Totha held him fast She fell on her knees before him and pressed her mouth to the wound on his thigh.
'I will bind it with my lips.'
Blade leaned on the sword and stared down at her. Some of her excitement transferred itself to him. A faint tremor began in his legs as her mouth caressed him. He put a big hand on her glistening head and she made a soft moaning sound.
Her scarlet stained mouth gaped up at him, the perfect little bones of her teeth glinting through the blood. When she spoke her voice was trembling, yet oddly firm and commanding. 'We are alone. When we are alone you are not Mazda, but you are still my Lord. Only do not misunderstand. I rule. You do not. I command. You obey. I desire. You give.
'I thank you for slaying my brother, Gutar. I had grown very weary of him. When I have become weary of you I will have you slain also, but that time is far to come. Obey me, Lord, and submit with all your great body to my desires. None will come. None dares intrude on Totha in this place.'
As she began her phallic worship Blade's hands closed around the jeweled hilt of the great sword. He closed his eyes and let his body surrender, but his brain was clear and active.
He had come far into the labyrinth, still had far to go, and he could see no glimmer of light ahead. Yet it must be there.
Chapter Seven
Blade remained in the Gorge for two days. He could reckon time here - there were days and nights and even a glimpse of red sun occasionally, though mostly the weather was wild and wet. He and Totha, when she would let him off the couch of love, rode great shaggy horses and Blade explored as far as he was permitted. It was a feral, craggy country, full of cruel ravines and slashing black mountains and rock formations like demons. It reminded Blade of plates he had seen of Dora's Hell.
And always there was the great sheer wall of the Gorge rising up and up and out of sight into the clouds.
Blade, when he was not making love to Totha, who was insatiable and knew techniques that even he had not encountered before, found an occasional moment to think of his other, civilized life, and to wonder how soon Lord Leighton would snatch him back through the computer. He did not worry about it. He knew that J, like a faithful watchdog over Blade's safety, would not let Lord Leighton keep him out too long. Here, too, a fact must be faced: Lord Leighton, as a scientist, was sometimes overzealous and tended to forget his humanity. Especially with so much at stake, perhaps England's very existence.
And there were times when Blade was quite prepared to be snatched back to London and the Tower before he had completed his mission of exploration. Totha was literally loving him to death!
Totha was straddling him now back in the cave chamber and grunting like the little animal she was. Blade was still able to replenish her physically, he was amazingly strong and enduring in that department, but the excitement was long since gone. Even the greatest of pleasures can pall. He was careful not to show it. He knew that Totha, in her way, was far more dangerous than Org and Honcho combined.
Totha rested for a moment, leaning far over him and crushing her breasts against his big chest. Her sharp little teeth gnawed at his beard which was sprouting magnificently. She liked to talk in this position, with his flesh in her, talk to the accompaniment of her moist slithery little movements. She could go on and on for hours.
Usually Totha spoke her mind loudly and imperiously. Now she whispered. 'When we have taken Tharn and killed Honcho, there is another thing I want you to do for me.'
Blade did not open his eyes. 'Yes, Totha?'
Totha bounced for a moment. Then: 'You must kill Org for me. For us. There will not be room for three on the throne of Tharn.'
Blade opened one eye. He was bored with his sexual thralldom and he did not choose his words as carefully as usual.
'Three, Totha? Two? You mean one, don't you? You! Only you, Totha. But there is one little thing that puzzles me: who are you going to get to kill me?'
At that moment she began to have one of her innumerable convulsions. She sat erect, grimacing down at him, teeth bared and eyes rolling wildly. 'I do not know, but I will find a way!'
Later, when even Totha deigned to rest, she lay beside him on the skins and toyed with his beard. They had long since dropped the Mazda pretence among themselves. Blade, Org and Totha, and the neuter had had many long conferences and had come to perfect agreement, each with the silent reservation that he would kill the other three when the proper time came. Blade knew that Org was now jealous of Totha and him in a sexual sense. The Pethcines had no understanding of incest; at first Org had offered his daughter as a gift, as hospitality, and perhaps as a political gesture but now he was jealous and resentful and beginning to sulk.
Blade could not decide which one of the three was the more dangerous. He inclined toward Totha, yet Org was capable of gigantic rages. Honcho was cunning, crafty, with a highly developed homid brain that had somehow been misplaced in a neuter's body. His brain was as good as Blade's own and the techniques at his disposal far superior to anything Blade had at the moment. Yet Blade lived, kept a half step ahead, because they needed him desperately. Without him Tharn could not be taken.
Now Totha said: 'I may not kill you after all. I have never had this feeling for a man before. Not Org, nor Gutar, nor any of the great warriors of the tribe has made me feel as you do. And I will not find a man in Tharn that can gratify me, the Lordsmen are all runt things, shriveled and sickly. I shall put all of them to death immediately. No, Blade, perhaps I will let you live.' She laughed and poked his chest. 'After all, who will be left?'
'Who indeed?' Then, slyly, he added: 'There is always Honcho?'
Totha went into a gale of giggles. 'Honcho? That thing? Ha-ho, he is indeed a thing that has no thing!' And she grabbed for Blade as if to reassure herself.
'He is cunning and has great powers, this I know, but he is useless to a woman.'
Blade studied her. She had let a careless remark drop earlier, and now he came back to it. It was a possible way of handling the neuter in the future. In the imminent future, because very soon now Blade must return to Tharn and then to Urcit.
