He pointed to the dagger.
The earth jolted, this time moving the table the weapon he’d spoken of lay upon. Tilting at the cross-guard, the dagger rocked, the polished surfaces of its feather-hammered blade casting flickering shadows and reflections upon the ceiling.
Fireclaw seized the older man by the throat.
“’Twas you arranged for Ayesha to be ‘spoiled’ that the Caliph’s ‘gift’ would be valueless!”
Even before Mochamet al Rotshild nodded confirmation, Fireclaw burned to slay the sea-trader. Yet he kept his peace for different reasons than he had upon the night when she was raped. In an instant he realized Mochamet al Rotshild’s duties, as the Commodore had just explained them, might coincide with his own wishes.
“I should cut you in half, old man, this moment. Give me a reason why I should not!”
Mochamet al Rotshild rubbed his bearded chin.
“I could give you many a reason why you should. In some respects, I might be grateful for the release.”
He let his hand drop.
“But, since I suspect you’ll need my assistance, ’twouldn’t be practical at this particular moment. Nor would it give me much of an opportunity to offer proper restitution—which, I assure you, my friend, is just this moment in the offing.”
He pointed through the open door to the next room. For the first time, Fireclaw observed not just one gray, red-tailed, scaly-footed parrot, Po, perched upon the windowsill where his Saracen master had fashioned a place for him, but two.
“They’re not the strongest of fliers,” Mochamet al Rotshild nodded, “flap-hopping, in preference, from bush to tree to house to bush. But they remember instructions, seek home not just upon some random hatching location but upon a mate, and can better defend themselves from predators than pigeons.”
Po—or perhaps it was the other parrot—began making blatant courting overtures. Mochamet al Rotshild, a little embarrassed color in his face, rose to shut the door upon them.
He cleared his throat.
“I’ve this day discovered rescue’s at hand, some weeks earlier than I’d expected. I shall atone for what I’ve done by giving the Princess back her life.”
He stopped, awaiting answer.
Receiving none, he went on.
“And both of you more freedom than you’ve e’er now enjoyed. Toward that end I shall risk—and likely lose—my own. ’Twill be up to you, afterward, whether there’s any moral debt remaining which your greatsword might collect from me.
Fireclaw once again forced back his rising rage, thinking hard.
If the manner of Ayesha’s “marriage” should displease her father the Caliph, destroying any hope of an alliance, her failure to appear in the appointed place at the time of sacrifice should also displease the Sun, with the same results.
“You shall yet live a while longer,” he told the man, relaxing his grip. As he stepped away, he saw a grin upon the Saracen’s face, looked down—in his fist Mochamet al Rotshild held a tiny pistol which had been pointed at the Helvetian’s groin.
“Boy sopranos are made, not born, son.” The older man chuckled. “Had either of us squeezed a little harder, you upon my throat, I upon the trigger, both of us would now be dead.”
The Helvetian blinked. “Where—we were all searched.”
“Concealed in the iron heel of a boot,” the older man explained, “somehow it evaded notice.”
Fireclaw brushed the matter aside.
“I can tell you something which might prove useful to a spy,” he informed the elderly Saracen. “The destruction of the fleet which you witnessed as a boy has something, I believe, to do with the great transparent sacrificial pyramid yonder.”
Mochamet al Rotshild nodded.
“You’re telling me naught I’ve not ferreted out for myself. Now I’ll tell you something. There’s a Mughal fleet waiting to pick us up once it’s assured ’tis safe to approach the harbor. I believe what we saw this morning was the Crystal Empire defending itself against that fleet’s most advanced elements.”
He thrust out a hand, palm upward.
“Fireclaw, I owed no more, at my unwelcome birth, to the Saracen Empire where it by chance occurred than you to the Helvetian cult which ruined your boyhood. I’m no traitor, but a patriot—by choice—to a land you don’t know as yet.”
He folded his arms across his chest, though in truth they rested more upon his ample stomach.
“And whye’er not? What manner of loyalty do I owe the nameless, faceless Saracen father who took my mother, then left her behind? Or the family which afterward cast her out upon the street to starve—or eke her living out in the manner they’d already accused her of? Or the Caliph who’d prostitute his own beautiful, innocent daughter in a wise not too dissimilar, in the name of politics?”
