The Five were clacking like a crowd of old hens.
The Queen smiled at Blade. 'Perhaps. I do not think it likely, but perhaps. If you live. If you please me enough to persuade me to indulge you. But first there is the law - he who would succeed another man in my affections must first kill that man.'
Blade, still on his knees, gave her back look for look. He could feel the priestly eyes gnawing at his back.
Queen Pphira had a sudden thought. She frowned and leaned forward and Blade saw the glitter of something deadly in her eyes. She spoke softly through compressed lips.
'You do find me desirable, man?' Mockery now. And menace. 'You arc conscious of the honor that may come to you?'
He knew how near he skirted the chasm. Blade smiled, using all his great charm, his teeth gleaming white in the curling back beard.
'I know, my Queen. I am not fit, yet I desire you beyond all things. Even, perhaps, my brother's life. And that is an evil thing to say. But I am a man - how can I slay a blind man? That is also an evil thing. I cannot do it.'
She leaned to tap him on the shoulder with her wand. 'It may be that you cannot, Blade. Tarsu has slain the last three men who sought to take his place. He may kill you as well.'
Pphira leaned back. She tapped her teeth with the wand. She smiled at him again. 'I think that I would regret that.'
Puzzled, Blade said, 'But how can I fight a blind man in fairness?'
'You will see.'
She looked over Blade at Kreed. 'Let it be arranged. At once. I would know who shares my bed tonight Tarsu - or Blade?'
Chapter Twelve
They did not let Blade see his opponent. Blade, under heavy guard, was taken to catacombs beneath a huge square stadium built of the ubiquitous white stone. He was lodged in a narrow cell, unchained. The surrounding stench was overpowering, a mingle of urine and excrement and unwashed flesh. A burble of cries, screams, weeping and laughing and cursing, washed through the subterranean chambers like a miasmic surf. He was alert for a sight of Pelops but saw none. This turned Blade gloomy, for he thought that the little man's chances were not even as good as his own.
He was well fed and before the cell could befoul his new clothes, or his temper more than it was already, they came to see him. Equebus and Kreed. The Captain and the High Priest. Their heads close together and whispering like the conspirators that Blade now judged them to be. Why they conspired, this unlikely pair, he could not guess. He did not care. He had to kill a man and keep himself alive. In total darkness.
Equebus explained with pleasure, staring down his hooked nose at Blade. Kreed, behind the Captain, nodded from time to time and dry-washed his hands.
'Since you are obviously a man and a warrior,' said Equebus with a sneer, 'and no slave, you will not want to take unfair advantage of a blind man. You will fight this Tarsu in a dark room. You will be as blind as he, then, and it will be a fair fight.'
Blade scratched his beard - it itched a little - and glowered at the Captain. 'Weapons?'
Equebus leered down at Blade's big hands. He pointed. 'Those alone for you. Tarsu will have a sword - he is much the smaller man. You object to this?'
, 'He cannot object,' Kreed cackled. 'The Queen has ordered it. She is smitten with Blade, I think, but she will not weaken in this. He must earn the right to replace Tarsu.'
Equebus regarded the big prisoner. The Captain tugged at his beard, now combed and pomaded into a point. There was, Blade sensed, something ambivalent about Equebus today. He was both pleased and displeased. At times he smiled like a wolf, at other times his hatchet face darkened as he looked at Blade.
He said: 'You have done better than I expected, Blade. Oh, you have lost Zeena, who is sent to punishment, but it may be that you have gained the mother instead.'
Blade taunted him a bit. 'You have also lost Zeena, Captain. If she is in a prison galley, she is as far from you as she is from me. At least I have known her. You never will!'
The goad did not work. Equebus glanced at Kreed. Both laughed. Equebus said, 'You are right, Blade. Much good it will do you. There is much in Sarma that you do not understand - and never will. Now enough of talk. You go to fight. Allow me to wish you the worst of fortune.'
The Captain bowed to Blade with a mocking leer, then snapped an order to the guards. Blade was dragged from the cell and escorted to the center of the vast stadium. Rows of empty whitestone seats towered on every hand. It would, he calculated rapidly, seat a hundred thousand or more.
The floor of the vast square arena was strewn thickly with sand. In the very center was a heavy trap door with an iron ring set into it. Blade watched as slaves, under direction of the guards, tugged the trap door away to disclose a black hole with steps leading down. Equebus, sword in hand now, gestured with it at the stair. 'Down you go, Blade. Just as you are. Tarsu is waiting.'
Blade hesitated. 'My eyes will take time to adjust to the darkness. Tarsu, being blind, has no such problem. You spoke of fairness - '
The Captain made an impatient gesture. 'That has been thought of. The Queen is very concerned that it be a fair fight - ' his lip curled in a secret smile, 'and fair it shall be. Chephron here will see to it. Goodbye, Blade.'
Equebus smiled pure venom. Kreed, lingering in the background, chuckled and wrung his hands in glee. Blade spat into the sand at the Captain's feet.
The slave named Chephron was a hideous hunchback clad only in a long leather kirtle. He wore an iron collar and his pocked face was badly malformed. He was bald and his legs were twisted and spindly and covered with open sores. Blade looked at him with distaste. The man had executioner, torturer, written all over him. Most obscene of all was the voice, a high shrill bleat.
He touched Blade's arm. The filthy crooked fingers were cold as death on the big man's smooth warm
