"No, the lice stay, but listen-" Morales waved his hand in a way that bade attention. "Is Simon coming today?" he asked in a jestingly conniving whisper.

"Who knows?" Gonji replied, playing along. "Why?"

"If he comes, will he devour me?"

"He might dismember you, but his tastes dont run to rotten Spanish flesh."

"Youll protect me, then, if Ive been your friend, no?"

Morales was hiding something, and Gonjis curiosity was stoked.

"What are you getting at?"

The sergeant shrugged as if to dismiss it, then brought in the covered pan with his morning meal and his ewer of water. A grim pistolero watched Gonji closely from the corridor until Morales had withdrawn and locked the door.

Gonji doffed the black robe with its grotesque red ornamentation and began wedging it into the small grated window of his iron-bound cell door.

"What are you doing?"

Gonji pulled aside the garment and peered out. "No more visitors, eh?"

The sergeant began to laugh, his mirth rising as he moved away. "Too dark to eat like that."

"Ill manage," the samurai replied from the blackened cell. He removed the linen from his tray. A moment later he was whisking aside the robe again.

"Yoi! Yoi-good! Morarei-san!"

The sergeant returned, still grinning.

"You?" Gonji whispered.

Morales shook his head. "Father Martin-but I didnt have to bring it."

Gonji bowed to him, then moved to the floor, where he knelt in grateful silence, running his hands over the quill pen, small cruet inkwell, and parchment that lay beside his food.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

As the summer heat slowly permeated the land above, causing the dungeon stones to swelter and the mold to prosper on the slimy upper reaches of the cells, something new altered Gonjis stoic existence.

Valentina came into his life.

The cell opposite his had been unoccupied for a s.p.a.ce of days following the execution of the murderer who had suffered therein.

One morning Sergeant Morales face appeared at the grating ahead of the noisy party that wrestled the squalling woman into the cell across from Gonji.

"Youll like this," Morales told him. "Something to write about, eh?" He fluttered his eyebrows rakishly.

Gonji scratched absently as he watched the spectacle. He had never heard such vulgarity from a woman.

"Sc.u.m-ridden b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Ill rip your cojones from between your bowed legs and feed them to you! Come on-one at a time! Ill send you all writhing into h.e.l.lfire agonies! Your shriveled members will rot away with the plague, you G.o.dd.a.m.n-!"

A swing of the iron-clad door batted her down onto her rump. Then the portal was swiftly locked. A nailed hand clawed through the grating at a guard whose scratched face bore evidence of her spirit.

"Meet La Strega-The Witch," Morales told Gonji.

"Valentina de Corsia is my name," she railed, "and dont you forget it, cabron! Though witch I am, as youll all soon see. For you, therell be no resisting my spells. Youll each come l.u.s.ting after me in the night, and then my curse will destroy you! b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! A plague on thee, blackguards! A thousand plagues of pain and misery on all you macho limp-d.i.c.ks!"

She noticed Gonji looking at her through the grating. "Dramatic, no? I always wanted to be an actress." She tipped her head back and laughed coa.r.s.ely, her humor dissipating a second later. "Well, what the h.e.l.l are you staring at, slant-eyes? You want something to stare at?"

She tore open the bodice of her soiled dress, struggling with it like a bedlamite before removing the entire garment and throwing it at the wall of her cell. She propped something against her door and stood up on it. Tearing off her nether garments, she displayed her ample bosom.

"How about it, Man of Cathay-a double helping of delight, no? Even you will find a way to break out of your cell and get at me, and then youll be pox-ridden like the rest of them."

"All right, La Strega," Morales interrupted, "put this on." He screaked open her rusty cell door and threw at her one of the black robes decorated with red devils and the flames of Hades. "Now you really have something to write about," he told Gonji.

The samurai kept staring at his new neighbor, hoping that what he felt in his loins wasnt mirrored on his face. He had seen no woman for months, though he had heard the sounds of women prisoners in agony, but their subhuman wailings had helped him keep his thoughts from carnal pleasures; he needed no additional torture to remind him of how cleanly he had been severed from the mainstream of life. But now he would have to readjust, and it would not be easy. His shrunken stomach felt hollow, and his innards flared with the heat of desire such that he began to tremble. His breath soughed through his nose in short gasps. He watched her toss her long, tousled black hair over the cowl of the robe. Her eyes were wild and dark; the kohl that had colored their sultry lids, smeared from her rough treatment by the guards. A small trickle of blood issued from her nose. She wiped it roughly on a sleeve as she peered out into the corridor again.

"Youre probably right," Gonji found himself saying without thinking, "though I dont know how Ill manage it."

