least stored, in an empty kippe bottle. We come now to the final few sentences in the missive. Blade must have written it just before the storm swept back and struck again.)
I am writing on the poop deck, having been ejected from my cabin by Zeena and the other woman. Who calls herself a Princess, also. A Princess Canda. Two of them?
Zeena did not recognize me. She is in very bad shape mentally. It is clear that she had a bad time among the pirates. The other one, Canda, seems not to have been harmed. I really don't know what to make of her yet. She treats me, and poor Pelops, like dirt under her feet. She claims she is the daughter of some great king across the mountains of the Burning Land. El Kal of the Moghs. Whoever he is! I don't know. This Canda may just be a beautiful liar.
Tried to talk to Zeena again. No luck. She is afraid of me and shrinks into a corner of the cabin and stares at me with that haunted look. She has been passed from hand to hand by the pirates, that much is obvious, and it has tipped her over the edge. Question is - what can I do? How can I help her?
I have a job to do, damn it, and it has to come first. If we ever find that goddamned coast!
There is something about that other woman, Canda, that disturbs me. She keeps watching me with a funny little smile. As though she knew something. She is a cool customer, too, and would like to take over my ship if she could. She has been ordering Pelops about as if he were a slave again. We all seem slaves to her.
A beauty, though. Luscious. Even with most of her clothes off, which is the way all the women came aboard.
Canda is watching me now from the cabin with that imperious look on her face and that odd smile. Breasts that are out of this world! Down, Blade. You are in plenty of trouble without that - besides there is poor Zeena to think of. Yet I wonder - could Zeena and I still be married? Under Sarmaian law probably. To hell with that!
Ixion is signaling from the unireme. That damned wind is coming up again. Sky very bad. Waves starting to build. Here we go again! I will put this -
(Translator's note - That is all. We know that Blade, if there was such a person, stored his manuscript in a wine bottle of leather. The bottle was sealed when found. And here we must enter into speculation once more: surely, for all those centimoons, the wine bottle did not float about in the Purple Sea. It must, always supposing it to be genuine, have found a lodgement in some sea cave, or grotto, or even a wreck, while so many eons passed it by. Then, by chance, it was freed and eventually drifted into our own time and was at last discovered by the fishing villagers. This is, I must repeat once more, only speculation.
But then Richard Blade himself is speculation! This poor scholar has already gone on record as a disbeliever. My own theory is that the papers are a hoax perpetrated long ago, in an age contemporary with the Blade myth. Some submerged genius, perhaps, who believed in the myth and wanted his chance at playing Blade.
We shall never know.
Chapter Seventeen
Often, in those interminable days of trekking across the desert, flayed by the sun in daylight, frozen at night when they camped without shelter, Blade envied the man he meant to kill.
His doppelganger, the Russian agent, was living a life of luxury at the court of El Kal, King of all the Moghs. More than that - the double was now Vizier of the Kingdom, in a position of power and prestige, and was anxiously searching for his twin brother. For Blade!
The Princess Canda - for Blade was now convinced that she was indeed a Princess - had imparted this information. Not at first. But at a time and in a place of her own choosing.
As night descended Blade set about building the usual cairn of stones to catch water. It was all they had, all that kept them alive, and stemmed from a resourcefulness the big adventurer had not known he possessed. During the hot, sun blasted days he noted that the wind always blew inland from the Purple Sea. It was laden with moisture. The second night, with all of them raging with thirst, Blade built a high cairn of relatively cool stones dug out of the sand with his sword. Within half an hour moisture was collecting on the stones and trickling to form a tiny pool. Blade monitored the drinking, again with his sword, and filled a small wine bottle that the wretch Chephron had happened to have attached to his belt when the Pphira broke her back on a reef and sank.
After completing the cairn Blade stood gazing at the snow tipped mountains on the far horizon. They seemed no nearer than they had at the beginning of the march. Blade, had he not known better, would have sworn that the mountains retreated stealthily during the night.
Beyond the mountains, if ever they reached them, lay the Land of the Moghs and a great city where El Kal ruled. So said Canda, who claimed to be only daughter to El Kal.
There was an oasis, said Canda, not far from a pass leading through the mountains. When they reached the oasis - a matter on which Blade was not at the moment sanguine - a signal would be sent and a party would come to greet them. Blade was not especially looking forward to this, as irksome, uncomfortable and dangerous as his present plight was. His double at the moment held all the good cards. He was established and powerful. Had all the advantages. Blade had a pair of leather breeches, fast wearing out in the crotch, and his sword.
He had also been having pains in his head again. And wondered - was the Russian agent also having them?
'I am hungry, Captain. Why do you stand and dream at the mountains when you should be providing food?'
It was the Princess Canda. Naked to the waist, with a twist of linen about her loins, sunburned and tousled and as filthy as any of them, yet utterly lovely. Her jet dark hair fell to her waist and she had caught it back with a thong. She had a perfectly oval face in which gray eyes were set wide. Smoky eyes with glints of gold in them. She was nearly as tall as Blade, slim and regal, with pink budded breasts that, for all their generous size, were taut and with no hint of sagging.
Blade regarded her for a moment without speaking. He glanced to where Zeena lay being ministered to by the misshapen Chephron. Zeena was no better. He knew in his heart that her mind had gone forever. Yet she had been as lovely, nearly as beautiful, as this girl before him. Now - for Zeena still did not recognize Blade - her gentian eyes were hollow and shadow-laden and her body fast withering into gauntness.
Canda made a stamping motion with one shapely bare foot. 'I am still hungry, Blade.'
He drew his sword and she stepped back in mock alarm. Her smile had a teasing sweetness. 'You would not dare! Remember how much rests with me when we come at last to the oasis. The people know me. You, and these others, they will fall upon and slay.'
