Urcit stood on a vast and reaching plain. There were wide streets and graceful squares in which fountains played. Fountains that spewed colors and music instead of water. Blade had never heard such music before; it was everywhere and yet nowhere; it did not intrude and yet it was always there. Sensuous and gay, lifting the spirits like a powerful drug.
Urcit was clean. No speck of filth was seen anywhere. And yet nobody seemed to work. There were ceboids in the streets, and neuters, all hustling and bustling along, but he could discern no real intent.
And so it was that he saw THEY at last, and never thought of them so again. Richard Blade had never stood in awe of beautiful women!
Honcho had said that there were less than a thousand of them.
Blade watched them walk the streets, lounge in the squares and places, all regal, all tall, all lovely female creatures. There were brunettes and blondes and redheads, and every mingled shade, and their fine skins glowed in golden and copper tones. They dressed alike, and yet not alike, each wearing colors in breastplates and mini-togas that flattered and complemented them best.
There was a pleasant odor in the immaculate and windless streets. The smell of women.
Blade was fascinated and missed nothing, though mindful of the time. Kronos were ticking away and soon the Sacer would begin. A vastly different Sacer, so Honcho said, than the one of the Pethcines.
Sometimes the women were alone, sometimes accompanied by a ceboid or a neuter. Sometimes they were in twos, or groups, and some went hand in hand. The air was filled with bright badinage, in the high Tharnian that Blade understood, and he closed his mind to it less it distract him from his task. There was very little time now. Honcho had waited until the very last microkronos and Blade knew why. To cut down on the chances of matters going wrong.
Blade saw that all the women were now streaming toward a great slim pencil of a building that loomed in the exact center of the city. The Palace. It was here that Sacer was held and the twenty Lordsmen were sacrificed.
Blade had noticed, in his tour of Urcit, that phallic symbols were everywhere. In every square, place and crescent, were replicas of the male organ mounted on plinths. It was in shop windows. The women wore the same symbol on charm bracelets and necklaces. The gargoyles on the buildings were in the form of sharp thrusting phalli.
Engraved on the base of every image was the letter: M. Mazda. The symbol, the personification, of the male power.
The Palace stood in a great square. Before the main entrance was a huge phallus, sculpted from transparent teksin, that towered a hundred feet into the air. Flanking it on either side was the statue of a woman, each dressed in flowing white robes and each exactly resembling the other. Twins. Astar and Isma. Twin rulers of Tharn. Astar, the Queen-Goddess. Isma, the High Priestess. Astar clutched a phallic shaped scepter. Isma held aloft a half-rolled scroll. The Word.
The irony did not escape Blade. Honcho had pointed it out. Tharn was a dying civilization. Beautiful women, magnificent specimens that they were, were not enough. They worshiped the male organ as a symbol of fertility, of resurrection and immortality, of continuity. It was not enough.
Blade entered the Palace. The women were streaming along ramps towards a central arena. It was circular and covered with a pinkish-white sand, and illuminated by the nebulous drifting lights. There were no wires, no cables, no fixtures. Blade understood now that power was transmitted from some central source by means of invisible laser beams, that in some way the Tharnians could tap into magnetic fields and drain and harness the energy. There was a master Power Pool, and part of his mission for Honcho was to find it and render it useless. Then the great magveils would not work, the Red Storms could not be sent, and the Pethcines would sweep in like a scourge and devour the land.
If Blade willed it so.
The arena was full of women now. Quiet, waiting, only a low hum of conversation as obbligato to a waiting, haunting silence. The odor of the assembled females was overwhelmingly sensuous. Blade studied the two empty thrones that stood in the very center of the arena. The music that was everywhere, and nowhere, suddenly altered. There was a muted strain of trumpets. Astar and Isma, walking hand in hand, entered the arena. They were clad in golden breastplates and purple mini-tunics and were followed by a group of chanting Maiduke maidens. Many of the Maidukes strongly resembled Zulekia. Blade, hovering, observed that the sealed chastity belts were unbroken. Good Maidukes, these. No karno committed. Or they had been cleverer than Zulekia?
