Lin Carter - The City Outside the World (3 page)

They came at last into an open square which was walled on three sides by sheer stone surfaces, unbroken by gate or archway.

At the entrance to this cul-de-sac, Ryker halted and stood aside against the nearer wall in the black shadow of an overhanging second-story balcony, hoping not to be seen.

The girl, the old man, and the boy, stopped, too, realizing they were trapped and could go no further.

The silent mob halted at the entrance to the little courtyard, and stood motionless, blacker shadows amid the darkness of the alley. Ryker drew his gun and hid it in a fold of his cloak and stood there sweating, wishing himself a thousand miles away. He smelled an execution in the air, and the stench of it was fearsome and ugly.

And then the shadows, which stood ranked motionless, began to . . .
whisper.
Ryker cocked his ears to catch the unfamiliar word. It was rarely heard, even in the vilest dens of Mars, but it was not unknown to him.

"Zhaggua!"
the shadows were whispering.

The word was blunt and unlovely, and they spat it like a curse.

"Zhaggua! Zhaggua!—Zhaggua!"

The girl stood, naked under her fringed long-shawl, facing the faceless shadow-throng proudly, masked face lifted fearlessly, and took the ugly word full in the face like a glob of spittle. She took it unflinchingly, Ryker noticed. And even here, with death inches away and only moments in the future, he felt the pure, sweet, singing spirit of her, and he marveled at it. The manhood within him responded to the unconscious grace of her slim, poised body, her thrusting breasts outlined under the thin silken stuff of the shawl, and the pride and scorn eloquent in the fearless lift of that masked face.

"ZhagguaV'

The shadows were inching closer now, the glitter of catlike eyes intent on their prey. And the whispering rose to a chant as the ugly strange name, the ugly word, was spat forth. The smell of the mob was rank and vile in Ryker's nostrils, and the name of that smell was
hate.
But the reek of fear was in that sharp stench, too. And that was strange.

For why should the mob, many men strong, fear a slim girl, an old man, and a child?

But yet another question seethed through the turmoil of Ryker's thoughts. And it was the strangest mystery of all.

For the vile, guttural word—
Zhaggua
—had a meaning. A meaning lost in the dim vistas of the past, shrouded behind old mysteries and forgotten legends, veiled in the obscurity of remote and unremembered aeons.

It was a dirty word, that ugly grunt of sound. It was a curse, an obscenity, like "nigger" or "wop" or "Commie."

It was a word which had once been applied to a people lost in time's far, forgotten dawn.

It was a name that had not been used against a living man in millions of years.

It meant . . .
Devil \

"Zhaggua—Zhaggua—Zhaggua!"
the mob chanted, and now Ryker saw they held stones and bricks cupped in eager, trembling hands. Stones, heavy stones, to beat down that slim, proud, fearless, warm gold body. To beat and break and pulp that sleek, perfumed flesh.

But
why?

Devil—Devil—Devil!
The mob growled as it surged forward, stones lifted, to kill.

3. Red Thirst

Ryker cursed, shrugged
his cloak back over his shoulders, and stepped forward. Knowing himself for a fool, he I if ted his heavy guns. There was nothing else that he could do, after all. He had been many things in his time, and had done those things that tarnish the soul and harden the heart. He had lied, cheated, thieved, and he had killed for hire. But one thing he had never done, and could never do, and live at peace with himself thereafter.

He had never stood idly by and watched a woman be torn apart by a mob.

The shrill yammer of his power guns shrieked as they cut through the growling of the mob.

The thick shadows were split asunder, quite suddenly, by a cold, unearthly light. It was blue-white, that glare of fierce electric fire. And men fell before the blaze of those twin guns as wheat stalks fall before the keen-bladed scythe.

The mob was as brave as mobs usually are. That is to say, each man lost his own fear in the lust for violence which gripped them all, even as each felt his individuality submerged in the oneness that was the mob.

Therefore, each man was only as brave as those around him.

The mob was one animal by now, one huge animal with many parts and one desire in its hot heart—the red thirst for blood. But before the yammering shriek of those guns the mob dissolved into its component units. Those units

were only men—alone, individual now, isolated from the mob mentality, and terribly vulnerable to the cold fire that spat from the grim muzzles of Ryker's guns. The men had only bricks and stones and broken bottles in their hands, for power guns were forbidden to the People and were hard to come by in the Old City.

And bricks and stones and bottles weighed little in the balance against the sizzling death vomited forth by the twin guns held rock-steady in Ryker's hard, scarred fists.

A dozen men, maybe more, lay dead on the dusty cobblestones that paved the plaza. And the evil smell of burnt flesh was thick in the nostrils of those who lived.

The red thirst faded in their hearts, and in its place came fear. They licked their lips. They hesitated. They gave little, quick sideways glances at each other. And they hesitated. Had the mob been goaded on by a leader, it might still have been rallied. But there was no leader to stand forth and confront the bright death held now in check by a finger's pressure.

The mob began to crumble, peeling away in scuttling, shadowy figures. First, the rear ranks melted away as if by sorcery. Then from the sides, and men turned away and slunk off into the black ways of the little, crooked alley.

Finally there were none in all the little plaza, save for Ryker, the girl, her two companions, and the dead.

Ryker drew a long, ragged breath, and put his guns back in their worn leather holsters, and his heart began to beat again.

He turned to face the girl, who still stood proudly before her companions, and who had not moved or spoken.

He cleared his throat and spoke. Some whim made him speak not in the harsh sibilants of the gutter lingo he would have used, but in that old and finer variant of the Tongue spoken only by the warrior princelings of the High Blood.

