Anyway, all that mattered at the moment was that I was in possession of the ritual information that would allow me to pass muster as a follower of the Silver Wonder. The priests and the acolytes, the initiates and the hierophants, all had their grades and ranks. They had their secret signs and secret formulae. My knowledge was of a temple in Ruathytu down by the aqueduct by the Jikhorkdun of the Thoth. Well, what I knew would have to serve.
The silver mask proclaimed me as a Hyr-Jik, a fairly middling rank in the cult. I’d have to browbeat those below, cringe to those above, and stick anyone who argued.
The ship neared. A little breeze got up and blew grains of sand in silken patterns before me. The twin suns would soon be gone, down past the western horizon. Already the sea sheeted with crimson and jade. I fancied there came a touch of coolness upon the air. I breathed in deeply.
Once in a temple of Lem the Silver Leem a fellow would breathe the stink of incense and the raw choke of spilled blood. Thinking back to that unpleasant interlude with Nath Tolfeyr in the temple of Lem, I realized that in all probability the reason the Star Lords had chosen me to handle this situation was precisely because I’d gone through that initiation. The Star Lords, although they had done me a deal of harm in the past, had done so through sheer indifference. They were not actively malignant. They were not chuckleheads, either. They knew a good sound tool or weapon to be used in the heat of combat when they saw one. And, by Zair! they’d used me!
A movement beside the opening cut in the hull of the ship took my attention. Two guards in their harness of brown and silver stood there, spears slanted, on guard.
They passed me through without comment and I brushed aside hanging curtains of brown with silver tassels and so entered the antechamber. Racks and hooks were here provided for the impedimenta not required within. I stacked the canvas bag and the flagon. I drew the robe about me, and, a hand on the hilt of the sword, marched on.
The place was just the same as the temple in Ruathytu, and vastly different.
Constrained by the shape of the upturned ship, the temple had been cunningly laid out. The arching ribs of the vessel lent the space the appearance of a fane. Brown and silver hangings covered the old wooden hull. Torches flared from tall silver stands, four and five torches arranged around each stand in brilliant clumps. The incense was being burned in strength. I kept my mouth shut and tried not to breathe too deeply.
The people stood about in casual attitudes, talking quietly. Every now and then a star glitter would strike from the corner of a silver leem mask. The air of ease here struck me painfully. These debased characters waited for their diabolical rites to begin, and as they waited they chatted together, of this and that, and took a delight in the expectation of coming pleasures.
To one side of the altar stood the tall iron cage. It was not empty.
The sacrifice was a girl child, not above three or four years old. She wore a white dress, short to her knees, and flowers in her hair, which was left free and shining softly brown in the lights from the cressets at each side. That light shone on the black basalt slab.
I looked away. High over the altar reared the shape of the leem — silver, glittering, rampant, ferocious. The image, I judged, was formed of beaten silver over a wooden core. The sculpture was not of the first quality; but it captured the sheer ferocious impact of a leem. Leems have wedge-shaped heads equipped with fangs that can strike through solid oak. They have eight legs and two hearts and they are feral beasts who kill and joy in the killing.
A normal weasel-shaped leem is of the size of a full-grown large leopard; this image was over one and a half times life size. The torchlights glittered from its ruby eyes. I looked away.
The sacrifice was not crying. She was eating sweets of some kind, trifles of sugar and honey and candy in brilliant sticky whorls children love to buy from the local banje shop. Sticky goo ran down her chin.
I tapped the heel and then the toe of the sandal I wore, a simple enough artifact suitable for hot climates. The fellow, now tied up in the bushes, from whom I’d taken the sandals favored solid leather soles, with rope thongs. The sole made a sharp tap through the sand strewing the floor.
These people had used the deck of the ship, then, as their floor, interesting.
Priests with golden decorations superimposed upon the colors of Lem moved about, preparing the knives and flails. The congregation talked in hushed tones, at ease, the incense stank and the torches and cressets burned brightly. I kept the hood of the brown robe half across the silver mask.
