The Great Fetish

The escort herded Marko and Halran into the door at the end of one of these wings and down a long corridor.

By the lamplight of the interior, Marko had a better chance to see his captors. They were all armed women, wearing polished brass cuirasses molded to accommodate the female form, crested brass burgonets on their heads, and kilts. Some carried crossbows and some light pikes. All had blades—one could call them large daggers or small swords—hung from their belts. They did not look very formidable; but Marko reminded himself that, even if he were twice as burly, a jab from a sharp spearhead would let out his life no matter who did it.

The women did not wear the cosmetics affected by those of the Anglonian cities, but they were neater and more attractive than the slatternly hill women of Vizantia. The frequency of light hair and blue eyes bespoke Anglonian or Eropian ancestry. Sinthi had come in with the rest. Marko saw that she had greenish eyes and brown hair with a strong reddish cast.

She was a well-rounded, buxom girl, not exactly beautiful, but good-looking in a wind-blown, healthy way.

Marko was escorted into a room where sat an elderly woman, lean and hard-looking. The female soldiers clanked to attention. The oldest, who had screeched at the travelers, laid Marko’s ax on the desk and told her story. Marko could not get all of it because she spoke fast in her strong dialect, but he gathered that he and Halran were suspected of designs on the Great Fetish.

The lean old woman glared at the two men and spoke to Halran: “I am the Stringiarch Katlin. Tell your tale, foreigner.”

Halran began: “It is this way, my lady. I am Dr. Boert Halran, philosopher, on leave from the faculty of the University of Lann. I have been engaged in some experiments of unparalleled significance …”

Halran wandered off into the technicalities of aerostatics, getting more and more abstruse until Katlin Interrupted him: “I suppose you are speaking Anglonian, though it makes no sense to me whatever. I shall merely comment that you philosophers can look for little mercy from us, if by your inventions you learn to duplicate all the thaumaturgies we effect by magic and thus deprive us of our livelihood. All right, Fats, tell your story, and try to keep to the point more closely than this old rattlepate.”

Marko said: “My lady, I’m Marko Prokopiu, Dr. Halran’s assistant. He invented this balloon, as he tried to tell you. We set out in it to fly to Vien, but the storm blew us out of our course so that we had to light on Afka. When we persuaded the Afkans to let us depart, a calm delayed our return to the mainland, so that we had to put down here. We sincerely apologize for trespassing and will leave as soon as we can reinflate our balloon, assuming the present wind holds.”

“A likely story,” snapped the Stringiarch. “I shall soon learn if it be true and what to do with you. Put them in a cell and summon the head sibyl.”

The female soldiers led Marko and his companion away, down more halls, turning this way and that until Marko was completely confused. They went down a flight of stairs, through a door of bronzen bars, which clanged behind them and into a cell with a similar door. The guards locked this door, too, and marched away. The captives were left in semidarkness, relieved only by the faint glow of a lantern in a wall bracket down the corridor.

10

Nothing happened for so long that Marko thought the next day must be approaching. The mercurial Halran sat with his head in his hands, moaning: “Oh, what a fool I have been, to take such chances at this season! Now we are surely doomed—”

“Hush,” growled Marko. “Someone’s coming.”

There were light, quick steps in the corridor. Somebody stood at the bars, and Marko saw that it was the young girl who had first greeted them on Mnaenn.

“Sinthi!” said Marko.

“Don’t shout!” she said. “You must escape because they have decided to kill you and I will if only … and it must be soon because … so I’ll give you …”

“Get your breath, child,” said Boert Halran, his despondency gone.

Sinthi gulped air and resumed: “The hierarchy has decided to slay you.”

“Why?” said Marko. “What have we done? And don’t they try people here as in civilized countries? Even the Afkans decided we were harmless.”

“Oh, you have been tried.”

“I wasn’t aware of it.”

“Well, you see, the trials here differ from those of the mainland. They’re by divination.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. The method of divination is selected at random from the Handbook of Vaticination, by thrusting a dagger between the leaves. In your case, the method chosen was by marwan trance. The sibyl went into her trance and saw you two with your necks across the altar rail, and the Stringiarch chopping off your heads with your own ax, to the glory of Einstein.”

“Ugh,” said Marko.

“I wasn’t supposed to know about this, but I listened through the crack of the door. They had an argument. Mera objected that, while they might manage with Dr. Halran, Master Prbkopiu was too big to lay his head peaceably on the rail. He might break loose and start chopping them instead. Valri, the suffragan, objected that the Stringiarch wasn’t strong enough at her age, especially considering how thick Master Prokopiu’s neck is, and she might miss and gash the altar rail. Klaer was against the whole project as barbarous, as there hasn’t been a human sacrifice • on Mnaenn in nearly a century.”

Marko asked: “Why didn’t they dismiss the whole idea?”

“No, Katlin insisted. She’s very pious, you know. But she admitted she couldn’t take off your head with one neat slice. So in the morning they will send the troopers down here to shoot you with crossbows. Then they’ll drag your bodies out and lay them on the talisman table in front of the altar and ceremonially cut off your heads, probably with a saw.”

“Oh, dear!” said Halran. “That is terrible. Marko, do something! Think of something! Get us out of here!”

Marko said: “Sinthi, did you mention getting us out?”

“I can.”

“How?”

Sinthi held up a bunch of keys.

Marko said: “What do we do when we get out?”

“I don’t know. I thought you could lower the rope ladder, climb down, and take one of our fishing smacks.”

“How big are they?”

“Oh, one or two can row them. But I forgot a squad of guards is stationed at the ladder, as that’s where an invader would come up.”

Halran said: “I doubt if any such small boat could live through the sea out there anyway. But if I could get help in filling my balloon …”

Sinthi said: “What would you need for that?”

“Oh, perhaps a dozen hands and a supply of peat. I could direct them to rig the bag for inflation, and by morning we should be ready to go.”

Marko grunted: “I can see the old Stringiarch saying yes, gentlemen, gladly. Unless …” He turned to Sinthi. “Where is she now?”

“Asleep. I suppose. Everybody has retired except the witch who has the temple guard. That’s how I stole these keys so easily.”

“You don’t keep a heavy guard around here?”

“Why should we? There is hardly any crime among us; these cells haven’t been used for months. We do keep a watch on the cliffs against invaders from outside.”

“Where does the Stringiarch sleep?” asked Marko. “At the end of the second floor of the fourth wing. You go up the stairs, and turn sharply to your left, and down that hall, and up another stairs, and back towards the center …”