Sybelline drank deeply. She finished two cans of the drink and started on another. She went to lie on a sofa and gaze out the window at the lambent gray light. Far over the city she could just make out the Government Building, where the city fathers slept. What would they do, she wondered, if she were to turn on the power, then confront them and ask for her reward? Sybelline shook her head. She knew. They would either send her to the pits or back to the sewers to labor, or they might even kill her. This latter was only a slim possibility, for the Morphi rarely executed anyone. They did not have to.
She frowned. If she reactivated the Morphi, she would be betraying the Selenes and would have to answer for it. That would not be so bad if she could force the Morphi to fight for her. But how to do that?
By utter and absolute control of the power. With that threat held over them, she could make the Morphi do anything. She wondered if Jantor had the brains to think along similar lines. But how to accomplish it? The sheer physical problems were insurmountable. Who could she trust so much? Wilf? He was a sullen weakling-she never knew what was in his mind. She did not think he would betray her, but was he capable?
Norn would not do. She was only a pretty Gnomen, now crazed for sex with the man Blade. Love, she called it. Nor would any of her fifty guardsmen fit the task-they were good only to bed her and to report her every move to Jantor.
Sybelline had another can of the intoxicant and began to cry softly. At the same time she was suddenly overcome with sexual desire. She longed for Wilf, for any of her young guardsmen, even for the girl Norn or the man Blade. Why, oh why, was she so cheated of everything? Her fine brain, her body and her long life all wasted.
Suddenly she heard the fierce clamor of arms in the street below. A Gnoman voice screamed in death agony. There were harsh curses and the incessant beat of metal on metal.
Sybelline heard a shout, a stentorian bellow that could only come from Blade.
«Hurry, Sart. Help me pick it up. Heave, man. Heave!»
Sybelline ran to the window. To her left was one of the sewer kiosks. It had been knocked over, torn apart. Scattered around the ruins were four Gnomen bodies, some of them still twitching. Blade and his slave, Sart, were both covered with blood. They were in the act of heaving the great sewer lid back into its seating. Blade was still bellowing, his massive sinews shining with blood, his neck muscles bulging as he urged the slave to a final terrible effort.
A Gnoman guard was halfway out of the sewer opening. He swiped viciously with the hooked end of his bar. Blade leaped to escape the blow.
Blade let out a tremendous cry. «Now!»
They flung the sewer lid back into place. It pinched the Gnoman in half, his dying scream muted as the upper half of his body rolled away from the lower trunk, the hands and arms still alive.
Sybelline watched, frozen in mingled horror, excitement and an already beginning hope. This could be her chance. Blade had come to her. She must decide now, this instant, whether or not to commit herself.
Blade pointed to the building from which Sybelline watched. He shouted and gave Sart a shove and they were running toward it. Sybelline turned from the window and left the apartment, running to meet Blade. The intoxicant had made her unsteady and she fell several times. When she glanced down the stairwell from the second floor she saw them battered and bloody, resting on their spear bars, gasping for breath. Blade was examining a raw wound in the chest of his slave.
Sybelline shouted down the stairwell. «Blade.»
The big man looked up. He was covered with sweat and blood; wounded in half-a-dozen places. Even his coarse black beard was matted with blood. But it was his eyes-cold, fierce eyes peering from that dreadful visage-that both frightened and inspired Sybelline. They were bleak eyes and at the same time they flamed with the madness of battle. They stared up at her-alert, murderous and calculating-and Sybelline knew she had to go all the way. No retreat now.
«Up here,» she said. «Quickly.»
Blade nodded and gave Sart a little push. They began to climb the stairs, keeping the bloody spear bars at the ready.
CHAPTER 11
Only when they entered the apartment did Blade's battle ecstasy begin to diminish. Wounds, the sight and scent of blood, the killing, had completed his transmogrification. His adaption to DX was not complete and his only aim was survival. The thin wafer of crystal in his brain was his only link to Home Dimension; for the time being he had forgotten it.
And this woman, this white-haired Sybelline who claimed to be Queen of the sewer people, what of her? He set out at once to put her in her place.
«See to Sart's wounds,» he commanded. «Mine are of no consequence. He is a murderer and a rogue, and has a slave's brain, but I need him. Patch him up as best you can.»
When Sybelline hesitated, Blade raised his blood-encrusted spear bar. «Do as you are told.»
She was stubborn. «We must talk, you and I. I have much to tell you and to ask of you.»
«Later,» he said gruffly. «Tend to Sart before he bleeds to death.»
Blade went to stand at the window, keeping in the shadow, watching the shattered kiosk and the mammoth sewer lid. It did not move. Jantor and his men would not come that way, he thought. In any case, it would take awhile for Jantor to figure matters out and to take countermeasures.
The fight had been short and bloody, but it had gone better than Blade expected. He used Sart as a decoy, luring the subchief to talk, then Blade broke his neck with one terrible blow of his fist. He caught the Gnoman's spear bar as it dropped. Sart, driven by fear, carried out his orders. He plunged into the crowd of guardsmen and seized a bar before they knew what he was about. Blade came roaring in, yelling battle sounds to stun and frighten them and swinging his bar like a broadsword. He killed four of the guards before they realized what was happening. Sart killed three. Blade drove the demoralized Gnomen up the tunnel while Sart erected the ladder.
The guardsmen sent for help and began to fight back. Blade piled bodies before him as a barricade and held them at bay while Sart put his sturdy back to the sewer lid. At first he groaned that he could not budge it. Blade threatened him with a terrible fate and the slave, blood spurting from his wound, tried again and again. It moved just as a hundred Gnomen came running down the tunnel toward Blade. Blade leaped up the ladder and joined his strength to Sart's, together they moved the lid out of its bedding. Blade climbed over Sart's back into the kiosk, found it too confining and kicked it to bits. He reached down to pluck Sart up just before his legs were crushed by the bars.
Time ran out, and several of the Gnomen made it up the ladder in spite of Blade's flailing bar. Sart was near dead, so he could not help much in the brief bloody fray on the street, but Blade drove him and cursed him and together they had gotten the lid back in place, slicing a guardsman in half in the doing.
Blade turned away from the window. The battle had only begun. Jantor was an enemy now. He would find the body of Alixe and he would come after Blade and Sart. Jantor would think that Blade had plotted against him, that he had thrown in with Sybelline because she knew the secret of the power.
Blade went to the door to watch. Sart was on the floor. Sybelline, revulsion on her smooth, unlined face, was examining his wound. She glanced up at Blade, her green eyes narrowed and calculating. He remembered that she was half Morphi. She would bear watching. Nevertheless he meant to use her as she, no doubt, would try to use him.