Ruseth refused to enter it during the day, circling it instead, waiting for nightfall. When dusk came, Ruseth headed the Wind-Spirit for the setting sun, a red coal in the dark smoke. Presently the stars came out and with them the small bright flare on top of the Tower of Diheteth. It increased in size and brilliance, rising like a star as they neared.

  When they were within a mile of the vast dark pile, shot with tiny lights here and there, he hauled the mainsail down. By this time the stink from the city, carried by the wind, was powerful.

  Hinokly, who had been to Rebha once to visit his brother, explained the reason for the odor.

  “All garbage, refuse and excrement is dumped into the sea beneath. Most of it is slowly carried out by the current, but much is caught by the piles and the floating docks. You saw the garbage floating in the sea when we were passing southeast of Rebha. We were miles away, yet it was thick.”

  “Yes,” Hadon said, as he helped Hinokly with one edge of the sail. “I also saw the sea crocodiles, the gruntfish, the birds and the sea otters. There must be thousands around here, living off the garbage and the excrement.”

  Hinokly added, “There are so many birds that Rebha is half white with their droppings. Under the city, the crocodiles and the otters make life very dangerous for anyone who happens to fall into the water, or ventures too close to the edge of the docks. Every now and then, according to my brother, a massive hunt is organized to clear the predators out. They kill a lot of crocodiles and gruntfish, though not so many otters. These are too smart; they swim out and away as soon as they get wind of the hunt. No ships can catch up with them.

  “So Rebha has a big crocodile feast—they’re good eating—and for a while it’s comparatively safe to walk on the under docks. That is, the sea crocodiles are scarce then, though the two-legged crocodiles are not. Rebha has a serious crime problem, but what city doesn’t?”

  The wind died suddenly and the sea subsided into long flat rollers. As the ship slid forward on its own momentum, the crew stepped down the mast. Then they hauled out long heavy paddles and began the work of getting the vessel under the bottom of the city. It moved slowly under the bulk overhead, passing between two massive pylons bearing huge white numbers. Though it was dark, there was enough light from distant torches and large fires in braziers to see a hundred feet ahead. They steered by docks at which lay huge merchant galleys, small private galleys, fishing boats and even rowboats. Some two hundred yards in, torches flared around a building by a long dock. They were too far away to distinguish the words painted above the structure, but Hinokly said that the building housed customs inspectors and marines.

  They headed away from it, passing behind a series of great monoliths and vessels in docks. Several times they bumped against a ship or grated along a dock, but their slow passage prevented any loud noise or damage. Occasionally they heard a deep grunting, like that of swine, or a slurping noise. These were made by the monstrous deep-sea fish that fed here. Hadon dimly saw one by the distant light of a cluster of torches. Its flat oily back was wide enough for three men to stand abreast; its length would have taxed him to long-jump across it. Tendrils of thick knobby flesh sprouted from above its eyes. Its mouth was shaped like two shovels, one above the other.

  A few minutes later Ruseth stopped paddling. In a low voice he said, “Kwa-kemu-kawuru-wu. ”

  Something moved a few feet away in the water to Hadon’s right. Foam shone dirty white in the dimness as an object as long as their ship slid by. Hadon had an impression of knobbed eyes and a ridged back and a long tail, but that could be his imagination, since he knew it was a great sea crocodile. Then it was gone. "

  They resumed their paddling, feeling that at any moment rows of teeth set in iron-strong jaws might clamp on the blades of their paddles and tear them out of their hands. It had happened before, if Hinokly’s stories were true.

  They were forced to veer from their desired path by a brightly lit galley. Armed men moved over its decks, and from its depths came grunting and squealing and the stench of pigs.

  “Livestock has to be guarded until it can be hauled up to the first level,” Hinokly said. “There are human thieves, though these are not the greatest threat. The sea otters will get into a ship and suck the blood from cattle and pigs, then eat them. They won’t attack a man unless cornered, but then they are as dangerous as a leopard. Maybe more so, since they are bigger than leopards. I saw a sea otter fight a leopard once—this was at a party given by my employer in Khokarsa—and the otter killed the leopard. It died two days later, though, of its wounds.”

