Kingdom of Royth Part 2

He stormed aft, s.n.a.t.c.hing his sword and dagger free as he ran. He burst down the ladder and into the tiller flat with his weapons drawn, catching the captain leaning negligently against a beam, watching the tiller crew as they struggled to force the tiller hard over and keep it there. The captain had barely time to lower one hand towards his own sword when Blade's weapon came whistling down in a mighty slash. The captain's head jumped from his shoulders in a flurry of blood and sailed clear over the dumbfounded tiller crew. Blade shouted at them, "Put the tiller back over. PUT IT OVER! The captain was a traitor! That turn he ordered took us aback. The pirates are all around us." His manner and tone had their effect. As he charged back up the ladder to the deck he saw the sweating men strain at the tiller, bringing it back over.

But when he reached the deck, he saw that it was too late for any more maneuvering. Forwards and aft Triumph towered high above the decks of the pirate galleys, but amids.h.i.+ps she was low enough so that an agile man might swarm up a rope onto her deck. Four of the pirate s.h.i.+ps-two on either side-had slipped in. Grapnel hooks flew from them, to hook over railings and bits and provide pa.s.sage for climbing men. Blade saw one hook snag a sailor and whip him over the side before he could even scream. And the pirate s.h.i.+ps also had archers aboard, who were pouring arrows into the whole length of Triumph, so that no man could safely venture out on deck to cut the grapnel lines.

Arrows hissed and whistled about Blade as he dashed forward nonetheless, toward where the duke stood on the foc'sle deck, surrounded by his other guards. Miraculously, he made the trip unscathed, scrambled up the ladder, and shouted to the duke over the swelling battle roar, "The captain's dead. He gave the order to put the helm over."

"So he was a traitor. Thank you, Master Blahyd. I shall have---"

"Look out!" yelled Blade. Too late, he noticed half a dozen s.h.a.ggy or bald heads appear over the foc'sle railing. A crossbow went spung and the duke went rigid, hands going up to his blood-spouting throat to clutch at the crossbow bolt rammed through it. For a moment he stood there, long enough for his men to turn, gape and groan; then he toppled to the deck with a metallic crash of armor. For another moment he kicked wildly, then was still.

Blade was too busy to worry about what effect the duke's fall might have on the minds of the men. The pirate with the crossbow had his own throat laid open by Blade's back-handed slash in a split second. The man beside him screamed as Blade smashed the sword pommel into his face; he lost his grip on the railing and toppled into the sea. A third man had time for one wild stroke of his own before Blade's riposte chopped through his arm and halfway through his body.

The other three hung back, momentarily too terrified of the blood-spattered giant confronting them. But Blade had no shortage of opponents. The pirates were swarming onto Triumph's deck by the dozens, clambering from their own s.h.i.+ps across the decks of the ones already grapneled fast and pouring up the ropes. The s.h.i.+p's crew, unnerved by the duke's fall, were falling back or simply falling, under sword, cutla.s.s, and axe. The pirate archers had ceased fire out of fear of hitting their own men, and the waist of Triumph was now a cauldron of clanging, flailing steel.

Battle madness was on Blade, and he hurled himself into the fighting with no thought beyond taking as many of the pirates with him as possible. He leaped from the foc'sle deck like a panther, landing on two unsuspecting pirates and smas.h.i.+ng them to the deck with his ma.s.sive weight. Before they could recover and try to rise, he had sworded one, daggered the other.

Aft, a man nearly as tall as Blade and even broader stood by the door to the cabins. He wore only ragged black trousers and a grimy once-white rag tied about his unkempt blond head. In his left hand swung a cutla.s.s looking heavy enough to hew through iron bars. Like Brora, he had the air of a rough but deadly leader of even rougher and deadlier men.

Blade charged, his sword weaving a s.h.i.+mmering web in front of him as he tore through the press of struggling men like a mad bull splintering a rail fence. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Brora backed against a railing but keeping three pirates at bay with his whirling cutla.s.s. Then he was on the big pirate, who barely had time to bring his cutla.s.s up to guard against Blade's first stroke.

Heavy as the cutla.s.s was, the big pirate could wield it more than fast enough. The first return stroke whistled past Blade's ear and by a finger's width missed splitting him from shoulder to groin. His return stroke clanged off the cutla.s.s blade with a sound like a dropped anvil. Then they were at it hard and fast, with a steady crash of blades and stamping of feet.

