Clive heard a dreadful sound, a combination of a thump and a crack, and to his other side saw Sidi Bombay holding two objects upward. For the first time in the battle, the expression of serenity on Sidi Bombay's face had disappeared, transformed into one of dismay. The gaunt Sidi Bombay's staff had broken in two, doubtless snapped by one too many impacts against an attacker's ax, club, rifle barrel, or skull. Clive's own weapon, the black mallet, was suddenly seized by a breechclouted mameluke. The man tugged at the mallet, and Clive, setting his heels against the marble floor, yanked back. The mameluke flew toward Clive. The last thing Clive saw was the top of the man's head rushing toward his own face, too rapidly to avoid.
There followed a period of darkness and silence punctuated with flashing lights and roaring winds.
Clive opened his eyes and looked up into the worried face of Sidi Bombay.
"The Englishman lives yet. I thought you had been gathered to the bosom of the Creator, O Clive Folliot. Yes."
Sidi Bombay was crouching over him. The thin, dark face was streaked with blood, as was Sidi Bombay's tattered white robe. The gaunt man helped Clive to achieve a sitting posture. Clive gathered his breath and his strength, then climbed to his feet.
He found himself back in the room of the black altar. The stone altar had been converted to a throne, on which sat the fattest man Clive had ever beheld. He was huge, both tall and broad as well as fat. He must have been close to seven feet in height—or would have been, had he stood. As he sat, his weight must have approached eight hundred pounds.
Tiny, glittering eyes peered out of the folds of flesh that he might have called a face. He was dressed in luxuriant satins and wore a magnificent turban upon his head. A great purple ruby gleamed from the front of his turban, and his costume was decorated with diamonds and emeralds and sapphires. Little of his flesh was exposed, but that which was— most notably his hands—was as distended with fat as his porcine physiognomy.
He wore a ring on each of his fingers, no two alike, and he played with them, one by one by one, seldom looking up from the intricately worked metals and the precious jewels.
Clive found himself standing between Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe. Smythe was as battered as Sidi Bombay. A quick look told Clive that Smythe's nose had been smashed, a long gash had been sliced along his cheek, and one of his eyes was closed and discolored.
The huge man facing them began to speak, and in a fleeting instant, even as he did so, Clive took note, somewhere deep in his mind, that the gash on Sergeant Smythe's face had been crudely sutured closed. If the procedure had been painful, it might yet save Smythe from death by bleeding or infection.
Who had done the work? Sidi Bombay? Or one of their captors?
The fat man was speaking to them. His words flowed in a rapid, uninterrupted jabber. Clive could not understand his drift. A few of the words sounded vaguely familiar, like a slumgullion of Chinese and Spanish, ki-Swahili and Hindi. There were occasional familiar words, scraps of French and German, Latin and Greek, something that sounded like Hebrew, and even a syllable or two of English.
Once, Clive thought that he even heard his own surname spoken.
But he did not understand the message.
Only now did he begin to pick out the other figures who ringed the room, illuminated by this time with flickering torches mounted in brackets against the walls.
A man whose costume reminded Clive of a vizier at the court of the sultan of Zanzibar stood near the throne.
The ruler finished his peroration. The vizier turned to face Clive and his companions. The vizier's arms were folded across his chest. He appeared to await an answer.
Without warning, Sidi Bombay fell on his face before the ruler. The ruler spoke a few more incomprehensible words and Sidi Bombay rose as far as his knees. He began to jabber, not at the ruler but at the vizier, in Hindi.
"What's the fellow saying?" Clive whispered to Horace Hamilton Smythe.
Smythe whispered back, "I can only follow a bit of it, sah. But Sidi Bombay is pleading for our lives."
Before Clive could respond he was yanked forward and thrust face downward before the throne. The vizier had not performed the indignity upon him. A pair of savage Dayaks had advanced silently on bare feet and caught him from behind.
