here, forever, in all our consciousness and powers. There is then no difference between this state of life and that of death. If you call existence beyond the end of life ‘Undead,’ then so be it. Its real meaning is the survival of the mind, the will, the personality. We of the faith of Lord Sarku prefer no journeys into the unknown Planes that lie beyond this one-no voyages to the Isles of the Excellent Dead, there to be shunted into paradise or hell at the whim of some unfathomable God! We would stay here, alive and conscious, upon this Plane. The grave may be an end for most, but for us it is only the beginning of true existence. ” She thrust her fingers into her long tresses to press her temples. “Oh, my Lord Prince, you confuse me. The grave is dark and ugly-fearsome-!”
“Fearsome? Why? It is only another stage of being. There is no road that does not lead to the grave, girl! There is no story that has a happy ending. Let the singers chant the deeds of heroes; let Avanthe’s followers prate of survival through one’s children and the generations to come; let those of your persuasion forget the future and tumble together upon their couches of pleasure; let the priesthoods of Stability preach of light and purity and the joys of the Isles of the Excellent Dead! Nothing avails. Death is all. Life is fleeting, but death is eternal!” The horrible skull-mask leaned close to her. “Yet death can be made sweet; it can be made into life-of a most satisfactory sort-a life that can be prolonged, lengthened, made to last as long as the will exists.”
“Oh yes, I know.” Eyil could not help herself. “But at the cost of joy-the death of pleasure-the end of delight.” She shook her hair back from her face. “If these things be lacking, mighty Prince, then you speak not of life but of a travesty-!” “Your teachers have taught you your catechisms well, girl. A travesty? Not so! What is life, after all, but the ability to retain one’s intellect, to be conscious, to will, to act? Ohe, but you must think it through, little priestess! Consider that you, too, will dance for but a few short years more. Then your loveliness will fade, men will avert their eyes from your wrinkles, and in the end you will come back to Him-back to the Worm, as must all do who wear this shell of flesh. Are you wise in sacrificing eternity for those organs which you treasure there between your legs? Dead indeed will you be-and so forevermore-whilst I shall live and rule and go on to see generation upon generation of you transitory little creatures pass away before me into the dust! The lifetime of a summer moth instead of the eternal perpetuation of the intellect? A poor trade, girl! I have made sacrifices- terrible sacrifices-and I shall continue to make them, for the game is well worth the throw!”
He stood so close to her that she breathed in the cold, musty scent of his flesh. She drew away until the dank stones of the wall pressed into her back.
“I cannot believe-I can never agree that such an empty and passionless existence is to be desired!”
“Little I care for your desires, priestess!” He slashed the air with one corpse-painted hand. “Now I shall tell you precisely what you are to do. Cry out to your Harsan, cozen him, play upon his heart! He will respond. Even though he knows you false a thousand times over, yet he will surrender. His body calls out to you, just as yours does to him. No, he will not refuse you, Lady Eyil.”
“And if he guides you to this Man of Gold? You will slay him-us?”
“Did I not say that I gain no pleasure from harming small things? No, I shall command Vridekka to blur his mind for a time, so that he may not recall aught of this. Then I will see him placed in some rural temple, far away, where he can follow his own little Skein of Destiny. You may accompany him there, if you desire it.” The hollow black eyes bored into her. “But mayhap your love of ease and pleasure is too strong? In that case you may return to your temple. I shall see that you do not go empty-handed, for I wish no lasting quarrel with your Lady Misenla. She will be pleased at your success in bedazzling the priest. Ohe, she will forgive you for your lack of zeal in her cause- take you into her Clan of Emerald and Silver, promote you, whatever you wish. And why? Because I shall give you certain real secrets to lay into her hands: things of interest, yes, but not the Man of Gold.” He watched her carefully: her unconsciously artful pose, the loose tresses that swung beside the curve of her cheek, her long, wary, clever eyes. “You can then go on in your practice of the Thirty-Two Unspeakable Acts of your Goddess until you are too old to care-or until you achieve the final orgasmic self-immolation of the Thirty-Second Act itself! Your future will be assured until at last you go to join your ephemeral comrades in the tomb. Then indeed will it be too late to remember my words…”
“And if I refuse to join you in this thing? If I remain loyal to Harsan?”
