Blade realized he was on very delicate ground and was being warned about it. "I hid my camp very well. It is not my fault that you couldn't find it."

"It is said by some that there was no camp."

"Foolish men will say all sorts of things."

"So will desperate men, Blade."

"Also tree."

Jollya was silent for so long that Blade wondered if she had anything more to say. Then she spoke quickly, in almost a whisper.

"Blade, I do believe that you are not of Elstan. The metal of your bracelet makes me sure of that. It is not-"

"You have it?"

"Yes. I said I wanted to show it to my father. He is Keeper of the Animals, but there was no one here to speak for the Keeper of the Stones. Also, this wire is neither animal nor stone, so any of the Keepers could really claim it."

Part of this speech might as well have been in Arabic for all Blade could understand of it, but he was relieved to know that for the moment at least the wire was in safe hands. He'd worry about getting it back later.

"Thank you, Jollya. There is a warrior's honor in you." He didn't mind letting her know that he was grateful. She might not be his friend, but she seemed at least to be the enemy of his enemy Curim.

Another long silence, then she spoke in a strangely subdued voice. "Thank you, Blade. I-that-my father-" She gave up the struggle for words, dug in her spurs so violently that her mount squealed, then rode off at a trot. Blade knew that he'd said something right, but wished he knew what it was. Right now, though, the best thing for him to do was get some more sleep.

Blade drank the rest of the water, piled some sacks under his head and his wound, then fell asleep quickly. The wagon was a more comfortable and secure sleeping place than any he'd found in the jungle.

Blade rode in the wagon for three days and caught up on a good deal of the sleep he'd missed during his trek through the jungle. During the day he listened carefully. The men and women around him talked as freely as if he was deaf, but the wagon ride came to an end just as he was beginning to understand something of what was going on in this Dimension. He'd played the same game with captors in many different Dimensions and often saved his life with what he learned. This time what he learned made him feel he'd read a book with every other page torn out. There were two lands in this Dimension, or at least two everyone knew about. There was Jaghd, where Blade was, and Elstan, on the other side of the forest of Binaark with its killer plants. Although the forest and the mountains on either side of it were almost impenetrable barriers, somehow the Jaghdi and the Elstani managed to conduct a flourishing trade.

Jaghd was a land of plains and forests, and Elstan a land of mountains and hills. The Jaghdi were farmers and stockbreeders, who traded their grain and meat for the metal and jewels the Elstani miners dug out of their native hills. The Elstani were obviously unpopular if not hated among the Jaghdi, but their metals were needed and their jewels valuable. No doubt the Elstani were in the same position when it came to the food they bought from the plainsmen.

Manro and Tressana were king and queen of Jaghd, and Manro was definitely a half-wit. Whether he'd been this way from birth or become half-witted later in life Blade couldn't learn. In any case, Tressana was definitely the real ruler of Jaghd. She seemed to be respected rather than loved, particularly by the men. One thing in particular she'd done to make them suspicious was to form a body of armed and mounted young women, who served in her personal guard. Jollya was apparently the leader of the Women's Guard, and Curim was the leader of the men. Most people thought Jollya was brave and a good rider, but some said she'd got her post by sleeping with the queen and most of the others said she'd got it because of her father, the Keeper of the Animals.

A Keeper seemed to be a combination of priest, professor, and cabinet minister, and Jollya's father was one of the more respected Keepers. He'd probably be one of the more important ones too, considering that much of Jaghd's wealth seemed to be in its animals. Blade was satisfied to know that the closest thing he had to a friend so far in this Dimension was the daughter of somebody important.

Jollya didn't come to talk to Blade again during the three days of the trip, but one of her amazons brought fresh food and water every morning. Others rode by to look at him at intervals during the day. Blade couldn't be sure how far the royal party traveled during each day's march, but he knew that the wagon swayed and lurched like a ship in a hurricane. His wound was healing nicely, but he picked up fresh bruises almost every hour from boxes falling on him.

Each evening the caravan made camp by a pond or a stream. The draft animals were unhitched and the riding animals (which were called "rolghas") were unsaddled. All were fed and watered. Hunters rode in with the day's catch, including rabbits the size of small antelopes and several kinds of bird. The meat was roasted over strong-smelling fires of animal dung and roots.

Blade had to sit, drink his musty water, eat his thin porridge, and smell the roasting meat. After his days of grubbing roots and insects in the forest, he felt this was adding insult to injury. By the third evening he would cheerfully have fought Curim for a chance to stuff himself with roast meat and fowl.