Clive tried to struggle but he felt something cold and sharp against his neck and caught the glint of polished steel from a corner of his eye. With an almost silent moan, he lay still. He was spread-eagled on the polished marble. He was unharmed, save for the aches and bruises he had sustained in the battle. His head ached monstrously but that was to be expected, and he was fairly sure that he had broken no bones. But he realized that he was in imminent peril of his life. That fact was coupled with the affront to his dignity: a member of the English aristocracy and an officer of Her Majesty's military service, forced prostrate and helpless before some savage ruler!
Clive managed to get a view out of the corner of his eye. Sidi Bombay, still on his knees, conversed with the vizier. The vizier passed Sidi Bombay's statements to the ruler. Only the vizier, apparently, was permitted to address the giant who sprawled on the throne.
Sergeant Smythe was no longer visible. Clive hoped that Smythe was still there, still behind him, merely out of the range of his vision—that nothing drastic had been done to him. A pair of naked brown feet also impinged on Clive's view, one ankle decorated with a strand of small bones and teeth.
Clive recoiled at the sight, only to see that very foot raised and to feel it planted firmly on the back of his skull. One more move, it seemed to say, and cold steel would sever his head from his shoulders.
Sidi Bombay nodded at Clive and said, "Yes, this is the one."
The ruler spoke to the vizier. The vizier spoke to Sidi Bombay. Sidi Bombay nodded and spoke to Clive Folliot. "The Grand Khalif Achmed Azizal Karami commands you to rise to your knees, Englishman."
Without moving, Clive managed to whisper to Sidi Bombay, "Tell the fat pig that no officer of Her Majesty will respond to such impertinence." Clive thought he heard a moan from behind him. He dared not turn to see if it was Horace Hamilton Smythe.
"If I tell that to the khalif, he will order you killed at once. The choice is yours, Englishman, yes. Shall I tell him?"
Clive considered. He felt the Dayak's naked foot removed from his skull, but he sensed the continuing nearness of the steel blade. Carefully, he rose as far as his knees. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and looked the khalif in the eye.
Slowly and clearly Folliot said, "Your Magnificence, I am an officer in the service of Her Majesty Victoria. As a man I am at your mercy. You may kill me if you will. But as an officer of Her Majesty I have rendered you all the obeisance you are due. I will grovel no more."
Slowly and carefully he rose to his feet. "Sidi Bombay," he commanded, "tell that to the vizier, that he may tell it to his master." Clive looked directly at the khalif. He saw a new expression in the man's deeply hidden eyes.
Even as Sidi Bombay began his Hindi singsong, Clive heard the whistle of cold steel behind him. He neither turned nor dodged the stroke; to do so would lower him and would only prolong the inevitable.
The Khalif Achmed Aziz al Karami moved one jewel-encrusted hand. It was a tiny gesture, almost imperceptible.
But the polished blade changed its course even as it swung at the back of Clive's neck. It whistled past his head, actually clipping a tiny lock of his unruly hair and sending it floating through the air to slide slowly to the black marble floor.
The khalif made another gesture, this time to Clive. It was hardly larger than the move that had saved Folliot's life, a twist of one hand. Torchlight flickered and bounced from the gorgeous gems that covered Achmed Aziz al Karami's fat digits.
The gesture was suggestive of the spiral of the stars outside.
The khalif spoke again, and Sidi Bombay, still on his knees, translated to Clive.
"His Magnificence says that you have the courage of your br
other, Englishman. He says that your courage has saved you your life, and that he will spare English Smythe's and mine as well and place them in your hands."
"Tell His Magnificence that I thank him." Clive wondered how the khalif had known who he was, but he chose not to ask. His mind was racing furiously as he attempted to decide what next to do, what next to say.
The khalif gestured to his vizier, who gestured to a man standing beneath a torch at the edge of the chamber. The man advanced. He was a reddishskinned individual with a peculiar look to his face—his forehead sloped and his eyes were crossed and he wore a feathered breechclout and cape.
From beneath the cape he drew something and advanced toward Clive. He spoke and held the object forward.