Gradually, Blade became aware that the battle uproar behind them had faded. As the pirate stepped back for a moment, he took a split-second glance to either side. The deck was almost clear of the defenders-at least living ones-and most of the pirates were now standing and gaping at the duel of giants.

It was becoming a duel of weary giants now. Blade felt his joints beginning to creak and his muscles turning to the consistency of oatmeal. But he was utterly determined to hold on as long as the pirate chief and enough longer to drive his sword through the man's heart. Gradually, he began to realize that the pirate, strong as he was, was tiring even faster. The cutla.s.s no longer lashed out to whistle about Blade's head. Instead it darted back and forth, parrying Blade's sword strokes. Blade knew that the combat was approaching its crisis. In a little more time the pirate would realize that the only thing left for him was to take his opponent with him. Blade knew that in that moment he would face a charge that he would have trouble meeting.

Without a pause, he switched in mid-stroke to a thrust, and saw his sword drive through the pirate's defenses and the point leave a red line across the man's shoulder before the descending cutla.s.s smashed down again. Blade backed away for a moment, noting that the pirate was too weary to follow him, but stood gasping, as if rooted to the deck.

Then Blade came in again, whipping his sword into one thrust after another as fast as his fading arm muscles could move, seeing trickles of red emerge in one place after another. He saw a light beginning to glow in the pirate's eyes, too, and his chest heave as he gathered his last strength for the charge. The cutla.s.s swung up into a guard position, then whistled down and rasped in a spray of sparks along Blade's sword. The force of the blow almost numbed Blade's hand. It was entirely a reflex action that raised the sword, then swung the point out at the exact moment the pirate chief lunged forward. Blade's point drove straight into his chest, so fast and so hard that the guard was brought up with a thud against the ribs. Then there was another much louder thud as the pirate toppled.

Blade was very close to joining him on the deck too. Only by staggering forward and pressing his hands against the bulkhead did he keep from falling on his face. When the fogginess had pa.s.sed, he looked up and out, at the crowd of pirates amids.h.i.+ps.

None of them were raising a weapon except the three who had their cutla.s.ses pointed at Brora's chest. The look in their eyes as they watched Blade was something between surprise and respect. Then one of them, a lean and wiry little man, stepped forward and said loudly, so that all could hear: "By the Law of the Brotherhood, you who have slain in fair and equal combat Oshawal Rida's son, a full Brother and Captain, may ask the right to join the Brotherhood and take Oshawal's place."

Before Blade could decide how to answer, there was a scream from behind him. The door to his left flew open with a crash and two pirates dragged a half-naked Alixa out onto the deck. The other pirates stared, and Blade saw eyes open and tongues drawn across lips. Before anyone else could move or speak, he stepped forward and placed his sword across Alixa's shoulders.

"Hold!" he roared. "If I am worthy to join your Brotherhood, then I claim protection for this lady, my betrothed, and for that man with the swords at his throat, my sworn comrade. Accept them also, or start guessing how many of you will die before I am slain!"

There were black looks of frustrated l.u.s.t in Blade's direction. Somebody growled, "They said the daughter too," before somebody else snarled, "Shut up, you loose-jawed fool!" Blade took a firm grip on his sword, prepared to first give Alixa a quick death, then sell his own life at the expense of as many pirates as possible.

The small man raised a hand, and the mutterings died away. "It is not writ so in the Law of the Brotherhood. But for such a fighting man as you seem, the Law can be-eh, bent, I daresay. Silence!" to the men behind him. "Those words of the Law were to give us good fighting men. Any of you yapping dogs who think this be not a good fighting man, step forward and best him as he bested Oshawal. Then I'll own you true and rightful chief." The silence finally came. "Then so be it." He stepped forward and stretched out both hands to take Blade's.

CHAPTER 7.

That evening Blade stood at the railing of the late Oshawal's galley, Thunderbolt, and watched the flames roar up from Triumph. To one side of him at a discreet distance stood Alixa and a little beyond her Brora, and to the other side stood Oshawal's first mate, the wiry little pirate who had offered Blade entrance into the Brotherhood. His name was Tuabir.

Blade was contemplating the road by which he had traveled to his new status as a pirate of Neral, or at least a candidate for the status. It was a precarious position, but almost certainly better than waiting around as a high-ranking prisoner until it was discovered that no ransom would ever be forthcoming for him. And he had made it less precarious than it might have been by a stroke of practical leaders.h.i.+p.

