Jewel of Tharn

Chapter Sixteen

The old King of Neuters, Sutha, knelt beside the sarcophagus of Astar I. He had been kneeling for a long time and his bony knees were sore. His hands trembled as he put them on the edge of the sarcophagus and pulled himself up. It would not be long now before they came. Sutha had employed a staff of young neuters to keep him abreast of the news from the battlefield, and the last messenger had departed only a few minikronos before. No - it could not be long.

Sutha stood looking down at the dual face of Astar and Isma. Astar I had been the first. The Astar recently murdered by Isma would be the last Sutha was sure of it. Blade's coming had changed everything in Tharn. Had changed Tharn itself. For the better, Sutha prayed, when it was all over. It was not over yet.

As he gazed down at the dead and long mummified flesh he wondered why he bothered to pray at all. He did not really believe. Nor did any true homid, the intelligent Tharnians, the People. Belief had been lost for multikronos now, lost in the engulfing mists of cruel superstition and heartless technique.

On impulse Sutha reached and touched the cheek of Astar I. He had never dared before. He snatched his hand away. Cold. So cold!

He sighed and went back to the teksin ledge, glancing down into the Power Pool, at the glimmering box in the quiet depths. Blade was right, of course. Sutha understood, though Blade had never put it into so many words. The Power had been good at first. Now it was bad. The Power had taken over. It dominated them all, even to the last ignorant ceboid. With what Blade proposed to replace the Power Sutha did not know, nor care much. That was Blade's problem.

There was a stack of slates on the ledge beside Sutha. He had filled this time of waiting by writing a long missive that Blade might someday find. Or might not find. That did not matter much either. What did matter was that Sutha, through stylus and onto slate, had managed to transcribe thoughts, at last, that he had never dared admit before.

In that moment he found that he could feel deep pity, he thought he understood the word now, for Honcho. They were, after all, a great deal alike. Both aborts, both so nearly homid and still lacking in the ultimate manifestation of manhood. It was, had been, cruel. Had he not been better adjusted, deeper read, a step higher in intelligence, he might easily have chosen Honcho's path. Honcho had not studied the ancient mysteries as Sutha had, had not ruined his eyes with years of probing for an elusive thing called Truth. And now it was too late for both of them. Tharn must be destroyed before it could be rebuilt again.

Sutha picked up a fresh slate and poised his stylus. Then he put it down and reached for the first slate he had filed. He read it over with a grim little smile.

My Lord Blade: I write this so that you may understand. I do not know the why of your coming to Tharn, nor what it will mean, or even if you will ever see this. But I think, in spite of all my ignorance, that you have been sent to save Tharn. To rebuild it. For it must first be destroyed, the Tharn we now know, a cruel and decadent Tharn that is ignorant in its vast wisdom. So I - Sutha, a very old and ignorant neuter - am going to do what must be done. Perhaps, if you live and prevail, you will one day understand the how and why of all this. I do not know. I cannot guess. I can only act. And I am afraid, very much afraid...

They were coming now. Sutha put down the slate on the neat stack and prepared himself. He had never really understood pain, but now he would have the chance to find out about it. For him, now, there could be no easy and painless destruct. He only hoped he could go through with it. Neuters did not have much courage.

They were here.

Isma, tattered and stained with battle, strode into the Sacred Chamber. Behind her followed the Second Neuter, a smirk of anticipation on his long face, and half a dozen of the women who had been made privy to Isma's plans.

Isma did not bother to make obeisance to Astar I. She walked briskly past the sarcophagus and confronted Sutha. She had discarded her battle sword and now carried an ornamental and sacred phallus blade.

Sutha inclined his head. "My greetings, Isma. High Priestess of Tharn. I have heard that the news is good. The Pethcines are crushed?"

Isma glared at him. "That is so. No thanks to you, Sutha, who have sulked here in safety and, worse, denied us the Power. Denied me the Power. Me. Isma! How dare you do this?"

Sutha showed his long neuter's teeth in a smile that was meant to be gentle. "I dared, Isma, because Lord Blade thought it best. By so doing we denied the Power also to Honcho, Honcho the renegade, who would have destroyed us all. Has it not worked out for the best, Isma?"

