Yngve, AR - Darc Ages 02 - City Of Masks Page 7

  "You let robots guard the tunnels?" she asked the city lord, her voice loud and sharp with suppressed fury.

  Berluchos shrugged. "Why not? We cannot let our citizens risk the taint of the unclean touch..."

  Threo shook Awonso's hand. "Where have you two been all night? We were starting to worry..."

  Awonso's handshake felt limp, and his eyes looked dull underneath the mask. He seemed sluggish somehow, but his breath did not smell of strong drink. Kensaburé also seemed dazed, but the mask made it impossible to see for certain.

  "It is them," Threo whispered in Okono's ear, "but I think they have been drugged."

  "Now, dear doctor," said the city lord, "you can prove to me that your medicine works. If it cures him, I shall let all the city be treated. Unmask him!" The guard with the robot face-masks removed the prisoner's noose. "This one tried to spit on the guards, see, and wanted to spread the disease, so I had to order my robots to cut out his tongue. Of course we burned the tongue, just to teach him a lesson and keep our city clean..."

  The sack came off, and Threo gasped. He recognized immediately the grotesquely oversized nose of the man he had seen beneath the palace, who had been dressed exactly like the city lord was dressed now. Blood leaked from the man's lips, and he seemed too despondent to raise his head.

  The masked city lord shook his head reproachfully. "Not a pretty sight, I know. Stand back now... he can still breathe on you! Let the robots hold his head away from you, doctor, and you just... put your needle in his neck or whatever it is you do. You may want to look away, my lady."

  Threo's hands closed into fists. It was dawning on him now, that he and his friends were being coerced into playing a part in a power struggle, between two men who had shared the role of city lord. And of all the citizens of Vanitia, who would recognize the deformed man on the floor without his mask? If the man who wore the mask said this man was a complete stranger, then the man was a stranger.

  "It takes time for the vaccine to have its effect," Threo said, torn between his anger and his urge to help. The masked city lord nodded. "We have all time in the world to wait for this wretched Leper's reaction to your cure. Of course you must stay with us as my guest, until all my citizens are cured."

  "And where will you keep - this person?"

  "He stays right here, where he belongs, guarded by my robots! You can look after him all day. But we cannot let him have any sharp objects at hand, of course..."

  Such as pen and paper, thought Threo. The others did not know, and Awonso still acted drugged.

  Well, he thought, he had to play his part.

  The robotic guards held the prisoner down, while Threo put on a pair of gloves. He prepared a syringe and cleaned the man's shoulder. And when he gently pushed in the handle of the syringe, and thick yellowish liquid shot into the prisoner's bloodstream, it was the genuine Plague vaccine.

  While the others watched he carefully cleaned and sealed the tiny wound, sterilized the syringe with a special medical candle, and threw away his gloves - and mask. The Vanitians started visibly.

  "Burn those, and the man's clothes. Bring him clean ones. The guards must also burn their clothes if they have touched him. You too, my lord, if you have touched him or stepped on his blood."

  He put on his eyeglasses and regarded the masked city lord, impassive and professional.

  "Give him another face!" the man called Berluchos said, turning away from the naked face of the doctor. "He is breaking the law. The punishment is banishment or death!"

  "Then banish me if you like," Threo said, his face as rigid as a mask. "And try to make more vaccine on your own."

  The robotic guards froze still, hesitating. Berluchos was shaken and the human guards stepped away from Threo, as if he had been tainted by the very fear of plague.

  "Damn you, doctor!" Berluchos whimpered pathetically. "Is it money you want? I can make you a very rich man, if you provide the cure... but do not challenge our customs!"

  "Does the sight of my flesh offend you, Your Eminence? Is it the wrong color? Too dark, perhaps? The nose too flat?"

  Berluchos made a frantic, dismissive gesture, as if chasing off imaginary demons. "Put on a face, damn you!"

  Threo blinked. Berluchos meant it. Now there was no doubt: this must be the same man who had tried to rape Okono. He had recoiled in horror when she had cut off his mask, because to him the mask was his face, a face. The sight of anyone without a face-mask was as obscene to him as a person strutting around naked - or worse, to people like Berluchos.

  But somehow Lepers, dwarves and other outcasts seemed excluded from the custom; they did not count. How utterly strange. Threo knew, then, that he must first root out the disease in the Vanitians' minds.

  He fished out a handkerchief from one of his many pockets, and tied it over his nose. "Is that enough for the law?"

  "Until the mask-makers can make you another one. Now let us leave this place. It is too cold down here."

  They made to leave, and Okono clutched Threo's arm with both hands; only when she came to the staircase did she notice that Kiti-Mo was not with her. She turned and saw the big-eyed robot facing the prisoner, leaning its large head forward as if listening.

  "Kiti-Mo! Come here! Did you touch that man?"

  The robot tiptoed over to its owner, fluttering its eyelids with a click-click noise. "No. I was only -"

  "Quiet! Not a word from you until I say so!"

  On the top of the stairs, Threo cast one last glance at the lone figure down in the vast corridor, in the circle of light from the robotic guards' torches. One day ruler of the city, the next day a pariah and guinea-pig... Threo wanted to cry, something he rarely did.