In answer to the grumbling among Oshawal's men about taking an ignorant fighter, perhaps a landlubber, as captain, Blade had climbed on the railing and spoken to them.

"Oshawal Rida's son was a mighty warrior whose prowess will be sung for centuries. And he was also a wise man in the ways of the sea. Before I am worthy to step into his shoes, I must gain some small part of that same wisdom. When we reach Neral, I shall ask some worthy Brother and Captain to take me on as mate and teach me the ways of the sea. When I have learned enough, I shall return to take my place aboard Thunderbolt. Until then, follow Tuabir. I will not lead brave men into danger through not knowing the ways of the sea." In the wake of that speech, the grumblings turned to cheers, the black looks faded, and he caught sight of Tuabir nodding and grinning.

Of his two companions, the realistic Alixa, grief-stricken as she was for her dead father, had yet accepted Blade's stratagem with a shrug of her graceful shoulders. Blade, after all, had used a ruse much like what she herself had planned. Moreover, she admitted that it was one that would quite possibly offer them both a much better chance of safety than hers. Still, he did not venture to approach her or speak to her that evening as she stood by the rail of Thunderbolt, wrapped in her blue cloak and watching the flames roar up from Triumph in an eye-searing pyramid.

Brora, on the other hand, had nearly thrown himself overboard rather than accept the protection of someone who had turned traitor to all honest seamen by joining the pirates. Blade was even less willing to approach the tough sailor that evening. He knew Brora would have preferred to be, if not a corpse burning in the flames, at least one of the shackled slaves in the lower benches and holds of Thunderbolt and her sister vessels. Blade knew that only learning he had joined the pirates with the intention of escaping as soon as possible would make Brora respect him again. But that intention was something he would have to keep secret for some time to come and pay whatever price might be necessary.

Certainly he had no idea of how it might be accomplished, the morning after the burning of the s.h.i.+p, when a sea flecked with whitecaps tossed burned timbers about. Even Indhios' gold could not keep a fleet of Neraler pirates together beyond the moment of victory. The fleet was breaking up. Those s.h.i.+ps that had lost too many men for safe navigation or further fighting began the long beat to the northwest, homeward bound for Neral. Those still strong enough for further raiding or with crews greedy for more loot turned the opposite way, to spread out along the s.h.i.+pping lanes in search of their next prey.

With her captain and fifteen of her men dead, Thunderbolt was one of those that turned for home. Day darkened into night, which in turn faded into day, and so it continued for seventeen days and nights. Although the lateen-rigged Thunderbolt could sail closer to the wind than any square-rigger, it was still a long beat. On more than one occasion Tuabir abandoned hope of making any progress against the contrary winds. Then the drums beat the crew and the slaves to man the sixty oars and pounded out the cadence that kept those oars moving until the winds blew right again. And on one occasion they had to furl the sails, batten down oarports and hatches, and run helpless as a canoe shooting rapids before a howling northwest gale that blew for two days.

It was during that gale that Alixa decided to make the best of the fact that she and Blade would be much in each other's company for a long time, and there would be none to judge what they did except the rough and bawdy pirates. Blade realized they would wonder if a l.u.s.ty man betrothed to such a magnificent specimen of female did not indulge himself as often as possible. Nor did he really disagree with Alixa's notion that there was no point in observing the proprieties conjured up by the dessicated chaperones of an over-civilized court. He had always been a man to take his pleasures as l.u.s.tily and as frequently as possible. So Alixa spent most of those two nights and others afterwards in Blade's bed, and by no means all of that time was spent sleeping.

They had eleven days of voyaging after the storm blew itself out, eleven days of fair skies, cooperative winds, and seas sometimes whitecapped but never wild.

On the evening of the seventeenth day just before sunset the lookout called down, "Land ho." An hour later Blade on deck saw the line of the horizon that was Neral. Tuabir told him that it was customary to lie off until morning unless one was being pursued and not enter the harbor by night. When morning came and Blade, after a bout with Alixa and a refres.h.i.+ng sleep afterwards, came on deck, he saw why. And he also saw why Neral had never been taken or even seriously threatened since the Brotherhood had made it their base some hundred or more years before.

