“Keep quiet, Hamun. Say nothing. We are late.”
We stood before a tall brown curtain with silver tassels. Cautiously, Nath parted the drapes and peered in. Then he beckoned and we slipped through.
The massive cavern must have been natural at first, subsequently hacked out to wider dimensions. Water trickled darkly down one corner, for we were sufficiently near the Black River. The roof writhed in shadows cast by smoking torches and cressets. The foul stink of incense hung in the air. At least a hundred people knelt on the stone floor, all intoning chants, genuflecting, dropping into the full incline, and then the crouch, all clamped in the grip of a controlled yet hysterical religious fervor of adoration.
High above the altar a monstrous silver image of a leem gleamed starkly bright.
The thing must have been at least twenty feet in length, from the tip of the tail that in life lashed with such frenzy, to the snout of the wicked head with the cruel gaping fangs. Leems are feral beasts. The eight-legged leem is furred, feline, and vicious, with a wedge-shaped head, and fangs that can strike through solid lenk. Its taloned paws can smash a man’s head in like a rotten fruit. Weasel-shaped but the size of a full-grown leopard, a leem is a wild and terrifying beast with which I have had somewhat to do in my own wild life upon Kregen, as you know, and was to have more in the future, as you shall hear.
Priests, with gold added to the brown and silver of their robes, stood upon the dais in varying positions of power and authority. To one side a black basalt slab indicated that some of the stories about Lem must be true. A tall iron cage on the other side gaped open, and a fire flamed and fluttered at its base. Shadows writhed like bats in the vast chamber. The stomach-churning stink of leem hung in the air, barely concealed by the pervasive sickly smell of incense.
“Down on your knees, Hamun, for the love of Lem!”
Now.
Had I still been that same Dray Prescot who had faced the Princess Natema Cydones of Esztercari on the flowered roof garden of the opal palace in Zenicce, when all manner of bribes and insults had been heaped on me, when my Delia had faced a horrible death, when— Well, it is an old story, and still rouses my blood when I think of it.
These days the Princess Natema was happily married to my good friend Prince Varden Wanek of the House of Eward, and they had children. And I, the Lord of Strombor, had married my Delia and we had our two adorable twins. But, scatheless, it seemed, I, at least, was still rushing headlong into dangers and adventures!
No longer was I that same Dray Prescot. I had tried to conquer the passionate nature that burst all bonds at first headstrong rush. I attempted to think before I burst into action. That old Dray Prescot would never have bowed the knee to some pagan, blasphemous silver idol in its samphron-oil-lamp radiance. On this occasion, though, I conquered my self. I knelt. As I speak to you on this tape recorder in this South American hotel, I recall even as late as last season I had occasion to rush blindly into just such a foolish, headstrong parcel of trouble as I used to in my younger days. And, in between, during all my days on Kregen, I have always had to face the fact that I will sometimes flail out and bash a few skulls before I stop to think on . . .
Nath Tolfeyr let out a sigh of relief as he dropped to his knees next to me.
The atmosphere of cloying horror grew. The chants were in a tongue that had been deliberately fabricated, a doggerel of dialects and neologisms. I could understand it, through the agency of that genetic language pill given me by Maspero. What was being said sickened me. We had, as Nath said, come in late.
What was left of the girl child was being offered up to the silver image. The man with the silver leem-mask over his face held the pitiful torso up, the blood dripping down, making the sacrifice directly to the god. The god! The diseased vomiting of a sick mind, more like . . .
Had we arrived earlier, before the child had been sacrificed, I know I would never have, could never have, even though it resulted in my death, meekly plumped down on my knees.
So the ghastly business went on, the mumbo-jumbo, and the sexual athletics which followed and closed the religious service. I felt my hand on my thraxter. Maybe it was a duty laid on me by the Star Lords to investigate Lem the Silver Leem. They had not called me to Kregen, four hundred light-years through the void, for nothing.
Presently Nath Tolfeyr whispered: “Stay here on your knees.”
He slipped away. A few murs later he was back, and with him a man robed in the brown and silver, with a great silver mask of a leem over his face, carrying a whip and a chain, and with a rampant, obscene leem in a circle of silver swinging on his breast by a silver chain around his neck.
I am fond of silver. The metal was being blasphemed here.