She looked at him dimly a moment till comprehension dawned, and a sour twist came to her rouged lips. "Save it. Its not you that I want. Youve enough trouble already."

Gonji pondered her words awhile, and, still unable to take his eyes off her, he engaged her again. "What have they charged you with?"

She shrilled a harsh laugh. "Impersonating the king-what the h.e.l.l do you care?" Then her tone changed almost at once. "Sorry. We may need each other to keep from going loco in here. Seduction and witchcraft-what did you expect? Thats most of the women in these s.h.i.t-crusted dungeons, I suppose-seduction and witchcraft. Only they caught me too late-" She had raised her voice to a bellow. "Your captain of artillery knows my curse, knaves, and there is no saving him!"

Gonji listened to her expend her rage for a time, at last growing weary of it. But before he moved back to his daily habits, he remembered something.

"By the way, senorita," he said to La Strega, "I am not from Cathay. I am samurai, from Dai Nihon-j.a.pan."

"Is that so?" she responded archly. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"Si," he replied evenly. "It is."

Her eyes flickered ever so slightly, but she said nothing. Gonji quietly moved to his mat, where he sat cross-legged, for a long time, with his writing materials. But he scribed nothing as the morning hours dragged by achingly.

The evening shift arrived and tilted with Valentina as had the morning sentries. Gonji smiled in spite of himself to hear the endlessly inventive outpourings seasoned with her vipers tongue. He heard the guards combat her imprecations with curses of their own, or loud prayers and promises of perdition. Then there was a noisy din as her meal tray slammed into a wall.

The samurai went to the grating.

"Youll have a taste of the rack for that, evil wench," a spattered soldier was saying.

"Up your a.s.s, you son of a swine and a b.i.t.c.h!"

"Is that possible?" Gonji asked in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Same to you, senor sa-moo-rai," she retorted.

"It was probably just as well that you declined your dinner. Let me tell you something. Only the morning shift can be trusted with a meal."

"Oh, gracias, senor," Valentina said, affecting a dainty curtsy. "What business is it of yours? Theres nothing this sc.u.m can foul my food with that I havent handled before."

Laughter issued from a couple of the other cells, as Gonji turned away, annoyed and vaguely disgusted. But she halted him.

"Hey, listen." Her voice was lower now, sincere. "When I say Ill curse the men in here, I dont mean you who are captive. Just these strutting b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who think they rule the world. The ones who think they can have their way with any woman. What did you say your name was?"

"I didnt. Call me Gonji."

"Gon-shee-what does it mean?"

"Its my given name. Since were equals in this h.e.l.lhole, you may call me Gonji-san. Or if you like, since youve recognized that Im superior to these barbarians, you may call me Gonji-sama."

"It remains to be seen whether youre superior, my dear," she said suggestively.

He chortled. "Gonji-san, then. I take it youve had a lifetime of grief from the soldier cla.s.s, neh?"

Valentina sighed bitterly. "Since I was thirteen. When my Milanese mother died of the plague. I inherited her irresistible Italian charms. Well, you didnt think I blossomed like this yesterday, did you? I was a waif of the streets when I was thirteen. The brutes used to take their pleasure with me. Sometimes I could live with it. Other times...Finally I learned to hate what Id become. And them, for having done it to me. I prayed, but there was no deliverance. So I began to curse them and curse them until one day Satan gave me power over them. Now I am on the attack! I take them, writhing in torment, to their graves. Of course it takes time, but they all die. I am on a crusade, you see. I intend to send every man I hate to a plague-ridden death by my touch. I bequeath my curse with every pleasure they take of me, and Ive bedded my share, mind you."

Gonji felt a sympathetic pang. His lips parted twice before he spoke. "You have...the disease of the Gauls?"

"What are you talking about?" she roared. "What I have is power-the dark power they fear!"

"Only the power thats destroying half this filthy continent."

"Disease of Gauls," she repeated disdainfully. "What do you know?"

She lowered her head to the grating, and when she spoke again, her voice was m.u.f.fled. "Do they have it in your land?"

"Rarely. Only since the Spaniards came. Of course, they blame the Dutch, and the Dutch blame the Portuguese and the English. Lately, I think, theyve all formed a truce and selected the Gauls as the culprits."

"Can your people drive the evil spirit away?" she asked in a voice suddenly plaintive but devoid of hope.

"Iye. So sorry. All they can do is drive the Yoroppan traders away."

"Ive tried sarsaparilla. Its supposed to help, you know. h.e.l.l, Im awash in the stuff. s.h.i.t, p.i.s.s, and h.e.l.lfire! What do I care? My crusade continues, thats all!"

