Part 9 (1/2)

”As well, perhaps. The mysteries define it as something unwholesome. Weakening. Treacherous. A sin that causes much rot and trouble. It has always puzzled me.”

Blade put his hand on the jeweled hilt of the sword. Not in threat, but to emphasize the way he felt. ”So you will not help Zulekia? Very well. I must find a way to do it myself.”

”Before you even think of that,” said Sutha, ”listen to my real reason for refusing to try. The reason I brought you here so soon, to the Sacred of Sacreds, where we could not be overheard. The reason is Isma. The High Priestess!”

Blade nodded, getting the point at once. ”She would be displeased that I thought of another woman?”

Sutha leaned to pat the big man's shoulder. The expression on his face was a mingle of approval, exasperation, impatience and something else that Blade thought might just be a genuine liking for himself, dolt though Sutha obviously thought him.

Sutha cast a glance upward, as thought to call on a minor Tharnian G.o.d or two, and clasped his hands in resignation.

”You begin to see it, Blade. Isma! She is High Priestess and her authority is absolute. Even I cannot go against her. Astar is nothing. She, and her child's brain, do not count. I have, as a matter of fact, had great difficulty in restraining Isma from slaying Astar and ruling alone. She will do it yet. And I tell you something else about Isma: she has known coi, has committed karno many times with the Lordsmen. Only I know this, and Isma does not care that I know. But of all the times she has gone to the Cage, or had the Lordsmen sent to her, never once has she known coi as it is written it should be. Coi between a G.o.d and a G.o.ddess!”

Blade was stubborn. He clung to a thought once it had lodged securely.

”You say that only you and Isma know of her actions, that she has coi? How can this be? The Lordsmen must know. The ones involved. Or are they in a trance?” And Blade laughed.

Sutha did not laugh, nor even smile.

”The Lordsmen involved are immediately put to death following the event, Blade. They are killed and a subst.i.tute brought in from the Breeding Grounds.

story is put out, for the People, or THEY if you choose, that there has been an accident.”

Blade's smile faded. ”I see.”

”Then see this: if Isma has one suspicion, any faintest inkling, that you are so much as thinking of this girl, this Maiduke Zulekia, then the girl is dead. You are dead. And very likely I am dead. About the girl I care nothing. About myself I care little. I am a very old neuter, I am ent.i.tled to a painless destruct, and my kronos have already been extended many times because I please Isma and serve her well. But you, Blade? I would have you live. I have hopes and plans that, but none of that now. Come. We must get you to your quarters. Isma will be impatient and there is much to do. You must make ready for the Ceremony of Ravishment.”

As they left the Sacred Chamber Blade glanced once again at the corpse of Astar I. He knew it was impossible, yet her smile seemed to have altered, to have become a little more mocking than it had been.

Then he forgot Astar I as he listened to Sutha explaining the Ceremony of Ravishment and what he must do. Blade was appalled.

Chapter Ten.

The women were a.s.sembled. The People, as Sutha called them, and as Blade had come to think of them. They rustled and craned and chattered and filled the great amphitheater with their effluvia, with their laughter, and most of all, it was a palpable thing, with their expectations. The word had gone out. Mazda had come. Tharn could be saved. s.n.a.t.c.hed back from a slow, withering, agonizing death. The G.o.d had come, and from his loins would spring a new Tharn.

The Maiduke maidens had a special section to themselves, under the watchful eyes of monitor neuters. There were special ceboid patrols everywhere. Such of the Bearer maidens as were not fertilized, and thus incarcerated in the baby plants, were also on hand. The long conveyor belts, bearing the neuter decanters, had ground to a stop. All of them, every level of Tharnian society, were there unless duty prevented. From the lowliest to the highest, from the most humble ceboid street cleaner to Isma herself, they were all avid to see the G.o.d perform. And along with the flower smell of women was another, nearly as tangible, miasma that lingered in the air. Lubricity. Tharn was not an inhibited state.

Richard Blade had been bathed and perfumed by a company of Maiduke girls watched over by a neuter. They chattered incessantly as they worked, in a Tharnian patois that he could not entirely understand, but what he did understand was hard on his composure. They stared. How they stared! One, bolder than the rest, actually reached and tweaked until harshly reprimanded by the neuter. Blade was glad when it was over.

Blade was not to take his great sword into the arena. With reluctance Blade entrusted the weapon to the care of a neuter called Xeno. Xeno was young, only 16 kronos out of decantment, and husky for a neuter. He was Blade's personal servant and filled with awe at the a.s.signment, and at Blade.

Blade wore only a purple loincloth. He was unarmed. Now he paced the floor of his sumptuous chamber impatiently, anxious for Sutha to arrive and conduct him to the amphitheater, to have it over with. The image of Honcho, with his clever, aborted and not so neuter brain, haunted him. Surely Honcho had more arrows to his quiver than Blade knew of. And what of Totha? Of Org? Nothing could be done until this ceremony was over and Blade officially received as Mazda. Blade chafed and fretted for action.

Sutha came and conducted Blade through a tunnel beneath the arena. Xeno, staggering under the weight of the sword, followed along behind.

Blade asked a question that had been bothering him.

”How much of this ceremony is mock, Sutha, and how much real? Astar and Isma are to be armed and I am not? Will they really try to kill me?”

Sutha nodded. ”They will really try to kill you, Blade. They must. If they can, if they do, then it is a false prophecy and you are not Mazda. You, in turn, will try to slay them. But only symbolically! You do have a weapon.”

