Pearl Of Patmos

The soldier was prolonging his pleasure as long as possible. He had cast off his plumed helmet and dropped his sword belt, kicked away his pantaloons. He was squat and powerful and easily held the woman down on the altar, cuffing her and laughing as she sought to disengage herself from his rapacious flesh. To no avail. He was far in her and driving with brutal lunges toward his conquest.

Blade did not stop to think. He put the sword through the man's back. The soldier screamed and, still deep in the woman, clutched at the bloody steel pushing through his chest. He screamed again, rolled off the woman, looked at Blade with staring wild eyes, and crumpled at the foot of the altar. Blade put his foot on the body and tugged out the sword. He turned back to the woman.

Too late. From somewhere in her torn robes she took a dagger and, before Blade could prevent her, plunged it into her heart. He caught her as she fell forward, blood streaming from her mouth. Her glazing eyes met his and she muttered, «Dishonored-dishonored. Juna has turned her face from me. I die. There is only death in Thyme.»

Blade held her in his arms, kneeling, cursing his luck. She could have been of enormous help, have told him much that he must know to survive. A rafter crashed savagely close by and he flinched instinctively. Time to be going. Always before, in his six previous trips into Dimension X, he had been fortunate enough to be given a period of grace, time to adjust and adapt. This time he had landed squarely in the midst of a raging battle. Survival this time depended on his superb body and brain-and on his luck.

He put the dead woman gently aside and began to strip the body of the rapist soldier. He do

Blade examined the plume of the helmet. Red feathers, clipped to a smooth nub. There was nothing else that could be insignia. The color red, then, must be his identification and, by the lack of any indication of rank, he must be a common soldier. It did not matter. He bad taken the first essential step. He had clothing and a weapon and, he supposed, an identity of sorts.

A great stone fell from the dome and crashed six feet from Blade. It bounced toward him and he dived wildly to one side, barely missing being pulped. Another beam came down and framed him in spattering fire. Blade did the only thing he could do, follow his nose and his eyes through the smoke, plunging through the thi

He felt a rush of fresh air from his left and moved toward it. The floor was burning through his sandals now. He dashed through a last wall of flame and smoke and came into a narrow passage which led to a door. The door was half open and beyond it Blade could hear the dreadful sound he had heard before. Louder now as he approached the open air. An ever-rising tumult of clashing arms, clangor of steel on steel and shield on shield, the screams of dying horses and the shouts of sweating and bleeding men.

Thyme? That had been the word-Thyme. The raped woman had spoken it before she died.

Thyme. Blade, alone, a stranger in peril, friendless in Dimension X, knew nothing of Thyme. Except that it must be a city, or a town, or even a state or country. Whatever it was-it was dying. He was witnessing the death throes.

Behind him the ceiling of the temple fell in with a hellish roar. Flame licked down the corridor toward him. Blade tried to wedge his big shoulders through the half open door, but was balked. Something was holding it. He peered around the door and saw a corpse serving as a doorstop. Smoke, blinding and suffocating, swirled down the passage and choked him. Blade bent low, put all his muscle into it and shoved at the door with everything he had. He squeezed through just as the ceiling of the passage caved in and the tu

He was in a cobbled lane. A narrow band of night sky, all that he could see, was tinted lurid red by a thousand fires. But there was a night wind blowing down the lane, a fresh strong wind that came somewhere off a salt marsh. Blade breathed deeply, reveled in the wind, filled his lungs and did not mind that the air was tainted with death.

The temple from which he had just escaped collapsed inward, a pyre of scorched stone and wood ash. The wind blowing around Blade caught at floating embers, balloons of flame, and bore them on to fire another edifice. Blade, on impulse, reached down and got a hand around an ankle of the corpse that blocked the door. He dragged it down the lane to where there was a small square and the light was better. He examined the corpse.

The man had been killed by a blow from a sword, or an axe, that had sheared through his helmet and cleft the skull as far as his jaw. The two halves of the helmet still clung to the greasy, bloody dark hair. Blade noted that the helmets were much alike-the one he wore and this shattered grisly thing-except that the latter had a crest of blue feathers. Blue. Red. The colors of opposing armies or only regimental or divisional insignia? The rapist he had killed in the temple, and this man, had they been enemies? Blade could not know and this was no time to worry about it. His own helmet plume was red. He had the uneasy feeling that he would know soon enough if there was a difference, and what it meant.

He tugged a shield off the arm of the corpse and adjusted. it on his own left arm. It was small and circular, with a metal boss embellished with the curious design of a snake with its tail in its own mouth. Trying to swallow itself?

Beneath the snake, in script that was half cursive, half glyphic, were two words-Ais Ister.

Blade shook his head-it was all Greek to him-and began to make his way cautiously down the lane. It narrowed again and twisted this way and that, lined by rows of dark houses with narrow stone fronts and overhanging roofs of shingle. Some of the roofs were begi

He entered another small square. It was ringed by deserted homes and shops, but in its center a fountain played and Blade made for it. His tongue was as dry as old leather. For a moment he regarded the fountain from which fell cool water in a delightful spray. It was in the form of a young woman holding a tilted vase from which the water poured. Blade stared and paid silent homage to the unknown sculptor. The girl was nubile and lovely and so cu

He raised his sword in a salute to her frozen beauty and plunged his face and arms into a basin beneath the flowing vase. The water was icy and refreshing, with a brackish taint that he did not find unpleasant. As he emerged, dripping and snorting, he noted the legend at the foot of the statue: Juna.

Juna? That had been the name cried out by the raped woman just before she killed herself. Blade, as he drank again and scrubbed himself free of blood and grime and smoke, regarded the stone woman with a quizzical eye. Junal Obviously a goddess of some sort. Perhaps the patron goddess of this city, of Thyme. In which case, he thought with a grim smile, her work left much to be desired. That poor raped woman had said it all-Juna had turned her face awayl