Blade's taunt was deliberate. 'How can that be? You are not a man. You are a neuter. A nothing!'
Honcho shrugged and spread his long fingered, nearly prehensile hands in a knowing gesture. 'Perhaps.
Perhaps not. Even that may be changed. Totha thinks it may be, and she is very interested. All the miracles, Blade, are not performed here in Urcit.'
Blade became very alert. 'What does that mean?'
Honcho could not repress his gloating. 'Many, many kronos ago, Blade, before the system was perfected, and all things became static, there was a thing called sickness in Tharn. And there were men, homids, called surgeons. I have read of them. Some were very wise and skilled. Then they vanished, were ruled extinct, because they were not needed. But a few survived. I have been searching all Tharn for a long time, and I have found one. In a remote corner of West Provo. I sent ceboids and had him secretly brought to my Tower. He tells me that there is a thing, something called an operation, that will make me a man. In body as I already am in brain. What do you say to that, Blade?'
Blade was amused but he did not let Honcho see it. It was a minor development that had no bearing on the matter at hand yet it buttressed his judgment of Honcho. The neuter was a tortured creature and sex was going to be the death of him. He was reaching for the unattainable and that was nearly always fatal.
Gravely he said: 'Your ambition is impressive, Honcho. It is overwhelming. Not only do you wish to rule Tharn, you also wish to be a man. I can only advise you to be careful. Do not overreach.'
Honcho stroked his sharp chin. 'I thought you would say that You have changed, Blade. You have changed greatly since I destroyed Moyna and took you prisoner. Is it possible that I made a mistake sending you here as I did? I begin to think there is treachery in your heart, Blade. That you do not intend to carry out our plan, to keep our bargain.'
Coldness grew in Blade. The neuter's tone was soft, lacking in anger, and laden with a mocking confidence that rattled the big man. He kept his face impassive.
'That may be, Honcho. Why do I need you now? I am accepted as Mazda. I rule. I have Isma. With every hour I learn more of Tharn and Urcit and the uses of the Power. What can you offer me, Honcho, that I do not already have? I command now, Honcho, not you! You are fortunate that I decided to forget your scheming and let you live in peace in the North Provo. You will, of course, have nothing more to do with the Pethcines. When I am ready I will destroy them.' This last was said on impulse, on the spur of the moment. Blade felt a strange compulsion to keep talking, because as long as he talked Honcho would not, and he did not want Honcho to speak because he knew what Honcho was going to say. Blade did not want him to say it. Blade was trying to forget it. And her.
Honcho had folded his frail arms across his chest. He stood listening with bowed head, half smiling, his eyes half closed, the epitome of patience. Blade's hand itched for the great sword. If only Honcho was here in real and not simlu! Blade choked back a curse, feeling the sweat start on his forehead. It was useless to wish. You could not decapitate a simlu.
Honcho looked up. 'You are quite finished?'
Blade nodded curtly. 'I am. Go. I am weary and wish to rest Go back to your Provo, Honcho, and forget your plotting. I will forget that you ever plotted. That I promise.'
Honcho's mouth thinned. 'And leave you to gather all the fruits of my planning? I think not, Blade. Perhaps you are a fool after all. At the moment you are showing the intelligence of first level ceboid, a sweeper of dung. But you have a weakness, Blade, a great weakness that you try to pretend you do not have. No! Speak no more. Watch. I am going to show you something. I can only do this because old Sutha has weakened the magveils, trying to entice me into Urcit. Did you really think that I would teleport myself here, put my real in your power? Think again. When I come in my real it will be with Org and the Pethcines and as a conqueror. But watch, Blade. Watch!'
Honcho pointed a finger at the center of the chamber. Blade started, fascinated, knowing that it was taking every ounce of Honcho's power to summon a second simlu into the room. The neuter was using secondary power, regenerated and buffered in the Gorge Tower, though fed from the primary source, and from that distance the power was stretched to the ultimate.
Yet a picture was forming in the room. Blade watched with a coldness growing in him. It was Zulekia. And Totha.
Zulekia was somewhere in the Tower, in a barren room. She was spread-eagled on the floor, her arms and legs pulled wide apart and fastened to ringbolts of teksin. She was naked. She was screaming, her red mouth gaping wide, though Honcho was not bringing the sound into the chamber. Somehow that made it worse for Blade - the yawning contorted mouth that he had kissed - and the silent screaming that went on and on.
One of the ceboid-soldiers was atop Zulekia. It finished and another took its place. There was a long line of ceboids waiting outside the door, snarling and jostling and peering to see what was going on. The line stretched down a corridor and out of sight.
Totha watched from a corner of the room. She was smiling and laughing and applauding as each ceboid took a turn with the shrieking Zulekia. Blade hated her. His big fingers itched for her throat.
Totha went to kneel beside the Maiduke girl. Totha was wearing only a brief girdle of animal skin and her breasts hung firm and shapely as she bent over Zulekia.
Her lips writhed over sharp little teeth as she thrust a little flaying knife into tender flesh. Zulekia screamed with the new pain and began to thresh about in her agony. She arched her back, screaming and screaming.
Sweat was pouring from Blade. Isma stirred sleepily beside him but he paid her no heed. 'Enough,' he grated at Honcho. 'Enough! I swear, by all the Gods of Tharn, that I will do the same to you...'
Honcho mocked him. 'But watch - there is more.'
The scene faded, then came back. This time Blade saw the Tower, the terrace on which he had first seen Zulekia, overhanging the Gorge. Four ceboids were holding the girl by the wrists and ankles, swinging her back and forth, on the point of hurling her into the Gorge. Totha stood a little way back, watching with her same cruel smile.
'I have been able to invent a little refinement,' said Honcho. 'The hooks. Watch carefully.'
It was only simlu, yet Blade winced, sweated and cursed under his breath. Great jagged hooks of teksin had been set into the cliff wall. The falling body of Zulekia hurtled down and struck a pair of the hooks. They pierced her thighs and torso and she hung there like meat in the butcher shop, her once lovely face dissolved in agony, a contorted screaming mask.
