We shall never know.
Chapter Seventeen
Often, in those interminable days of trekking across the desert, flayed by the sun in daylight, frozen at night when they camped without shelter, Blade envied the man he meant to kill.
His doppelganger, the Russian agent, was living a life of luxury at the court of El Kal, King of all the Moghs. More than that - the double was now Vizier of the Kingdom, in a position of power and prestige, and was anxiously searching for his twin brother. For Blade!
The Princess Canda - for Blade was now convinced that she was indeed a Princess - had imparted this information. Not at first. But at a time and in a place of her own choosing.
As night descended Blade set about building the usual cairn of stones to catch water. It was all they had, all that kept them alive, and stemmed from a resourcefulness the big adventurer had not known he possessed. During the hot, sun blasted days he noted that the wind always blew inland from the Purple Sea. It was laden with moisture. The second night, with all of them raging with thirst, Blade built a high cairn of relatively cool stones dug out of the sand with his sword. Within half an hour moisture was collecting on the stones and trickling to form a tiny pool. Blade monitored the drinking, again with his sword, and filled a small wine bottle that the wretch Chephron had happened to have attached to his belt when the Pphira broke her back on a reef and sank.
After completing the cairn Blade stood gazing at the snow tipped mountains on the far horizon. They seemed no nearer than they had at the beginning of the march. Blade, had he not known better, would have sworn that the mountains retreated stealthily during the night.
Beyond the mountains, if ever they reached them, lay the Land of the Moghs and a great city where El Kal ruled. So said Canda, who claimed to be only daughter to El Kal.
There was an oasis, said Canda, not far from a pass leading through the mountains. When they reached the oasis - a matter on which Blade was not at the moment sanguine - a signal would be sent and a party would come to greet them. Blade was not especially looking forward to this, as irksome, uncomfortable and dangerous as his present plight was. His double at the moment held all the good cards. He was established and powerful. Had all the advantages. Blade had a pair of leather breeches, fast wearing out in the crotch, and his sword.
He had also been having pains in his head again. And wondered - was the Russian agent also having them?
"I am hungry, Captain. Why do you stand and dream at the mountains when you should be providing food?"
It was the Princess Canda. Naked to the waist, with a twist of linen about her loins, sunburned and tousled and as filthy as any of them, yet utterly lovely. Her jet dark hair fell to her waist and she had caught it back with a thong. She had a perfectly oval face in which gray eyes were set wide. Smoky eyes with glints of gold in them. She was nearly as tall as Blade, slim and regal, with pink budded breasts that, for all their generous size, were taut and with no hint of sagging.
Blade regarded her for a moment without speaking. He glanced to where Zeena lay being ministered to by the misshapen Chephron. Zeena was no better. He knew in his heart that her mind had gone forever. Yet she had been as lovely, nearly as beautiful, as this girl before him. Now - for Zeena still did not recognize Blade - her gentian eyes were hollow and shadow-laden and her body fast withering into gauntness.
Canda made a stamping motion with one shapely bare foot. "I am still hungry, Blade."
He drew his sword and she stepped back in mock alarm. Her smile had a teasing sweetness. "You would not dare! Remember how much rests with me when we come at last to the oasis. The people know me. You, and these others, they will fall upon and slay."
It was likely the truth and Blade nodded. "I am going to kill our dinner, Canda. Nothing more. I do not attack helpless women."
Again her odd smile. "I am not so sure, Captain Blade. I am not sure about anything with you. There - there are too many of you for my comfort!"
He ignored her and turned away. She had been hinting at something ever since they left the coast In her own time she would get to it.
Blade left them and, sword in hand, went in search of snakes. If it had nothing else, the Burning Land had snakes in plenty. They were non-poisonous, or so Canda said, and they came out at night. A hundred were to be found in any shallow ravine.
He killed a dozen snakes in as many minutes and took them back for Chephron and Pelops to skin and bone and prepare them for dinner. Cut into bite size and taken with what little water there was, they would furnish strength for another day of marching. Maybe you gagged a little, Blade admitted, but you got them down. Funny what a man could eat when he was starving.
He went back to the cairn. Pelops was there waiting for the first trickle of condensation to form. The little man had lost weight he could not afford, the fuzz on his face and long head was long and dirty, and he had lost his armor and sword in the sea. He looked, Blade thought, to be on his last legs. Yet there was a resilience about the man that continually amazed Blade. And his habits did not change. Even now, looking like a mistreated scarecrow and with only a scrap of leather twisted about his privates, Pelops had not lost his tendency to lecture.
"It is my thought," said the little teacher now, "that we should abandon Zeena. She delays us, sire, and she will get no better. And it sickens me to watch her, for I remember her from better days when she was a child and I taught her in the palace."
Blade stared hard at him. He did not, could not, blame the man for what he was saying. Pelops was Sarmaian and could not help what he was.
"I remember Zeena," said Blade, "from the time of our first meeting. When I took her to save your life, Pelops. When I married her in your Sarmaian law. We will not abandon her. There are graves enough behind us."
There had been nine in the party starting inland. Five were left. Blade, Pelops, Chephron and the two women. The dead men had all been slaves too weak and emaciated to stand the trek. Of the women taken from the pirate craft none had been saved but Zeena and the Princess Canda. Of Ixion Blade knew nothing at all; Pphira had become separated from the unireme long before she struck the reef and went down in a churning welter of fifty foot waves. Blade had barely made it ashore with the women, with the Princess Canda doing her share, and Pelops, strange irony, owed his life to the former mine slave, Chephron.
Pelops stared at a first small trickle of water tracing down the cairn. "I wonder at times, sire, if you are not a man of magic. Such as lived in the old times in Sarma. To find water like this, out of nowhere!"
"A simple matter of physics."
"I do not know the word, sire. But let me tell you - "
Blade laughed in spite of himself. "You know enough words, little warrior. Too many. Spare me them. Speak only of what I wish to know - and that is about this Princess Canda. What of her, really? Is there a land of Mogh? And such people as the Moghs? Could there be such as El Kal, whom she calls her father, and who rules this land? What do you think of all these tales?"
While Pelops pondered, chin in hand, Blade watched Chephron caring tenderly for Zeena. Feeding her. The man's leg sores were healing somewhat. More proof, Blade thought, that the meta was really pitchblende. And that in Sarma there were mountain ranges of the stuff. Uranium.
Lord L and J would just have to take his word for it when Blade got back to H Dimension. He had lost the chunk of raw meta, along with the log he had started, when the Pphira went down.