The old neuter pointed to Blade's groin. ”Your phallus! That is your weapon. I warned you. You must disarm them and ravish each separately. So do you consummate with the dual G.o.ddess and you all become as ONE. Tharn.”

Sutha touched Blade's arm. ”You will not fail. You must not fail. Do you understand my meaning? Even if you disarm them, Astar and Isma, and subdue them, which you will, and then are not capable of entering them, then you will still have failed. It will be symbolic death. And actual death will not be far behind.”

Blade did not think he would fail. He had always been enormously potent. And yet there was no guarantee that in the excitement, the frenzy, in the stress of performing publicly, he pushed the thought away. That would be all right.

They reached a gate leading into the great arena. Sutha flicked a hand at Xeno and the young neuter dropped back and fell to his knees, making slaveface. Sutha drew Blade into a corner. Through the gate they could hear the sound of the waiting crowd.

Sutha squeezed Blade's great bicep. ”I do not think you will fail, Blade. But if you do I cannot help you. Isma will order the soldier-ceboids to kill you. This they will do, though you slay many of them first. But it is not that I worry about, much. It is Isma. She has a secret. I can always tell. And being Isma it is a dangerous secret. I do not know if it concerns you, or Astar, or even myself. But be warned. Watch her. Isma is High Priestess and a woman of all women, and not to be trusted for a minikronos. Go, Blade. I invoke fortune on thee.”

Blade strode into the arena.

There was no welcoming roar. There was gathering silence as the whispering died away and the a.s.sembled People, all of THEY who really counted, feasted their eyes on Blade.

Blade stood tall, his heavily muscled legs planted like columns in the earth. His heavy black beard had been washed and combed. It was thick and wiry and glistened in the evanescent soft light bathing the huge s.p.a.ce.

Blade's shoulders were wide, his chest ma.s.sive, his waist lean and hard muscled. Playing to the audience, as Sutha had instructed, he raised his arms above his head and turned slowly around, inspecting them and letting them see the confidence and arrogance he exuded. Even if Sutha had not given him meticulous instructions, Blade was far too good a natural showman to play it humbly.

So he stood for a moment. The whispers came back now, and a long collective exhalation from the women of Tharn. The neuters were apathetic. The ceboids, with slow animal curiosity, watched his every movement.

Blade smiled at them. He put his hands on his hips and laughed, loudly and triumphantly, his white teeth flas.h.i.+ng through the black beard. Some of the women began to laugh, a nervous growing t.i.tter.

Blade began to walk toward the transparent teksin cage in the center of the arena. It was cube shaped and the walls were solid. Inside, each lying on a separate couch, were Astar and Isma. They were naked. Beside each couch was a s.h.i.+eld and a sword with a keen, phallus-shaped blade. As Blade approached Isma raised herself on her elbow and watched him. Astar did not move. Only the rise and fall of her sharp b.r.e.a.s.t.s showed that she lived.

A door, reached by a short flight of steps, opened into the cage. By the steps a fire burned on a teksin grate. It was attended by a high ranking neuter. As Blade drew near the neuter cast a handful of powder on the flame and it swirled upward in a cloud of red and yellow.

Blade watched the moiling fire from a corner of his eye. He knew why the fire was there, what it was waiting for. If he failed, if he was not man enough, Isma - or would it be Astar? - would hack off his manhood and toss it to the greedy flames.

The music began. It crept into the arena from nowhere, low and sinuous, gaining in sensuality with every note. Blade halted at the foot of the steps.

Through the teksin his eyes met those of Isma. Their stares locked and held. Something glittered in those obsidian depths and the red mouth moved a bit over pearly teeth. Isma moved on the couch, twisting, thrusting her b.r.e.a.s.t.s at Blade like daggers. She crooked a finger and her lips moved. Come. Come to coi...or death.

Blade glanced at Astar. She was still unmoving, silent and distant on her couch, staring straight before her. Would she fight him? Could she, as r.e.t.a.r.ded as she was? Her body, revealed in every detail, was as lovely as that of Isma. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, their faces, were alike. Only the body hair was different: Isma's a darkest curling jet, Astar's fine and straight and golden bronze.

A great phallus, bearing the initial M, curved over the door of the cage. Blade made obeisance to it, then bounded up the stairs, and flung open the door and stepped inside. The crowd was silent, intent, waiting.

Isma leaped to her feet and picked up her sword and s.h.i.+eld. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the smooth velvet woman muscles of her s.h.i.+mmered and writhed beneath the tawny hide. Blade, incongruously at that moment, remembered that the People had once been great warriors under Astar I.

Isma snapped a command at Astar. ”Fight, Astar! On your feet and fight. Kill this one who claims he is Mazda.” Isma's mouth was thin and angry, imperious. She leaped at Blade and thrust with the sword. Blade moved skillfully away.

Isma did not follow. She retreated still talking to Astar. ”Fight, Astar! Fight!”

Blade knew then that Sutha had been right. Something was amiss. Isma was up to some mischief. He watched, ready and tense, as Astar got slowly off the couch. She picked up her s.h.i.+eld and weapon and began to move toward Blade. Her eyes were vacant and staring and she looked not at Blade, but through him. In a flash it came to him. Astar was drugged!

So much the easier. He waited as Astar approached, concentrating on her body, feeling himself begin to react to the s.e.xual excitement that clogged the air like smoke. He kept an eye on Isma, who was slowly circling around to get behind him. Obviously she intended that he subdue Astar first. Why? And why drug Astar? It must be Isma's doing. Was Sutha wrong and Astar not r.e.t.a.r.ded, brain damaged, at all? Had Isma been drugging her for a long time?