Astar and Isma halted in the middle of the arena. They kissed each other lightly, then each ascended her separate throne.
Blade was watching Astar, the Queen-Goddess, and he saw something that puzzled him. She stared straight ahead, her eyes half closed, and she might have been alone in Tharn. She was withdrawn, silent, distant.
It was Isma, the High Priestess, who raised her hands high and clapped them. The music altered, the trumpets more brazen now.
Isma's voice was sweet and high and commanding. "Let the Sacer of Tharn begin," she said. "Bring in the Lordsmen."
There was a hush over the vast arena. The trumpets died to whispers. Somewhere a vast door slid open and the Lordsmen marched into the arena in a column of twos. And Blade understood why Tharn was dying, and why Honcho had picked this time for its overthrow. The Lordsmen were only travesties of men. They were runts, spindly and scrawny, some ugly and misshapen, all standing under five feet. The male strain in Tharn had weakened and run out, and this was all that was left.
Marching music now. The Lordsmen circled the arena, still in twos, raising their swords to the thrones as they passed. They were dressed bravely enough in tinted armor and helmets and greaves, and each carried a square shield and a short sharp sword. Recognition clicked in Blade's mind. The Roman gladiator games. This scene was much akin.
The music died again. The Lordsmen stopped marching and formed a double rank near the thrones. The crowd of women buzzed and hummed. There was a moment of waiting. Then Isma clapped her hands again.
An old man began to materialize between the thrones. Blade knew that he was seeing simlu and for a moment his mind chilled, then he cast it off. Honcho had admitted that he could not, in person and without permission, penetrate the magveils around Urcit. He could send simlu, yes, but a simlu was harmless, lacking real power. And Honcho's spiscreens did not work in Urcit. For a time Blade had nothing to fear.
He saw now that the old man was also a neuter. The slimness, the neutral cast of features, the long green eyes were unmistakable. Yet this neuter must be very old. Its hair was gray and the face a mass of wrinkles. It was richly dressed.
The neuter was fully materialized now. It made obeisance to both Astar and Isma. Blade noted again that the Queen-Goddess did not respond, only sat unmoving and staring straight ahead. It was the High Priestess who nodded and spoke: "Hail to you, Sutha. King of Neuters. You know your duty well. Perform it."
Sutha bowed again, then faced the column of Lordsmen. The voice was like an ancient document, raveled and cracked and weak with age. He began to walk up and down the line of Lordsmen. Blade, watching closely, sensed that some sort of a decision was to be made. Yet it did not seem to be a serious one, for the old neuter had a half-mocking smile on his face. Blade glanced at the throne. Astar was paying no attention, but Isma was leaning forward, amusement on her face, like one who anticipates entertainment of a lighter sort.
Sutha selected the largest and strongest of the Lordsmen and placed him squarely in the center of the arena. The man stripped off his armor and weapons and piled them at his feet. He was naked now. Blade felt amusement and a trace of pity - the Lordsman was a puny thing but, such as it was, he was certainly in an erectile state. And now Sutha was positioning the other Lordsmen, one here, one there, somewhat in the manner of chessmen on a board. All stripped down as soon as they took their positions.
Blade saw and heard it then. The women! They had stopped talking and laughing among themselves, and yet there was no silence. It took him a moment to puzzle it out, then he understood: it was the sound of breathing. Just that. Hushed, expectant, excited breathing. The women kept their seats, not one arose and he supposed there was a rule about that, but each one of them was tensed and ready, an arrow on a bow string, a coiled spring. And then Blade could also smell them. Not the perfume, not the clean bodies, but women exuding the musky odor of lust.
Blade could anticipate. This was a once a year thing, and while it had comic overtones it would be deadly serious to the women involved. And, he thought with amusement, it might be dangerous to the Lordsmen. He did not think they had long to live in any case, but even that little time might be cut short.
The old neuter had finished now. He raised a hand to Isma. Astar was still taking no interest in the proceedings.
