by Джеффри Лорд
Ogier muttered again. «Do not do it, Blade. Do not go in there alone. Let me come with you.»
Blade laughed. «You are an old woman, Ogier. Stay here and wait for me.»
He strode into the entrance, beckoning to the tall priest. «I said we go. Or must I seek out Casta alone?»
Without speaking, and with downcast eyes, the priest slipped in front of Blade and crooked a finger. Blade followed. They went down a marble ramp into a central chamber from which a dozen corridors radiated like the spokes of a wheel. Torches, held by iron rings, flickered over each entrance. The tall priest plucked a torch from its sconce and, beckoning once again to Blade, led the way into a labyrinth of marbled halls that soon had the big man totally confused. Already he was lost. It would be possible, he thought, to wander for days in such a maze and never find his way out.
The priest went swiftly, never looking back, and Blade hurried to keep up. They came to a steep flight of narrow marble steps and descended. The air was hot and oppressive now and Blade began to sweat. They entered a chamber with a pit in the middle. The priest signed to Blade to step onto the platform. In all this time he had not spoken. He watched, sunken eyes glowering from the hood, as the platform sank with Blade on it.
Blade drew his sword and loosed the mace in his belt. He was not so sure of himself now. It might have been wise to have fetched Ogier along.
The platform halted and Blade gazed into a vast cavern. Somewhere a fire burned and cast lurid red shadows. Blade stepped off the platform, peered into the gloom and kept his sword ready. The silence made him uneasy.
The Princess Hirga appeared from the gloom. She was wearing the silver trousers, but this time her breasts were bare and Blade felt a spasm of desire as he gazed at those perfect cones. They would match his hands and they were as firm as the marble above him.
Hirga saw his glance and smiled in a secret way, beckoning to him. «You can put away your sword, Blade. Casta awaits you and he plans no treachery. Follow me.»
Blade sheathed his sword and followed. She led him back into the cavern, past grinning skeletons, some mounted and some dangling from the rafters. Hirga indicated them and said, «Casta is a great scholar. He opens bodies and examines them, and he knows and has names for every bone.»
They passed what seemed to be a smithy, where coke fires glowed and cast off a great deal of heat. Blade sweated harder.
«Casta works in iron,» explained Hirga. «When he needs a certain tool and does not have it, he makes it.»
Blade said nothing. This High Priest was certainly a man of parts. Blade mentally girded himself for the encounter. He began to get the feeling that he was going up against an equal, something that rarely happened in Dimension X.
Hirga stopped before a leather curtain, slit like a stage curtain. She motioned. «In there, Blade. Casta is waiting. He would speak to you alone first.»
As he stepped toward the curtain she moved to him and her jutting breasts touched his chest armor. Her green eyes were bold. She laid a hand on his heavily muscled arm. «And perhaps later, Blade, there will be time for us. I am curious about you. I would know more of you.»
Blade nodded curtly. «Perhaps, Hirga. We shall see» He parted the leather curtain and stepped through.
This chamber was small and at first glance crammed beyond capacity with specimens of all types-stuffed animals, skeletons, a great many skulls, books and bottles and casks and retorts. A small fire burned in an iron grate, and before the fire was a long table. Behind the table sat a man dressed in black.
«Come better into the light,» said the man at the table. «When I first, and last, saw you I saw a baby. Now let me behold the miracle for myself.»
Blade strode into the circle of firelight. «You are the High Priest Casta?»
«I am he. And you are Blade, the child full grown to manhood in one course of the moon. Yes, now I believe it. If it is trickery, and in some manner it must be, I would give all my present knowledge to know the trick.»
Blade steeled himself. It was not like him, in his X-Dimension persona, to feel so ill at ease. The man was nothing-a priest, a charlatan, a greedy power-grabber. Nothing more. Why did Blade’s nerves tingle and his sweat turn cold and his knees feel unsteady?
Gloom shrouded the figure behind the table. Blade strode to the table and leaned over it, peering. «You have taken a good look at me, Casta. Now I demand the same. Turn your face to the fire, priest.»