"Good questing," Gonji said, moving away from the door, as the guards grumbled at them. He begin his evening meditation, which always seemed to unsettle the guard shift.

He lay in a cold sweat, the darkness an almost palpable thing as he drifted in and out of nightmare-haunted sleep.

Huge, leering faces sprouted unseemly appendages that grasped after him, never giving ground, though he ran and ran and arced his sword at them with all the pent-up fury of his long imprisonment.

Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara...

He rode astride Tora again, exhilarated, leaping chasms as if borne on invisible wings, monstrous predators strafing him with gnashing teeth-leaping another gorge inset with the chattering heads of slain enemies who mocked him with their immortality.

Red Blade from the East- He jolted upright, raising a fending knife hand. He heard only the smothering silence, then the soft moaning from another cell. No murmuring from the guards.

Then-the whispering voice from the cell across the corridor: "Hurry, Gonji-san, there isnt much time."

He rushed to the door grating and peered out, saw Valentinas anxious face but no warden about.

"Theyre asleep," she said, "but we dont know for how long. We must speak."

"What is it, Tina-san?" For so he had come to call her.

"Dont call me Valentina. Call me Domingo."

Gonjis breath rasped as he gathered his reeling thoughts. "Domingo? The witch Domingo Negro?!" And gazing deep into her transformed eyes, he recognized the truth of it. "Yoi! Can you-can you get us out of here?"

She shook her head sadly. "Im afraid not, mi amigo, though I wish it were so. Its amusing, you see-they strive so hard to ensnare witches, and now theyve caught a real one. But not for long-and this one came willingly. Its a shame I had to sacrifice this troubled woman to get in here, but she was my best chance. They were going to arrest her anyway, I believe, and the cohabitation subjects must be entered through some imperfection. Some physical weakness: Pacos simple mind; Valentinas disease-there must be an avenue."

Gonji was shaking his head. "Wakarimasen-no entiende-I dont understand. Youre here now. You had the power to get here. Havent you some power left to distort s.p.a.ce, create a doorway in this wall like with your magic hedge?"

The witchs eyes closed with finality. "Impossible. This region is firmly fixed in this sphere."

Gonjis head bowed. "Then why in h.e.l.l have you come?" he asked hotly, gloomily. Then, remembering: "How did the a.s.sault fare? Obviously you overmatched the Spaniards."

"Why 'obviously?" she countered. "Do you know whence Ive come? Facile a.s.sumptions are dangerous when one is dealing with sorcery."

The samurai felt a peculiar unease. He looked deeply into her expressive dark eyes. There he found a languid resignation. His mouth opened to speak, but she continued: "They destroyed it all, Gonji-san. Evil power aided them, and I was foolishly complacent. They obliterated the result of generations of life-affirming earth magic. And they destroyed me with it. And my sons."

"But how?"

"How they did it is not so important as why. Thats why Ive come to you. As to how Ive come-" She made a low gurgling sound. "Im not sure, embarra.s.singly enough. Only believe me when I say that Ive been given time enough to roam the land of the living apart from my riven body so that I might see things as they are. And, I believe, to set you upon a new course. The agents of the Evil Unknown are strong here, and theyve singled you out for discredit and terrible doom. Somehow, you must identify them. Stop them. Somehow...you are very important as an agent of change in this interspheric system."

"How? Why?" Gonji replied haltingly, befuddled by it all. "And why should I care what evil overtakes Yoroppa, after the many painful years Ive spent here?"

"Because it is...your duty."

"Duty?" Gonjis eyes narrowed in bewilderment. "Explain, por favor."

"Youve spread your influence far and wide on this continent, if unwittingly. You have friends and supporters you may not even be aware of. And it is not merely Europe that is affected. The Evil Unknown recognizes no boundaries. And Gonji-perhaps the dread Akryllon youve inquired about yet exists, and its power is presently allied with the side of evil." She eerily waxed rhapsodic. "That power must be broken, for the good of all sentient races! I speak not of the mundane wickedness born of twisted purpose that you see here in this land. I warn you of the silent, deadly, grasping tide of evil that seeks to pervert and control and crush until there is nothing left of freedom in all creation! It seeks you out! Will you run from it?"

Gonjis jaw tightened, his neck arching to hear her calculated challenge. "What can I do from here?"

"I cannot say. You are held in check here by the poised balances of several powerful interests. Some good, some misguided...some, clearly new outgrowths of the arms of the Evil Unknown. But you must learn what you can while imprisoned here and, when youve judged the time is right, you must free yourself somehow and go to Africa."

"Africa? What-?"