  Something creaked above them. Hadon looked up and saw a faint oblong appear in the darkness about fifty feet above. Something splashed into the water, just missing the vessel, throwing a spray against his side. The oblong disappeared.

  Hinokly said, “Somebody dumped their garbage.”

  “Paddle faster,” Ruseth said. “The noise and the odor will bring the beasts.”

  They hastened to obey. Hadon thought it time to ask a question: “How do you know where you’re going in this dark maze?”

  “The head priestess gave me a map and also verbal instructions,” Ruseth said. “I was to take the ship in through the fortieth and forty-first piles from the southwest corner along the south side. We were then to shift one row of piles to the west every twelve piles. After reaching the tenth row, we were to proceed past twenty piles to a dock on which are three burning torches,” he continued. “That one ahead. We couldn’t take a straight path in because we had to avoid certain well-patrolled docks and water lanes.”

  The ship bumped slightly on its starboard against the edge of a slip and then bumped harder against the end. A face appeared in the window of a shack. A moment later three robed and hooded figures came out. One quickly doused the torches in the water. Another said, “What word, strangers?”

  Ruseth said, “That Word spoken in the Beginning...”

  “By great Kho Herself,” the priestess answered. “Come into the shack.”

  They crowded in. The woman closed the wooden shutters, putting them all in darkness. A moment later a spark flew from flint against iron, fell into a basin full of oil, and the oil burned. By its dim, bluely flickering flame, the woman ignited a candle, then three more. She placed a metal cover over the basin, extinguishing the fire, but not before the smoke had set them to coughing.

  Her hood was thrown back, revealing the face of a woman in middle-age. “You have papers?”

  Ruseth took a roll of papyrus paper from a leather bag slung over his shoulder. She broke the seal and spread it out on a table to read it by the candle’s light. Her eyes widened, and she looked up now and then to stare at the newcomers. Finally she took a bronze-tipped bone pen, dipped it into a bottle of ink and wrote a note at the bottom of the last page. She signed it with a flourish, sanded the ink, pressed it, rolled the paper up and affixed a seal to it. She handed it to Ruseth.

  “So you are Hadon,” she said. “The man who should have been Emperor, consort of our high priestess, if the Voice of Kho had not decreed otherwise. And you,” she said, staring at Lalila, “are the Witch-from-the-Sea. Suguqateth tells me that you carry one in your belly who is destined for great things—if she is born in the treasure city of Opar. We will see what we can do to get you there.”

  Hadon had read her signature. He said, “Karsuh, you seem to have been waiting for us. Apparently the news about us has raced ahead of us, though we were in the swiftest ship on the two seas.”

  “No, Hadon,” she said, “we were not waiting for anyone in particular. A watch is always kept here; this is a station in the secret message-transient system. It is true, however, that we have heard something about you. Four days ago a swift naval galley docked here. Admiral Poedy received a message from Minruth. It warned the admiral that Awineth, Hadon and others could possibly be on the way to Rebha. There was no positive data to this effect. It was just that the authorities at Rebha should be on the lookout for you. Minruth thought you might try to flee Khokarsa if Awineth’s forces suffered defeat. There was no description of your ship, Ruseth, which is fortunate. But that does not mean there won’t be.”

  “If we could get provisioned tonight, we could leave before dawn,” Hadon said. “That won’t be possible,” Karsuh said. “We can get a certain amount of food into the ship tonight. But there is so much patrol activity now that a large amount being moved at one time would be certain to attract attention. It will take severaldays. You see, Admiral Poedy fears—and rightly—that there are many people loyal to Awineth in Rebha. These don’t include most of the great merchants who live on Rebha, and Poedy is certain that the majority of his officers are faithful to Minruth. It is the lower classes, the fisherfolk, the sailors, the laborers, the smugglers of Rebha whom he mistrusts. So he keeps patrols busy at all hours, especially at night. That is why we have to move slowly and circumspectly.