For something told him these were no folk of the Low Clans.

He said, ' 'They will not have gone far. I think they will be waiting for us back at the place where many black alleys open on the way we came. So we must be gone from here, and quickly, and that by another way."

For the first time the masked girl spoke, and her voice was like the music made by the chiming of many little silver bells. Clear and sweet was the music of that voice, but cold as metal.

"And how would you have us go from here, Out-worlder? Through the very walls themselves? For there are neither doors nor windows."

Ryker indicated the balcony at the far end of the plaza, in whose shadow he had stood when the mob first charged. The girl nodded without words. He made as if to help her ascend the wall, but she ignored the hand he proffered. With the kick of her long dancer's legs she sprang into the air, caught ahold of the bottom ledge, and swung herself nimbly up and upon the carven stone balustrade.

Ryker lifted the old man up to her and between them they got him over the rail. He was very light, his arms and legs as thin as sticks. He said nothing.

The naked boy gave Ryker one bright glance of pure mockery and mischief, then sprang as lightly as an acrobat upon the Earthling's shoulders and gained the balcony. Ryker jumped up and caught the carved rail and heaved himself up and over it. Despite the lower gravity of Mars, the exertion left him red faced and puffing. He was unaccustomed to such acrobatics. The boy giggled, but the old man and the girl said nothing.

The small, roofed balcony gave way to a second-floor room, but the way was barred by shutters, tightly closed and locked from within. On Earth the shutters would have

been of wood, but here on the desert world where wood was almost as rare as water, they were of thin, fretted and carven stone which resembled lucent alabaster. The stone was thin and fragile. Ryker kicked the shutters in with one thrust of his booted feet.

They crawled through the opening he had made, and found themselves in a long-unused room, thick with soft dust, the air of which was sour from old cooking smells. A few pieces of ancient furniture stood along the walls, covered with cloths. A tall door of worn metal, also locked, gave way to a narrow landing and a flight of steps leading down to the street level.

There were no windows which gave forth upon the next street, but eye-chinks were cut into the stone walls to either side of the main door in the Martian manner. The view through these peepholes suggested that the street beyond was empty of men. But Ryker had learned caution in a hard school, and felt uncertain that the way to freedom was quite as clear as it seemed to be.

' 'Do you and your friends have a place of refuge where you will be safe?" he asked. The girl shrugged slim shoulders under her silken shawl.

"A purchased room in the House of the Three Djinns, near the Caravan Gate," she murmurred listlessly. Ryker thought quickly. He knew the place she meant, an old hostelry whose courtyard was guarded by three stone colossi called Ushongti—dj innlike giants out of Martian legend. The Caravan Gate was to the north of the Old City. The twistings and turnings of the winding alleys had confused him, and he could not say for certain how much of the city they must traverse to reach the caravanserai.

"But it will be no longer safe for us," the girl added in her sing-song voice, cool and sad as faint chimes heard at twilight.

"Why so?"

She shrugged again.

"Now that the
hualatha
have found us," she mur-inurred, "there is no safe refuge for such as we in all of Yeolarn."

By
hualatha,
she meant "holy ones," or priests. A cold wind was blowing up Ryker's spine, and, again, he wished he had never obeyed that whim of curiosity that had led him to follow the girl and her companions out into the night.

"Was it the
hualatha
who set the mob on you?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. "Did you not notice the
hua
among the fallen?"

Ryker thought back to the litter of the dead they had left in the little square behind this house. He had noticed that one of the men he had gunned down wore black, cowled robes. Now that he thought about it, the corpse had been of a man with a shaven pate, like a priest. He almost remembered the silver sigils clipped to the man's earlobes in the priestly manner.

It was bad, and it's getting even worse,
he thought to himself bitterly. Bad enough to be caught following a native woman through the streets at night—for that, the People had been known merely to castrate
F'yagha.
And to come between a native mob and its prey—to beam a dozen down—that was death. And not a swift or easy death, either. But to kill a priest . . .

Ryker shuddered. The penalty for that he did not even know. Nor did he want to.

But he had gained a pieCe of information. It was the priests who had driven the mob against these three. They must be heretics of some kind, defilers of shrines, perhaps tomb robbers. And if the
hualatha
knew where they were,

the girl was right. There was no hiding place anywhere in the Old City that was safe for them. And no place for Ryker to hide either. For there could not be so many Outworlders in Yeolarn that Ryker's identity would not swiftly be learned by those who had hunted the girl.

The only safety lay in flight. But flight to where? And how?

The New City across the canal might afford a safe enough haven for the dancing girl and her party, but not for Ryker. They had hounded him out of the New City, and by this time the way back was surely closed to him. His only chance of seeing the sun rise tomorrow lay in getting out of Yeolarn entirely. And, perhaps, their only chance as well. For native priests can come and go in the New City pretty much as they please.

Ryker began to sweat again. He could feel the perspiration trickle down his ribs under his thermals. He leaned against the stone wall and tried desperately to think. The smooth stone was cold and slick against his brow.

"Do you have any idea just where we are now?" he asked.

The girl put her hand to her mouth tentatively. She tilted her head on one side as if listening to some faint sound to which his ears were deaf.

"Near the Processional Way, I think," she said thoughtfully. "It should be through the next alley. We are a square or two from the Bazaar—the Lesser, not the Great. That means the quickest way out of the city would be the Gate of the Dragons—"

Ryker felt his heart quicken. The Gate of the Dragons! Very near that gate was the house of Yammak, a dealer in riding beasts he knew from the old days. And Yammak owed him a favor or two. If they could reach the house of