Wallie apologized for his va.s.sal's behavior and a.s.sured his host that the man was being suitably punished. Tarru grudgingly accepted the apology and smiled. Why his smile always made Wallie think of sharks was a mystery, for the man's teeth were not pointed. His eyes were embedded in wrinkles like an elephant's, not gla.s.sy and smooth like a shark's. Gray hair was not sharklike. Perhaps it was just the way he eyed the seventh sword, giving a mental image of circling and waiting.

"Of course, insulting and provoking a guest is not good behavior for hosts, either," Wallie said as his bowl of stew was laid before him. "Perhaps I should have a word with those gentlemen's mentors. Who are they?"

"Ah!" said the acting reeve, with a curiously unreadable expression on his face. "They are not hosts, my lord, but guests, like yourself. They were proteges of Lord Hardduju. They asked to stay on for a while, and I agreed."

Clever! They had thought that Wallie would take Hardduju's place. If they had sworn to a new mentor within the guard, they would have been vulnerable. So they had obtained privileged status as guests, just as Wallie had done. A guest must behave himself toward another guest, of course, but now the Shonsu emergency was over...

"So they have no mentors?" Wallie asked, sensing something wrong.

"They have not sworn the second oath to anyone," Tarru agreed, face still blank.

Red flags were waving at the back of Wallie's mind, but he did not have time to search them out, for Master Trasingji of the white eyebrows suddenly turned to Tarru and said, "How is the work on the jail progressing, mentor?" in a singsong voice, as though he had been rehea.r.s.ed.

"Quite well," Tarru replied. "It will go faster when we have more carpenters. Most of them are busy with the new work at the stables."

"I didn't know you had stables," Wallie said. "Is there anything that the temple does not possess?" He wasn't fooling anyone. Tarru had seen that escape hole and was plugging it, fortifying the stables and probably increasing the guard on them.

There was something wrong with the Fifths, too. Yesterday they had thawed out as soon as they learned that Shonsu was not going to replace Hardduju. This morning only Trasingji was meeting his eye.

Then Tarru rose, made his apologies, and departed. The four Fifths went with him like a bodyguard. So he had seen that way out, also -- no blood oath was going to be imposed on him.

Wallie had been left alone in the middle of the hall. He sat and ate in solitary misery, feeling as though he were in a zoo, surrounded by secret grins. Ignorant iron-age barbarians! Bloodthirsty prehistoric thugs! He had promised the demiG.o.d that he would be a swordsman, but he had not said he would enjoy it. He despised this primitive, ignorant culture and its murderous hoodlums...

As soon as dignity allowed, he stalked from the hall and headed for the women's quarters. There he summoned Janu and gave her money so that his slave could make a dress. Janu's disapproving expression implied that he ought to make up his mind; did he want a wh.o.r.e or a seamstress?

Then he wandered out to the front steps and stood in black anger, glowering across the parade ground. Faint hammerings drifted over from the jail, and that was one small comfort. He was doing a small good there. But Nnanji was a hopeless psychiatric case, and his attempts to reward Jja were only loading her up with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity -- perhaps she would have been happier left where she was, tending pilgrims, doing what she could manage. As for Tarru -- if that small-time barbarian gang leader thought he was going to outwit Wallie Smith, then...

Revelation like a sheet of lightning!

Wallie uttered an oath that was half a wail. _Trap!_ Injured feet forgotten, he rushed down the steps and hurried off to the temple in search of Honakura.

*2*

The heat was incredible. Every day seemed to be hotter than the last, and now invisible waves of fire lashed the grounds, seeming to sear Wallie's flesh from his bones whenever his path led him into sunlight. At the temple he was escorted once more through the dim corridors and into the gloomy jungle courtyard, but even that felt like an airless oven. His harness straps were sticking to his skin. In a few minutes the tiny priest hurried in, and his blue gown was patched with sweat, as though to prove its occupant had not been totally mummified.

Today there were no polite pleasantries after the salutes. As the two men settled down on stool and wicker chair, Wallie blurted out, "I wish I had taken the job you offered, even if only temporarily."

"That might be arranged," the priest replied cautiously.

"It is too late," Wallie said. "Tarru has forestalled me. He is swearing the guard to the blood oath."