With a gasp Clive recognized his brother Neville's journal. He took it from the man and opened it to the last entry he had read—the one that had instructed him to sound the black gong in this very chamber. He had done so only a few hours ago, and all that had transpired since quite staggered the imagination.
There was a new entry in the book! Even before attempting to read it, Clive turned back to the beginning of the journal, to the entries that preceded the one he had read.
They were gone.
He turned back to the newly written page. There were only a few lines there. This time they offered no positive directions. The writing was cryptic, almost a riddle. Beware your friends. Trust your enemies. Rise to the depths and sink to the heights.
The writing was definitely that of Neville Folliot. And it was brand-new writing! What did it mean? Clive wondered. And even if he could fathom its import, was the journal to be trusted? He had obeyed a previous instruction, had sounded the black gong— and had promptly been attacked by an army of murderers! What result would come of obeying another directive from Neville Folliot's ectoplasmic hand?
From behind Clive, Quartermaster Sergeant Horace Hamilton Smythe moved forward.
Achmed Aziz al Karami gestured, and a squad of warriors seized Clive and Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe.
The warriors hustled Clive and his companions from the great chamber. They did not speak. They were a motley crew, the dregs of the armies of the world, not only of this year 1868 but of all time. A Roman centurion, a Grecian helot, an Egyptian in the garb of the Eleventh Dynasty, a blue-painted Celt, a feathered Maya, an Oriental in the rough and foul-smelling accounterment of the horde of Genghis Khan.
All were armed and powerful men.
As audacity had been the key to survival earlier, Clive decided, discretion was the course to follow now. He hoped that he could communicate this to Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe. Apparently he could—or else they had come independently to the same conclusion.
Single file, with Clive in the lead, an ill-matched pair of warriors as guards at the elbows of each, they marched through corridors and down ramps.
The Dungeon was huge, yet its very commodiousness was strained by the crowd of prisoners it contained.
What the khalif intended, Clive had no idea. The journal was still in Clive's possession, but other than that he and Sergeant Smythe and Sidi Bombay had no weapons, no tools, no supplies or equipment of any sort. They had only the clothes they wore and the resources of their own wit and experience.
The Dungeon was apparently carved from the living rock beneath the Black Tower of Q'oorna.
But carved by whom?
Or by what?
The answer to that soon became apparent. A narrow stream flowed through the Dungeon, perhaps a tributary of the broad body of water that Clive and his companions had seen from the mountain peak where they had found and left Neville's coffin. How many centuries the stream had flowed here, there was no way of telling.
But if the stream had carved out this cavern, then the water had to come from somewhere and exit elsewhere, and that meant that there were two possible paths of escape from the Dungeon, other than returning via the opening through which the guards had unceremoniously dumped Clive and Sidi Bombay and Sergeant Smythe.
The mouth of the cavern was closed by a wall of iron bars. The single gate in the wall was also made of iron bars. The guards had unlocked this, swung it open, and shoved their prisoners through. Then they had slammed the gateway shut once again, locked it securely, and marched back the way they had come.
The cavern was lighted by a row of torches that burned high on the walls. The torches were fed by oil. Where the oil came from, when or how or by whom it was replenished, the newcomers simply did not know.
Clive and his companions stood together, peering into the gloom.
How many prisoners did the huge cavern hold?
There seemed no end to them. Hundreds, possibly thousands of prisoners stood or lay or sat in huddled heaps on the cold, damp floor. The mix here was as polyglot as that in the chamber above, but here the men were not spruce as above, nor armed and equipped. Instead they appeared dispirited, their clothing in tatters, their faces gaunt, their eyes haunted by hopelessness.
They had clustered by nations and by races. There were gangs of dark-skinned men, probably African tribesmen. Others, equally black, might have been East Indians or Australian aborigines. There were yellow Asiatics and ruddy-skinned American Indians.
From each group there arose a buzz of talk, the whole so blurred and overlapping that Clive was unable to detect any meaning in any of the voices.