The island was a natural fortress further improved by human ingenuity. It stretched away some forty miles to the north. But it was the south end, the one they were approaching, that was the heart of its strength. The entire southern end of the island was sheer cliff more than two hundred feet high, fringed with reefs extending out two or three miles. All, that is, except for one channel leading to an equally narrow slash in the cliffs. Behind that narrow slash, half a mile long but no more than a hundred feet wide at most, lay an immense landlocked harbor, large enough to accommodate three times the Brotherhood's two hundred s.h.i.+ps. Climbing up the steep sides of that harbor were all the buildings that housed the Brotherhood and all the activities needed to sustain their power. Looming over fleet, harbor, and town alike was the vast gray bulk, visible fifty miles away on a clear day, called only the Mountain. It separated the southern portion of the island from the northern. Over winding, easily blocked paths the meat, grain, and garden stuffs from the farms and herds that filled the northern portion of the island came in to feed the Brotherhood and fill its storerooms. Those storerooms, Tuabir said, never held less than a year's ample rations. The Brotherhood could loll in comfort in its fortress and sneer at any opponent for far longer than that opponent could keep a fleet near or an army on the island. They had in fact done so three times.

Tuabir ordered the sails furled and the masts lowered into their cradles amids.h.i.+ps. The rowers manned their benches, and the drums began to beat a slow, creeping cadence. Thunderbolt was just approaching the entrance to the channel, marked by two squat buoys with gla.s.s oil lanterns mounted on them, when a red flag went up on a pole jutting out from the cliff to the left of the pa.s.sage through the rock.

Tuabir cursed. "Another s.h.i.+p coming out," he muttered. "Back your oars!" he yelled. Thunderbolt crabbed her way clear of the channel and waited. Soon the boom of an oarmaster's drum and the thump of oars came to their ears, echoing off the high walls of the pa.s.sage; then a s.h.i.+p came in sight. Tuabir grinned when he saw the bow emblem-a stylized female figure, green and surrounded by flowing black robes.

"Sister Cayla's Sea Witch. Coming out to exercise her rowers after refit, no doubt. Aye, there's a l.u.s.ty lady. And you'd best take her for the fighter and captain she is, if you want to keep those cods you've been keeping so busy. I've seen her duel a man half again her size and slice him up until he was as well-gelded as any cony. She'll not find much happiness in learning we've taken Khystros and all his while Witch was hove down for a bottom-clean."

Sea Witch was a small galley, rowing only twenty oars a side, low-built and almost bare of ornamentation. As she came abeam of Thunderbolt the oars slapped down into the water to lie there while the crew ran smartly to winch the masts into their sockets. A small figure in green popped out of a hatch aft and strode forward through the men. They gave way to either side as the figure pa.s.sed up to the bow and hailed Thunderbolt.

Somehow, Blade had been expecting that any woman who could captain her own s.h.i.+p among the crowd of professional tough customers that was the Brotherhood would be large, tough, and disagreeably unfeminine. Instead, the lethal Sister/Captain Cayla was visibly at least half a head shorter than most of her crew. She wore a trim green tunic-and-breeches outfit with black leather belt and boots that would have carried a fifty-guinea price tag in any Chelsea boutique. Face and figure were at least presentable, as far as Blade could tell across fifty yards of water, while her close-cropped blonde hair s.h.i.+mmered in the sun like a cap of gold. Her voice as it came across that gap was roughened by many years of shouting above battle and storm but no worse than Blade had heard from ticket takers on a score of London buses.

"Hoy, Tuabir! Back so soon? Pickings that slim where you went?" Tuabir stiffened at the mocking note in her voice.

"Good pickings indeed. We were of those who fell in with Grand Duke Khystros and all his. You know the reward promised for that?"

"Wha-?"

"Aye. We took his s.h.i.+p. The Grand Duke, or what the fire left of him, is down among the fishes now." Tuabir gestured over the side.

Cayla turned in an instant from fas.h.i.+on plate to fishwife. The stream of curses that poured out of her mouth and spattered about the ears of those aboard Thunderbolt would have made any sergeant-major turn green with envy.

Finally she ran out of curses, or more likely out of breath, and shouted, "All right, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. You made sure I wouldn't get any part in this! You didn't want to let me have any more reputation, so I could be a threat to you and the other big boys!" She paused again, then, sharply: "Where's Oshawal?"

