Ooma and the aunts went off into seclusion and in half an hour Blade found that Mok was a drunkard and, like all drunks, was looking for someone with whom to share his liquor and troubles. Blade, itching horribly under the rough cloth, his sores and cuts troubling him, put a good face on and pulled up at the table and began to match Mok drink for drink. The ropy brown liquor, poured liberally from a huge clay jug, was a sort of hard cider brewed from the apple-melons. The first swig nearly tore off the top of Blade's head and, though he did not let Mok see it, he was very near to spewing. Immediately his respect for Mok, at least as a toper, increased enormously. Blade set out to pump the man for every last snatch of information he might possess.
Chapter Thirteen
«The old Empress lies dying,» said Mok, pouring himself a cup of liquor. «In her tent on the pavilion in the lake she lies dying. For days now she has teen dying while the musicians play the same tune over and over again. When she dies the Child Princess Mitgu will become Jeddock in the old lady's stead. If, that is, the Child Princess ever lives to come to the throne. For there is the Wise One to consider, and the various captains, all of whom want the power of Jedd.» Mok took an enormous drink, put a fat finger alongside his nose and looked wise.
They had been drinking for hours at the table. Blade's head was buzzing and at times he felt ill, but he was still holding up well enough. Mok seemed to have, in addition to an enormous belly, a hollow leg. He was drunk, the fat man, but not drunk enough to inhibit his speech. He talked and talked and talked. Blade listened and learned and tried to make such plans as he could, considering the fact that the liquor was roaring in his belly like a storm at sea.
Now and again Ooma would peer into the room and make signs to Blade, signs of impatience. Always he dismissed her with a brusque shake of his head. He would not get another chance like this. A drunkard Mok might be, but he knew what was going on in Jedd, the country and, more important, what was at the moment transpiring in Jeddia, the city. To Blade it had an old, familiar ring — intrigue and plot and counterplot. Power and death. A situation into which he might move, and exploit it without too much peril to himself, if only he could find the right wedge and the proper moment to use it. And the more he listened to the drunken fat man, the more Blade realized that the time was here and now. Before the old Jeddock, the Empress, actually died.
Blade took a drink, blinked and coughed, and said, «Tell me, Mok, of him you call the Wise One.» The man was, he supposed, some sort of prime minister or vizier, and the title more than likely self-bestowed. Blade felt that he could deal with the type — there were plenty of them back in Home Dimension.
Mok burped and rubbed his four chins. «A cunning one, he is. As skinny as I am fat and with not a hair on his great head. He is more brain than body and it is said that he has magic. Perhaps. Certain it is that he has been chief minister to the Jeddock for more years than I can remember, has had her ear and advised her in all things, has had all the power — and he will not surrender it short of death. So it is certain that if he cannot have the care of the Child Princess Mitgu, cannot control her, and Jedd with her, he will see to it that she dies.»
Here Mok sighed and took another drink and wiped at a tear that slid down his blubbery cheek. «A pity, my new friend. Truly a pity. She is a lovely child. So beautiful.»
Blade glanced through a half-shuttered window. It was dark now, but he reckoned on a moon later on. Even here, high on a hill, the odor of burning corpses came to them and there was a fine sift of ash in the air. Blade decided. Why delay? His own danger could only grow with each passing moment. According to Mok, the Wise One had his own police and soldiery and he was sure to hear of Blade's arrival in Jedd. Perhaps he already knew. Mok had whispered that there were spies everywhere these days. The situation was tense, the rival factions poised and only waiting for the old Empress to die. The sudden arrival of the Yellow Death had only complicated matters, not altered them.
Blade now pretended drunkenness and plied Mok with more and more of the fiery melon juice, interspersed with a host of sly questions. Ooma did not appear again and he saw nothing of the two aunts. By the time Mok gave a last piglike grunt and slid forward to sleep on the table, Blade had all he wanted. More than he needed. He got up and staggered outside, put his ringer down his throat and was sick for a long time. Below him, ringing the city on all sides, fires blazed red in the charnel pits.
When he could spew no more and the retching was over, Blade went back into the house. He went up a ladder and found the two aunts asleep in one room, Ooma in another. She was lying on a crude mat in a corner, curled up in the embryo position she favored, and breathing gently. Blade bent over her for a moment, kissed her lightly on the cheek and decided not to waken her. She could have no part in what he meant to do, was in fact best out of it, and the less she knew the better. If things worked out, if he lived and got on with his work in Jedd, he would come for her or send for her. If not — well, she was scarcely more than a child and would soon forget him. He patted her shoulder and left her.
Mok was sprawled head and shoulders on the table, snoring loudly, as Blade left the cottage. He found the path by which they had come and started down the hill. A pale moon was just rising at the far end of the valley. Blade hiked briskly until he was within a hundred yards of one of the charnel pits, then paused in concealment and took stock.
He had only the rough, scratchy clothes he had been given and the stone knife. Not much with which to begin a career in Jedd. This troubled him not at all — he had been in far worse spots in previous dimensions. Weapons would not be a problem, once he came on them. Mok, without knowing he did so, had informed Blade that Jedd was in the Iron Age. For a hundred years now all weapons had been made of the new and miraculous ore that had been discovered in the mountains. Crude iron. Blade chuckled and shook his head. The iron would be brittle and would not hold an edge, but at least the weapons of Jedd were those he understood: swords, lances, pikes, dirks and the like. And armor. Heavy iron armor that weighed a man down.
Blade moved closer to the charnel pit. Fires blazed high and clouds of stinking smoke drifted around him, but by now he had grown accustomed to the smell of roasting flesh and it did not bother him. He moved again, using the smoke as a screen, creeping closer and closer to the pit where the corpseburners were working.
A cart arrived with a new load of corpses. The attendants swore and shouted harsh insults at the driver of the cart. Blade stopped his advance and watched the driver. The man was dressed the same as the corpseburners — yellow breeches and vest and cap. Blade changed his plan and moved away in the smoke to lie in wait beside the cart track leading back to the city walls.
From behind a cluster of boulders he waited patiently, watching the scene in the charnel pit. Inevitably he thought of Home Dimension and of the inferno in which some believed. It was all before his eyes, like a garish woodcut of Dore — the smoldering bodies, the writhing smoke, the moving and cursing figures of the corpse-burners playing their parts as demons. Blade observed and reflected and kept the business part of his mind clear and gripped his little stone knife.
The cart started back toward the city. Blade perched atop his boulders and waited. The cart creaked toward him, the solid wooden wheels squealing for lack of grease, drawn by a slow-moving bovine-like creature that to Blade looked like a water buffalo. Horses were unknown in Jedd. Mok, when Blade questioned him about the beasts, had only looked stupid.