A vivid, a scarlet, lightning bolt of memory hit me. I could see just such a scene as this, out in the open air with the priest about to plunge his knife into the body of the sacrifice. And then a flier swooping in with me whirling a Krozair longsword and Barty Vessler leaping out and severing the child’s bonds. An elegant, refined, very proper young man, Barty Vessler, the Strom of Calimbrev, a man with high ideals of honor and duty. A fine young man now dead, struck down by the cowardly blow of a kleesh whose come-uppance had been too long delayed. Vengeance is for fools. But some redress for Barty’s death was long overdue.
Moving slowly, head half-bent, I approached the iron cage. Chains lapped the stone slab. The light threw contorted shadows from the bars across the girl child within the cage. The sweet stickiness ran down from her mouth and shone.
She had to be freed. Also, to perform this duty properly, another act must be done. I eyed the priests.
One of them, bulky in his robes, wore more gold than anyone else. He would be what they called the Hyr-Prince Majister, or some such nonsensical title. I marked him. Keys swung at his waist, and he wore a sword.
An under priest approached.
“Not too close,” he warned.
“I would have words with the Hyr-Prince Majister—”
“Who?”
“I said—” Then I stopped. I saw that I had blundered. That was not the title of the chief miscreant.
A cresset flared in its bronze cage hard by my left shoulder. Another stood a few paces to the right. Between them stood the cage. The basalt slab under the idol stood to the side of the cage, at the center of attention by the altar. I moved forward, striking like a leem.
I kicked the priest twixt wind and water. The left hand cresset went over backwards from a single sweep of my arm. Without pausing I slashed across to the right-hand cresset and knocked that flying. Live coals hissed out to scatter across the floor. The stink of smoke thickened.
I took the chief priest’s neck in my left hand and I stuck a finger in his eye.
“Open the cage, rast! Move quickly and quietly, or you are dead.”
He could not gobble his fright because his air was choked off in my fist. He scrabbled at the keys. He was useless. I dumped him down, raked off the bunch of keys and selected the largest. It did not fit the lock.
Now shocked shouts burst up in the confines of the ship’s hull. People were running and screaming. I intended them no good. I did not look back. I sniffed. The smell of burning grew. There would just be time...
Three keys later the lock snicked open.
The girl child looked up, past me, staring in wonder past my shoulder. Brown drapes burned fiercely. The fire spread. If the floor was well alight by now, fine. The ship was old, her timbers tinder-dry. She should burn well. That would be a more fitting end for a proud ship than this blasphemy.
I scooped the girl up. She started to cry.
Flames broke up in my face as I swung back from the cage. The uproar was now prodigious. So far no guards had burst through the smoke to find out what was going on.
And, still, I had not drawn a sword...
“It is all right,” I said to the girl. “I am taking you home.”
She just cried.
Cradling her in the crook of my left arm I took hold of the chief priest by the ear and dragged him along.
I spoke to the girl again.
“What is your name?”
She did not answer; just cried. Perhaps she had been chosen with smiles and garlands of flowers and had been happy to be given sweets and taken off. Perhaps. That could be attended to. I gave the priest a kick up the rump as he wriggled and dragged him along past the wafts of black smoke.
Ahead hung a blue and brown curtain, in checks. The way lay forward. Through that curtain extended the bow section of the old ship. My plan — such as it was — was to make my way forward and escape through the hawsehole. I had not failed to note that the hawsehole still existed, just a few feet above the level of the beach.
Once, years and years ago upon this planet Earth, I had clawed my way through the hawsehole to stand, brave in gold lace, upon the quarterdeck, an officer in Nelson’s navy. That effort had been immense. It differed merely in kind from the effort needed now to escape from this stinking den of iniquity.
Two guards blundered up through a narrow corridor lit only by a torch in a becket. They looked wild. Their leather brass-studded armor was spattered with grease.
It was necessary to let go of the chief priest to deal with the two guards, that and shield the child. The guards went over, yeowling, and I trod on them as I dived after the Chief priest. He tried to duck and scuttle away, screaming.
“C’mere, you rast!”
