The Crystal Empire (45 page)

Their peculiar, complicated-looking muzzles were leveled at his hairy chest.

He raised an eyebrow and grinned, lowering
Murderer
with conspi
c
uous care, turned back into the small room, and cast about for its wol
f
hide scabbard. The messenger stood in the spot he’d retreated to, across the narrow corridor.

“D’you imagine,” Fireclaw asked, indicating his naked body with a sweep of his equally naked stump, “His Imperial Dom’ll mind too much if I get dressed ere we go visit him?”

This question proved beyond the linguistic ability of his visitor. The helmetless armsman assumed a puzzled expression, referred to the rote-speech written upon the parchment, found no answer which suited him. He watched Fireclaw repeat the gesture, understood at last.

“Yes,” the fellow answered, “audiencing wit habiliments.”

He faced each of the other warriors in turn, speaking a few words in some language Fireclaw couldn’t follow.

The muzzles of the blanket-rippers dropped.

The armsmen, however, stood watching Fireclaw’s smallest mov
e
ment as he took his clothes from the wardrobe and put them on. Thin
k
ing to establish himself from the outset among these people as he’d done among the Comanche, he slipped the prosthetic cast over his right for
e
arm, adjus
t
ing it to his liking. He strapped revolver and dagger about his waist. He slung his greatsword over his back. Habiliments, indeed. It was an effort not to watch for their reaction from the corner of an eye.

Turning, he bent down, stepped through the low, arched doorway i
n
to the corridor—and caught his breath. Everywhere he looked, ceiling, walls, even the floor, artists had embellished the smooth surfaces with some kind of painting—murals in many colors, scenes of battle rendered in a style which, in their bloodthirsty enthusiasm, might have done ju
s
tice to any engagement Fireclaw had ever fought.

In one scene, copper-kilted warriors could be seen, lined up, drawing the intestines from a staked-out prisoner, as if they’d been playing at a tug-of-war. Between the soldiers and their victim a low fire had been built, ba
k
ing what was suspended over it.

Yet it was neither this picture, nor the many others marching along the walls and ceiling, inlaid upon the floor, which had taken the Helv
e
tian’s breath. This couldn’t be one of the crablike vehicles—as huge as they’d been—which he’d seen upon the meadow! From one dim-lit end of the passageway he’d entered to another, brilliant-lit, toward which the arms-men prodded him now, at least five of those machines could have nestled, one after the other, nose to tail!

The helmetless messenger had backed himself against the garish co
r
ridor wall opposite Fireclaw’s guard-flanked door. Having issued the su
m
mons to an audience, he now started toward the bright-lit end of the pa
s
sageway, inviting Fireclaw to follow.

Fireclaw strode between the guards, taking a long step to catch up. As he did so, the guard to the left of the door wheeled even with the ot
h
er, where both, in Fireclaw’s presumption, would walk behind the giant Helv
e
tian and the messenger.

For the briefest of moments, as they turned, the peculiar, slotted muzzles of their weapons crossed, a finger’s width apart. Fireclaw’s left hand snapped out, seizing both weapons by their barrels, wrenching them from the shocked grasp of their owners.

“Escorting dangerous prisoners,” he advised with false solemnity, “is that serious an undertaking.”

Breaking into a grin, he tossed the weapons at the messenger with a casual wrist-flip.

“Your minions’d best be better trained for it in future.”

The alarmed messenger fumbled to keep from dropping both guns. The scrap of paper he’d been reading from fluttered to the inlaid floor. Fireclaw stood with his arms folded before his chest. His point had been made: he was naught here save a willing guest. He wished he could see the expre
s
sions behind the helmet visors.

When, after an awkward moment, their confiscated weapons had been returned to them, the guards—stiffer-postured than before—took up pos
i
tions to the rear of the other pair. All four proceeded toward the light, Fireclaw taking deeper strides than usual so that his shorter-legged escort, losing dignity with every pace, was half compelled to run behind him. It was a long walk, during which Fireclaw revised his estimate of how many of the alien land-vehicles might have fit within whatever structure they now occupied.

Eight perhaps, maybe ten.

The deep, enveloping throbbing never ceased, never altered pitch nor volume.

For five whole minutes they strode along a polished floor embe
l
lished with pictorial representations of the painful and protracted deaths of thousands of individuals, which the walls and ceilings multiplied fourfold again. The hideous, decorated corridor grew brighter, widening until they traveled the long length of a half-cylinder, the walls upon e
i
ther side stepped back, curving upward from what was, in comparison, a narrow floor, to a wide, flat ceiling above their heads.

Upon the many steps there were arranged a myriad of curious o
b
jects: animal and human statuary, garish and obscenely painted; idols of rough stone and polished metal, some with far more arms or heads—or other organs—than seemed natural to the man; lacquered cabinets; o
r
nate Z-folded screenery; other exotic furnishings; a thousand mechanical devices, black and gleaming, whose origins and purposes Fireclaw could but guess at, and with little confidence his guesses were correct.

They halted, between the upcurved walls and flattened ceiling ove
r
head, fifty paces short of the shadowless interior of a glaring quarter-sphere of many-paned windows. It was the bottom quarter of a sphere, the warrior observed, providing a broad-angled view of what was fo
r
ward and beneath the enormous chamber.

The glass (if that was what it was) had been arranged like spaces b
e
tween the webbing of some nightmarish spider. If ’twere afternoon, as Fireclaw believed, the quarter-dome they occupied was facing wes
t
ward. The vehicle—for such was what it now proved to be—was trave
l
ing in that d
i
rection, at great speed, and at such a dizzying height that the wild, many-folded land visible below appeared as nothing more than heaps of sand within a child’s sandbox.

