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The tall priest spoke at last. «You are Blade?» He took a step near the big man and a dirty, long-nailed hand fiddled with the dagger at his belt. Ogier muttered and moved in. Blade waved him back.
«Let be, Ogier. I am Blade, priest. I come to see the one called Casta. You will take me to him without delay.»
Ogier muttered again. «Do not do it, Blade. Do not go in there alone. Let me come with you.»
Blade laughed. «You are an old woman, Ogier. Stay here and wait for me.»
He strode into the entrance, beckoning to the tall priest. «I said we go. Or must I seek out Casta alone?»
Without speaking, and with downcast eyes, the priest slipped in front of Blade and crooked a finger. Blade followed. They went down a marble ramp into a central chamber from which a dozen corridors radiated like the spokes of a wheel. Torches, held by iron rings, flickered over each entrance. The tall priest plucked a torch from its sconce and, beckoning once again to Blade, led the way into a labyrinth of marbled halls that soon had the big man totally confused. Already he was lost. It would be possible, he thought, to wander for days in such a maze and never find his way out.
The priest went swiftly, never looking back, and Blade hurried to keep up. They came to a steep flight of narrow marble steps and descended. The air was hot and oppressive now and Blade began to sweat. They entered a chamber with a pit in the middle. The priest signed to Blade to step onto the platform. In all this time he had not spoken. He watched, sunken eyes glowering from the hood, as the platform sank with Blade on it.
Blade drew his sword and loosed the mace in his belt. He was not so sure of himself now. It might have been wise to have fetched Ogier along.
The platform halted and Blade gazed into a vast cavern. Somewhere a fire burned and cast lurid red shadows. Blade stepped off the platform, peered into the gloom and kept his sword ready. The silence made him uneasy.
The Princess Hirga appeared from the gloom. She was wearing the silver trousers, but this time her breasts were bare and Blade felt a spasm of desire as he gazed at those perfect cones. They would match his hands and they were as firm as the marble above him.
Hirga saw his glance and smiled in a secret way, beckoning to him. «You can put away your sword, Blade. Casta awaits you and he plans no treachery. Follow me.»
Blade sheathed his sword and followed. She led him back into the cavern, past gri
They passed what seemed to be a smithy, where coke fires glowed and cast off a great deal of heat. Blade sweated harder.
«Casta works in iron,» explained Hirga. «When he needs a certain tool and does not have it, he makes it.»
Blade said nothing. This High Priest was certainly a man of parts. Blade mentally girded himself for the encounter. He began to get the feeling that he was going up against an equal, something that rarely happened in Dimension X.
Hirga stopped before a leather curtain, slit like a stage curtain. She motioned. «In there, Blade. Casta is waiting. He would speak to you alone first.»
As he stepped toward the curtain she moved to him and her jutting breasts touched his chest armor. Her green eyes were bold. She laid a hand on his heavily muscled arm. «And perhaps later, Blade, there will be time for us. I am curious about you. I would know more of you.»
Blade nodded curtly. «Perhaps, Hirga. We shall see» He parted the leather curtain and stepped through.
This chamber was small and at first glance crammed beyond capacity with specimens of all types-stuffed animals, skeletons, a great many skulls, books and bottles and casks and retorts. A small fire burned in an iron grate, and before the fire was a long table. Behind the table sat a man dressed in black.
«Come better into the light,» said the man at the table. «When I first, and last, saw you I saw a baby. Now let me behold the miracle for myself.»
Blade strode into the circle of firelight. «You are the High Priest Casta?»
«I am he. And you are Blade, the child full grown to manhood in one course of the moon. Yes, now I believe it. If it is trickery, and in some ma
Blade steeled himself. It was not like him, in his X-Dimension persona, to feel so ill at ease. The man was nothing-a priest, a charlatan, a greedy power-grabber. Nothing more. Why did Blade's nerves tingle and his sweat turn cold and his knees feel unsteady?
Gloom shrouded the figure behind the table. Blade strode to the table and leaned over it, peering. «You have taken a good look at me, Casta. Now I demand the same. Turn your face to the fire, priest.»
The chuckle was low, throaty. «Yes. That is fair. Look, Blade!»
The eyes, huge and burning black, were torches in a skull. The face was a death's head, bone with saffron flesh drawn over it like a drum. A skull. Blade could see the veins writhing like blue worms. The nose was vulpine, sharp as a nail, and the lips a bloodless anus.
There was no hair. No hair at all. No lashes and no brows, and the pate as sleek as the skull near at hand on the table.
Blade had an odd thought for such a moment. If this was the lover of Hirga, as was said, then the times were indeed out of joint. Even for Zir. Even for Dimension X.
Casta picked up a black skullcap from the table and placed it on his glabrous head. He chuckled again and pointed to a cask nearby. «You have seen. And yet you have seen nothing, for what a man is is not carried on his face nor in his muscles or bones. Sit there, Blade, and we shall have our talk. But let us understand each other from the outset-I do not think you are a fool and I am not a fool. I hate waste of time. If we speak truth to each other, and only truth, and do not waste words in fencing or deceit, we shall get much further. Do you agree to this?»
Blade sank onto the cask. «I agree in principle.» He glanced at the wall behind the table and saw what could only be a sky chart. The man was an astronomer as well.
«I am a practical man,» said Casta. «I seek power. I have power now, but I want more. For only with power, absolute power, can I do the things I want to do. The reason I have not had you murdered before now, Blade, is that I think you can help me. And I can help you. If this is true we would be fools to fly at each other's throat-and we have already agreed that we are not fools, eh?»
Blade was cautious. «I can see how I might help you, Casta. But how can you help me?»
The low chuckle again. «In many ways. By advice, by intrigue, by treachery if need be, and by treasure. Lastly, and most important, by not having you killed.»
Blade leaped to his feet and slammed a fist on the table. He half drew his sword. «You keep saying that, priest. I think you boast. If you are so sure you can murder me then why not try it now?»
Casta patted his gash of a mouth with bloodless fingers. The great dark eyes burned at Blade. once more he chuckled.
«Such is not my way.» He tapped his skull. «In here is my strength. But sit down, Blade, and hear me out. Be calm. We are not children, or slaves, or simple folk. Now tell me-whence do you come?»
As Blade went back to the cask he decided to play along. For a moment he had been on the verge of putting his steel into Casta and having done with it, but intuition told him that he would never leave the place alive. He could not, for instance, even find his way out through that maze of corridors.
«There is little point in telling you that,» he said, «for you would never understand. I come from another world, perhaps another planet, though as to that I ca