At a beckoning we went with the priest into a side chamber where lamps threw light across an altar with a smaller silver-leem image, a black basalt table, very smooth, and an array of bronze knives with curious bone handles, of black and white.
At least ten men and women crowded in, wearing silver masks over their eyes and across their noses, like dominoes. But I recognized some of them, raffish hooligans and easy trollops from the sacred quarter. They all knew me.
The atmosphere grew more tense, and that abominable incense stink wafted in, carrying with it the stench of leem.
The room was hot and crowded.
“Take off his green jacket!” commanded the man in the silver leem-mask. “Take it from hence and burn it.”
About to protest I was severely nudged in the ribs by Nath, who had donned a silver mask. His was not as large or important as that worn by the priest, but it was more impressive than the dominoes worn by the witnesses.
Well, I will not go into details of what followed. It nauseated me at the time, and does to this day. I was stripped. Eventually we were all naked, but still those others wore their masks. A mask gives a person a great sense of power. It conceals truth and enables a man or woman to don a new personality.
The blasphemies against Opaz were uttered with a glee that told me these people were doomed and damned. I think, even then, had they known of Zair and included him in their obscene blasphemies, I would have broken all their necks. As it was, they could not, of course, touch the true core of belief.
Partway through the ceremonies a heated iron was brought. The brand was very tiny, shaped in the uncial for the Kregish letter L. This was branded on a personal part of my anatomy. I endured this. I knew that, thanks to my immersion in the Pool of Baptism of the River Zelph, all brands wear away from me in time. The pressure grew. Chants rose. Customs were followed that, I suppose, the painted cavemen had already discarded.
The sacrifice was a chicken, and, again, I felt a reprieve.
The blood was sprinkled upon me, in my hair, daubed on my face. Women rubbed the blood in. Well, I’ve waded through rivers of blood, as the cant saying has it. It meant nothing.
From a hyr-lif — and that was a blasphemy, also — the rules, the penalties, the obligations were read out. Once initiated, the converts were meant to be kept. There are silly secret societies like this on Earth, where a knife is brandished and threats are made to disembowel if the petty little secrets are revealed. But these fanatical followers of Lem the Silver Leem were not bluffing: they’d gleefully spill my tripes if I betrayed them; indeed the drawing out of guts was merely a small penalty among those recited to me with such lip-smacking appreciation.
Lem, the Silver Leem, they said, was real and awful and possessed of the greatest powers. Once under his protection the acolyte could look forward to great prosperity, massive good fortune, much money, and an orgy every full moon.
Given that they excluded the three smaller moons of Kregen, and the Twins naturally coincide, this meant a ripe old time would be had. I was not light-headed by this time, but I was genuinely feeling sick, and the stink of the incense got down into my stomach.
I cannot speak of the rest of it.
Eventually, now a full-fledged acolyte of Lem, I was taken away to another cavern, hollowed from the ground away from the Black River. Here everyone settled down to drinking and dancing and wenching. From this point on the religious aspects of the night’s doings grew less, and the affair turned into an orgy one might chance upon in a frenzied dopa den of the sleaziest portions of a city of Kregen.
They gave me a silver domino, and I wore this, out of shame.
For, Star Lords and their mysterious commands or not, this was not my idea of life. I had already disliked Lem, now I detested and despised the evil cult of Lem.
Who knew how many poor children they had bought or stolen away? A slave child would hardly be missed, and a missing child from the shanty clum towns outside the city walls would not raise a single voice in protest. Even a child taken from the guls’ quarters would soon be forgotten after a few of the routine inquiries made by the watch under the laws of Hamal.
Along with the silver mask I had donned a short tunic of brown, trimmed with imitation silver lace. I sat at a table with Nath Tolfeyr, and I drank a little wine. It was good stuff, too, thick and purple and potent, so that I mixed it well with water. When they began singing I found I could not join in, for the songs were obscene ditties about the exploits of Lem, but I saw Nath frown, and I essayed a few unmelodious warblings.
So there I was, apparently sitting at ease, with a pretty shishi at my side plying me with wine, drinking and singing, when I looked up and saw a blocky figure come striding up between the tables. He was dressed in brown and silver, and he wore a curved dagger suspended on silver chains at his waist. But despite the silver leem-mask over his face, I recognized him.
