Gary Gygax - Dangerous Journeys 3 - Death in Delhi (25 page)

Rachelle nodded. It made sense. "And I went for it in a big way, didn't I? Hungry for the lure of the promised wealth to follow should
you
succeed in solving the mystery of who stole the jewels."

"Nobody could blame you for liking such an exquisite piece of jewelry, my dear, or for thinking that a casketful of more like it would be nice."

"Face it, Setne, I was greedy."

"Not greedy, just a little too anxious to have such baubles. There was the lure of a distant land too, you know. No matter, for I decided to accept, and I did so on my own without any influence from you.

"Yet I had severe reservations. That's why we made the journey in such an odd fashion. I needed to find things out, and I didn't want to prejudice you in the process. Your opinions and thoughts are far too valuable to me to do that!"

"Stop flattering me."

The magister waved his hand to disperse the layer of smoke which he had created, for it was clouding his view of Rachelle. "No flattery," he said in clipped tones as he fanned. "I should have a slave or two to take care of this sort of thing as the toad had."

Rachelle giggled at that. "He is
such
a toad," she agreed, "and those ridiculously active fan bearers with their fluttering plumes beating around his fat head!" She laughed, then grew serious. "Better Kali than him," she muttered, thinking of the maharajah's plans for her.

"Better neither. You'll have to settle for me, and that's that. Now where was I? Oh, yes. On the way to Delhi. Some of that was really necessary, of course, once I opted not to bull straight on from here to the palace of the maharajah. The rest was aimed at giving you and me a chance to get to know a bit about the Hindis in general, the folk of Delhi in particular. With such information, naturally, we could judge the ruler and the way he governed."

She smiled. "It was pretty clear that something was lacking, wasn't it? By the time we came to the capital, 1 had the distinct impression I wasn't going to like the king. Little did I know. . . . The fear the people showed, the comments regarding how the government worked, made me certain that the Peacock Throne displayed little merit in the eyes of those ruled from its perch."

"You verge on puns. I am happy to see you are recovering, but I refuse to pick up that gauntlet—at least not until I have finished enlightening you." Inhetep ignored her facial expression and the razzing sound which accompanied it. "The thugs were the final weight which tipped the balance to the side favoring the rebels. Your discovery of the pirimah s dedication to Kali explained it, for someone in a high place had to be allowing such a band to operate."

"That is certain. They knew who we were— or at least that we were there on business of the maharajah. That was evident when they got a look at us changed from our disguises as Hindis and ran off rather than attacked."

"Very
good
, Rachelle! I see I shall have to work harder at this." He laughed. Puffing away for a moment as he considered, the magister then asked, "Were you impressed at how I got you out of the oath? Clever bit that, the blood and all, recalling Kali's having to strangle the 'Demon of Blood and Seed'."

She propped her head up with one hand. "I hate to say it, Setne, but I caught on as soon as you spoke of form and content. There is
something,
though, that I do wish you'd tell me about."

"But of course, I'd be happy to, my dear. What?"

"The day you went out alone to see about contacting the rebels in Delhi." When Inhetep shifted uncomfortable in his chair she knew she was onto it. "Yes, Setne. What was it you said you had done? I recall the words voluptuous and whore."

"Pish! Nothing of the sort. I said I had helped to recover a lost girl from a life of prostitution to something more noble, and in return she aided me in contacting the insurgents hidden in the city." He drew himself up and gave her his best expression of aristocratic altruism. Rachelle wasn't buying it, so he deflated his chest a little. "Very well. If you need eveiy sordid detail, here is what occurred." When Inhetep concluded, she laughed. He looked sour.

"So Braji is now probably a courtesan in great demand in Delhi!"

"No—at least, not if she stuck with her later decision."

"What was that?"

