another man executed in the presence of Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek.’
‘He threatens us,’ said Jean Froissart quietly.
‘Because he is a fool,’ said Trasilika, unshipping a weapon from its sheath.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said Uckermark calmly.
‘But you’re not me,’ said Trasilika, drawing back the weapon so he could chop off Uckermark’s head.
Whereupon Shabble spat white fire which melted the weapon in Trasilika’s hand. Splashes of molten metal singed the deck. Trasilika yelped and dropped the hilt of his useless weapon.
‘I think,’ said Uckermark, ‘it might be to your advantage to accompany me ashore.’
‘We are your prisoners,’ said Froissart, accepting the inevitable.
‘No,’ said Uckermark. ‘You are my guests.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Manthandros Trasilika and Jean Froissart, believing themselves to be very much Uckermark’s prisoners (or, more precisely, captives of the sword-melting Shabble), consented to being conveyed ashore. Whereafter their route took them through the streets of Marthandorthan, which were hot and unbearably humid.
‘Drums,’ said Trasilika. ‘I hear drums. But why? Is there some religion on Untunchilamon which demands this rhythmic celebration?’
‘It is a cult,’ said Uckermark shortly. ‘A cult of the young. Think nothing of it.’
Then Uckermark and Shabble guided the newcomers into the Xtokobrokotok, then down a plungeway leading from that warehouse-temple into the depths Downstairs.
‘This is the braloch, I take it,’ said Manthandros Trasilika.
‘The what?’ said Uckermark.
‘The braloch,’ said Trasilika. ‘You know!’
‘If I knew,’ said Uckermark, ‘I wouldn’t ask.’
‘Has it fallen out of use, then?’ said Trasilika.
‘We use Downstairs for purposes in multitude,’ said Uckermark. ‘Ice is mined here and liquor stored against the depredations of the law. Here sewage flows to its private doom, and here too our water is sourced.’
‘But not as a braloch?’ said Trasilika.
‘What means this braloch?’ said Uckermark.
‘A temple,’ said Manthandros Trasilika. ‘My ethnology texts make heavy mention of it. They say the Dagrin come here to temple in the dark. Zen, they say. The Dagrin use it. A drug. You must know of zen, surely. But what of the Dagrin? Have you not heard of them?’
‘On Untunchilamon,’ said Uckermark shortly, ‘we do not talk of the Dagrin. No, not that way. Up here. These steps.’
‘You don’t talk of the Dagrin?’ said Trasilika. ‘But why not? My texts, they-’
But Uckermark was climbing the steps so swiftly that, following him, Trasilika found himself too short of breath for lectures. The stairway debouched into a tunnel where black grass flattened itself shortly underfoot then rose in silence after the three men had passed. The light was first green and then red. Shabble sang a happy song and played at being an anti-chameleon, challenging green light with yellow and red with white.
‘Where are we going?’ said Froissart.
‘Elsewhere,’ said Uckermark.
And refused to explain further as he guided his guests through long and arduous subterranean walkways. Black grass gave way to a strangely spongy green felt, then to a silvery metal laced with streaks of red and gold. By which time Froissart had started to feel himself trapped in an inexplicable doom lifted straight out of nightmare.
Jean Froissart had feared much; but he had never expected to be confronted by a miniature sun which could melt forged steel as fire melts ice; or to go meekly from his ship in the company of a complete stranger to meet an unknown ruin in depths of strangeness.
Giving way to nostalgia, he remembered the sewage canals of the city of Bolfrigalaskaptiko, that mighty stiltland metropolis which lies on the River Ka just upstream from the great lagoon of Manamalargo. He felt an unexpected pang of homesickness for that miasmal city of floating corpses; for the mosquitos which drench the air like a black fog; for the wail of the water seller and the cry of the professional child beater; for the smells of the crocodile market where flies blacken exposed meat and first-class knobbed leather sells for no more than fifty damns the fangle. -
Froissart recalled his last night in Bolfrigalaskaptiko.
He had dined upon tolfrigdalakaptiko, that delectable dish of fried seagull livers anointed with basilisk gall and served with baked yams and lozenges of dried jellyfish. Then he had taken himself off to the House of Priestly Pleasures, there to enjoy a full seven of the Fifty Open Delights before retiring to his hammock.
He had slept restlessly that night. The mosquito fire had been over-oiled; furthermore, one of his fits of angst had been upon him. The next day, he had at last visited a heart specialist, a doctor of the Ola caste; and, with fears about his fitness somewhat eased, had then joined Manthandros Trasilika aboard the ship which was to ‘-hear what I was saying?’
‘Pardon?’ said Froissart.
As he spoke, he committed himself to another step. But the much-scarred corpse-master flung out a brawny arm. That meaty weapon thumped into Froissart’s gut with such emphasis that a spasm of nausea momentarily discomforted the young priest. Yielding to the arm’s compulsion, he stepped backwards.
‘If you don’t listen,’ said Uckermark, ‘you put us all in danger. This is not the safest of places.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Froissart; though in truth he felt he owed no such duty of apology to his kidnapper. ‘I was dragon-chasing.’
The idiom he used may not be universally familiar. Therefore, let it be known that, when Jean Froissart declared himself a chaser of dragons, he meant that he had been feeding on rainbow and fishing for clouds; that his feet had been chancing as wings and his fingers as fins; that he had swum in the desert as the dolphin’s escort and danced upon fire with a statue of ice.
Uckermark, who understood his mode of expression perfectly, warned him thus:
‘Less salt and more flour lest your ginger curdle.’
Jean Froissart, who was of course familiar with this classical admonition, accepted the rebuke, and said, as a child says:
‘I have ears.’
‘Good,’ said Uckermark. ‘What I said, when you were away dancing your phoenix and tickling your basilisk, was that you must watch your footing. Here the floor has certan studs, like this one.’
So saying, Uckermark pointed to a red, slightly raised, coruscating button on the floor. The floor itself was now a slightly convex stretch of what looked like sea-blue stone.
‘If you step on that, or anything like it,’ said the corpse-master, ‘we’ll vanish from sight, as others before us have.’
‘Vanish?’ said Froissart in bewilderment. ‘To what? To where?’
‘To the afterworld, for all I know,’ said Uckermark.
Manthandros Trasilika coughed, hawked, spat. His phlegm splattered against the floor. Hissed. And was gone.
‘Don’t touch the floor, either,’ said Uckermark, as an afterthought. Then: ‘Make your choices. If you want to die, run on ahead of us and die in your own time. There’s plenty of death in a place like this. I won’t grudge you your share if it’s what you really want.’
Uckermark spoke the truth. This was indeed a hazardous realm. While most of the mazeways Downstairs were innocuous, their greatest dangers being vampire rats or disorientation, Uckermark was daring his guests through a frequently fatal part of the labyrinth.
Jean Froissart, having decided that Uckermark’s warning was sincere, started paying more attention to where he was going and where he was placing his feet. Though he was half-certain that this netherworld would claim his