The chuckle was low, throaty. «Yes. That is fair. Look, Blade!»
The eyes, huge and burning black, were torches in a skull. The face was a death’s head, bone with saffron flesh drawn over it like a drum. A skull. Blade could see the veins writhing like blue worms. The nose was vulpine, sharp as a nail, and the lips a bloodless anus.
There was no hair. No hair at all. No lashes and no brows, and the pate as sleek as the skull near at hand on the table.
Blade had an odd thought for such a moment. If this was the lover of Hirga, as was said, then the times were indeed out of joint. Even for Zir. Even for Dimension X.
Casta picked up a black skullcap from the table and placed it on his glabrous head. He chuckled again and pointed to a cask nearby. «You have seen. And yet you have seen nothing, for what a man is is not carried on his face nor in his muscles or bones. Sit there, Blade, and we shall have our talk. But let us understand each other from the outset-I do not think you are a fool and I am not a fool. I hate waste of time. If we speak truth to each other, and only truth, and do not waste words in fencing or deceit, we shall get much further. Do you agree to this?»
Blade sank onto the cask. «I agree in principle.» He glanced at the wall behind the table and saw what could only be a sky chart. The man was an astronomer as well.
«I am a practical man,» said Casta. «I seek power. I have power now, but I want more. For only with power, absolute power, can I do the things I want to do. The reason I have not had you murdered before now, Blade, is that I think you can help me. And I can help you. If this is true we would be fools to fly at each other’s throat-and we have already agreed that we are not fools, eh?»
Blade was cautious. «I can see how I might help you, Casta. But how can you help me?»
The low chuckle again. «In many ways. By advice, by intrigue, by treachery if need be, and by treasure. Lastly, and most important, by not having you killed.»
Blade leaped to his feet and slammed a fist on the table. He half drew his sword. «You keep saying that, priest. I think you boast. If you are so sure you can murder me then why not try it now?»
Casta patted his gash of a mouth with bloodless fingers. The great dark eyes burned at Blade. once more he chuckled.
«Such is not my way.» He tapped his skull. «In here is my strength. But sit down, Blade, and hear me out. Be calm. We are not children, or slaves, or simple folk. Now tell mewhence do you come?»
As Blade went back to the cask he decided to play along. For a moment he had been on the verge of putting his steel into Casta and having done with it, but intuition told him that he would never leave the place alive. He could not, for instance, even find his way out through that maze of corridors.
«There is little point in telling you that,» he said, «for you would never understand. I come from another world, perhaps another planet, though as to that I cannot be certain. The difference is in dimension and not in time. But it is hopeless-you could not know of these things.»
«You are arrogant,» said Casta. «Intellectually arrogant, and that is the worst kind. How do you know what I know, Blade? Let me tell you-I have long suspected that there are other worlds, other times and dimensions, than are known here in Zir. We here are locked in ignorance, all but myself, and I think that you are such a person, come from such a place, and that your trick of growing from babe to man in a month is nothing but some advanced machinery of the brain. I cannot do it, nor even understand it, but I know that it can be explained and I do not fear it. There is nothing of the supernatural about you,
Blade. That is my department, my skill, and mayhap one day I will show you something. But as of now, my bristling friend, I want to keep you alive and learn from you. When your knowledge is mine, when I have drained you of all you know, then is time to worry about dying. In the meantime we are not friends and will not pretend to be. But we can help each other. It would be a pity if we did not. What say you now?»
Blade, with a sinking feeling, knew that he had been right. He had met his match. This living skeleton was his peer. Blade did not like to think that Casta might be his superior.
«I will make a truce,» he said at last. «When time affords I will tell you what I can, and what you can grasp, of what I am and how I came here. It will not be easy. And what do I get in return, other than the assurance that you will not have me murdered?»
«I will give you power and freedom of movement. I will give you treasure, or at least show you where it is.»
«Treasure? What kind of treasure?»
«Hah,» said Casta. «I have struck a note. You are a seeker, Blade, and a seeker usually is after treasure of one sort or another. But we must see-perhaps the treasure I can offer is not what you seek.» He opened a drawer in the desk and reached into it.