Isma scowled at him. Her face worked in anger and she pointed the phallic sword at him. "I have lost over half my People, old fool! That is how well it has worked out. It was not necessary. AH my Lordsmen gone! Blade planned that. I know it. And you, Sutha, have served Blade too well and me not at all. I will not suffer this any longer. I do not need Blade now. I have tired of him. Nor do I need you. I depose you, Sutha. Second Neuter is now in your place, King of all Neuters."

Sutha looked past her at the Second Neuter. "That should please him. He has long plotted and coveted this moment."

Isma waved the sword at Sutha. "You are under arrest. Because you are old, and have served well, before Blade came, you shall be destructed painlessly instead of tortured."

There was a sudden coldness in the chamber that Isma did not like. She glanced around uneasily. She knew she had violated taboo by bringing the Second Neuter and the women warriors into the Sacred Chamber. But what matter? She, and she alone, would rule Tharn now. When the Power was restored it would be easy to hunt down Blade and destroy him, along with the Maiduke girl he had gone after and obviously preferred to herself. That was an insult never to be forgiven!

Isma beckoned to the Second Neuter. "Place him under arrest. Take the chain of office from him. It is yours now."

"I do not think so," said Sutha. At that moment he found that he was not afraid. Not afraid at all. He fell backward off the ledge into the Power Pool. He had taken the precaution to line his tunic with the very heaviest of teksin so he would sink rapidly. He did. The glimmering casket at the bottom of the Pool waited for his touch.

The Second Neuter did not even have time to scream.

Richard Blade, whipping the chariot horses to their limit, did not see the first explosion. His back was toward Urcit and he was following the faint moving dots across the wide plain; it could only be Honcho and Zulekia. Here and there, on his flanks, were scattered little groups of stragglers, sullen and unheeding, Pethcine warriors intent only on getting back to the Gorge.

His first intimation of the holocaust was the terrible slamming wind at his back, a fierce draft across the plain, as though giants had opened their doors to all the winds of the cosmos. It flattened the mani fields on both sides of the faint track and pushed the galloping horses and chariot into a crazy stagger that sent them reeling sideways and smashed a wheel to splinters. Blade was pitched from the chariot, but landed on his back and shoulders and rolled to his feet unhurt He stared back at Urcit.

There were no flames. Only smoke. Thick, black, roiling columns of greasy smoke already building amorphous turrets and castles where Urcit had been. Blade, in the instant, could not fathom what had happened. One thing he knew. The Power was gone forever. Everyone near the blast must have been destroyed. But there would be survivors. There always were. And it was with the survivors that Blade must reckon, and work.

He began to trudge rapidly across the plain, the great sword ready in his hand now. A man in a war chariot was one thing, a man on foot another. Some of the Pethcine stragglers might be looking for revenge.

But nobody paid him any attention. They stayed away from him and his terrible sword. Blade kept walking, at times running, toward the now motionless chariot and horses of Honcho. Something was awry with the neuter. His forward progress had ceased, as had Blade's for the moment, with the devastation of Urcit. Now, as Blade moved on, Honcho made no move to escape. Honcho, in fact, made no move at all.

Blade drew close enough to distinguish details. The chariot was undamaged, the horses quietly pulling at mani roots. Honcho was slumped in the chariot, lolling, his legs trailing off onto the ground. The Maiduke girl, Zulekia, stood motionless off to one side and watched Blade's approach. She had been naked. Now she had a wisp of teksin fabric twisted around her loins.

Blade knew at once that Honcho was dead. How, or why, did not matter to him. That threat was past. He drew near to Zulekia, thinking that she was even more lovely than when he had first seen her on the terrace at the Gorge Tower.

Her long hair now, as then, cascaded in bronze-gold over her shoulders and covered her naked breasts. She stood erect, proudly, and waited for him. Blade wondered if she would make slaveface, and was pleased when she did not.

He halted six paces from her. "Zulekia! It is good that you are safe and well." Pale words for a lover. But that would follow. He was sure of it now. This was not a time for passion, or for telling of love.

Her gentian eyes, as huge and luminous as he remembered them, were grave. She did not smile. "Yes, Lord Blade. But I am not surprised. I knew you would come for me."

"You knew?"