On the third evening the caravan made camp by a well with an elaborately carved stone wall around it. In the distance Blade saw the tall chimneys of a town trailing smoke against the sunset.

The next morning Blade was unchained, allowed to wash in a bucket of cold water, then turned over to a squad of soldiers. The soldiers arrived in four chariots, each drawn by three rolghas harnessed abreast. Blade was bound hand and foot, propped up in one of the chariots, and carried off toward the town. The last thing Blade saw of the caravan was Jollya on her rolgha looking after him, then turning her back and shouting orders more loudly than usual to her women.

On the rough ground the chariots rattled Blade's teeth, but beyond the town they reached a well-made gravel road. The rolghas leaped forward, and the chariots seemed to fly down the road. In seconds the town behind vanished in the dust.

There were other towns for Blade to look at that day as the chariots rattled north, changing rolghas every couple of hours. He quickly learned that the Jaghdi were more than stockbreeders and farmers. They were superb builders. The road itself was a notable achievement for any civilization without modern machinery. Blade had driven on worse ones in England.

Each paddock full of sleek animals had a solid wall of stone or wood. Farmhouses and barns were roomy and sprawling, with thatched roofs, carved wooden shutters, and decorated clay chimneypots.

In the towns the houses were usually smaller, but many had two or three stories, with gla.s.s in some of the windows. The roofs were covered with glossy blue or red tiles, and the main doors decorated with iron bands. The streets were paved with cobblestones, and Blade saw sprinkling carts and men with brooms keeping the stones clean. He saw other carts hauling barrels of garbage and human wastes out to fertilize gardens and orchards.

Most of the buildings showed nothing but stone, slate, tile, and wood in their construction. Blade remembered that nearly all Jaghd's metal had to be imported from Elstan. Iron was used where its strength was needed, however, and also where someone wanted to show off his wealth. Judging from the number of metal-decorated houses Blade saw, there were a fair number of wealthy men in Jaghd.

In fact, everything Blade saw gave him the impression that Jaghd was a prosperous and peaceful land. Otherwise the road wouldn't exist and the flourishing towns would be huddled for protection behind solid walls or around ma.s.sive castles. Blade felt a little safer knowing this.

Not that peaceful and prosperous lands couldn't be unjust or cruel to suspected criminals. The Jaghdi seemed to execute suspected Elstani spies on very little evidence, tearing them limb from limb with teams of rolghas. If he could prove his innocence, though, he'd be much safer in Jaghd than in a land torn by civil war or feudal lords quarreling with their neighbors. There strangers often got knifed in the back simply because no one could be quite sure they weren't enemies.

The chariots rolled on through the night. By dawn there was a red-roofed city larger than any Blade had seen in Jaghd to the south, and a rugged range of hills to the north. When the chariots left the road, they turned toward the hills.

They followed a track into the hills, dustier than the road and much rougher. Blade was alternately coughing from the dust and being thrown violently against the side of the chariot to pick up a whole new set of bruises. At last they came out of the valley in front of a ma.s.sive square castle perched on a crag. A tower rose at each corner. The gate was made of solid slabs of stone bound and riveted with iron. It was the first purely military building Blade had seen in Jaghd, and he was impressed by the amount of labor it must have taken to build it up here.

It was also the last Jaghdi building he saw for quite a while. The chariots rolled in through the gate, and Blade was untied in the middle of thirty guards with spears. Then the guards led him down a dark winding flight of stairs into the depths of the castle, and locked him in a lightless, airless cell, cold, damp, and dismal.

When the door thumped shut behind him, Blade realized that getting out of prison in Jaghd might be somewhat more difficult than it had been in other Dimensions.

Chapter 6.

Fortunately for Blade, the castle seemed to be almost new. Everything was fairly clean, there were few odors of long-forgotten garbage or long-dead prisoners, and there were only a few rats. He'd been in much worse places, and he was willing to consider staying for a while before even thinking of escaping. An escape attempt was likely to provoke the Jaghdi into doing something much more drastic than simply locking him up. And staying here might give whatever friends he had (Jollya? Her father the Keeper? Tressana herself?) time to arrange for his release. Unfortunately the food was vile, and that made getting out of the prison something he'd have to do sooner rather than later if he wanted to get out at all.

At first Blade wasn't sure he was supposed to eat the porridge they brought him. It didn't look, smell, or taste like anything a self-respecting pig was expected to eat, let alone a human being. He decided that if he didn't eat it, maybe someone would notice this and give him better food. He wasn't going to believe the Jaghdi were planning on starving him to death. Meanwhile the arrival of the porridge at least helped him tell time. Two feedings made one "day."

