way matched it in size, and in proportional acumen, he had best beware. The Wise One might be just that — and cunning into the bargain.
Now the man was giving orders, dismissing most of his party. Blade peered harder as Nizra stepped full into the glare of a torch. The man wore a flowing robe and a skullcap, as had the others, but the skullcap was a gleaming scarlet. A badge of office, Blade supposed, as was the gleaming chain that encircled the scrawny neck and at which the man continually fumbled with spidery fingers.
Nizra, with four soldiers in attendance, walked a short way around the lake, following a well-worn path, and disappeared into a tall, narrow house of the usual stone and wood. The soldiers did not enter. Blade watched as they spoke for a moment, then split into twos, one party remaining before the house, the other disappearing in the gloom to the rear. This Nizra was well guarded. So much the better. He would be that much more impressed when Blade appeared like a wraith from the very walls. For Blade was counting heavily on the first confrontation. It would decide his fortunes — and whether he would live or die.
He waited patiently until things quieted down. He had about two hours until dawn. Barge traffic between the landing and the pavilion ceased, though the dim lights still glowed and music came everlastingly over the quiet water. Blade made ready. He watched the two guards in front of the house intently. They were bored and sullen and patrolled back and forth, hardly speaking, each intent on his own thoughts. The only light was a guttering torch in a sconce over the door of the house that enlarged and distorted the shadows of the guards as they passed to and fro. Blade moved in closer.
He had only the stone knife. This killing — for he meant to kill them for his own safety and for the effect of it — must be a matter of skill and timing and luck. The skill involved did not worry him — when he had to be, Blade was a most efficient killer.
Still he waited and at last the guards paused to chat for a moment beneath the torch. Blade had been waiting for that. He ran swiftly across the path and ducked into the shadows of a hedge that lay near the end of the near guard’s beat. Blade crouched there, stone knife ready, waiting. It must be noiseless.
The guards resumed their pacing. The man was coming toward Blade now, leather harness creaking, short sword swinging in its scabbard, the faintest of star sheen reflected from polished iron armor. Blade took a deep breath and held it.
The guard passed him. He was humming, very softly, a snatch of the refrain that came from the old Empress’ pavilion. Blade let him get three paces past, then took him from behind with one brawny arm about his throat to stifle any cry. With his free hand he brought the stone knife around and sought for the man’s throat just above the breastplate. The guard was strong and struggled mightily for his life, but Blade held him as he might a babe and slit the jugular neatly. Blood spurted, drenching the dying man and Blade as well. He did not mind. He wanted the blood on him.
Time was important now. The other guard would have reached the end of his run and turned back. Blade held the guard erect until he bled himself out, then lowered him and snatched off the swordbelt and scabbard. The sword was short and wide, double-edged with a thick hilt, and very heavy. Very like an old Roman sword.
Blade hauled the body into the shadows, fastened the swordbelt around his slim waist and started walking toward the torch over the door of the Wise One’s house. He went slowly, with a measured tread, matching his pace to that of the other guard now approaching. As he drew near the aura of light cast by the torch, Blade drew the heavy sword from its scabbard. He let it dangle by his side, concealing it as much as possible with his leg. The other guard must experience a split second of shock and surprise and terror, and Blade was counting on that.
Both men strode into the flickering circle of light. The guard said, «I have been thinking, Topah. How did you say it was that—»
He stopped, staring, his mouth gaping in surprise at the thing that approached him. This was not Topah! This was not a Jedd! This was not anything in the world he had ever seen before — this yellow-clad and blood-drenched corpseburner with blazing eyes, this towering and muscular thing that was lunging at him now. Topah? Where was Topah?
«Topah—»
It came out as a mere squeak of death. Blade used all his massive strength and put the iron sword into the guard just below the breastplate and above the groin. As he thrust, he twisted the blade in a classic disemboweling cut. At the same time he used a backhand chop to smash the man’s throat and voice box. It was over.
Blade put his foot on the corpse and tugged out the sword. He left it bloody. He dragged the body out of range of the torch and then turned and went into the house of Nizra, the Wise One.