Tuabir shook his head and jerked his thumb over the side in another down-with-the fishes gesture. "Dead. You see beside me the one who killed him. And he wouldn't take Oshawal's place, because he said he would be leading a crew into danger through not knowing our seas. He wants a chance to serve as a mate before taking Thunderbolt out on his own. Aye, his head's as good as his arm, and his arm's a thing like you've never seen."

"Indeed." The interest in Cayla's voice sounded clearly. Blade wished the two s.h.i.+ps were close enough for him to see the expression on her face. But Cayla had apparently seen and heard enough. She barked an order, and the crew scrambled back to the oars, which began their steady beat again, carrying Sea Witch out to where the wind could fill her sails.

As the other s.h.i.+p pulled away, Tuabir turned to Blade and said softly, "Master Blabyd, I think she has her eye on you. As for me, I'd be happier with a sea adder having its eye on me."

Cayla's own word seemed a reasonable answer. "Indeed?"

"Aye. She has ambitions beyond being a mere Captain. She would sit on the Captain's Council of the Brotherhood. And what she would do then, Druk alone knows. It's said she was once a Serpent Priestess in Mardha and would still see the Serpent Cult rising on all sh.o.r.es of Ocean."

Alixa came out in time to hear Tuabir's last words and stare after the departing Sea Witch. The pirate looked at her, drew Blade farther off to one side, and muttered to him in an even lower voice than before, "Take care for your lady. I don't know what she is to you in truth, whether your betrothed or not. And I care little. But if Cayla has her eye on you and sees another woman standing in her way, the lady'll have great need of prayers, for nothing else will help her. Among the Free Women of the Brotherhood there's the Woman's Duel when two desire the same man, and it's to the death. Cayla fights with a dagger and a little whip no longer than your arm. But I puked myself empty for a day and a night after seeing what she did with them the last time she fought, and I wasn't the only one. Had you but pa.s.sed the lady off as your sister, she'd be ten times safer. Cayla'd stand beside you to defend her from insult then. But as it is . . ." Tuabir shrugged.

Blade shrugged too, a gesture far from reflecting his true feelings. To become involved with yet another woman, and this one a s.a.d.i.s.tic she-pirate with vast and nameless ambitions, would weaken even further the tightrope on which he was going to have to walk for a painfully long time. He hoped Tuabir was mistaken, but his own reading of Cayla's voice left him little hope of that.

However, for the moment there were other things to think of. The oarmaster began his drum beat, the oars swung forward and splashed down, and Thunderbolt surged forward up the channel towards the gap in the rocks. As they pa.s.sed the entrance and slipped into the shadow, Blade noticed that the rock on either side showed signs of extensive working. Railed galleries and slits had been carved at several levels on both sides, from just above the water to nearly a hundred feet up. Blade guessed that from those galleries and slits arrows, stones, burning oil, and many other sorts of nastiness could be hurled down on any s.h.i.+ps foolish enough to try breaking into the Brotherhood's fortress through the channel.

Farther on, they came to a broad ledge, partly natural but also extended by more carving. On it were piled a score or more of enormous logs, blackened with tar and grease, and coils of rope as thick as a man. There was yet another barrier for the pa.s.sage-an enormous boom that could be easily fastened in place in any emergency, to rip out the bottom of any s.h.i.+p.

Blade tried to calculate the amount of work that must have been involved in all the excavations from the living rock he had seen. He found himself appalled at his most conservative estimate. No wonder the pirates had an insatiable demand for slaves, and no wonder the slaves died like flies! The more he saw of the fortifications of Neral, the more he realized how justified the pirates were in their casually arrogant a.s.sumption that the island was impregnable. And, more personally, the more he realized how difficult making his own escape would be when the time came. Possibly getting out of the channel would be easier than getting in, but he doubted it.

Thunderbolt crept up the pa.s.sage. The thump and splash of the slowly moving oars echoed from the looming gray walls. Blade s.h.i.+vered in the chill shadows and wrapped his cloak more tightly about him. Finally they glided out into the sunlit inner basin. Blade looked up at the heart of the Brotherhood's fortress rising all about him.

