The messenger slowed abruptly for the climb up the switchbacks to the keep. The road here seemed in worse repair than the one leading down into Stegatum, and Ruiz was constantly poised to hurl himself from the cab, should the crumbling verge give way under the great weight of the chariot. But they made it safely to a portcullis set into a sheer cliff. The way led through a twenty-meter tunnel cut from the bedrock and then into the main courtyard, where the chariot stopped amid a venting of steam that for a moment obscured the sights of Brinslevos Keep.
When the steam cleared, Ruiz looked about glumly, unable to resist a sudden fit of pessimism. Several iron cages hung from the heights, clasping shriveled corpses. In the center of the courtyard a number of tall sharp poles thrust from a little shrine; their aspect suggested a macabre function, as did their proximity to a three-loop gallows. Ruiz shuddered. Denklar claimed to moderate the Lord’s behavior — Ruiz wondered….
“We’re here,” the messenger said, with an air of grim finality. His small face reflected no joy at the arrival, and Ruiz surmised that Brinslevos was not well loved by his liege men.
“So I see,” Ruiz answered.
“Well then, get out. The steward yonder will see you to your quarters and the Lord will summon you when he wants you.” The messenger pointed to a small door in the western inner wall, where an elderly hunchback waited, a look of benign idiocy cloaking his lumpy features.
Ruiz alighted from the chariot, and gave the messenger an affable nod. “A pleasure to ride with you,” he said earnestly. “A fine machine you drive.”
The messenger’s face warmed slightly. “Yes, she is. Though she deserves better care than she gets.” But then he flushed, as though he had said a foolishly dangerous thing, and his face closed tight again. The chariot chuffed off toward the carriage house, which apparently lay on the far side of the gallows, through a low wide archway.
Ruiz shrugged and carried his pack over to the door — evidently the tradesmen’s entrance. “Hello,” he said to the hunchback.
The hunchback bobbed his head, swung back the door, and gestured for Ruiz to follow. Ruiz got the impression that the hunchback did not speak.
Inside, they went down a dark hall to a narrow stairway. The steward lit a candle and preceded Ruiz up the stairwell, which twisted and turned in a confusing eccentric fashion. They passed several tiny landings; there were no windows. Finally they reached the floor on which Ruiz would be housed, and the steward unlocked both the door to the landing and the door to Ruiz’s room, which was small and musty. Ruiz stepped inside on unwilling feet. Apparently Lord Brinslevos kept his guests in a vertical dungeon. High on one wall a slit of a window admitted a beam of sunlight. A bed frame with a rope mattress, a chamber pot, a washstand, and a tattered quilt comprised the furnishings. Ruiz sighed. The Denklar Lodge seemed in retrospect a haven of comfort and safety. At least, Ruiz thought, the room was dry and no large vermin were immediately apparent.
The hunchback grinned toothlessly and bowed his way out. He closed the door, and a moment later Ruiz heard the clatter of the key in the lock, followed by a more distant rattle as the steward locked the door to the stairway. The locks were a comfort, in a way. They wouldn’t long resist Ruiz’s implements, if he needed to get out, but they reassured him as to his safety, at least for the moment.
He dropped wearily to the rope mattress and assessed his situation. He could not shake off a sense of foreboding, which, he thought, was natural under the circumstances. He was in the hands of a man who apparently recognized no limit to his whim, no constraint on his authority — never a healthy situation. Additionally, Ruiz still felt a bit unsettled by Pharaoh’s alien ambience, and by his personal uncertainties.
He lay back, fixed his attention on the rough stone of the ceiling. He could hope that Brinslevos observed the Pharaohan custom that allowed snake oil men a greater degree of eccentricity than other low-caste persons. He could hope to be sufficiently entertaining to avoid Brinslevos’s disfavor, and at the same time he must be careful not to be so lovable as to be offered a permanent position at the Keep. The thought of staying long was a depressing one, so he put it aside and instead considered the problems involved in catching the poachers.
All over Pharaoh, conjuring troupes competed for fame and for “translation to the Land of Reward.” Translation was the Pharaohan interpretation of what occurred when a League harvest crew collected a troupe, which occurred whenever the League observers on Pharaoh Upstation decided that a troupe was ripe for collection. The selected troupe was usually allowed one last performance, which almost always took the form of one of the great religious plays called Expiations, during which a victim, usually a condemned felon, was sacrificed to the conjuror’s art. Immediately after the conclusion of the play, a League catchboat — made invisible by pangalac technology — moved in and scooped up the troupe. To the spectators, a miracle had passed.
Religion flourished on Pharaoh, as it did on most League-owned worlds. The League found it easy and efficient to exploit the religious impulses of client populations; what better way to conceal the bizarre evidences of its activities? On Cardoon, from which the League exported astonishingly beautiful women, the most beautiful were chosen at great religious festivals, and then were sacrificed to the gods — a process that involved loading them into small boats and sending them down an underground river. League personnel plucked the victims from their boats, just before the river disappeared into a vast siphon.
On Mortadinder, famous for the quality of its gladiators, men and women competed for the gods’ favor, playing a variety of deadly sports. The survivors became saints — and then product, to be marketed to pangalac worlds that permitted blood entertainments.
On Scarf, scholars strove to outdo each other at intellectual pursuits, for the glory of the gods. The superior were packed off to monasteries on high crags, from which none returned — since the monasteries were staging areas for cataloging and shipment.
On Pharaoh, more than religion drove the conjurors to heights of artistry. Those magicians who weren’t quite brilliant enough to win entry to the Land of Reward, yet were capable of consistently entertaining performances, might move upward through the otherwise rigid caste system, might even attain the status of aristocrats. Anyone at all, even a peasant, might strive for a career as a conjuror.
Ruiz’s problem was one of discrimination. With dozens of major performances on Pharaoh each week, how was he to pick the one that would be attended by the poachers? Presumably the poachers had some means of choosing the best available troupe not yet scheduled for harvest; the League catchboat had never come in conflict with the poachers’ boat. The League organization here was riddled by collaborators, obviously.
Ruiz worried at the problem, coming to no conclusions, until his eyes grew heavy and his thoughts drifted into disjointed speculation. Presently he slept.
By the time Ruiz woke, the sunlight had faded from the high window. Later, the hunchback brought a meal, one markedly less palatable than the food at the Denklar Lodge. Ruiz ate stoically. A long time later, he fell again into uneasy sleep.
Another man wearing the gorgeous rags of the snake oil peddler arrived in Stegatum at sunset, and rode his weary striderbeast through the sandy streets at a stumbling trot. He pulled up in front of the Denklar Lodge and bellowed for a stable boy. One appeared almost instantly and took the beast to the stable.