Burton immediately pressed his advantage, striking at his opponent's right side—a blow that was, again, turned aside with difficulty.
Darwaas teetered off balance, stumbled, and gasped, “By Allah! Thou art considerably more than I expected!”
“A man should not be precipitous in his choice of enemy,” Burton advised. “And I am puzzled that thou hath chosen me. Wert thou paid to do so?”
“Aye, 'tis the case.”
“When I told thee of the man of brass, thou didst exclaim, ‘A whole man in a whole mechanism this time!’ Perhaps, then, thou hast seen a man partially of metal? Mayhap it was his head that was half of brass, and this man was your paymaster?”
John Speke.
“I do not deny it. Enough talk. Let us fight.”
Burton transferred his scimitar to his left hand. “Keep thy body loose, Jemadar, and control thy blade with the wrist, not with the entire arm. Now, strike at me.”
“Art thou so confident?”
“Strike!”
The Jemadar gave a grimace. The duel wasn't going at all the way he'd have liked. He spat onto the sand and crouched a little, his sword arm held out. The two men moved around one another, their dark eyes locked.
With such speed that the movement was almost a blur, Darwaas launched himself at Burton and sliced sideways. His blade hit his adversary just below chest level, but Burton was braced against it, with his own weapon shielding him closely, held point downward, tight against his body from shoulder to mid-thigh. He immediately swept it out, up, and around, hooking it beneath the bandit's scimitar. He stepped in with knees bent and pushed upward. Darwaas's sword was instantly levered right out of his hand.
The gathered Baloch men cried out in amazement as their leader's weapon went spinning away, landing at the edge of the arena.
Darwaas stood stunned.
“The sword should be held against the body in defence,” Burton stated, “else, as thou saw, in being knocked backward, it can do as much damage as the attacking blade. Also, this means that, for the defender, the muscles of the shoulders, arms, and wrists are relaxed—are not employed in resisting the offensive—and are thus free to fully power the counterattack.”
Darwaas's face blackened. “Dost thou mean to humiliate me, dog?”
Burton shook his head. “I did not seek to fight thee, Jemadar. I desire only to—”
“Richard!” Swinburne shrieked.
Something impacted against the back of Burton's head. The world reeled around him and vanished.
A conflagration raged in his skull, needled his eyelids, clawed at his skin. He tried to move and found that he couldn't. Thirst consumed him.
He forced his eyes open and squinted up at the pitiless sun. Turning his head, he saw that he was on his back, with limbs spread out, his wrists and ankles bound with cord to wooden stakes driven deeply into the ground.
Dunes rose to either side.
He opened his mouth to shout for help but only a rattle emerged.
Grains of sand, riding a hot, slow breeze, blew against the side of his face.
He experienced a strange sense of déjà vu.
Is this a dream?
Jemadar Darwaas entered his field of vision.
“Art thou comfortable?” he asked. “Thy head aches, I fancy? My moollah—lieutenant—struck thee with a knob stick.” The bandit chuckled. “By Allah, he knows how I hate to be bested! Thou art a fine swordsman, Abdullah! Mayhap the tales told of thy race are true, for it is said that the British are undefeated in battle. Praise be to Allah that the lands of my people have no resources that thy people covet!” Darwaas held his arms out wide as if to embrace the entire desert. He grinned wickedly. “Let us see,” he said, “how that land now judges thee, Britisher.”
He turned away and climbed to the top of a dune, looked back once, spat, then descended the other side of the mound and passed out of sight.
Burton felt his flesh cracking.
It was mid-afternoon and the heat wouldn't abate for at least another three hours. If he survived it, he'd then have to endure the severe chill of night.
He moved his tongue in his mouth. It felt like a stone.
There was a spell of nothingness.
He sucked in a burning breath and realised that he'd been unconscious.
Think. Think, and hang on to the thoughts. John Speke and Count Zeppelin obviously stopped here and warned the bandits to look out for a crashed rotorship and to kill any survivors. How far ahead are they? Already at Aden, perhaps?
Think, and keep thinking!
Awareness slipped to one side and skidded into oblivion.
Awake.
Where?