He explained what had suddenly become so obvious. Ghaniri and Gorramini had not sworn the second oath -- they had sworn the third. Nnanji's ordeal had been ordered by Tarru, as a punishment for being honest and winning a bet for his liege.

The att.i.tude of the Fifths had changed because they also had been made into Tarru's va.s.sals, probably at swordpoint. They would resent it and feel guilty. That was why they had been unable to meet the eye of a man they might have to kill in dishonor.

Tarru had not merely seen all Wallie's possible moves and countered them, he had made one of his own -- a beauty. Unbeatable! He was probably even then working his way down through the ranks, and when he had sworn every man in the guard, then he would be ready to spring his trap.

"If I make any move now," Wallie concluded, "then he will promote a coup. How many of the guard he has already sworn I cannot tell, but I expect it would be enough. The rest would obey their mentors first. I would be a reeve with no swordsmen."

He scowled. "I can't even kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d now. Va.s.sals are pledged to vengeance. d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n!"

Honakura comprehended at once, as he always did. "He has moved efficiently in his new post, my lord. He is repairing the jail and the stables. He has increased the guard on the gate. I understand the stables, but I admit that the jail puzzles me."

Wallie snorted and explained, although even the priest seemed surprised over his concern for mere prisoners. "So what do you do, my lord?" he asked.

"I don't know," Wallie confessed. "Sit tight and wait for my feet to heal, I think. It is too late now to think of recruiting more followers. Even if I knew the good men, they may have been preempted by the blood oath and ordered to keep silent about it. The d.a.m.ned thing takes precedence over anything."

"Ah!" Honakura said. "Then you will have to find followers who are not swordsmen. You must have six, you know." He stopped as a junior priestess scampered in to place a tray on the table between them, then nervously fluttered away again between the trees like a white b.u.t.terfly. "Tell me what you think of this wine, my lord -- it is a trifle sweeter than the one we had yesterday."

The goblets were silver instead of crystal, the little cakes even richer and creamier, cl.u.s.tered on a silver plate.

"Six? Why, for G.o.ds' sakes?" Wallie demanded.

"Seven is the sacred number." Honakura frowned at Wallie's expression. "The G.o.d told you to trust me, you said? Then trust me -- it must be seven."

"Me and Nnanji and Jja and the baby ... do you count babies? Do you count slaves?" Religions need not be logical.

The old man leaned back in his wicker cage and surveyed the airy canopy of branches above him for a few moments. "Normally I would not count slaves, but I think you do. So, yes, I think you could say that makes four." He waved the flies off the cakes and offered the plate to Wallie, who declined.

"How is your protege?" the priest asked. "You tested his swordsmanship?"

"He couldn't fight his way across an empty courtyard!" Wallie sipped politely at wine he did not want. It tasted faintly like diesel oil. "Indeed Nnanji's problem has me baffled, and I would have your advice as an expert on people." Leaving out his theory that some traumatic experience had caused Nnanji's paralysis, he tried to explain the earthly concept of a mental block, finding suitable words only with difficulty.

Honakura nodded. "I have no name for that, but I have met it. I had a protege once who got similarly tied up in certain sutras. He wasn't stupid, but on that one point he seemed to be totally obtuse."

"That's right! Did you find a cure?"

"Oh, yes. I had him flogged."

Wallie thought of the whipping post and shuddered. "Never! That is no way to make a swordsman."

"And your slave, my lord? Does she perform her duties a.s.siduously?"

Conscious of those penetrating eyes upon him, Wallie smiled blandly. "She needs more practice, and I shall attend to the matter personally."

As well try to smuggle a plump antelope through a cage of lions. The priest studied him thoughtfully and said, "She is only a slave, my lord."

Wallie did not want to discuss his s.e.x life, but he resented something there. "I intend to make her into a friend!"

"A slave? The G.o.ds have picked a man of ambition, I see." Honakura sat back with his eyes closed for a while and then smiled. "Have you considered the possibility that this slave girl and this young swordsman have been given to you as a test, my lord?"

Wallie had not. He disliked the idea very much.

"I sacrificed my principles by buying a slave girl," he said. "If the G.o.d was behind that, then he tricked me. But I am not going to flog Nnanji! Never, never, never!"