Blade tested the crystal in his brain. Not working. Nothing. No matter at the moment. But treasure was what England wanted, needed, and treasure was what the Prime Minister demanded. Teleportation was working now-at least it worked in the labs in Scotland-and if there was anything in Zir worth sending back
Casta put something on his desk. It resembled a large lump of coal, irregular and many-faceted, except that it was colorless and of a crystalline purity. Blade gazed at it in awe. It couldn’t be. It simply could not be. He left his cask and swept the lump off the table and took it to the fire. He held it up. A million fires danced and reflected in the giant prism; it sparked and burned in every facet and somewhere deep in it glowed a rainbow. It was! It was a diamond.
Chapter 8
Blade hefted the diamond in his hand. It weighed at least ten pounds and would run to thousands of carats. He held it to the fire again and his hand seemed to catch flame from it. Here was treasure indeed. If there were more of these stones, and if they could be teleported back to Home Dimension-Behind him the High Priest said, «I was in the right of it, Blade. You are a seeker and you have found-it is written on your face. Already your mind changes and you are more inclined to bargain with me.»
Blade put the diamond on the table and stared at Casta. «You are partly in the right-it depends. How came you by this stone? Are there more? Are they easy to come by?»
Casta folded his hands on his frail chest. «Hold a moment. Knowledge for knowledge. What is this thing called in the place from which you come?»
«A diamond. They are deemed of much value and greatly sought after.»
Casta compressed his thin lips. «Indeed? How strange. Here they are but edged stones that are good for cutting. Thane, the builder, showed me the use of one to cut stone or metal. Diamond, you say? I have never heard the word.»
Blade poked the great diamond with his finger. «You do not answer my questions. Are there more of these?»
«Not in Zir. We have none.»
«Where then?»
«In the land of the Hitts. They have mountains of the stuff. They accord it no great value except to make statues of their kings and queens-after they are dead. So if you really value these diamonds, as you call them, you must cross the narrow water and take them from the Hitts. That will not be easy. Loth Bloodax, the leader of the Hitts, is a savage and a barbarian, but he is a great warrior. It will take a greater warrior to defeat him. I admit that you have the look of a warrior.. are you one in truth?»
«I am,» said Blade. «If you have a champion and wish to test me, bring him forward.»
Casta gave him a very odd look, then covered his lips with a hand. «In time-in time. I have such a champion, but the time for that is not yet. Let us get back-you want these diamonds. To get them you must invade the Hitts. To do that with any hope of success, you must have my help. Shall we strike a bargain?»
Blade pondered before he answered. Casta broke in on his thoughts and now there was a touch of impatience in his tone.
«If it will help you in coming to a decision I will tell you something-something I had not meant you to know just yet. The Izmir is dead. In this last hour.»
Blade stared. «How can you know that?»
Casta shrugged. «By mirror message, how else? Surely you have seen and understood that, and how we use the sun, you who know so much.»
Heliograph. Blade had seen the flashes in the sky many times and had tried to decode the messages to no avail. He decided that Casta was telling the truth.
So he nodded and said, «How came this about?»
Casta shrugged again. «I know only what the message spelt out. The Izmir had a seizure in his chambers and was dead before his surgeons could be sent for. You may be sure of it. My spies in the palace would not dare lie to me in this matter.»
The Izmir’s death changed everything. The old man, as frail and ill as he had been, had afforded Blade some protection. He had pronounced Blade his son and heir, Prince, and now he was gone and Blade was bereft of sponsors-other than his sword and his strength and his cunning. What of Ogier and his twelve stout men? Would they cling to a man so disinherited?
Casta said, «I think you had best strike the bargain, Blade. For both our sakes. I want no trouble and you can afford none. If I have you slain I will be the loser, for you carry knowledge that I would have. Do not force it. Agree.»
Blade decided. «For the time being, then. To what would you have me agree?»
Casta smiled, showing toothless gums, and picked up the skull from his table. He toyed with it.
«Good. You are being wise. So hear me out and, when I am done, I will hear your objections.