Isma in turn gestured to a neuter trumpeter who stood nearby. One blast of the trumpet.
All the women stood up.
Another blast of the trumpet.
The arena was filled with the slither and flutter of feminine clothing as it was discarded. The effect, the sound and the odor, was overpowering. The arena was one vast mass of woman flesh, naked and unshielded, muscles tensed, faces contorted. They waited. Breathing.
A final blast on the trumpet.
Blade could only compare it, a pale comparison at best, to a rush of women he had once seen in a great London store. There had been a sale going on and Blade and a friend had unwittingly gotten caught in the stampede. They had nearly been torn apart.
So it was now. At the third blast of the trumpet the women stormed into the arena like a tidal wave. Teeth glinted white and feral in contorted lovely faces; breasts of every size and type bobbled and jounced and jammed as female struggled against female.
The horde swept down and over the Lordsmen, inundating them, clawing and scratching and pushing at each other to get a man and claim him. Blood was already flowing from minor wounds. The Lordsman in the center of the arena, he first chosen by Sutha, went down under a wave of kicking legs and waving arms and tawny posteriors.
It was useless to try to watch everything at once, so Blade concentrated on the scene in the middle. Here the fight was brief enough, if rough. A tall redhead, well muscled and superbly breasted, was straddling the fallen Lordsman and beating off all comers. As soon as she had established her rights the other women fell back. By that time it was too late for them, for all the other Lordsmen had been similarly conquered and claimed.
Trumpet.
The fight was over. The losers retired to their seats and began to dress, sullen, muttering, but obeying the rules.
Each of the Lordsmen had been taken now. The woman stood over him, naked, sweaty, disheveled and a little bloody perhaps, but triumphant. Blade saw that Isma was laughing now as she made another sign to the old neuter.
Trumpet.
Blade had never seen mass rape before, and he had never dreamed that it could be comic, yet somehow it was now. To him.
Certainly it was not comic to the women. At the last blast of the trumpet each one fell on her victim like a female wolf on a helpless lamb. Blade noted that the Lordsmen were, for the most part, passive. There seemed to be no real lust in them. They were simply machines, not very good ones, to be used by the women to achieve this long denied, and illegal, gratification.
Some of the women cried, some howled like lost demons, some laughed wildly, some worked away in a deadly writhing silence. All of them, he saw, placed the man in the lower, the subordinate position and mounted him in one fashion or another. Some of the women were brutal, cuffing and kicking their partners into a submission that was never in doubt.
There was a great silence in the seats as the women watched their luckier sisters. Isma, her chin cupped in a palm, leaned forward to watch with an occasional delighted laugh. Astar still paid no attention. Sutha, the old neuter, appeared bored by it all. He had, Blade imagined, been through it all many times.
It was all over quite suddenly. Nearly all the women seemed to finish at the same time. One laggard, a sinuous blonde, was at last admonished by Sutha and raced to a finish with a great series of ecstatic wriggles. The women vanished from the arena and the Lordsmen again donned their clothes, armor, and weapons.
The fun and games, Blade sensed, were over. Serious business was on the agenda now. The Lordsmen formed two lines facing each other, swords and shields at the ready.
Isma stood up and clapped her hands once more. "Let the sacred flame be made ready."
Ceboids brought forth a large platform of teksin on which a small fire burned. Sutha cast some powder into the flames and there was a puff of red and yellow smoke.
Sutha raised his skinny arms and proclaimed: "Let the sacred slaying begin!" The music leaped up, furious and martial, bearing in itself the clangor and clash of arms.
The women watched in silence again as the Lordsmen began to fight. Blade admitted that, for their size and condition, some of them were very proficient at arms. And they were evenly matched physically, so that it was some time before the struggle had been narrowed down to the last two. Yet gradually the twenty were whittled down. Heads rolled and blood gushed from great ugly wounds. As soon as a man fell and was dispatched the ceboids came out to drag the corpse away and scatter fresh sand over the blood.
