Champions Of The Gods

The battle went on all day, with no quarter given or asked for. By sunset there were no more Raufi attacks, because there were hardly any more Raufi. Dahrad Bin Saffar led close to fifty thousand warriors out of the desert against the city. Less than ten thousand rode away. It would be generations before the Raufi could again threaten Kano. It would probably be centuries before they would want to try.

In Tyan's private chambers everything was as silent as ever. Outside in the street, there was noisy rejoicing at the victory and equally noisy mourning for the dead. Not a sound crept through the massive walls of the House of the Consecrated. Nothing disturbed the First Consecrated and the Champion of the Gods as they sat across the table from each other. On the table between them lay the great jeweled staff of the First Consecrated.

When the last servant had vanished, Tyan raised his wine cup.

«To Kano.»

«To Kano,» replied Blade. He added as he drank, «A city with a future.»

«A future it owes to you,» said Tyan.

Blade shrugged. «Perhaps. Also much to Katerina and Mirdon.»

There was a long silence. Then Tyan spoke quietly. «Mirdon was my son, Champion. Against all the laws and customs that bind the Consecrated, I was the father of a son. So I think I can say that I feel with you in what you have lost.»

Blade nodded without speaking. He couldn't think of any response that needed putting into words. Tyan had explained much and offered sympathy. What more was necessary? He drank again, emptying his cup, then poured more wine from the silver jug.

Another long silence. Then Tyan heaved a sigh. With an almost visible effort, he set aside his memories and smiled his usual thin smile.

«Champion, I promised when we first began this game that I would one day ask how you escaped from the Mouth of the Gods. You are certainly a warrior such as neither the Raufi nor Kano have known since the days of ancient legend. It is just as certain that the ritual of sacrifice is designed so that no one can escape as you did, except by a greater miracle than we have seen these past few days. How did you do it Champion?»

«I-Tyan, will there be any danger to anyone if I tell you?»

«Well, if it turns out that there was weakness or corruption among the servants of the Consecrated-«He broke off. «No, I will give you my word. No one shall suffer, regardless of what you tell me.»

Blade nodded. He'd gained a few seconds to think by his delaying tactics. Now he would have to give the alarmingly shrewd Tyan a convincing natural explanation of an escape that indeed had been a miracle! He shook his head and absent-mindedly reached out to lay a hand on the great staff of office.

Before Tyan could rebuke him or he could say a word, Blade felt a faint dart of pain in his head. He started to rise, his hand still on the staff. The pain came again, three times in rapid succession, each time stronger. Blade sat back down again, a great sense of relief welling up in him. The computer had reached out to his brain again and had gripped it. This time there was no one he needed to help. This time he would be going back Home, back to London, away from this nightmare in Dimensions. He did not know how he knew this. He only knew that it would be so.

The pain roared and thundered. Blade staggered to his feet, both hands now clutching the great staff. Across the table he could see Tyan leaping up so fast that his chair went over backward, eyes staring in total disbelief. The First Consecrated's mouth was open, but Blade could no longer hear anything except the roaring in his own head. Then the chamber started fading before his eyes. The last thing he saw as it faded out was Tyan throwing himself facedown on the floor, hands toward Blade and lips moving frantically. Curses, prayers, what? Blade didn't know, and he would never know.

The chamber vanished, and Blade was on his horse again, riding across the moonlit land toward the Raufi, clutching the great staff. Underfoot there was nothing but moonlight, and the horse struck silver sparks as it galloped.

Another horse was galloping beside him, but it was not Mirdon who rode it now. It was Katerina, naked, with a sword in her hand. She reached out with the sword toward Blade, and Blade stretched out his free hand to grasp the tip of the sword.

The air glowed and sparked between his fingers and the sword. Golden fire burst out into tiny balls that sailed away on the wind, then swelled upward. It swelled up until the flames reached out toward Blade and blotted out his view of Katerina. Fire went on swelling until there was nothing around him except the swirling golden fire.

Then the fire was gone, and in its place a great blackness that swallowed him up between one heartbeat and the next.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Several people were not particularly happy after Blade returned to Home Dimension.

Lord Leighton and J sat in the living room of J's London flat. J found himself extremely tempted to just go on sitting there, until cobwebs formed over him or at least until the maid came around in the morning to clean up the room. He suspected that Lord Leighton felt exactly the same way. He'd never seen the scientist look so red-eyed, haggard, and generally wretched after the conclusion of one of Blade's trips into Dimension X.

Well, it was hard to blame the man. He himself didn't feel much better. It was absolutely maddening to consider what had happened-and it was also slightly chilling to consider what might have happened. They'd found a method of passing two people at once from one Dimension to another. They'd found another person fully equal to Blade in her ability to enter Dimension X and survive. They'd lost her, too, but however maddening that was, it was the luck of battle. It would have been almost as awkward to have her back as it had been to lose her with much of the information she could have provided. Katerina had lived, she had survived in Dimension X, and in doing so she'd proved conclusively that Blade was not unique. Somewhere in the world there were other people who could survive the trip into Dimension X. The problem, though, was finding them. There nothing was new, nothing was changed. The long search would become longer still, and there was no helping it.

The «might have beens» were even more unsettling, even if none of them had happened. There were so many of them that it was impossible to describe them, or even to count them all. But the total added up to one conclusion-this time they had come closer to losing Blade than ever before. They hadn't lost him, but that was because their luck-and Blade's-hadn't run out. A dozen unknown factors had been thrown into the whole affair, and that none of them had killed Blade or trapped him forever in Dimension X was as big a miracle as Kano's defeat of the Raufi!

Leighton, of course, was feeling particularly bad because he was responsible for some of these unknowns, without being able to say a word to explain any of them! He felt he was failing in his duties to the Project, to Richard Blade, and to his own reputation as a scientist. Which of the three failures preyed on his mind the most was impossible to tell. But J was quite sure that they added up to a grisly burden. For once he felt totally sympathetic toward the scientist, and he made a mental promise to do everything he could to help Leighton. The man was past eighty, close to the end of his life and career, and here his greatest achievement, the Project, had turned around and bitten him!

At least, J added mentally, he would do everything to help Leighton that wouldn't endanger Richard Blade.

Meanwhile, there was a decision to be made. Push on with the next mission, or defer it until-until what? That was the question. Blade was in fine shape physically and mentally, although he was certainly angry, and he seemed somewhat depressed about something he hadn't mentioned. The two women, Arllona and Katerina, were both dead. There was nothing more to find out from or about either of them. There really wasn't any reason for delaying, except perhaps objections from Richard, and their own nerves. But there wouldn't be any objections from Richard-there never were. And as for their own nerves-well, if they'd given in to those at all, the Project would have come to a halt years ago. This was no time to start.