Honakura cackled. "You may be looking at it the wrong way. Perhaps it is a test to see if you are ruthless enough to have him flogged. Or perhaps it is a test to see if you are patient enough not to have him flogged?" Now he had made Wallie thoroughly confused and looked very pleased with himself.

Wallie changed the subject -- there was so much to ask. "Tell me about fathermarks, my lord. I see that I have none."

The priest smiled. "I had noticed. That is very unusual; I have never met it before. Right eye shows father's craft and left eye the mother's, of course. Were you not a swordsman, people would ask you about it."

He smiled and let Wallie catch up with him. "But you met Shonsu that first day..."

"And then your eyelids had parentmarks," the priest agreed. "I don't remember them, but their absence is so unusual that I am sure I should have noticed."

"And I am supposed to find my brother! The G.o.d removed them?"

"Apparently," Honakura said complacently.

Wallie sat and brooded on his problems for a while and inevitably came back to Tarru.

"The G.o.d warned me that I must learn to be more ruthless," he said. "I should have killed him when he challenged me." Shonsu would have done so, probably any Seventh.

"Then you failed," Honakura remarked, "and have made you own job more difficult." He did not seem very worried, but then it was not his blood that was going to wet the sand. "But some of your problems cancel out, my lord."

"How do you mean?"

The priest counted on his fingers. "You were worried about brigands, dishonorable swordsmen in general, and about Tarru. You should also add priests, I regret to say -- some of my colleagues believe that the sword of the G.o.ddess belongs here in the temple, if it is indeed Her sword. But if Honorable Tarru is after it, then he will not alert the brigands, nor cooperate with the priests. And he must have his own worries about swordsmen."

That was true. The unG.o.dly might well squabble among themselves over the loot. Unfortunately it was likely to happen after Wallie was dead.

"I suppose," Wallie said thoughtfully, "that the G.o.ddess will eventually provide a new and more suitable reeve for Her temple?"

"Certainly, my lord."

Another Seventh? With another Seventh beside him, Shonsu could turn the whole guard into a plate of cutlets...

"Eventually," he repeated.

"Eventually," Honakura echoed. "We may be wrong, of course, but if you are indeed being tested, my lord, then I should antic.i.p.ate that the replacement will not arrive until ... until you have resolved your problems by yourself."

"d.a.m.n!" Wallie said. "I need time! Time to heal! Time to find some friends! I envision him working his way through the whole guard like a cancer, swearing them at swordpoint, one by one. When he has got them all, or nearly all, then he can strike -- kill me, take the sword, and leave. If it is a fraction as valuable as you say, then he can throw away everything else and make a new life for himself somewhere. Or he can make himself master of the temple..."

He stopped, following the thought through and then observing the priest's quiet amus.e.m.e.nt.

"He wouldn't need the sword, then? He could pillage the treasure in the temple itself!" Wallie said. "It has been done? In all those thousands of years some reeve must have tried it?"

The wrinkled old face broke into a broad smile. "At least five times, although not for many centuries now, so I suppose someone is about due to try again. Of course it does not work! First of all, your blood oath does not take precedence over everything, my lord. Your swordsman code puts the will of the G.o.ddess ahead of the sutras, is that not so?"

"True. So the temple is protected? But I am not!"

"That is so, I'm afraid, but there is another protection -- they must leave by boat." The priest chuckled and refilled the silver goblets.

Wallie stared at him blankly. "So?"

"So the boats don't go!" Honakura retorted, surprised by his obtuseness. "The G.o.ddess will not cooperate with those who despoil Her temple!"

"Ah, you mean a miracle?" Wallie said.

No, said the priest, he did not mean a miracle, he meant the Hand of the G.o.ddess. Boats went where She willed on the River, for the River was the G.o.ddess...

"And the G.o.ddess is the River," Wallie finished, his deep growl drowning out the toothless mumble of the priest. "Perhaps you had better explain, my lord."

It took a while, for Honakura could not comprehend how ignorant Wallie was of the ways of Rivers. There was only one River -- it was everywhere in the World. No, it had no beginning and no end that he knew of. All towns and cities were on the River, like Hann. Usually Fon was downstream from Hann and Opo was upstream, but not always.