He tried to form words, to call for help, but the slightest movement of his mouth increased the pain a thousandfold. The agony flared; an unbearable brilliance.
He sank into the centre of an inferno.
Flames.
Flames in a stone bowl hanging by chains from a ceiling so high that it is lost in shadows. Columns. A monolithic temple. It is on a hill in the centre of Kantapuranam, the capital city of Kumari Kandam, the land of the reptilian Nāga.
A man steps forward.
He is Brahmin Kaundinya, and he is wedded to the monarch's daughter, their union a symbolic pact to mark the end of conflict between the lizard race and humans. He has lived a year among them, and is now standing before K'k'thyima, the high priest.
Thin blue smoke from burning incense curls around the human's legs. Onlookers watch attentively. There are at least a thousand of them gathered in the temple, and many millions more in attendance mentally but not physically.
The man bows his respect to the priest.
“Not to me, soft skin,” K'k'thyima hisses. “To the Joined.” With a three-fingered clawed hand, he gestures to his right.
Kaundinya turns to a huge black diamond, which rests on a plinth of gold.
One of the three Eyes of Nāga.
Kaundinya bows again.
K'k'thyima says: “Thy wife may step to thy side.”
The man turns around to look at his mate. “Come, and speak for me, that all may know my character,” he says, following the ritual.
She moves to him. Like all of her race, she is about half his height; her skin segmented into a mosaic of leathery black, yellow, and green; her limbs short and thick; her head confusing to the human, for sometimes it seems to be one of seven heads, other times one of five, and occasionally the sole one. She is wearing extravagant jewellery and a chain-mail tunic.
“Husband,” she says, “I am willing to speak.”
The high priest, who also appears to have multiple heads, orders a human prisoner to be brought forward. As the man is escorted to the plinth, Kaundinya is addressed.
“Thou came as an emissary, O Kaundinya. Thou came to broker peace between the race of soft skins and the race of Nāga. Thou hast lived among us as one of us, and thou hast been husband to Kuma K'sss'amaya.”
He turns to the female.
“Hast thou, my Kuma, been satisfied with the conduct of thy husband?”
“I have,” she answers. “With intervention from our wise ones, that which divides our species was bridged, and the human gave to me a child. He is an attentive and dutiful father. He has respected our ways. He has learned much and has not judged. He brings peace.”
The crowd emits an approving sibilance.
Kaundinya watches the high priest. A single head swims into focus. Its yellow eyes blink, their membranes sliding sideways: a sign of satisfaction. The head blurs. There are seven heads. There are five. There is one. There are seven.
“Pay honour to the Joined,” K'k'thyima orders.
A blade slices through the prisoner's neck and his blood spurts over the irregular facets of the giant gemstone. He convulses and dies and his corpse is dragged out of the chamber.
“A sacrifice is always necessary, O Kaundinya, but the essence of he who gave his life will live on in the Eye.”
The priest performs a number of ritualistic gestures, almost a dance, and intones: “The multitude are one. Individual thoughts are one thought. Separate intentions are one intention. The words of one are the words of all. The days that have been and the days that will come are eternally now.”
He steps to the stone, leans over it, and, with one of his long forked tongues licks blood from its surface. He then dips the same tongue into a bowl containing black diamond dust.
With the organ extended, he returns to Kaundinya—who bows down—and runs it delicately over the human's shaven scalp, leaving a swirling, glittering hieroglyph.
K'k'thyima steps back. Kaundinya straightens.
The High Priest says: “Thou art invited into the Great Fusion, O Emissary. Dost thou accept the Joining?”
“I accept.”
The crowd emits a throbbing susurration, a repetitive refrain. All the gathered priests extend and quiver their multiple neck crests, a dazzling display of vibrating colour.
From somewhere, a throbbing rhythm pulses and a melody of heart-wrenching beauty swells through the temple. Layer after layer is added to it. Its refrains are bafflingly complex, and they are constructed from tones that no human instrument has ever produced; tones that no human being can even properly comprehend.
Kaundinya tries to meet K'k'thyima's eyes but is unable to focus on any single head. He feels the music and the lizard's mesmeric power overwhelming all but one tiny and very well-concealed part of his consciousness, and he allows it.