Although he had looked at the symbol-crowded map of the area many times, Blade was still awed by the scale of the whole thing now that he saw it in reality. At the water's edge docks and piers jutted out into the harbor, some of them covered, enough of them to accommodate four hundred s.h.i.+ps. Just above them lay the building ways and their auxiliaries-the storage sheds for timber, masts, rope, metalwork, and everything else needed to build s.h.i.+ps. Mixed in with them were the storehouses for loot, the barracks for the dockyard and rowing slaves, their rank smell drifting across even the miles of water to attack Blade's nose, and the forges and foundries puffing up their clouds of black smoke. On a terrace farther up the slope stood the shops, taverns, gaily painted brothels, and the living quarters for the free sailors and the servants. Higher still were the homes of shopkeepers and mates, and highest of all, surrounded by its own walls and served by its own shops was the street of the Captains, the rulers of the Brotherhood.

From the water's edge to the uppermost of the Captains' stout brick homes the slope stretched more than a mile and rose five hundred feet in that mile. Beyond the houses another wall studded with towers wrapped itself around the whole base, and beyond that rose the frowning peak of the Mountain. Not only did this base represent an incredible amount of labor, it also represented incredible wealth. Blade could easily see why the Neralers had bled the Four Kingdoms white for a century, where the wealth had gone-and how the masters of such a fortress might begin to think of becoming masters of a Kingdom.

There was a sudden flurry of running figures all up and down the slopes as Thunderbolt slid across the basin toward her dock. At Blade's side Tuabir grinned. "So we are indeed the first back from all the fleet that took the duke. I thought that, from what Cayla said, but it was almost too much to hope."

On the roof of one of the covered docks somebody stood now, frenziedly going through a complicated series of pa.s.ses with a pair of orange and black signal flags. Tuabir barked an order, and a sailor sprang up onto Thunderbolt's prow and set a similar pair dancing. A moment's pause ash.o.r.e, and then cheers that spread like a fire around the basin and up the slope until it seemed the whole vast bowl was ringing with them. From two stout, high red brick towers of a building on the Captains' street yellow smoke began to stream up into the sky in a sinuous cloud.

"Eh, the call to Festival!" said Tuabir with another grin. "And few of the fleet will be home to share the wine, the women, and the joy. Have you a stout head as well as a stout arm, Master Blahyd? You'll truly be needing it tonight for a Festival of the Brotherhood."

Blade nodded absently. Festival-some sort of ma.s.sive celebration? It would be one way of getting a chance to look around him, meet people, get a better impression of this colossal den of thieves which had sucked him in. But he would rather have had a chance to be alone and think out his next move.

He was utterly certain by now that Khystros' a.s.sumptions about a pirate conspiracy were absolutely right, and he was more than inclined to believe the duke's suspicions about the Chancellor as well. He had heard too much over the past eighteen days, and now these cheers were one more piece of evidence. Fighting and intriguing. In every world, it seemed he sooner or later wound up doing one or both.

CHAPTER 8.

Tuabir armed four of his toughest sailors to the teeth and escorted Blade, Brora, and Alixa up to a house on the Captains' street. Like its neighbor, from which the Festival signal was still streaming, it had two high towers with slit-narrow windows. It was into a room high up in one of these towers that Tuabir led his charges, up a winding circular staircase. Although the room was comfortable and well heated, there was a certain austerity about it that made Blade ask if he and his companions were guests, prisoners, or something in between.

"Say that you are prisoners for the time of Festival, so you'll still be living when it's over," replied Tuabir. "No Free Woman and no man not prepared for a fight goes out beyond locked doors tonight. And for you three, not yet initiated into any status among the Brotherhood..." The sailor shrugged. "The Master Blahyd may well go out with proper care, being a well-set-up fighting man even if not yet known as such. But even he would do well to wear a Candidate's belt." He pulled out of his pouch a length of blue and gold cloth and handed it to Blade. "That shows you be Free but not Initiated. You can neither challenge nor be challenged to duel."

After a moment's hesitation Blade tied the belt around his waist. He intensely disliked going out and relying on anything but his own strength and skill. But he had to get out and look around before he could do any planning for anything. And it was too soon to get caught up in any more fights, not if his status was so uncertain.

After removing all of his weapons except a sheathed dagger in his belt for eating and another knife concealed in his boot top, Blade turned to Brora and Tuabir. "I call you both friends now. May I ask you, as friends, to take care that nothing happens to the Lady Alixa?"