At last Wallie began to understand -- the geography of the World was variable. Now Jja's story made more sense, and he asked about Jonahs. A Jonah, he was told, was a person whom the G.o.ddess wanted elsewhere. If he or she stepped on a boat, then the boat went to that place. If the G.o.ddess wished you to stay where you were, then your boat would keep returning. No, that wasn't miracle, Honakura insisted. It happened all the time. Wallie's sword, now, that was a miracle.

There were good Jonahs and bad Jonahs, but mostly they were good -- which might be why the word translated fuzzily for Wallie. As soon as the Jonah was put ash.o.r.e, then the boat was normally returned to its usual haunts and often granted good fortune.

The World sounded like a very interesting place. Obviously pillaging the temple treasury would not be a profitable operation, but the demiG.o.d had specifically warned Wallie that his sword could be stolen.

"Do not these priests you mention believe in the miracle?" Wallie asked.

Honakura scowled at the paving stones. "I am ashamed to admit that some of the priesthood are displaying a lamentable lack of faith, my lord. There is a group that believes ... the legend says that the sword was given to the G.o.ddess. There are those who interpret that to mean that it was given as an offering here, in the temple, that it has been hidden here somewhere, all these centuries." He looked up angrily. "I have been accused of giving it to you, Lord Shonsu!"

That explained Tarru's thinking, then.

Honakura laughed uneasily and again offered the plate, although he had eaten most of the cakes already. "Have faith, my lord! The G.o.ds do not choose idiots. You will think of something. But now it is my turn! Tell me about your dream world."

So, for the rest of the morning Wallie slouched limply on his stool in the hot courtyard and told Honakura what he wanted to know about the planet Earth -- Jesus and Mohammed and Moses and Buddha, Zeus and Thor and Astarte and all the others. The little man drank it all in and loved it.

That afternoon Wallie made a reconnaissance. Accompanied by an equally shaky Nnanji -- the two of them looking like disaster survivors -- he made a complete circuit of the temple grounds.

The River might just be fordable in a few places, and the cliff might be climbable in a few others, but nowhere could he find both together. There were bad rapids downstream, so he need not dream of boats or rafts. Now he knew that the canyon had been designed by the G.o.ddess to protect Her treasures, so he was not surprised.

Both ends of the great wall stood, as Nnanji had said, in the water and in fast, deep, swirling water. There was no way around.

Wallie stood near the gate for a while and watched the pilgrims coming and going, plus a steady stream of artisans and tradesmen, slaves and carts. It was a busy place, the temple entrance, but now there were eight men on the gate, three of them Fourths. Once he had entered there unseen, but miracles were never produced upon demand.

The new work at the stables consisted of ma.s.sive doors with wickets for the identification of visitors. A Sixth was required to know almost all the sutras, and Tarru was obviously familiar with those concerning fortifications.

The temple enclosure was a very comfortable place. But now, for Lord Shonsu, it was a very comfortable prison. How long would Tarru allow him to enjoy it? How long until he sent his army?

At sundown Nnanji seemed much better. He had even recovered most of his normal high spirits. Wallie informed him that this evening he was to be social secretary and protocol attache -- although in translation all that came out was "herald" -- and they went off to the women's quarters to collect Jja.

She paused shyly in the doorway to let him admire her gown. That was not hard for Wallie to do. It would not have pa.s.sed in Paris and it was still a shamefully s.e.xist way to clothe a woman, but bare chests and harnesses and swords had their own s.e.xual overtones, so perhaps they were evenly matched. She had chosen a pale aquamarine silk, so sheer that it seemed ready to blow away like smoke, and she had made a tight and simple sheath that displayed every detail of her gorgeous figure. The neckline plunged to her waist, her nipples glowed through the filmy material, and Wallie found that effect enormously more exciting than the previous night's ta.s.sels and purple paint.

When she started to walk forward, the slit he had suggested opened to reveal the smooth perfection of her leg. Nnanji gasped in astonishment and uttered a low growling sound, probably the local equivalent of a wolf whistle. Then he looked nervously at his liege.

Wallie grinned sideways at him, without being able to take his eyes off his slave as she approached. "As long as you only look," he said, "I will refrain from disemboweling you."

He thought Jja had worked her own private miracle. He kissed her fondly and told her so, and she shone with pleasure at having pleased her master.