Fortunately the kilt was loose about his waist, and Mirasa did not notice his reaction to her. Instead her eyes roamed up and down his body like the hands of the surgeon, but not with a clinical air. Definitely not. They came to rest on his belt, with the sword and axe hanging from it. Her eyes widened.
«Did you think you would need those weapons tonight, Blade?»
Blade grinned, to show he understood her double meaning, then shrugged. «I have survived many dangers only by having my weapons always close at hand. I could not be sure that your soldiers were not those of the priests of Ayocan in disguise, sent to snatch me away to another sacrifice or some less dignified way of dying.»
Mirasa grimaced. «I told them to use your name, Blade, so that you would know that the message was from me. I am the only one in all the Garden of the Kings who knows it.
«Perhaps. But I could not be sure. Secrets have a way of leaking out.»
Mirasa looked at him with a new respect. «Indeed they do. And particularly in this garden, with the Second Prince's spies everywhere. You are wise to recognize the fact.»
«Warriors of the English have many occasions to deal with secrets, Princess.»
«Then you will be even better fitted for the mission King Hurakun has planned for you.»
So he was about to be drafted into the service of the King of Chiribu, was he? He could think of a good many worse fates in this dimension, including the one from which Hurakun had rescued him. So far, this was not bad news. But. .
«What is this mission, Princess?»
«To go down the Great River into Gonsara, and spy on the temples of Ayocan there.»
Chapter 11
Blade could not help laughing. For the first time in all his travels into Dimension X, he was going to be used as a secret agent-just what he had been in Home Dimension for nearly twenty years! He had been pirate and messiah and soldier and revolutionary in Dimension X, but never what he had been trained to do and had lived by doing.
Then he sobered. After his dealings with the cult of Ayocan, he could and would be a marked man for the priests of the bat-god. They would be looking for him, and if they found him around one of their temple mounds, whether in Chiribu or Gonsara, he might not live long enough to carry out any missions for anybody. He said as much to the princess.
She nodded. «King Hurakun has thought of all these things. But you will be heavily disguised, so that your own mother would not recognize you, let alone a priest of Ayocan.»
«My height cannot be disguised. And I have not seen anyone here in Chiribu as tall as I am.»
«That is true. But the Gonsarans are tall and bearded, and there are some men in Chiribu of mixed blood. You will be disguised as one of those.»
«I speak no Gonsaran, Princess. That will certainly make people suspicious.» He was deliberately testing her now, to see how thorough their planning was. With the alterations the computer made in his brain, it was a pointless question. But he was not going to try to explain Lord Leighton's computer to Mirasa!
She passed his test with flying colors. «The Gonsaran language is not so different from that of Chiribu that it is difficult to learn. Particularly for one who speaks the tongue of Chiribu as well as you do. It is interesting that you do that.» Blade tensed. Was he going to be asked how he had learned to speak Chiribuan so well? Mirasa was sharp-witted enough to try trapping him that way, he suspected. But she let the matter drop. Instead she said, «You will have some weeks to learn Gonsaran from the best teachers in all of Chiribu.»
«Good,» said Blade. «I have done this kind of work before, in England. It is dangerous enough at best. And it is foolishly dangerous if the people who send the spy do not prepare him for his journey.»
«We are not fools, here in Chiribu,» said Mirasa briskly. «And still less so in the Garden of the Kings. There are those who say that the First Prince is a fool, because I am wiser than he. But he follows where I lead, and is it the act of a fool to follow one wiser than himself?»
That question obviously demanded yes as its answer.
«And you are a wise man and a warrior, so mighty that there is nothing like you outside of legend,» she went on. «It would be the act of fools to throw you away like a child throws away a toy that it wearies of. No, you will be prepared as well as possible. I, First Princess of Chiribu, swear it. And I will see it done even if I must go openly against Second Prince Piralu.»
«Why should the Second Prince Piralu wish to see me thrown away?» asked Blade. Mirasa's swearing to help him was reassuring, but her motives for that were obvious. He badly needed to find out more about the political ins and outs of Chiribu, Gonsara, and the cult of Ayocan.
By good luck he had chosen the right question. The problem now was not getting Mirasa started, but stopping her. The explanations came out in a continuous flood, so fast that Blade could barely make a coherent picture out of them. Eventually he assembled a picture something like this-
The cult of Ayocan, though not the official cult of the Kingdom of Chiribu, was by far the most powerful there. Many adhered to it out of genuine belief, more out of hope of being saved by the doctor-priests and the extract if they became ill, and still more simply out of fear. Few dared speak openly against the cult and its growth. So it had acquired temple mounds in every city and town, masses of priests, and an entire army of Holy Warriors.
Those who did speak out against the cult of Ayocan too openly did not live long. Often they died mysteriously, but some of them were found with the mark of the cult's Death-Vowed killers carved in their bodies. According to the priests of Ayocan, the Death-Vowed were men and women inspired by the god to send spirits up for him to feed on. So the Death-Vowed were sacred, their roamings and killings free and unmolested, and the bodies of their victims left in the street until the «spirits» were released. Hence the bodies with bat-wings carved in their flesh that Blade had seen littering the streets of Tzakalan.
But it was impossible to doubt that in fact the priests of Ayocan controlled the Death-Vowed, sending them out when they wished, against whom they wished, to sow terror and death among any opposition. Such opposition had been either dead or silent now for some years, and the cult had won many highly placed supporters. Not least among those was the Second Prince Piralu. Young, vigorous, handsome, masterful, he was more popular with the people than First Prince Kenas. And many people would not in fact grieve at seeing him become First Prince, in Kenas' place.
Now there was nothing terribly bad or evil about First Prince Kenas (Mirasa's lips curled in a smile as she said that). But he cut no figure as a Prince and heir to the Serpent Throne of Chiribu. He was stout, clumsy, undeniably ugly in face and figure, but he was far from stupid. However, he preferred to use his considerable wits working on jewelry. As a jeweler, he could give lessons to half the masters of the craft in Chiribu. But as a prince, Kenas did not make the best impression on the people of Chiribu. There were already many who said that Piralu would make a better king when Hurakun died. It would not take many more saying this to make the Supreme Brother of Ayocan pass the word to the masters of the Death-Vowed. And then some morning Kenas would be found dead, the batwings carved across his stomach. On that morning, the hopes of Chiribu for escaping from the clutches of Ayocan's servants would vanish.
So much for Chiribu itself. But there was also the Kingdom of Gonsara, some days down the Great River that had linked the two kingdoms since World-dawn. Since before men could remember, men and goods had traveled up the river from Gonsara to Chiribu, and down it from Chiribu to Gonsara. Both kingdoms were wealthy, each had things for which the other would pay a great price. So there was much commerce, men came and went freely, and for centuries there had been peace between the two kingdoms.