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."
He told Sutha everything that had happened to him since the day in London when Lord Leighton had pressed the computer button. Sutha listened without once interrupting. Nor did the High Priestess, who was listening somewhere in the Palace, send her voice into the room.
Blade finished. Sutha stroked his chin and stared, but with nothing of amazement. There was even a hint of boredom in his voice.
"Our scientists, our astronomers and physicists, and all the other disciplines, suspected for many kronos that there was intelligent life in the universe. Other than here in Tharn. But all efforts of communication failed and after a time it hardly seemed worth while. We had domestic problems, also. We became a one crop economy. Mani. To produce enough mani for all our needs we had to control the weather, and the sky, and so shut ourselves off from the universe. But we know it is there, Lord. We know it is there!" And Sutha smiled.
"I," said Blade, "am living proof of that." Sutha was speaking again. "In a sense, you are Mazda! HE WHO COMES TO THEY. We shall accept you as such, Richard Blade. I will call you that in private. And though we know, you and I and Isma, that you are not a God, yet it may well be that you are sent to save Tharn. Now to business. You will find that we in Urcit, as apart from certain other parts of Tharn, are an eminently practical people."
Blade asked the question that had been bothering him.
"You speak always and only of Isma. What of Astar? In the books I have read..."
Sutha held up a hand. "Yes. You have a right to know. Our religion is based on duality and as Mazda you will have to consort with both of them. Astar represents power, Isma death. So it is written and so it has to be, for all power structures need a religion. But in Tharn, Isma must carry the whole burden. Astar is a child. Has been a child since birth. Her brain did not develop as it should have. She is capable of going through the outward motions of being Astar, no more. Now, about this neuter in the North Provo. Honcho?"