Nath said: “We have a new acolyte, Hyr-Majister. A worthy addition to our strength, a great convert.”
I wilted a little at the blasphemous use of the “Hyr-Majister” for this scoundrel.
Vad Garnath stood looking down at me through the slits in his silver mask and I saw his eyes glittering like a leem’s eyes through the leem eye-sockets.
“I see.” His hands played with the dagger. No one else, as far as I could see, wore arms.
“You have wrought well, Hyr-Jik.”
“I felt it would be to our mutual advantage.”
Vad Garnath turned, unable to bear the sight of me. Nath, I heard quite distinctly, chuckled.
“He called you Hyr-Jik,” I said.
“Yes. The higher ranks are graded in the normal way. But we have, also, darker significations.”
Nath Tolfeyr was an adept, then. “Jik” is the familiar abbreviation for “Jiktar,” as I have often used it, as “Del” is for “Deldar” and “Hik” for “Hikdar” and “Chuk” for “Chuktar.” Nath had given me now an insight into the hierarchy, and I detected the old familiar story of the intrigues and jealousies of politics. As the Hyr-Majister, Vad Garnath had been making himself unpopular. Now that I was a member of the secret cult he would be unable to attack me directly and have me killed; in this Nath Tolfeyr and those others who now considered themselves my friends had calculated aright. But I thought I might understand men like Vad Garnath a little better than they did. So it would behoove me to put my shoulder to the wheel and help along in the overthrow and ruin of Garnath.
Then I checked.
Cayferm!
I had to put all this foolishness behind me. Tomorrow I would seek out Ornol, the gul, and bribe him. I would choke the information out of him this time, instead of allowing him to weasel out of it.
“When does this finish, Nath — I mean, Hyr-Jik?”
“When the last one falls asleep. But you may leave if that is your wish.”
“It is.”
He rose. That must have been a signal, for others rose, also, and so it was as a body that we went to the robing rooms to don our everyday garments. My green jacket was gone.
“Green is a color not allowed here, acolyte,” said Nath. “And the name of the Holder of the Green is never mentioned here.” I knew he meant Havil. They never mentioned the name of the state religion’s god, but they reviled the name of Opaz. Now that was interesting . . . it showed where their true fear lay.
Most of the revelers would remain immersed in the debauchery until the break of day. The little party now leaving would slip out of the hidden stairway two by two. Most would have waiting link slaves and preysany litters standing securely well away from this plot of wasteland. As we went up to put our silver dominoes into their appointed stations I saw the man in the mask who had conducted my induction ceremony remove his mask. Lo! It was Strom Dolan.
I had remarked previously that I considered Strom Dolan to be a fussy Bladesman, with exaggerated ideas of his own importance. Now I began to see why he entertained those ideas.
He took my arm as we went up the stairs.
“You have been saved, Hamun, out of our friendship for you and for the Trylon Rees. Sadly, he refuses to join us. And, you, too, blasphemed the all-glorious Lem when you challenged Vad Garnath.” He waggled his finger. “You must put all that aside, now that you are an acolyte and have seen the true way.”
Nath coughed and, abruptly, I understood. Nath Tolfeyr had told Strom Dolan that I wished to be converted and to adore Lem. He had saved me. Why?
“I shall remember, Strom Dolan.”
He jumped a little at my use of his real name, for he was a Hyr-Prince Chuk in the Lem hierarchy. But we were out of the tunnel now, under the stars and the moons.
We shook hands, but not in the Hamalese way. We said good night; we did not say Remberee. We shook hands and we used words that were sacred to Lem. All this was childish stuff, of course, but at least it gave me valuable knowledge as to how pappattu was being made. I fancied I’d know a damned leem lover from now on.
Nath said he would accompany me. We were lucky in picking up a link clum outside the Thoth Jikhorkdun. The massive pile reared against the stars. Despite what had transpired this night my mind went back to the island-realm of Hyrklana, and the capital of Huringa. There, in the Jikhorkdun, I had fought as a kaidur — as a hyr-kaidur! So when Nath passed some remark about meeting footpads, a disgruntled pack of clums, or slaves on the run, I slapped my thraxter and said: “By Kaidun, Nath! If we cannot see off a pack of mangy curs like that, may our arms fail with the glass eye and brass sword of Beng Thrax!”