  “In fact, if he should discover that the Temple of Piqabes is aiding Hadon and Lalila, he would arrest every priestess in the city. He is looking for an excuse, though he realizes the dangers. Perhaps he even hopes for an uprising, since that would give him a chance to clean out the slums. We know through our spies that he has marked at least three thousand men and women for death, people whom he suspects of criminal activity or subversion. Rightly, I might add.”

  “How long will the restocking take?” Ruseth said.

  “From what you’ve told me of your lack of supplies, about three nights,” Karsuh said. “In the meantime, we must hide your ship. Even with the mast stepped down, its lines are obviously unfamiliar. An inspector would know at once that it had entered illegally. If such a vessel had come in through proper channels, he would have heard about it, you may be sure of that.”

  “I must know where you’re taking the ship,” Hadon said, “in case we have to leave suddenly; we’d be in a bad situation if we didn’t even know where the ship was.”

  “It’ll be in an enclosed dock ten piles west and thirty north of this pile,” the priestess said. “My men will take it there. Come, let’s get out of here.”

  The woman leading, holding a fish-oil lantern, they walked along the dock until they came to the bottom of a wooden staircase which wound upward into the darkness. They climbed swiftly, pausing on three landings to catch their breaths. At the top, they found themselves in a narrow street. Here, above the city, the sky was cloudless except for a half-veiled moon. On both sides rose unpainted wooden houses three stories high. The windows on the street level were shuttered: the doors looked solid and were fitted with massive bronze locks. The windows on the upper stories were open. The far corner of the street was dimly lit and, when they arrived there, they saw two giant torches burning on stanchions before the door of a large building. As they passed it they heard sounds of revelry from within. Over the doorway was a large board on which was painted the head of a beach baboon. This marked the hall where sailors of this totem could stay and where Rebha citizens of the same totem gathered for social events.

  The priestess led them on, up a flight of steps alongside a ramp to a higher level. Hadon tried to memorize the route, but the darkness and the many turnings and climbings and descents confused him. He wondered at the absence of people at this early hour. Karsuh told him that there was a curfew.

  “Poedy imposed it two months ago, ostensibly to prevent any more rioting. It also makes it easier to control criminal activities. Anyone caught out after dusk is automatically convicted, except for provable emergencies, of course.”

  She stopped. “Oh, oh!”

  A light had suddenly illuminated the corner of the street about a hundred yards down. It swiftly became stronger.

  “The patrol!”

  17

  She turned and ran by them, and they hastened after her. Kebiwabes, who was carrying the sleeping Abeth, began to fall behind. Hadon took the child from him. The party fled back up the steps until it came to the previous junction. There they turned to the north and walked swiftly until Karsuh halted.

  “This is the Street of the Overturned Hives,” she said.

  She rapped on the door of a run-down structure, giving three quick beats with her fist, then six, then nine. She waited and presently somebody on the other side of the door rapped twelve times. Karsuh struck the door three times.

  Just then lights flared strongly at the junction. Several men, their bronze helmets, cuirasses and spearpoints gleaming in torchlight, stepped into the open. A few seconds later lights appeared at the other end of the street, and a second patrol appeared in the junction there. The party was caught between the two.

  Chains rattled behind the door. Karsuh said, “For our sakes, lovers of Kho, open quickly.”

  A chain banged; a bolt was withdrawn; wood squealed against wood as if a bar had been fitted into too tight arms. A patrolman shouted, his cry echoed by the group at the other junction. At the same time both patrols began running toward the group in front of the door.

  It swung open suddenly. The priestess’s lamp showed a man clad only in a kilt, clutching a short sword, blinking. Behind him was a narrow hall with walls of peeling paint and a stairway halfway down it.

  “Karsuh!” the man said. He stepped back, and the refugees poured in.

  “The patrol!” Karsuh said. “They’re after us! Lock the door!”

  The man quickly obeyed, though he had just shot the bronze bolt when men hammered on the other side.