As the last two exhausted Lordsmen panted and slashed at each other, both on the verge of utter collapse, Blade knew that his time was growing very near. He knew what he must do. At the outset, at least, he meant to carry out Honcho's orders. Later he might decide on another course. He was not yet a free man. He walked in danger every moment. He was not sure, even now, that Honcho would keep his word, adhere to the plan. Honcho was cunning and malicious beyond measure. He might have evolved a new plan by now, one that did not include Blade or included only his death.
There was a stifled, choked, dying scream as the next to last Lordsman died. His opponent's sword ripped out his throat and he sank to his knees, the red blood spurting. The survivor hacked off the head, and then turned the body over and cut off the genitals. He picked them up, carried them to the fire and cast them in, at the same time bowing to Astar and Isma.
Isma raised a hand. She stared down at the bloodstained victor.
"You live," she said. "You are Keeper of the Cage for the next kronoseg. You have won the right to consort with any of the Maidukes you choose. I, Isma, High Priestess of Tharn, pronounce it so. As it is so written in The Word. I command..."
It was time. And Honcho was carrying on with the plan. Blade felt his body flow into sensate being, was aware of his great muscles and his flesh, of his clothing and his armor and the great sword in his right hand. Honcho had kept his word thus far, and sent Blade's body from the Gorge Tower. It meant, or Blade hoped it meant, that Honcho still did not distrust him too much. It was life again. Real flesh and blood life! And for a time he was beyond Honcho's reach; for now the neuter could not harm him.
There was stricken silence in the huge arena. Blade had materialized near the thrones. Isma was staring at him, her mouth still open. The Lordsman gaped. Sutha folded his arms over his bony chest and stared at Blade with slitted green eyes. The old neuter, alone of all, did not appear very surprised.
Blade raised the big sword and brandished it. The sword would, Honcho had promised, be recognized at once for what it was. His coaching of Blade had been long and meticulous.
Blade brandished the sword once more. He flung back his head and roared out the words.
"You do not command, Isma! I command! I am Mazda and I have come at last as was promised. I am Mazda! Whom all will obey."
There was a flutter of fear through the assembled women. Some fell to their knees, others stared and hugged their breasts, the bolder ones leaned to get a closer view of this magnificent apparition.
Astar, the Queen-Goddess, did not so much as look at Blade. She stared ahead of her, her face impassive. Something was very wrong there.
Isma stood up and stretched out both hands. "If you are indeed Mazda you will carry out the prophecy."
This was the part that Blade did not like. Yet it must be done. The play must be carried through. There was no help for it.
Blade spun the huge sword in his hand. He turned toward the lone surviving Lordsman. "Defend yourself," he warned.
The man cowered, overcome with terror at this strange and new sight, at this towering bearded giant with the massive sword. He slunk backward, casting looks of appeal to Isma.
Blade moved in. "Put up your sword," he said again. He did not want to kill this poor excuse for a man. Yet he must. His own life was very much at stake, though not endangered by the Lordsman himself.
For a moment the dwarf man nearly found his courage. He raised his sword. Then he flung it away and fell to his knees, babbling and begging. "I...I cannot fight Mazda. I make slaveface! I beg my life. I surrender all claims and beg only my life. I..."
Blade did it quickly, lest he be unable to do it at all. The big sword snarled in the air. The man's head, lopped like a cabbage from a stalk, rolled over the sand. The arena was filled with a susurrant wail as a thousand women sighed as one.
The worst was yet to come, but there was no turning back now. Blade bestrode the headless trunk and hacked off the genitals. He carried them to the fire and flung them in. There was a crackle of flame, smoke rose, the charring of flesh in the air.
Blade raised the bloody sword aloft. "I am Mazda," he said once more. "I come, as was foretold, to save Tharn." He pointed the sword at Isma, ignoring her sister, Astar.
"I lack comforts," said Blade. "They will be given at once. And I will have private audience with you, Isma, High Priestess of Tharn. At once. I have much to say that is important for your ears. Now let this be done!"
He was close to Isma. She was standing on the throne, but so tall was Blade that their eyes were nearly level.