He reached out to seize Fireclaw’s arm.
“What do I owe any of them but my hatred? Why shouldn’t I serve their enemies—to my own handsome profit—and thus destroy them? If you’ll help me to discover the pyramid’s secret, we can work together to rescue the Princess.”
Fireclaw considered.
“Upon a single condition, old man, speaking of the Cult—that we find Oln Woeck, if yet he lives, where’er he may be within this building, and bring him along with us.”
The old man laughed.
“Such fierce—and uncharacteristic—fondness you display toward your venerable mentor.”
Mochamet al Rotshild’s eyes twinkled. As from the first moment he’d met him, Fireclaw found he was having great difficulty hating this man as he should.
Together, they went to arouse David Shulieman. If such proved possible. The wounded rabbi, they knew, had been severely weakened by the long walk he’d insisted upon, demonstrating a pride Fireclaw well understood.
When the two men reached his bedside, they found the Jewish scholar at peace, his bespectacled features relaxed into a look of calm contentment. His eyes were closed. Across his chest he held a small, yellowed photograph of the Princess Ayesha.
He no longer breathed.
2
If there can be a good ending to life, the Helvetian thought, David Shulieman had had it. He had died with as much peace and dignity as the act affords. Without a spoken word of comment, Fireclaw strode from the room to don the armor of the Sun Incarnate’s bodyguard.
“This should save a deal of embarrassing questions. My single regret’s that our otherwise thoughtful host the Sun Incarnate’s once again provided me an empty gun.”
He looked at Mochamet al Rotshild, who’d followed him. The man seemed to have aged ten years—again—though Fireclaw suspected this time no ruse was involved in the appearance.
“Snap out of it, old man! We can’t help the rabbi now, but we can save the one thing he loved above aught else. Come, now—you’re a sneaky and resourceful bastard, d’you happen to have you any loaded magazines secreted about your person?”
The Saracen lifted his shoulders in a shrug and spread his arms.
“Naught but charges for my little pistol. Best take the damned weapon anyway, wear the helmet as well. ’Twill protect you and complete your disguise.”
Fireclaw nodded.
“You’re also a bastard of the observant kind, with a talent for languages. How d’you say ‘Where’s the Sun? It’s an emergency!’ in Bodyguard-speech?”
With a puckered frown of frustration, the Saracen sea-captain admitted that he was not, perhaps, quite as observant a bastard as Fireclaw might have wished.
“What in Goddess’ name are you good for, then?” Fireclaw asked, a grin belying the harshness of his words. “Ne’er mind, I shall find Ayesha myself. Since the rabbi no longer needs yon wheeled chair they brought back for him, I’ll borrow it. You take Ursi with you, go now. Prepare our way out of this accursed place—provided you’re feeling up to it—you’ll find the bloated thing moored upon the roof!”
He wrapped the greatsword Murderer in a blanket, laid it slantwise in the cha
ir. Ignoring certain grumbled objections from his companion—most to the effect that he didn’t know how to fly the airship—he slung the automatic weapon over his chest, squeezed his head into the birdlike helmet, poked his head into the corridor.
Observers there were aplenty along its length, none of whom paid him the slightest attention.
Taking a breath, he joined them, pushing the chair, glad he’d thought of this deception as a way to keep his greatsword, which he’d not leave behind, from giving away the game. Besides, the chair might otherwise prove to be useful. It would give him an appearance of businesslike purpose. Several turns later in the complicated building, he’d lost the way, but this likelihood had never worried him. He was looking for another uniform like the one he wore.
He found it, at long last, standing beside an elevator, waiting in impatience for a slow-moving car to make its appearance. The man had his helmet nestled in the crook of his left arm, his weapon slung across the small of his back.
With a gauntleted finger, Fireclaw tapped him upon the shoulder, crooked the same finger, turned, striding to a nearby niche along the wall where he’d left the chair. He turned, but not before he arrived at the place he’d chosen. With a look which was a mixture of annoyance and puzzlement, the man had followed.