“You know your own body better than that, Lady Eyil.” “Then if I r emain devoted to my temple?” she cried. “You must know, my Lord, that I serve my Goddess-in my way, if not in Lady Misenla’s-just as you are obedient to your cold and undead master!”
A hand like that of a corpse smeared with oily clay came up to touch her chin, and she shrank away. “Then your pain will be real, girl, and my plan will progress all the same. As you see, it revolves around Harsan and not really about you. If you thwart me, then know that afterwards, when the Man of Gold is mine, the last embrace you will feel will be that of the impalers of the Legion of Ketl, and your final orgasm will be kicked out on high, there above the battlements of this place. Fail me not, my Lady.”
She bowed her head and wept. “I shall do as you command.”
Chapter Seventeen
Harsan sat upon the cold wooden table where they had left him. He had gladly drunk the wine the guards had brought, but he had refused the food. Now he must decide.
What was he to do?
What, indeed? He suspected that he could not resist for long against the forces Prince Dhich’une could bring against him: “The leaf cannot swim against the current.” So Zaren’s old adage said.
He thought about pain. He had faced nothing more dreadful than Prior Haringgashte’s “leather rosary” and the sudden wounding he had suffered there on the Sakbe road. He had never so much as broken a bone, and when some years back he had had a painful tooth pulled, Zaren stuffed him with so much Aira-grass paste that he had no memory of the operation at all-nor of the day after! How would he withstand the blandishments of the Legion of Ketl?
Something within him told him that he could. He sensed a deep reservoir of endurance somewhere inside himself, though he could not imagine why or whence it came.
But there was Vridekka. He was Prince Dhich’une’s real weapon. Harsan had heard of such as Vridekka: men whose skills were so valuable that they were paid fortunes-and were kept virtual prisoners by their masters, the lords of the Five Empires; men who could cast up defensive shields of magical substance, who could see through stone walls, who could defend their employers with bolts of ravening energy drawn from the Planes Beyond. Yes, Vridekka would catch him out in any lie, probe through any web of subterfuge, and pick his brain as clean as a pauper’s plate!
What point, then in delaying or resisting at all?
Was it possible that the Temple of Thumis could aid him? They would certainly have bored through the collapsed tunnel by now and discovered the body of Hele’a’s henchman. The man had worn brown armour-perhaps that of the Legion of Ketl- and was hence identifiable. (A thought intruded itself: poor Chtik p’Qwe!) His superiors would know the means of Kurrune’s ghastly demise and of the deaths of the two soldiers.
But were these things traceable to the Temple of Sarku? It seemed that servants of the other Lords of Change had access to the labyrinths-and commerce with the strange creatures who dwelt there as well. The Temple of Ksarul, for example, was famed for its command of the darker mysteries. Some suspicion would thus fall upon Kerektu hiKhanmu. Or upon the velvet-masked priest of Wuru. Harsan liked neither of them, and he wished them no better than they deserved; yet in this affair they both appeared guiltless.
There were probably further clues that Harsan had overlooked, but even if these led to Lord Sarku as blatantly as a Sakbe road leads to a city gate, how would his superiors know of the machinations of this Skull- Prince?
He suspected that very few within the hierarchy of the Lord Sarku, Master of Worms, would be aware of what had transpired tonight either.
There was still another pebble in the porridge. Suppose that the priests of Thumis made all the right deductions; there was still that accursed message which Kurrune had had in his hand. Had not Hele’a said that it pointed toward some other player in this ugly game? Who?
He resolutely refused to think of Eyil.
What, then, was to be gained through resistance? A little time, not enough to be of use. Harsan almost