Her beauty was breathtaking. She betrayed no excitement other than the rapid rise and fall of her breasts beneath the plates. Her eyes were sloe, dark as night, and narrowed on him now. He saw the quick intelligence glow and flicker in her eyes and knew at once that she did not believe and that she was the one he must win over. Astar, somehow, did not count. He was already sure of that.
Isma inclined her head. She beckoned the old neuter, Sutha, forward.
"You are Lord Mazda," said Isma, and a flicker of mockery moved in the deep eyes. "Your command shall be obeyed in everything. Go with Sutha, Lord. He will attend you. I shall come presently."
Blade, still swinging the big sword, stalked as majestically as he knew how from the arena. As he left it he heard the beginning of great clamor. The rising hysteria of a thousand women who have seen the promised land.
Chapter Nine.
As Blade followed the old neuter down a long corridor that slanted into the bowels of the Palace he felt in the folds of his tunic. He had had time only to contrive a makeshift pocket for the tiny cylinder he had gotten from Zulekia. There was raised, minute lettering on the cylinder that he had not yet read.
Sutha turned into a transverse corridor and then through an arching door that led into a huge well-lighted room where scores of neuters, all dressed exactly alike, worked at desks. Some were using machines made of teksin, others worked with styli and slates.
They passed into a smaller room where another neuter, old but not as old as Sutha, looked up from a desk to nod to Sutha and stare at Blade. Then into a circular room with an arching dome, a large desk in the center, and low couches spaced around three sides of the perimeter. The fourth side of the room was squared off. There was a large blank space, possibly a screen of some sort, and scores of small push and pull switches. Set into the screen area was a narrow door, a postern, and from behind this came a low, monotonous hum that struck a familiar chord in Blade's memory. He had last heard it in London Tower: the sound of computers at work. Hundreds of them.
Sutha bowed and indicated a couch. "If you will rest, Lord. I think it well that we should talk before you have an audience with Isma. She also wishes this."
Blade had ripped a strip from his tunic and was wiping the sword free of blood. Sutha watched him closely, his eyes narrowed and intent on the great sword.
"You have been into the Gorge, my Lord? That is the Secret Sword of the Pethcines?"
Blade tossed the bloody scrap of cloth away. "It is, Sutha. I killed a man for it. Gutar, champion of all the Pethcines. He nearly killed me. But perhaps you know of this already?"
Sutha shook his head. "Not know, Lord. Suspect, perhaps. Our knowledge, our intelligence of the Gorge, is not of the best. I admit it. There have been difficulties."
Blade sensed that it was a moment of crux. The old neuter was taking him apart, dissecting him, with those glittering green eyes. Blade attacked.
"Why must I talk to you? Who are you, anyway? I am Mazda and I will speak only with Isma or Astar. At once! Where are they?" He watched Sutha's eyes.
Sutha built a temple of his long fingers and stared at them for a long moment. The fingers moved in an incessant tremor which Blade attributed to age, not fear.
Sutha said, "You must agree, Lord, that this is a most unusual situation. You appear from nowhere, that in itself is no miracle because we have used teleportation for years, but you appear and announce that you are Mazda. This is a miracle, of sorts, because I know there is no Mazda. As does Isma. And, I daresay, quite a few others of the people who think for themselves. That, thinking, is a thing we try to discourage. But leave that, let us speak with absolute candor, you and I. I do not threaten, Lord. I do not promise. But I am Sutha and I represent Isma. She is listening now. Who are you, Lord? From where did you come? How did you arrive in Tharn? And how do you have the sword of the Pethcines?"
Blade had been thinking furiously. There was much that he understood, much more that he did not. But it was crux and he must decide. He held the die. He must cast it. But first...
He leaned toward Sutha. "This place, this room. It is secret? Absolutely secret? There are no spiscreens that lead out of Urcit?"
Sutha's smile was enigmatic. He shook his head. "To Canto 13, in the Provo of North Gorge? No. We are private here. Except for Isma. You will speak now? Truth, nothing but truth?"
"I will," said Blade. "Nothing but truth."