Brora nodded and looked hard at Tuabir, who also nodded after a moment. During the nearly three weeks of the voyage to Neral, Blade had seen something far short of friends.h.i.+p but close to mutual respect growing up between the two tough sailors. Each saw that the other was a man who could handle a s.h.i.+p and a crew nearly as well as himself, and neither could quite bring himself to wholly reject such a man. So Blade knew that he had at least two friends to guard his back as he went out to sample the Festival.

He found that he needed more than a hard head to get through the Festival. He needed a strong stomach also. And even with both of these, he found it beyond him to enjoy the Festival.

Tuabir, as b.l.o.o.d.y-handed as any other pirate of long standing, still had considerable decency and self control. And while at sea on a raid the pirates had been as tough and well disciplined as any crew of fighting seamen who want to die in bed must be. But now, safe on sh.o.r.e and with money in their pockets and a victory to celebrate, the pirates ran wild. After a few hours of watching their notions of amus.e.m.e.nt, Blade knew he would have to get free of Neral as soon as possible before his own revulsion caused him to make some slip that would sign his death warrant. And he also knew he was willing to spend as much time here in this Dimension as might be needed to defeat the pirates' plans to seize the Kingdom of Royth. The idea of any civilized country in the hands of the pirates made Blade's stomach turn.

There was only a pale glow on the western horizon when he went out. But the light from the torches spluttering in brackets on the walls of the taverns and brothels made the streets noon-bright. There were sentries patrolling the streets in ominous groups of four. The sentries cast sharp looks at Blade's size and other looks at his belt but left him alone. Otherwise, everybody was too intent on his own pleasures to pay much attention to the huge newcomer striding along among them and trying not to look disgusted.

There was a House of Dreams. Blade was practically dragged inside it by two burly doormen who bellowed in his ear, "All the dreams Druk can send for only five silver bits! Come, worthy sir, come seek our dreams!" Inside some forty men and women were sitting on padded quilts spread across the stone floor, breathing in blue smoke rising from glazed bowls. As he watched, he saw one of the men turn slowly around, stare at one of the women, then fall backwards on to his quilt and curl up like a dog, knocking over his bowl. It spilled a smoldering dark blue-black powder out onto the floor. A slave attendant rushed across and hastily swept up the powder with a brush.

Blade backed out hastily. Even after only a few whiffs of the blue smoke, he found his head swimming and his eyes peculiarly sensitive to the light. He wondered briefly if the powder was addictive as he brushed past the doormen and headed farther down the streets.

There was a House of Whips. From inside it sounded wild screams of delight and other screams of pain. Blade nerved himself to step inside. He was rewarded by the spectacle of two women dancing, or trying to dance, nude in a sand pit while four brawny attendants sent long lashes tipped with metal slicing over their heads, about their feet, and occasionally into their flesh. They must have been dancing for hours already. Their hair was matted with sweat and their bodies were glazed with sweat, oil, and blood from half a dozen open whip cuts. A man beside Blade muttered, without taking his eyes off the dancers, "They think they will be allowed to go afterwards. But they are to be killed in honor of the Festival. Wait and see that big fellow in the black tights lay on the kill-whip." Blade swallowed hard and left the House of Whips even faster than he had left the House of Dreams. The pirates, it seemed, were addicted-in mind if not body-to sadism, drugs, everything ugly. Blade wondered if this were deliberate policy on the part of their leaders, who were unwilling to rely on a freely given loyalty and instead chose to manipulate their men in this gruesome fas.h.i.+on.

There were women wrestling naked in tubs of mud or copulating with men on stages. There were other dream places, with the drugs in liquid form rather than in smoking powders. There were strip shows, although Blade wondered how something so comparatively mild could compete with the more exotic amus.e.m.e.nts elsewhere on the street. There were bars and brothels, and inevitably there were wandering drunks and prowling wh.o.r.es.

Blade saw one of the drunks solicit one of the wh.o.r.es. When she pushed him away and he staggered over against the wall and sat down, his companion whipped out a razor-edged knife and slashed the girl's cheek open from hairline to jawline. Blade's control snapped then. He came up behind the knife-wielder and chopped him across the back of the neck, pulling the blow just enough to avoid leaving a corpse lying in the street. With luck the man would never know that a Candidate had hit him, but Blade at this point hardly cared.