"I knew, Lord Blade."

It must be true, he thought Even as he had known, somehow from the very first, that he wanted this woman above all in Tharn. This was no time to seek explanations. There might never be such a time. The fact was enough.

With the long sword Blade pointed to the dead Honcho. "How did this come about?"

"When he saw the explosion he took something. A very little pellet. Of a golden color."

"What did he say?"

Her smooth, tawny shoulders moved in a shrug of negation. Muscles rippled beneath the golden flesh.

"He said: 'Blade has won. My Thara and my Urcit are dead. Perhaps Blade is a God after all.'"

"That is all he said?"

"All, my Lord. Then he smiled and looked at me with those green eyes of his and died. We are well rid of him, my Lord. He would have made trouble for us still."

Blade moved the sword in an arc. "Not for long. But it is as well. Zulekia..."

"Yes, Lord?"

"You will not call me Lord in future. You will call me Richard."

"Richard?" The name came hesitantly from her ripe mouth. A hint of a smile as she said it again. "Richard - what does it mean?"

He went to her and put an arm about her smooth shoulders and smiled down into violet eyes that were full of glints and shadows. She nestled close to him.

"It means kiss, perhaps? I like kiss."

He kissed her for a long time. She clung to him.

Blade, still with his arm around her, turned to stare at the smoke hanging like a grim canopy over Urcit.

After a moment the girl said: "Urcit has been destroyed forever?"

"Not forever, Zulekia. We will build it again. A better Urcit."

She watched him with puzzlement. "But who will rule Tharn now?"

Blade held up the sword. At that moment a ray of sun struck through the black pall and glinted along the steel.

"I will rule Tharn," said Richard Blade.

Zulekia nodded. It was complete acceptance. A natural thing. Blade, aware of his own doubts and fears, felt his spirits lifting. It could be done! It must be done.

"There will be much toil," he said. "Sweat and work such as you have not known. Fear, terror, failures...but we will do it, Zulekia. As I came a stranger into your world - now you will be, at first, a stranger in the world I shall make here in Tharn."

Her expression told him that she did not really comprehend. He sighed and patted her smooth shoulder. She would understand. In time. Time, he thought, was about the only thing he could be sure of now. And how much of that? Blade shrugged his massive shoulders. It would be as it would be...

"Richard?"

"Yes?"

"There is something I must say. There has been a strangeness in me - in my body - since that time we had coi in the Gorge Tower. I have read of such things. Of course it is illegal that I bear..."

Blade stared at her. Harshly he said, "The laws of Tharn have been changed!" Then, with a smile, he kissed her gently. "I am ruler now, and I declare it legal that you bear my child. In fact, I demand it!"

It had been, from the very beginning, from the time of his first adventure in Alb, and then in the Land of Cath, a hazard. Lord Leighton had pointed it out. His Lordship had toiled to invent the little chronos computer, a device to "stretch" Blade's memory capacity so the big man could store data without conscious effort on his part. This aided greatly in the debriefing.

when Blade was brought back through the computer Part of his mind became a tape recorder, a memory tank, which was easily tapped.

There was still the hazard. Blade tended to forget his real persona, in his real dimension; in the heat of action, and danger, battling for survival or in the throes of love, Richard Blade forgot who Richard Blade really was! And so it was now, when the pain began in his head, that Blade was startled and genuinely surprised.

Zulekia's lovely face began to blur. Blade must have made some sound of anguish as the pain grew more intense, for the girl clung to him, alarmed and stared into his face.

"Richard! What is it? You are so strange. You... you..."

The plains of Tharn shimmered and tilted. A dozen suns hued red hot lances through his head. He clutched at the girl and felt that solid tawny flesh turn to vapor. Blade himself was fast becoming bodiless, his limbs dissolving and floating away. He tried to look at Zulekia a last time, for now he understood it, knew that Lord Leighton was calling him back, but the girl was a bird that fluttered away from him.

He was shrinking fast to dwarfdom. He was a fluid running from positive to negative and soon he would be nothing at all.

Blade was conscious, barely conscious, that he still clutched the great sword of the Pethcines. From a great distance, an echo in a labyrinthine shell, he heard a voice say: "Zul... I lo..."

He was gone.