They were flying!

At the center of the web reposed a figure equally nightmarish. It half reclined upon a great chair, carven from a single slab of some transl
u
cent green stone. This was suspended, by a system of taut wires, several feet higher then Fireclaw’s head.

“Step forward, Sedrich Fireclaw,” a voice commanded. “The wi
n
dows will sustain your weight.”

Fireclaw heard motion behind him. He glanced backward. His ers
t
while escort had stepped forward, intending to prod him into obedience. He glowered at them and they shrank back, cowed. He turned his atte
n
tion back to the figure before him.

’Twas human. He could have no doubt of this. Also male—although the object which reposed between its naked thighs was artificial, leat
h
ern, a grotesque caricature of what ought to be there. Aside from this, and from the mop of colored feathers about its base, with narrow straps which held the ugly object about its waist, the figure was unclothed—that of a wiry, athletic, well-muscled brown man—save for its jeweled and lacquered fi
n
gernails, each of them a handspan in length and curled back disgustingly upon themselves, and for the helmet concealing its head. A drapery of some sort, woven of tiny scarlet feathers, had been allowed to fall upon the chairseat behind the figure, enveloping the bu
t
tocks.

A small, T-handled dagger hung upon the leather straps at either hip.

The helmet was not unlike those affected by the guardsmen, save that it seemed to have been fashioned of fine-beaten, polished gold. Instead of having been wrought in the likeness of some bird or animal, it rese
m
bled the disk Fireclaw had seen upon the wall in the cabin where he’d aw
a
kened: a hideous face with tapering rays zigzagging from its edges, a broad, square-ended tongue protruding from the mouth, obscuring whatever lo
w
er lip it claimed, reaching almost to the chin.

Only the large eyes were dark, fashioned of the same smoky su
b
stance as the visors of the guardsmen. Fireclaw imagined that these eyes regarded him in estimation now, as he himself attempted to regard their owner. During the long silence, the messenger and both copper-kilts had thrown themselves prostrate upon their faces. Hand resting upon the wooden grip of his holstered, empty revolver, Fireclaw stood straight, looking into the hideous artificial face, ignoring the mountains passing by a league or more beneath the transparent floor.

“Even thus suspended between the heavens and the earth you don’t abase yourself.”

The mild-toned voice had emanated, not from behind the hideous golden mask, but simultaneously, it seemed to Fireclaw, from all corners of the great quarter-sphere. The words themselves had been Helvetian, well formed, without accent.

Fireclaw didn’t move.

There followed a brief outburst Fireclaw couldn’t understand, save for some few of the words with vague resemblance to those of the C
o
manche. Of the origin of this second voice there could, however, be no doubt, addressed, as it had been, at the inlaid, polished floor by the me
s
senger who’d brought him to this place. The masked figure moved as if in speech, its four-cornered voice answering in the same unknown la
n
guage.

It resumed in Helvetian.

“Our faithful servant inquires of Us whether We’d have you—‘the barbarian,’ he calls you—forced into the customary gesture of respect toward Us. We’ve demurred, forewarned by Our Dreamers that your defiant posture’s aught We might have expected of the legendary warr
i
or, S
e
drich-called-Fireclaw.”

Fireclaw nodded but uttered no word.

The three guardsmen stayed flat upon their faces, leading the Helv
e
tian to suspect that others—well-armed others—kept close watch from some concealed niche for the sake of their superior’s safety. Perhaps such was the purpose to the confusing array of painted and polished bric-a-brac clu
t
tering the steps of the receding walls behind him. Any number of the manlike statues might have been living individuals, fr
o
zen into postures of watchful wariness.

Another long silence reigned while the two men, proud Helvetian warrior and golden-masked enigma, regarded one another.

“Astounding!” The sourceless voice spoke again, breaking the s
i
lence. “You’ve outwaited Us—We who’ve Ourselves triumphed in many a neg
o
tiation through the simple tactic of outwaiting another more anxious than We to fill the terrifying quietude.”

It raised a slender, sun-browned arm.

“But see here: would you not ask Us a thousand questions, S
e
drich-called-Fireclaw? D’you not wonder where you are, what manner of co
n
veyance we ride within, or what’s to become of you? Is there naught you wish to learn from Us?”

The Helvetian let his silence last a moment longer.

Then: “I calculated you’d tell me what I want to know”—Fireclaw suppressed all expression save for the faintest hint of a smile—”or you’d not. What has become of my traveling companions—my dog? The same fate as befell the Ute?”

“Sedrich Fireclaw”—the gold-masked figure turned a long-fingernailed brown hand over, palm side up—”there
are
no more ‘Ute’—nor any ‘Co
m
anche’ either.”

Belying the racing heart within him, the Helvetian raised an inquiring eyebrow.

The golden face nodded.

“They’ve been eradicated by Our personal guard—erased from the face of the earth, for failing to stop the Saracen party’s penetration into Our Domain.”

The strange figure gave a shrug, somewhat exaggerated by its weird attire, yet as if this were an idle matter, of little concern, they were di
s
cus
s
ing.

“They’ll be replaced in due course, either by random levies from near-neighboring tribes, or from surplus population within the interior. New ‘Ute’ and ‘Comanche’ nations—provided they’re allowed to retain and, um, redeem those arbitrary designations—will spring into being, each equipped with appropriate cultures, appropriate legends, appropr
i
ate s
o
phistication in the mechanic arts.”