After four days, Blade reluctantly concluded that he really was supposed to eat the stuff. After six days, he was hungry enough to get it down. At least they gave him plenty of water, and Blade discovered that he could get the porridge down if he held his nose tightly enough. After a few more days of the prison food, Blade would have fought Curim barehanded merely for the right to boil the prison's cooks in their own pots.

He also realized that he was losing weight just fast enough so that if he sat here in the cell too long, he would be too weak to escape, fight, or flee. Blade refused to consider becoming that helpless. He'd have refused even if he trusted the Jaghdi and their curious little queen much more than he did.

To be sure, leaving him here could be an accident or an oversight, from somebody not filling out the proper forms. He'd never encountered any people as civilized as the Jaghdi who hadn't developed something like bureaucracy and red tape. More likely the tangled politics of Jaghd might have made him someone who couldn't be kept alive, but who couldn't be openly killed either. Slow starvation was a sure killer and cheaper than any more drastic methods.

Everything depended on whether he was supposed to get out of here alive or not. He could only guess about that. In theory Blade disliked guessing as much as Lord Leighton did. In practice he knew that it was often the only alternative to lying down and letting the world roll over you like a steamroller. Blade disliked that even more than guessing.

On the eleventh day only three guards came with Blade's food and water. Two carried long knives and one carried a bow. After the guards left, Blade exercised to test his strength. He decided he could wait seven more days and still be able to fight three guards. If he waited much longer than that he'd be so weak he wouldn't be able to fight anyone and he'd have to a.s.sume he was being starved to death. He accepted that the odds against him were extremely long, but he had every intention of getting out of this prison alive. The people who expected to come in some morning and throw his body out with the garbage were going to get a nasty surprise!

Instead, it was Blade who got the surprise.

On the fifth day after he'd worked out his timetable for escaping, "breakfast" arrived with no less than six guards escorting it. For a moment Blade thought the guards suspected him and braced himself for a fight to the death here and now. Then he saw that three of the men weren't prison guards. Two wore helmets and knee-length blue robes over leather shirts, and carried short spears. They seemed to be escorting the third man, who also wore a blue robe, but his was knee-length and embroidered in red at the throat and cuffs. The third man stepped forward into the full torchlight. He was a head shorter than Jollya and pudgy rather than lean and athletic, but the face was unmistakable. Here was Jollya's father, the Keeper of Animals.

Blade knew no more than before about what made Keepers important in Jaghd, but the fact that one was visiting him was encouraging. He wasn't out of danger by any means, but if he kept his wits about him he would no longer face a choice between slow starvation and an escape attempt that might be suicidal.

The prison guards raised their torches higher and the Keeper stepped through the cell doorway. One of his escorts pulled the door shut, but did not lock it. Before the door was shut Blade saw both of the escorts stationing themselves between the door and the prison guards. Each of them looked tough enough to fight all three guards at once.

Blade relaxed his unarmed combat stance but didn't sit down. He doubted he could pretend to be humble or submissive well enough to fool this man. The Keeper looked soft until Blade saw his eyes. They were anything but soft, and like Jollya's eyes they seemed to miss very little. After another moment's silence Blade decided to go over to the attack.

"Did Jollya ask you to come and see me?"

The Keeper's eyebrows rose. "Jollya?"

"Your daughter, I believe."

"How do you know that?"

Blade smiled. "I don't know your name, but the face is familiar. It's Jollya's."

The Keeper fingered his chin. "You see clearly. Did she share your bed?"

It was impossible to tell what answer the man wanted here, so Blade decided to tell the truth. "No. I was chained in the back of a wagon all during my journey here."

"That might not have stopped my Jollya." The unreadable expression vanished for a moment, replaced by the weary look of any father with a wild, uncontrollable daughter. "I think that-no, I think I will ask you a few more questions before I answer any of yours."

"That is your privilege."

"It is also my pleasure. I am Sikkurad, Keeper of the Animals of Jaghd. One of my pleasures is to learn what I can about the world beyond Elstan and Jaghd. Do you have Keepers in your distant land of England?" Blade wasn't sure whether Sikkurad p.r.o.nounced the last phrase with a skeptical note in his voice or not.

"We have men who do all that I have heard the Keepers do. But each does only part of a Keeper's work."

"I see. Did one of these men send you on your travels, or are you roaming the world for pleasure?"