"When I left the rebels, she stayed, vowing to join them and fight for the cause of the claimant. It is one of Sivadji's half-brothers. It seems the old yogi, Purshiva Rishi, somehow managed to save one of the royal brood from his brother's tender mercies. He and Prince Da-hasti both are alive, lending their talents to the claimant in his mountain retreat. Because I had to, ah . . . rather strongly insist they not butcher me as a spy for the maharajah, most of the insurgents fled the city to join the growing army of rebels gathered to the soon-to-be ruler of Delhi. Braji went tripping off with those young warriors, happily receiving court from a half-dozen of them."

Rachelle laughed again, merrily. "That is a tale. If she gets to meet the royal rebel claimant, 111 wager that she charms him!"

"Not interested in that bet, my dear."

"How did you manage to convince the young hotheads not to run you through, Setne?"

The magister frowned. "It was necessary for me to employ heka. Most annoying, under the circumstances. I displaced myself to be free of threat, changed to show my actual appearance, and then had to go through a number of castings as if I were a mountebank or charlatan impressing yokels before I convinced them
they
were actually at my mercy and all that. Demeaning to everybody concerned, you know.

Made them look like weaklings, me a blundering bully who had gotten himself captured and then had to flex his magickal muscles to get free."

"You have wonderful muscles of that sort— and the physical sort too, dear Magister," she cooed. That made him more annoyed than ever, and Rachelle laughed. "Don't be so stuffy, Setne. You know I'm only teasing you because 1 have to have you tell me so much about what went on."

Feeling much better at hearing that, the magister smiled back, then himself laughed. "Funny, isn't it? When it comes down to it, all of us are just fragile little folk. Glad you're not too fragile, though, or you'd not have gotten that orb away from the pirimah. I'd have been in for it then! Which reminds
me\
How did you manage to shake off whatever it was the witch had done to you?"

"The sleeping draught you gave me made me unconscious for the whole kidnapping, Setne. I heard that awful bitch mention a secret passage, so I knew how they entered the bedroom and took me without you knowing about it. Not trusting to common old drugs, she laid one of her witchcraeft castings on me. She knew I have studied the art, and that made her think 1 would be more vulnerable. Little did she know I am more skilled at apotropaistic things than at witchery. I managed a counter to her evil, so that the duration of its effect was foreshortened greatly. In fact, I had to pretend to be helpless from the time they brought me to the vault entrance. Your feigning no interest in whether I lived or died was superb play acting, Setne. You almost had me convinced."

She probably thought his slight raising of a brow had to do with the last words she spoke, but the magister was piqued at what the ama-zon had related about her kidnapping. "Fortunately, my dear," he said earnestly, "those malign fools didn't know much about me. If they had, the game would have ended then and there, for those familiar with Magister Setne Inhetep know that his companion is more dear to him than his own life."

"That was sweet, Setne. You had better mean it!"

"But of course. Could my head dispense with my body because it lacks a brain?"

"That does it, Inhetep. Now I'll make you sorry for your cruel jests!" She started to get up, then stayed put, sitting on the couch and looking at the wizard-priest. "Speaking of cruel jests, you keep me on tenterhooks, Setne. You haven't explained about how the two supposedly dead officials of the maharajah are actually living, how the seemingly stolen crown jewels were really there all along, and how we managed to get out of the vault which nobody could enter nor escape from without a special amulet! How
did
you manage that?"

"Oh, that's easy. Because the place couldn't be broken into, and no rebels outside the palace could force their way inside to make the chancellor and court practitioner cooperate, it had to be an inside job. Working from that premise, it was most probable that those two were working in conjunction, of course. What was said about the two by their replacements made that the only reasonable assumption.