None of the men possessed anything other than his clothing.
Clive and his companions moved among the groups, studying them as they passed, gathering suspicious or assessing glances in return. They found the source of the black stream. It emerged from an opening in the wall of the cavern. Clive examined the opening. It was less than a foot in diameter. There was no way he could escape through that hole.
The three companions followed the course of the steam until it broadened into a basin. The basin was roughly circular, some twenty feet across. There was no telling its depth, but it was obvious that the water exited the Dungeon through the basin, for the stream flowed steadily into it and no visible watercourse emerged from the basin.
But that was not the most astonishing part of the circular body of water. Clive and his companions were not able to get close to it because it was completely surrounded ...
By women!
Women of every conceivable racial type, white and black, yellow and brown. Most were of types recognizable to Clive, but others were so strange that they appeared hardly human. Heavyset, hulking, hairy women looking more apelike than human. Perhaps these were survivals of some ancient ancestor of humanity, some race that had arisen thousands or millions of years ago only to give way to a more advanced species when their time had run out.
Mr. Darwin would be beside himself, could he but see these persons!
And others! There were women with hairless skulls and slim, sleek bodies that might function better in a watery environment than on the face of the Earth. And still others with long torsos and extended, tapering limbs, women who might have grown to maturity in a world where the pull of gravity was slight—if not absent—and where the human frame could stretch to amazing heights.
The women clustered around the pond. Like the men, they were devoid of weapons or other implements, but they had found strength in union and were unmolested by the males.
One woman in particular caught Clive Folliot's attention. Despite her ragged garb and unkempt person, there was a dark-haired and dark-eyed beauty to her, and a grace to her carriage and her limbs that brought a tightness to Clive's throat and chest.
There was something of Annabella Leighton there! All women were sisters under the skin, or so ran a common army maxim. Surely there was a kind of sisterhood here, and Clive was deeply moved by the sight of this female.
He tried to move toward the woman.
To his astonishment, the other women stepped aside. They did not want contact with these strange males. Clive could sense Sergeant Smythe and Sidi Bombay beside and slightly behind him.
/> Even as the other women, black and white, tall and short, hairy and primitive and smooth-skinned and sleek, moved aside, the dark beauty stood her ground.
Before her, Clive halted. He looked into her eyes. Her back was to the pool. She returned his glance, her face curious, courageous, perhaps even cunning. She did not step aside as the others had. She did not yield an inch. She did not flinch from Clive.
He raised his hand to touch her. He moved slowly, as one would toward a wild animal, seeking to reassure it, to tame it, above all not to drive it to panicked flight.
The woman tracked the movement of Clive's hand, following it with her eyes. The suggestion of a smile played at the corners of her mouth.
Clive placed his hand gently on her upper arm—or tried to.
When his fingers were the tiniest fraction of an inch from her flesh, a searing flame leaped from her to his skin. It spread across him, covering his entire body. His every nerve screeched, his eyes bulged, his hair stood on end. He could see blue flames crackling over his torso.
CHAPTER 14
"Too Many Creeps"
Clive Folliot sat on the floor of the cave, feeling its cold and damp through his khaki trousers and thick- soled boots. To his left sat Sidi Bombay, serene in lotus position, his face a blank, his hands resting palms upward on the inner sides of his knees. To his right was Sergeant Horace Hamilton Smythe, his face a twitch with eagerness to be on with things.
Opposite Clive sat the woman whose touch was so electrifying. She smiled now at Clive. "Clean run I dimp sizzle your circuits, user. Would have been a catastrophic error. Glad to download this message." Clive shook his head and looked to Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe for help, but they failed to understand her any more than Folliot did. "Are you apologizing, young lady?"
She smiled and nodded. At least they were in accord on that score. She seemed to speak the English language, or some variation of it. Clive had known enough Americans to recognize some of the peculiarities that had accrued to the tongue in that country, but even Sergeant Smythe, who had lived in America for a time, got no more out of the woman's words than did Clive.