"I was sent by two men, who each do part of a Keeper's work." He smiled at the prospect of explaining Lord Leighton and J in terms the Jaghdi would understand. "One is a very learned man, who seeks new and better ways of counting." That would do for a description of a computer expert. "The other is an old warrior, who was once mighty in battle but now guards the first man." J had killed a number of men in hand-to-hand combat in his own days in the field.

"Were they also your teachers?"

"Yes." That was the truth and probably the answer Sikkurad was expecting.

"I thought you had been taught in a way no man in Jaghd has been since-in a way unlike any man in Jaghd today. You seem to think like a Keeper, but you also seem to be a man of war." He pointed at several of Blade's more prominent scars.

"Did Jollya tell you this?"

"Why do you think so much of Jollya, Blade? Does she interest you?"

"As a woman?"

"Yes," the older man said.

Blade's annoyance was not entirely an act. "I will answer that question when Jollya herself asks it, at a time and in a place where I can prove just how interested I am in her. This would not be the time or place, even if you were your daughter. As it is, you are merely taking time away from more important matters and I do not like long talks that go nowhere. Do you have so much time? Or will those guards on the other side of the door later find a way to hear what we say, and tell the queen? I wonder if Her Grace, Queen Tressana, would approve of all the things you are saying to me?"

That was something of a shot in the dark, but it hit the target. The Keeper winced and bared his teeth, and sweat broke out all over his pale forehead in spite of the chill of the cell. There was the longest silence of all. Then he laughed, although he sounded more nervous than amused.

"Very well. I want to hear you tell me why I should believe you are not a spy from Elstan. I want to hear your own words, including things you might not tell the queen."

"And if I do this?"

"Then you will have me as a friend."

"What will you do to prove that friendship?"

"Give you a chance to show the queen that you are not a spy from Elstan. Once she is satisfied, she will let no one punish you. She may even reward you. Although I'm not sure what is worse: her rewards or her punishments." He shrugged. "That is as much as I can do now, even with all my power as a Keeper."

"Or it is as much as you will do, for a stranger who may not live to be of any use to you."

"You have a sharp tongue."

"I am merely being honest."

"Very well," the older man said. "So-tell me how you came to the borderland of Jaghd, without pa.s.sing through Elstan or even hearing of the country."

Blade told a tale of coming through the mountains, dressed in warm clothing he'd left in that well-hidden camp in the ruined city. He went on to tell of entering the forest of Binaark and of his grim struggle with the killer plants.

"You would have done better to go on across the mountains," said the Keeper. "Our sentries watch the pa.s.ses, but they are more merciful than the killer plants. Only very desperate men or those who hope to escape all detection come through the forest of Binaark. You say you were neither kind."

"I wasn't. But I didn't know what lay in the forest. By the time I found out, it was too late. Backward or forward or sideways, the plants were waiting for me."

Blade finished his cover story quickly, but by the time he'd finished Sikkurad was smiling with real pleasure and admiration.

"Blade, you have survived an ordeal that kills nine men out of ten who face it. The plants have done their work since-since there was Jaghd to the west of them and Elstan to the east. Would you be willing to face another, smaller ordeal to prove that you are not of Elstan?"

"That depends on the ordeal. Something which you might call less dangerous than the Forest of Binaark might kill me more surely than the plants."

"I doubt it, Blade. Your willingness to do what I ask would be like swearing to the truth of your story. All I am asking you to do is fight three of the queen's guards in a contest to prove you told the truth."

"Men guards or women?"

"Only men. Would you strike at a woman, Blade?"

"If a woman takes up arms, she should have the same chance as a man to prove her skill and courage."

Sikkurad hooted with laughter. "If you say that to Jollya, she'll fight her way to your bed."

"Before that can happen I need to find out more about what you are asking me to do in this contest. Do I fight on foot or on a rolgha?"

"You can ride?"

"Yes."

Sikkurad's eyes widened.

"In England we have animals called 'horses.' They are somewhat like the rolghas. If I have a few days to practice with the rolgha I will be riding in the fights."

Sikkurad nodded. "I shall see what I can do. If you were to fight on rolgha-back, no one could doubt you weren't of Elstan. I've never yet heard of an Elstani who could ride better than a drunken pig."

"I see. Well, I can do better than that."

"I hope so. However, you will indeed need practice if you have never mounted a rolgha before. The war-trained ones are rather spirited."

Blade suspected this was a considerable understatement. "I will fight any three men of the queen's guards on rolghas as long as I have good weapons, a good mount, and time to practice with them. Oh, and I'll need one other thing before going into this fight."