“. . Beautiful piece. A waste to sacrifice her first.”
I stopped and listened again.
“One of ’em got away. But the man’s safely mewed up.”
“Bitch women. Why can’t they attend to women’s affairs and leave men’s to men?”
Thank God, I said to myself, Delia and Dayra and Lela were safe dwaburs away from here. Although nothing had ever been said about where they were going or where they were adventuring, I had somehow assumed it was in the north midlands of Vallia.
Well, this was getting me nowhere. While there was no way of telling just how professional these two masichieri were, they were mercenaries, and therefore I must give them the benefit of hard professional competence. If I made a single mistake they’d not wait for Makfaril to implement his ordinance on my death, whatever gruesome affair that was to be.
A trampling of iron-shod sandals in the corridor was followed by jocular remarks from the two guards to others of their ilk who passed, giving me a little time.
“What a beauty! Treat her gently!”
“Ah! Makfaril’s girls will see to her!”
“What I wouldn’t give. .”
I waited until the guards passed. Apart from the old scarlet breechclout I was naked. Simplicity, that was the only way. Simpleness in plans can defeat the most cunning of experienced professionals. I leaned against the door and spoke through the iron bars. “Tell Makfaril I have vital information for him. Bratch!”
When Makfaril came I’d fling everything into one wild lunge and so finish the cramph. But these two were incompetent professionals. One looked through the bars, saying, “How do we know you speak sooth?”
“Fetch Makfaril and you will soon see.”
So, poor fools, they swung the door open to make sure of me. They were armed. I was naked. It made little difference.
I stood up and slid the thraxter from its scabbard. I took the other one’s short compound reflex bow and his quiver of arrows and slung them over my shoulder. A knife, too, would be useful. . The two masichieri slumbered on the floor. I shut the door on them and shot the bars and bolts. A short corridor lit by a single torch led onto a wider cellblock. Probably the sacrifices had been kept here in the old days. At the corner I halted as a screech of metal sounded. Cautiously, ready to fight or run — I was annoyed and did not wish to waste my strength on masichieri when Makfaril was here — I peered around the corner.
The scene was arresting in its action and before I could sort it all out in the tricky light it was all over. A guard screamed and spun away from a door. I saw a girl drive a long thick poniard into his neck, saw her as a fleeting black-clad sprite, her long limbs splendid as she sprang to the door. The sheening black leather stood out against her white skin. Her mass of brown hair obscured her face, but she was not Delia. She was not Delia. The door opened to her quick fingers and a man staggered out, looking ghastly, with blood dried upon his face and his dark hair draggling with caked blood and his left arm all broken and dangling awry. Quickly the girl dragged him along, taking no notice of his broken arm. She moved with feline grace, like a hunting cat — all the old images sprang into my mind. Like a tiger-girl she dragged the shambling man along and together they vanished around the corner. I loped along the corridor and looked after them. The next set of cells lay dusty and deserted and of the panther-girl and the man she had rescued remained only a double line of footprints in the dust. I wished her well. But I had my own zhantil to saddle.
Up. I must go up. Without doubt these cells for the sacrifices would be low down in this pestiferous place. So I hunted stairs and upward-sloping corridors, and only four guards died on the borrowed thraxter. The straight cut-and-thrust sword of Havilfar is keenly adapted to this work. At the end of a long corridor which by its width and height indicated I must be leaving the deeper warrens, the figure of a girl moved across from one side passage to another. For a single instant I thought she was the girl who had rescued the bloodied, broken man. But this girl’s black clothes riffled with black feathers, and she carried a wide silver bowl steaming with fragrant water. She vanished and I padded on. That splendid girl who had used her poniard so ruthlessly, she reminded me of Sosie ti Drakanium, Delia’s messenger. Her gleaming tanned white skin and her long lissom legs — yes, well, there had been a sight more skin than black leather on view. All the same, had I not disposed of the two guards at my cell door, of whom she could have had no knowledge, her rescue would have gone awry. Still, she could not know that.
As I prowled on, very much like a leem among ponsho pens, the absence of people made me realize that the time was much later than I had thought. The palaces of Kregen — and there is an evocative phrase for you! — of which I had knowledge all contained runnels of secret passages and concealed doors. This ancient temple of abominations followed that pattern. I was perfectly confident I could find my way out to the surface and probably emerge through some hidden opening an ulm away from the ruined tower of Hjemur-Gebir, but I wanted to leave dragging a rascally priest of the Great Chyyan with me.
The deserted stone corridors, the decayed barrenness of it all as I wound my way back to the giant cavern of the idol of the toad-thing, convinced me the first meeting was already being held. The other meetings for later on, one of which I had arranged to visit, now meant nothing. This meeting, here, was the vital one. For Makfaril would tell his assembled priests the date of the Day of the Black Feathers. The priests would return to their congregations all over Vallia. They would scatter like a loathsome pestilence all over Vallia and prepare their followers and, come the Black Day, they would strike!
In the end the long ululations of a moaning, whining chant, a succession of weird cadences echoing through the dusty and deserted chambers, led me to the scene. I cautiously came out upon a high ledge of rock, drowned in shadow, and so could look out and down into the torchlit bowl of the cavern with the grotesquely evil idol crouching at the center on its ominous plinth. The black obsidian altar from which the long rusted streaks of dried blood cut corrosive swathes was covered by a wide-spread cloak of black feathers. The cloak was formed into the likeness of the four wings of a chyyan, covering the altar and what lay upon it.
When I had looked down from the balcony that had collapsed in Autonne upon a gathering of the Black Feathers I had had an inkling of what might follow. And here was the reality! This gathering was far removed from that first one. Here the long ranks of the black-feathered priests droned out their chant in perfect rhythms. Tall candle flames flickered among the torchlights, casting gleams that winked back from weapons and armor. The black arms lifted in ritual observances. A knot of high priests upon a fallen block of stone to one side led the chanting. I gazed at the scene, ignoring everything save the gigantic form of a chyyan, chained with silver chains, fluttering its four wings above the toad idol. A real chyyan. Its rusty black feathers showed the true horror of the situation, as it clashed its wings and hissed viciously, its scarlet beak open and its scarlet claws striking wildly at the air. The horror lay in this: how could any sane man regard this feral killer of the skies as a god? What difference lay between the living and breathing chyyan and the decayed stone idol of the toad-thing?
Half-naked girls partially clad in scraps of black feathers gyrated wildly. They swirled black-feathered fans. The stink of incense rose dizzyingly. The priests chanted, a long rigmarole of praises to the Great Chyyan and how he was immortally twinned in spirit with Makfaril. Staring down from the shadows of the ledge into the wild torchlights with the naked sprites dancing and the wafting coils of smoke and the chanting lines of priests, I felt the nausea well in me.