“Mann—who are you? Maadaa thureet?”
Fireclaw blinked. The words had been garbled but understandable, some dialect of the Saracen tongue.
“Where’s the Sun?” he asked, mismouthing his own words in what he hoped was a similar manner. “Upon the authority of Owald the Commander. There’s been a...a situation.”
He indicated the wheeled chair, as if it explained everything. The Bodyguardsman drew an instrument from his belt, consulted it, pointed a finger at the floor.
“Somewhere below.”
Fireclaw nodded, flipped a thumb, gave the man a gentle shove, pushed the chair toward the elevator. The Body-guardsman sighed, nodded, plodded along with the warrior.
The car descended almost as far as it had before their submarine voyage to the Spire of Dreamers. When its steel doors had once more hissed aside, Fireclaw and his accidental companion marched toward another door, halting there.
The Bodyguardsman raised a fist to knock upon it.
Fireclaw seized that fist, twisted it till the Bodyguardsman turned about, slapped him once across the forehead with the steel rim of his prosthetic.
As the man slumped into the chair Fireclaw shoved behind him, unconscious, likely dying, the Helvetian forced the helmet over his head, removed the magazine from his Bodyguard-issue weapon, seized the bag of spares, rid himself of the empty magazine in his own weapon, slapped a fresh one home, and worked the operating handle.
He rolled the body aside, the bundled greatsword lying across the chair-arms, arranging things to appear that the bodyguard upon watch at the door was dozing—it occurred to him to wonder why someone was not already guarding the door.
He arranged his own uniform and accoutrements.
Only then did he raise his own hand to knock upon the door.
It slid aside before he touched it.
Fireclaw stumbled through.
The sight which he beheld there stunned him.
He looked down upon a supine, undraped female figure, her head toward him, her feet away. The rest of the room invisible to his shocked gaze, he strode closer. Upon a narrow table in the middle of the room lay the unquestionably dead form of an olive-skinned girl, not yet twenty, her smooth arms spread a bit over the edges of the table, her hands curled as if in sleep, the palms upward in a gesture betokening surrender.
A tumble of shining, raven-colored hair cascaded toward him. It lay about her shoulders as well, obscuring her face. Yet he could see that large, lash-fringed eyes, set in a soft, high-cheekboned face, were dark brown, open wide, unaware.
Fireclaw knew a moment of the blackest horror he’d ever felt.
He whispered a name.
“Ayesha...”
SURA THE SEVENTH: 1420 A.H.—
The Hollow-Handled Knife
**
“You were upon the brink of a pit of Fire, and He delivered you from it; even so God makes clear to you his signs; so haply you will be guided.”—The Holy Koran, Sura III, The House of Imran
XLVI: The Bride of God
“And...Moses said to his people, ‘My people, you have done wrong against yourselves by taking the Calf.’”—The Koran, Sura II
In a brocaded robe, Oln Woeck looked up at him without a word, madness mingling with ecstasy deep within his glittering eyes. Beside him, in a rattan chair like the one the old Helvetian occupied, reposed the bronzed, irresistible figure of Zhu Yuan-Coyotl, ruler of the Han-Meshika, the Sun Incarnate.
Both men had blood upon their lips, the elder of the pair wiping it from his chin as Fireclaw approached.
The Bodyguard Fireclaw had wondered about was here as well, sitting upon a stool beside the door.
The slender soft-skinned torso of the helpless maiden had been with deftness opened hip to breast—perhaps with one of those razor-edged push-daggers the Sun Incarnate always carried with him—her liver removed and placed within a bed of crisp green leaves upon a golden platter which Oln Woeck and the Sun shared between them, partaking of the warm, blood-slippery, sweet-smelling meat.
Zhu Yuan-Coyotl chuckled, brushing hair away from the dead girl’s face with blood-lacquered fingers.
“You’re mistaken, impetuous friend. All of the earth’s people serve Us in their own wise, ’tis true. This is but a little peasant-girl, of small use to Us save as you see her here, the centerpiece of an initiation rite—our mutual friend here has determined, with commendable pragmatism, to transfer his religious faith to the Sun Incarnate. Your Saracen Princess will serve Us in quite another capacity.”