He turned to look for the girl, but she darted whimpering away into an alley so black and forbidding that even Blade for a moment hesitated to follow her. Then he plunged into the darkness, guided by the sound of running feet ahead. He would not leave the girl to crawl off like an animal into some corner and heal herself-or die of an infected wound-even if this was the custom of the pirates. He shuddered again at the thought of a civilized community fallen into the hands of the Neralers.

Suddenly he heard the footsteps ahead of him change direction, first bearing off to the right and then beginning to climb. He heard echoes, and knew the pa.s.sage must lead into one of the tunnels that honeycombed the slope. The girl had turned into the tunnel. Should he follow? Before he could decide, he heard a rumble and felt a vibration in the cobble-stoned floor of the alley under his feet. And before he could react to that, the cobblestones dropped out from under him and he plunged down into a blackness even more complete than that of the alley.

The fall was enough to knock the wind out of him, but a thick layer of quilts and cus.h.i.+ons broke most of the impact. He sat up instantly, drawing his dagger. As he did so, a pale light suddenly flooded the chamber.

He was sitting in the bottom of a shaft some twenty feet deep and eight feet in diameter at the bottom. The cus.h.i.+ons and quilts were made of a uniform dark green cloth glimmering with little sparkles in the light, which Blade saw came from a lantern behind a heavy gla.s.s panel set in the door of the shaft. The door itself was also green-old copper-and bare of ornament except for what first looked like a capital W in the middle. Then Blade saw that the W was made up of two pairs of black enameled serpents, their jewel-eyed heads together at the bottom. He felt a cold sinking in his stomach, remembering what Tuabir had said about Cayla's being a former Serpent Priestess of Mardha. And remembering that, he was not particularly surprised a moment later when the door slid noiselessly open and Cayla's voice said softly: "Come to me, Blahyd."

Blade stepped through the door with his dagger firmly held ready to strike, and found himself in a tunnel sloping downward. The walls and ceiling were rough-hewn slimy rock, but the floor was tiled in smooth green and black patterns through which stylized serpents writhed. Small lanterns in gla.s.s-fronted niches filled the tunnel with more of the same pallid light.

He stalked downward, prepared to follow the tunnel as far as it went, even into the foundations of the island. He was therefore a little surprised when it ended in a blank wall after less than fifty feet. Or at least it gave the appearance of a blank wall, because he had barely come to a stop before Cayla's voice came again, the same words in the same tone. The wall slid aside, and Blade stepped through, went down two shallow steps, and looked about him.

He was in a high-domed, circular chamber about fifty feet across, lit by more of the ubiquitous lanterns, these now hung from brackets set in the walls. The floor was the same uneasily familiar black and green serpent pattern. In the exact center of the chamber, on a dais raised some four feet off the floor, stood a stone altar in the form of a monstrous coiled serpent. Its head was toward Blade, and inside its gaping maw a small fire burned, sending coils of pungent green smoke up between the stabbing gilded fangs. Blade sniffed at the smoke, which hazed the chamber. It was not the same drug as the House of Dreams had offered. He had no time to wonder whether this was good or bad, because Cayla stepped out from behind the altar, uncoiling herself with a grace as sinuous as though she herself was a serpent.

She wore a green robe which covered her completely except for hands and face, a necklace of black stones, and a tiara of more black stones set in silver. Her face-and it was a strong and well-formed face, seen from close range-was totally expressionless.

"So you came, Blahyd?" Her voice, too, was almost expressionless, except for a slightly mocking note of inquiry.

He could not help asking in reply, "Did I have a choice?"

"You could have refused to follow that girl. But I knew you would not. Just as I know you are planning to desert us as soon as you can."

Blade would have found it convenient at that moment to sink through the floor. He was as close as he had ever been to giving way to raw panic. He wondered if he were facing a telepath and suspected that coping with one would prove beyond him.

When he could get his tongue and lips into motion again, he could only say, "Why do you say that?"

"I am adept at reading the subtle messages of voice and face and stance, Master Blahyd. It is an art that can be acquired by proper training, just as the swordsmans.h.i.+p of which you seem so rightly proud."

Blade, after a moment of indulging his relief that nothing paranormal was working here, looked about the chamber again. "This is not the work of the pirates."

"No, nor of any man living. These swinish animals who crawl over the surface of the island and think they are burrowing deep into it know nothing of what lies inside. No more than lice know what lies inside a man."

"Indeed." It again seemed a useful enough word, when one absolutely had to say something.