He looks at the black diamond. His eyes fixate upon it. He feels himself pulled into its depths, the essence of his individuality breaking apart, distributing itself among the planes and lines and points and angles of the great stone.
Kaundinya remains passive as thousands upon thousands of other minds touch his. He loses his sense of independence and becomes enmeshed, soaking into a vast multiple consciousness.
He wills his identity farther and farther into the diamond. He fills it; exists in every part of it; becomes an ingredient in its very existence.
He is one with the Nāga.
He exists with them in the Eternal Now.
All but one tiny part of him.
Kaundinya is no ordinary man. Through rigorous education, meditation, and ritual, he has attained the absolute pinnacle of intellectual order and emotional discipline. Here, at the dawn of human history, his self-control is unmatched; and it will remain so until the end of that history.
The Nāga have been surreptitiously probing his mind from the moment he started to live among them. They have found only good intentions, only a desire for peace between the human race and their own.
Kaundinya's true purpose has never been exposed.
Now, the moment has arrived.
He flexes the one small knot of awareness that has not melted into the Joined and turns it inward, probing deep into the physical matter of his own brain.
He locates a major blood vessel and he wrenches at it.
A massive haemorrhage kills him in an instant, and at the moment his consciousness is destroyed, it sends an inexorable shockwave through the structure of the diamond.
The stone fractures and explodes into seven fragments.
The Joined are ripped apart.
Millions of Nāga drop dead.
The retorts of the shattering gem echo through the temple like rifle fire. The pieces fall from the plinth to the floor, their facets glinting like stars.
Rifle fire and stars.
Rifle fire. Stars.
Rifle fire. Stars.
Sir Richard Francis Burton opened his eyes.
It was night.
Stars filled the sky.
Rifle fire echoed across the desert.
A man screamed.
A camel brayed.
Voices argued in one of the languages of the Arabian Peninsula.
His eyelids scraped shut, time overbalanced and dropped away, and he opened them again and saw the dawn.
A figure climbed into view and stood looking down at him. A breeze tugged at her robes—for it was undoubtedly a woman, Burton could tell that from the curve of her hip, against which she rested the butt of her rifle.
“No,” she said, in English. “It cannot possibly be you.”
Her voice was deep and warm but filled with shock.
He tried to speak but his tongue wouldn't move. His skin was afire, yet the core of him, having suffered the night, was as cold as ice. He could feel nothing but pain.
The woman slipped and slithered down the sand then strode to his side and knelt, laying her weapon to one side. Her face was concealed by a keffiyeh and remained in shadow—silhouetted against the deep-orange sky. She unhooked a flask from her belt, unscrewed its top, and dribbled water onto his lips. It trickled into his mouth, through his teeth, over his tongue, and was so good that he passed out from the sheer relief of it.
When awareness returned, he was inside a tent and sunlight was beating against its roof. Sister Raghavendra smiled down at him.
“Lie still, Sir Richard,” she said. “I have to apply more ointment to your skin.”
“Give him warm water mixed with a spoonful of honey, please, Sadhvi.”
The voice was the same melodious one he'd heard before. Impossibly familiar.
He tried to look but a stab of pain prevented him from turning his head.
Sister Raghavendra drizzled sweet liquid into his mouth.
“We were rescued,” she said.
Consciousness escaped him yet again, only to be summoned back by the tinkle of camel bells and the flapping of the tent's canvas as it was battered by the simoon—the strong hot desert wind.
He'd been propped up into a semi-reclining position, with his back and head supported by soft pillows. Sadhvi Raghavendra was sitting to his left, Algernon Swinburne to his right. The owner of the deep female voice was standing at his feet, with her face still concealed by her Arabian headdress.
She was a tall woman, slender but curvaceous, and she radiated confidence and power. Her large clear eyes, above the scarf, were of a scintillating blue.
She reached up, pulled the material aside, smiled prettily, and said, “Are you compos mentis? You've been ranting about reptiles and temples and diamonds.”
He tested his voice. “I think—” and found that it worked, albeit harshly. “I think my mind is in better order, though my body is burned to a crisp. Hello, Isabel.”
“Hello, Dick.”