Something inside the paralyzed warrior spoke for him. “Where is she?”
“At this moment, We expect she’s being prepared to join the Sun in wedlock.”
He pushed back a voluminous sleeve, consulting a timepiece strapped to his wrist.
“She’s already at the place appointed.”
“And you?” demanded Fireclaw beginning to recover his wits, “Isn’t the bridegroom going to be late?”
“We shan’t attend, at least not in this fleshly aspect, for ’tis neither to the body nor to the mind of Zhu Yuan-Coyotl that the Saracen Princess will be joined, but—”
Fireclaw stepped forward, seizing the Sun Incarnate by the front of his embroidered robe, dragging him to his feet. Hideous images washed through his mind, mingled with relief that it was not Ayesha here upon the table.
The young man didn’t resist him.
“At the pyramid?”
“At the pyramid.”
A disturbance near the door behind him distracted Fireclaw’s attention. He spun, pulling the Sun with him that the younger man’s body might interpose itself between the warrior and the Body guardsman, flung Zhu Yuan-Coyotl toward him. The Sun shouted, stumbled, a slipper caught in the hem of his robe. He fell just as the Helvetian raised his weapon. The Bodyguardsman raised his own, slapping in desperation at the operating handle, fumbling with the safety lever.
The room filled with the yammering of gunfire, the smoke of “smokeless powder” obscuring vision. Empty cases fountained from the weapons of both men. When it had ceased, the Bodyguardsman lay dead atop the struggling form of his ruler.
Fireclaw was untouched.
Another noise.
Fireclaw whirled toward a shadow creeping up on him, one of the chairs held clublike overhead, and lay Oln Woeck out with a single negligent swing of his prosthetic. Before the man had fallen, he leapt forward, pressing the muzzle of his weapon against Zhu Yuan-Coyotl’s cheek.
“Lift those knives out with both little fingers—if I see the rest of your hands uncurl, boy, I’ll kill you with some satisfaction here and now—toss them away!”
The Sun complied.
Finding something to do with
Oln Woeck was not difficult. Bundled up in the blanket with Murderer, the unconscious former leader of the Cult of Jesus soon occupied the rabbi’s chair.
Persuading Zhu Yuan-Coyotl to come along in peace was another matter. Fireclaw settled this, giving him a job pushing the chair. He first supervised the young man as, under the warrior’s instruction, he pulled copper-clad bullets from several aluminum cartridges, filled the barrel of the dead Bodyguardsman’s weapon with powder—in front of a chambered bulletless round, and hammered one of the leftover bullets into the muzzle, converting the weapon into a bomb.
Strapped across the Sun’s chest—Zhu Yuan-Coyotl was by now wearing the uniform of his own Bodyguard—with a bit of the same ravelings of brocade attached to the trigger which Fireclaw had used to tie his hands to the handles of the chair, the converted weapon assured that the young man presented little problem.
2
The Sun’s personal airship, the same great craft with painted eyes which had brought them all here, had been left moored, unattended, upon the building’s roof. The bullet-pierced bodies of two mechanics now lay tucked behind a ladder where the gondola lay closest to the roof. In the control-cabin, Mochamet al Rotshild, strain showing upon his face, was overjoyed—no more than was the bear-dog, Ursi—to see the three men emerge from the elevator.
Still uncertain how they planned to steer the craft, the Saracen took charge of Fireclaw’s prisoners, at his suggestion trussing them with strips torn from their own clothing. As the Helvetian cast them off, running from tie-down to tie-down at the roof’s edge, slashing restraining hawsers with his greatsword, however, a familiar copper-kilted figure appeared at the elevator, gun in hand.
Ursi snarled, sniffed the air, whine-whistling in confusion. Fireclaw turned from cutting the next-to-last rope. The airship had begun to bob in the continuous gusty breeze off the bay. The figure with the weapon was his own son.
“Kill them! Kill them all!”
The voice was that of the Sun, shouting from the open doorway of the gondola. Owald Sedrichsohn, Commander of the Bodyguard, slapped back the operating handle. He let the bolt slam home upon a cartridge. He raised the sight to eye level.