The collar of his robe felt hot and greasy. I hauled him back. He squirmed like a trodden-on lizard, and howled, and held one hand to his injured eye. His noise did not muffle the ululations and hullabaloo going on beyond the blue and brown checked curtain. The two guards rolled away as I kicked them out of the path and went on, head down shielding the child, dragging the chief priest.
At the end of the corridor an open door against the roof reminded me the ship was upside down. A narrow slot had been sawed in the bulkhead to allow passage. I stepped through and dragged the priest after. The space out there, dark and suddenly chill, stank of old rast’s nests. I forged ahead.
From some way to my rear a sudden burst of shouting indicated the congregation had recovered from their surprise.
Just how long it would take for the ship to catch well and truly afire, or for the Leem lovers to quench the flames, I had no way of telling. Certainly, the flat tang of smoke persisted, slick on the tongue among the stink of rasts.
Knowing your way around a ship comes naturally to anyone who has served some long time at sea; even upside down as the old vessel was, the ways remained familiar. Up ahead, in the sweep of the bows, lay the hawsehole I sought.
Through the darkness ahead a light glimmered. The light was sickly, sallow; but it shone as a welcome.
I hurried on.
Hurrying was a mistake and there was no welcome awaiting me when I debouched into the forward hold and saw what lay in wait for me.
The stench of leem filled the air.
The chief priest was shrieking in soul-destroying fear. I took a pace forward — and stopped.
There were two leems.
They snarled. In that sickly light their jaws opened widely, and the blackness of their gums showed their yellow fangs in glistening horror. They hissed and leaped.
Of two leems and one torch
The girl child cried and dribbled. The priest shrieked and writhed. The stench of the leems belched foully in that confined space.
The leems leaped. In that instant I dropped the priest and switched the girl around behind me. I drew the thraxter. The sword cleared scabbard — and the leems hauled up in midair, choked on broad silver chains and collars about their necks.
They crashed to the floor and were up in an instant, howling, spitting, all a bristle of fang and claw.
I glared at them. Foul beasts! They’d come sniffing around the chunkrah herds to cut out a straying animal and chew her up for their dinner. The priest tried to run.
I twisted the sword about and let him see the point and he cowered back, shaking.
“They are death — death, you fool!”
“Aye! Your death for certain.”
He slobbered.
The leems were chained one each side. The sweep of their claws at the ends of the chains practically met along the center-line. There was no way past them while they slashed at anything that approached them there, and while there was probably a wheel and ratchet mechanism for drawing the chains back taut, there was certainly no time now to find it and put it into operation.
There was no way back through the fires and the enraged worshippers, and there seemed no way ahead.
The chief priest fell to his knees, wailing. I lifted the child higher on my arm. The leems snarled and slavered, the foam frothing upon them. Their hides hung loose and matted, slimed in filth. The sickly light fluttered as the fires at our backs sucked air past and made the shrunken torch-light waver and fleer.
With the child to protect, the sword would not serve here. The blade snicked back into the scabbard. The torch was a greasy, poor affair, not one of the great torches of Kregen. But it would do its duty. It must.
The leems leaped against their chains, snarling, and fell back. I pushed the child more securely — yet again! — into the crook of my arm. I kicked the priest. And I thrust the torch ahead. The flame sizzled hair. The nearest leem yowled, desperate to get at me and tear out my throat and sink his fangs into me.
“Back, you misbegotten creature!” I yelled, incensed.
The torch thrust again, burning him about the muzzle. He shrank back. My own back was to his mate; now, with a single step forward, I dare not step back.
Shaking his head from side to side to avoid the flame, the leem tried to burst past that fiery barrier and get at me. The torch thrust and withdrew, flicking him with fire. His frenzy mounted, as did my own fury, so that we were just two enraged beasts, fronting each other.
Each step must be judged and taken carefully. The floor, which was in reality the underside of the old ship’s deck, was rotten in places, treacherous with splinters. And there was the priest to kick ahead, like a cringing, mewling football. The leems’ chains rattled. Their roars shook the timbers of the ship. The girl child continued to cry, turning her flushed and tear-streaked face into my shoulder against the brown robe. I held her gently — gently and yet with a grip of iron. After all this, I would not lose her.