«First I would have you marry Hirga. She is a princess, the sole blood of the Izmir that survives-all the other infants having been strangled to ensure this-and by taking her to wife you will become Prince Consort. The people of Zir will accept that and, though my hand will be suspected in it, they will not know for sure. For I am not loved, Blade, nor my priests. I am hated and feared and, while I do not care for myself, such hatred and distrust is an obstacle to my plans. So I remain hidden and you and Hirga will seem to rule.
«You will marry as soon as the funeral is over and the Izmir has been placed in his crypt in this place. A pity he did not live to see it finished for I could have wished him that. As soon as you marry you will move against the Hitts. I wish them destroyed.»
«Why?»
For the first time rage showed in Casta’s face. «Because they are mockers. They laugh at me and defy me. Loth Bloodax is an arrogant savage and must be taught a lesson. And there are other reasons-I would have the lands of the Hitts. They are of no value to me, but my north flank must be protected when I march at last to the east and to the west and south. I have plans for conquest in due time, Blade, and I do not want the Hitts at my back. Are you agreeable so far?»
Blade feigned doubt, though he knew that in the end he must agree. With the Izmir dead he was in a weak position. He must bide his time, play along and await developments. So he nodded.
«So far I agree. With these conditions-I am to have complete command of the armies. I will choose my own officers. I will take whatever diamonds I find as my share of the loot. Other than that, and if Hirga agrees to the marriage, I am in accord.»
Casta put the skull down. «I see no quarrel. Hirga will do as I bid her. So go now, back to the palace-city and await word from me. In the meantime you can make plans for the invasion, subject to the interruption of funeral and marriage services. I think they will not greatly hinder you?»
«No,» said Blade. «I will get on with it. Goodbye, Casta.»
The High Priest did not rise. He gave Blade a thin smile. «Goodbye. Hirga will be waiting for you. Since you are to wife her, Blade, it might be as
well to pay her some attention and do as she lists. Spend some time with her and listen-she is not a fool. And think not of treachery, Blade, for I will know of it and there would be trouble and great loss to both of us. Think always that, though we are not friends, we need not be mortal enemies. Let your brain rule and not your emotions. Farewell for now.»
At the leather curtain Blade halted and looked back. «I would have a word with this Thane, the builder. I may have use for him. I will need an engineer for the Hitt invasion.»
Casta shrugged. «See him. Talk. Arrange it as you will. Goodbye, Blade.»
Hirga was waiting for him in the cavern. She took his hand and drew him into an adjacent corridor and thence to a bare cubicle in which there was only a cot. She wore only the silver trousers and atop her piled red hair sparkled the coronal. Blade sought for diamonds in it and could see none.
There was an odd smell in the cubicle. Blade could not identify it, but it was unpleasant. A burnt smell, a rotten smell, somehow an odor of feces and death and rot that yet eluded those names.
Hirga’s green eyes were bold and her teeth gleamed. She took Blade’s hands and placed them on her jutting breasts. «Since we are to marry we had best get acquainted.»
Blade was aroused physically but felt no real desire for her. This he accounted strange indeed for he was a sensual man. He kissed and caressed her briefly and she drew him to the cot. Her eyes were wild and out of focus and she did not lie down for him at once, but insisted on loosing his kilt and making a long study of his phallus. She fondled it and stroked and leaned closer to see it, and Blade, for the first time in his life, sensed that he was found wanting in the genital department. She did not speak of it, and when they coupled on the cot she gave every outward sign of enjoyment, but he knew. She lay on the cot and watched as he arranged his clothing and armor and buckled on his sword, and he saw discontent in the green eyes. He had not satisfied her. He could not understand it.
The foul smell was in the cubicle again and as he went to the door he saw something shining on the floor. He stooped to pick it up. It was of silvery sheen, a hard substance, leathery and pliable, and he thought it some sort of scale. A fish scale? On impulse he sniffed at it and the foul odor was there. He flung it away and glanced back at the cot. Hirga was watching him with her mouth half open, her red tongue lolling out and her eyes narrowed. She was laughing at him. She knew something that he did not, about a subject that he could not fathom. Blade stared at her.