Isabel Arundell, who'd once been his fiancée, was wearing a long white cotton shirt, white pantaloons, and an abba—a short-sleeved cloak of dark green woven from the finest of wools. A sword, a dagger, and a flintlock pistol were held in place by a multicoloured sash circling her slender waist. She manoeuvred them out of the way as she lowered herself onto a cushion and sat with her legs tucked to one side.
Burton rasped, “I thought you were running around with Jane Digby in Damascus.”
Sadhvi handed him a canteen. He drank from it sparingly, knowing from experience that gulps would cause excruciating stomach cramps.
“We parted ways,” Isabel replied. “I found her morals to be wanting.”
“My hat, Richard!” Swinburne piped up. “We've experienced a miraculous intervention! Miss Arundell is leading a merry band of Amazonian warriors. They came galloping to our rescue on the most beautiful horses you've ever seen and gave the Disciples of Ramman a proper thrashing!”
Burton looked from his assistant back to Isabel, a question in his eyes.
She smiled again and said, “I seem to have acquired the habit of collecting about me women who've suffered at the hands of their husbands. When I opened a refuge in Damascus, there were objections from those same men. The continued existence of the place soon became untenable, so my companions and I left the city to live as Bedouins. We travelled south, through Syria, collecting more women on the way, until we arrived in Arabia, where we've survived by raiding the bandits who plunder the caravans.”
“Extraordinary!” Burton wheezed. “How many of you are there?”
“A little over two hundred.”
“Great heavens!”
“We saw a plume of steam, went to investigate, and discovered your downed ship. It was abandoned and a lot of supplies had been left behind. Don't worry—we have them with us. Then we followed your trail and happened upon the brigands.”
“The women are armed to the teeth!” Swinburne enthused. “And they revere Miss Arundell as if she were the goddess herself! Guess what they call her!”
“Please, Algernon!” Isabel protested.
“What?” Burton asked.
“Al-Manat!”
Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the Self, forget the “I,”
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:
[…]
How Thought is imp' otent to divine the secret which the gods defend,
The Why of birth and life and death, that Isis-veil no hand may rend.
Eternal Morrows make our Day; our Is is aye to be till when
Night closes in; 'tis all a dream, and yet we die, – and then and THEN?
And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.
[…]
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?
–SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON,
THE KASÎDAH OF HJÎ ABDÛ EL YEZDÎ
“It only requires a scientist to be told what variety of thing to look for, and where best to look, and it is inevitable that the thing will be found. So it was in the earliest days of Eugenics. The hints had been of the vaguest. They were passed from a madman to a drunkard, and from the drunkard to an engineer, and from the engineer to a naturalist, and from the naturalist to Mr. Francis Galton. Whether they seeded themselves in Mr. Galton's brain in anything resembling their original form seems doubtful—we all know how information is corrupted by travel—and yet, in that magnificent, terrifying mind of his, they blossomed, and he dazzled us all with his brilliance. Mr. Charles Darwin, in particular, was enthused to the point where, I regret to say, moral and ethical boundaries ceased to exist for him. To some extent, this happened to all of us in that little band of scientists. Unquestionably, I am now ashamed of certain of my actions whilst under the influence of that great wave of fervour and creativity that overtook us. And I feel somewhat responsible, too, for the dark turn Eugenics very quickly took after it was established as a unique scientific discipline, for it was I who, under Mr. Galton's direction, conjoined his and Mr. Darwin's brains, using techniques that I have since discovered are many, many decades ahead of their proper time. The thing that Darwin/Galton became, as a consequence of that operation, I now regard as a monstrosity, but while it existed I was in its thrall, and much against my better judgement, I was a principal in the horrible path that Eugenics trod. Oh that I could travel back and change everything! The death of Darwin/Galton liberated me and restored my proper senses, but with them I now suffer to witness the villainies of Eugenics; I see the terrifying speed at which its ghastly techniques develop; I see how it has moved so far beyond the original concept of guided evolution that it now perverts life dreadfully. Perhaps it is true that, as many claim, Mr. Darwin killed God. The existence of Eugenics rather suggests to me, I fear, that he did not, at the same time, succeed in destroying the devil.”