"The two must have spent a very long time preparing their strike. Months, I'd guess— about the time it became clear to them that the maharajah's interest in the witch, Lady Sujata, would mean death for them. I'm certain that both were staying in the palace to better aid the rebels, but when she came along they had to abandon that post. What Sujata wanted was obvious. To become pirimah. The court practitioner of Delhi is always chief cleric as well as the head of magick. In her case, it meant priestess of Kali and Thugee. Unthinkable to both men, I'm sure! With the Purshiva Yogi Rishi's heka, they set up the seeming robbery. The 'remains' left behind were so good they almost fooled me, until I thought a bit and realized that half of the amulet key would never have been left behind with the supposed ashes of a slain treasurer. He might have been killed by thieves, but never would such a thing be left behind to be ruined by whomever did him in.

"Somebody's body was burned to ashes, but 1 can't imagine whose. The Yogi Rishi's blood was used, but not so much as to be fatal. Together with the proper castings, the whole thing threw everyone off the track. Why just the Crown Jewels? And why were the maharajah and his court witch so desperate to get them back? Because in order to properly invest the chief cleric of the land, the power of those objects—the crown, orb, and all—must be invoked. Only when she was properly recognized thus would the Lady Sujata agree to use her influence to bring in aid to put an end to the rebels. Among her other dark dealings, the woman was in touch with Kabul. Perhaps she would have called in the Afghanis; maybe she would have trusted to a growing Thug movement to strangle the rebels." Inhetep shrugged, palms held out. "So we foiled all that. The rebels will certainly triumph now, for the maharajah is a weak and hateful fellow doomed to die as he has lived. It might be months or a few years, but soon now we will hear of a new ruler taking the Peacock Throne." He glanced at her, saw there was still attentiveness in Rachelle's expression, and realized one question remained to be answered.

"Hmmm. What else. Ah, I recall. You wanted to know about the hidden crown jewels. It was

DEATH IN DELHI

a matter of elimination. If they couldn't be located anywhere within Delhi—city or state— and hadn't been spirited from the land, where could they be? Only one place was possible. That was a place where all manner of castings were made useless. Where was such a place? In the palace vault, of course! Now then, how could they be hidden? That was more difficult, but finally I hit on it. If the chamberlain and the court practitioner were working hand-in-glove on all things, it followed that the two of them managed to do something inside the strongroom. What could they do? What else but to create a special space in some inaccessible dimension to displace the regalia. The little spot wouldn't be detectable to any sort of search save one which went to the exact location in which it was tied to the mundane. The Yogi Rishi was good! He did it by accessing the ninth and least known of the dimensions, my dear. Into that place the crown jewels went, and there they are now—and will remain until the fellow extracts them to place on the person of the new maharajah he champions."

Rachelle finally stood up and came over to where the magister sat calmly with his fuming hookah. "How did you get us out of the impenetrable barriers surrounding the vault? None of what you've told me explains that."

"Well, you can thank Rishi for that. By allowing the ninth dimension to impinge on the vault, he opened a way for me to access the Central Nexus. It was some work, of course, channeling energy so as to make a sort of tunnel from it to the nexus. But once done, poof! And who's the wiser about something going from Inconceivability to a remote part of /Egypt? So here we are!"

"Yes," Rachplle sighed, "but sans recompense. I have hardly a jewel to my name. ..."

The magister pondered that a moment. "Well, perhaps I have a couple which will suit you," he suggested.

"Wonderful, Setne! I knew you'd not disappoint me. They are separately mounted on golden wire, aren't they? That's how I shall wear them, of course."

"Perhaps well take the matter up another time, my dear," Inhetep said as he dropped the stem of the pipe from his mouth and made haste to leave the study. "I am worn out from our adventure and feel an acute need of sleep."

Rachelle nodded. "So do I," she said as she followed after him.

—— 18 —

A
SECOND PARCEL

A month had passed, and both Rachelle and the wizard-priest had dismissed, if not forgotten, the matter of their deadly adventures in Delhi. The two were in their private garden, Inhetep reading in the shade near the fountain, the amazon working with her flowers and herbs nearby, when Djemer-t came out of the villa. He coughed politely to let them know he was present, then announced in somber tone, "The post rider is without my lord."