  “Open in the name of the Emperor Minruth and his vicar, Admiral Poedy!”

  “There’s little time for explanation!” Karsuh said to the man. “These people are important! This is Hadon of Opar; you know of him. This woman and her child are under the protection of Kho Herself.”

  The door shook under hard bufferings. Suddenly a spearpoint rammed an inch through the wood. Lights appeared in the hallway and at the top of the stairway. Men, women and children looked out from the doors and the steps.

  “Gahoruphi,” the priestess continued, “you’ll have to move everybody out of here. The soldiers will call in help and seize everyone. Poedy is looking for a chance to make an example of those who resist him. It’ll be the crocodiles for all of you, even the children!”

  “I know,” Gahoruphi said. He turned and shouted at the people who were now filling the hall. Hadon wondered where they had all come from; they must have been stacked in their rooms.

  A fat naked woman nursing an infant gestured at the priestess, who told the others to follow her. They single-filed down the hall between armed men and up the creaking stairway. The blows on the door were getting louder and more frequent. Hadon looked back down the steps. The head of an ax crashed through the wood. It was withdrawn, and Gahoruphi stabbed his spear through the hole. A man cried out. Gahoruphi withdrew his spear and shouted, “First blood!”

  Lalila said to the priestess, “Won’t they be massacred?”

  “Some will be killed,” Karsuh said. “But the rest will follow us through secret ways to the temple.”

  Abeth, who had been silent with terror since being so savagely awakened, now began to cry. Lalila took her and comforted her.

  On the hallway of the second story, others poured out of the rooms. The reek of unwashed bodies filled the air, and shouts and questions dinned around them. The priestess stopped to tell them to follow her. Hadon, however, grabbed her by the arm.

  “Why should we run?” he said. “There are still only a few soldiers outside. Why can’t we kill them before they call more and then dump their bodies into the sea?”

  There was a crash from below as the door fell in. The clang of blades and the cries of injured men arose.

  “I will take the woman and the child to the temple!” Karsuh said. She called to the fat woman, whose baby was bawling loudly. “Hinqa! You stay here until Hadon is forced to run, then lead him to the temple.”

  Lalila gave a despairing look at Hadon, as if she did not expect to see him again. Then she hurried away down the hall and up another flight of steps. Presumably she would go to the roof and across it to wherever the priestess led her.

  The manling Paga hesitated for a moment. He was evidently torn between his desire to fight by Hadon’s side and his desire to make sure that Lalila was safe. Hadon pointed his sword at Lalila, saying, “She will need a man to guard her, Paga, if I should fall.”

  The scribe and the bard looked longingly after Lalila. They wanted to get away from the bloodshed to come, but they were not cowards and so would do their duty.

  Hadon rammed his way down the stairs through the crowd. Kebiwabes and Hinokly followed him. The hall was jammed with men trying to get at the soldiers, who had advanced only a few feet into the house. Hadon, seeing that the situation made it impossible for him to help, retreated. He fought his way back through the screaming women and children to the second floor. There he went to the window overlooking the street and opened its wooden shutters. Below were about two dozen soldiers. Two were blowing bronze whistles to call in more patrols.

  By now the windows all along the streets, as far as he could see, were lit. Heads protruded from them, and there were even citizens out on the street, some with lamps, some with torches. All carried swords, axes or knives.

  Hadon went into the nearest apartment, two rooms with blankets on the floor for beds, and rushed through them to stop at the window and look down. The street just below him was unoccupied. The soldiers were all crowding around the door or hammering at the shutters on the windows with spears and axes.

  Kebiwabes, Hinokly, Ruseth and his four sailors entered a moment later. Hadon said, “Follow me!” and he let himself out of the window. After dangling for a moment at arm’s length, he dropped. He brushed against the side of the house, shoved with his hands, propelled himself a little away. His long legs, bent, took the impact easily. And then he had his tenu, Karken, Tree of Death, out of its scabbard. Its edge cut into the back of a soldier, then into another, and another. The head of a fourth fell on the planks; the arm of a fifth thumped into it.