He found himself in a short hallway. A taper burned starkly on a barrel-like table. Blade took blood from the sword and daubed it on his face, drawing a crude pattern around his eyes. As a part of his long-ago training as a secret agent, he had studied the ways of American Indians and the ways in which facial paint could be used to induce terror. He could have used a mirror.
At the end of the hall, a steep flight of stairs led upward. Blade leaped up them like a great cat, the bloody sword held at the ready before him. There might be more guards in the house. He hoped not. Dawn would be on him soon and time was at a premium. He wanted to get on with the business at hand.
There were no guards. Another taper gleamed in the upper hall. There was a single door, half open, and through it Blade saw the Wise One asleep in a great bed with a canopy over it. This, if it could be called a luxury, was the only one. The room was barren, stark, with nothing but a chair and a table — on which were piles of books and papers — and a large clay pot near the bed.
Blade went softly into the room, carrying the taper, and closed the door behind him. There was a bolt and he slid it to. He walked to the bed and poked at the enshrouded figure with his swordpoint.
«Wake up,» said Blade. «Wake up, Nizra. Wise One. Wake up!»
The head, like a huge bald melon, emerged from the covers. Small dark eyes, like dank moths, fluttered at Blade. The taut white skin, stretched over the massive skull and marred not even by a hair root, mirrored the taper like an ivory ball.
Blade, towering by the bedside like a demon, glowering with his bloody face and clothes and the threatening sword, forever gave Nizra credit for his first words.
The dark eyes blinked. The thin mouth, tiny in the big head, said, «You are a fool. I am not dead yet, corpseburner. Get back to your proper work and leave me to my rest.» The voice was another surprise. A rich and robust baritone with the promise of basso.
Blade covered his own surprise with a laugh. «I am not a corpseburner and you know it, Nizra. But that is all you know. Are you awake now? Do you hear and understand me? There is little time for us to reach an understanding.»
The black eyes were studying him. Trying to understand, to cope, to sort matters out and decide if this was a dream or reality. And if real, how near was death? Because no man, no matter how dull and sleepy, could stare at the terrible figure Blade made and not know that he was very close to dying. The great bald head nodded and the little dark eyes blinked and the Wise One conceded this.
The marvelous deep voice slid down a note. «True. You are no corpseburner. Who are you then, and what do you want with me? And how came you into this house? My guards—»
Blade held up the blood-gummed sword.
«Your guards, the two before the house, are dead. This sword and this blood prove that. I killed them easily and with a purpose— to convince you, Nizra, that I am what I will presently tell you I am. And to show you that I will kill you also, as quickly and as easily as I killed your guards, if you do not cooperate with me absolutely and without question. From this moment on, Nizra, I will order and you will obey. You understand?»
Blade took a step toward the bed and raised the sword a bit. He watched the spidery hands lying on the coverlet. Near the bedpost was a bell pull. The long fingers twitched once or twice, but the hand made no move toward the pull.
«I understand,» said Nizra. «What do you want of me?»
There was no fear in the deep voice. The black eyes — for the first time Blade noted that they had no lashes — stared back at Blade. He knew then that he had very nearly met his match. For now he had the upper hand, by brute force, but one mistake could change that. For a moment Blade actually felt disappointment and a sense of pique — this Wise One, this Nizra, was either not afraid at all or he was a master of hiding fear. What he was displaying was curiosity. Plain and simple curiosity. Blade could not help wondering whether he, if awakened in the dead of night under similar circumstances, would have been able to summon such aplomb.
The man in the bed seemed to understand all this. He folded his skinny fingers across his chest and repeated, «What is it you want of me?»
Blade thrust his sword into the scabbard with a ring of iron. He kicked the single chair toward the bed and sat down. He crossed his own brawny arms and matched the dark eyes stare for stare. Blade knew that the time for violence, or the threat of it, was for the moment past. Now was a time for guile and cunning and the matching of wits. For self-interest. For compromise. He had won the first round, but the wedge was barely in the door.
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