  The robot stayed quiet on the journey back to the palace. The skies above the city rumbled, and another rain fell; Okono covered Kiti-Mo with her cloak.

  Chapter 9

  On the courtyard outside the palace, the city lord ordered the burning of their clothes, as the doctor had suggested. Berluchos told the visitors to wait with him for the palace staff to assist them.

  It might have been a ruse. But Berluchos was serious enough to order Gradischa and Bottichea to stay away from him, while he sent for new clothes for everyone who had visited the prisoner - including himself and the guards.

  Gradischa stood at the far end of the courtyard, waved at the dull-eyed, barely moving Kensabur and shouted across: "I shall wait for you, my brave warrior! I want to hear all about your great adventures!"

  What went on in Kensabur's drugged mind at that moment? He was thinking, after a fashion:

  Cold outside. Moist. Rain in the air. So hard to think. Something in the wine. Feels good. No. Not good. Try to remember. That fat lady with the stupid smile invited me to her room and offered me a drink... no. Not a smile. It was a mask. I drank the wine... the whole damned bottle. It had an odd aftertaste. I remember now. I've been drugged. And while I was down, she took off her face... I mean her mask... and I saw... HELP! Holy Goddess, get me out of this cursed place! Then I fainted, and woke up when a little ray of sunlight shone in my face... woke up...

  He let out a faint yelp, and blinked with suddenly clear eyes. He found himself standing next to Awonso on the courtyard outside the palace.

  "Awonso! I saw her face! Great gods. Did she drug you too, boy?" He shook the shorter, younger man's shoulder until Awonso babbled at him to stop.

  "Stop that... sire..." Awonso blinked, rubbed his head, uncertain of what caused his splitting headache - the vigorous shaking, or bad health. "The wine! I knew there was something wrong about it. But I had to wash down that blasted tablet..." He blinked again and became fully awake. "Where the King's shite is my radio set?"

  The eyes of Berluchos watched them through the eyeholes of the grinning face, revealing nothing.

  Kensabur remembered now the episode from the catacombs with the prisoner, every ugly detail, and his mind filled with grim, determined insight. How much easier it was for him to think and plan when he had a
clearly defined enemy.

  This city was ruled by thoroughly corrupt men and women, who spat on the ideals he held for sacred and would gladly lie to his face to stay in power.

  But not even he was gullible enough to accept the city lord's bluff that one single captive Leper - with a nose that size - had come all the way here alone. Threo was right; This is Leper City.

  Without Awonso's radio set, there was no chance of sending the distress call - and perhaps it would not have worked anyhow, what with the unexplained static.

  "Is the Blackwhale ...?"

  "Gone, sire," Awonso said. "And forget about bribing our way out on another ship. They can close the harbor with that giant chain, if you recall. And even if we could get past the chain, even if we sailed in a whole cluster of boats, their guns could sink every one of them before we got far enough."

  "We could jump ship and swim."

  "I cannot swim. Sire." Awonso shook his head. "It is five hundred kilometers to the nearest other city on this coast. Perhaps you want to try the tunnel we saw, which might lead to an opening, where we might run into Lepers, and..."

  "Enough! I hear you. Lady Okono, I could really use Buchu now. And I have to find Jacob, to help me into my armor. Goddess willing, he remembered to set the booby-trap."

  Okono urged her baby-eyed robot closer. Never had a robot looked more endearing, its movements more childlike. Even Threo, who detested robots, had to admit to himself that Kiti-Mo made an exception to his dislike.

  "What booby-trap?" she asked.

  The blond knight lowered his voice slightly. "It is a matter of personal honor, my lady. If anyone tries to move my armor without using the hidden switch... boom! "

  The city lord's guards had their rifles trained on the visitors and there was no longer any doubt that Kensabur's party were hostages to the city lord.

  "I heard that!" screamed the city lord, standing no more than twelve feet away. "You will not blow up my beautiful palace! Captain! No one shall touch or move our guests' luggage! Make sure it is left alone! And lock up Sarastos!"

  The captain of the palace guard saluted Berluchos and ran toward the entrance doors. The masked Gradischa waved at Kensabur from the entrance steps, while her veiled daughter stood silent beside her.

  Kensabur shuddered inwardly at the blurred memory of Gradischa's true face. If her daughter even remotely resembled her mother, there was no chance he was going to flirt with either of them, even to save his life...

  The servants came out of the palace carrying torches, firewood and piles of fresh clothing.

  "There," said Berluchos. "Now, this should not take long..."

  "Lie down," Okono said in a terse voice.

  "What?" asked Kensabur, unable to connect her voice with the pale artifice of her ever-pleasing mask.

  Okono tore off her mask, and at once he understood. Hers was the face he had seen on her late brother Kamo's face during that Spring Joust, when he had beaten both Kensabur and his bigger brother Sabur, and uttered the command "Yield" to Sabur's bruised, bloodied face. She had her brother's killer eyes.

  "Lie down!"

  During the space of a single breath, Kensabur grabbed Awonso and Threo by their collars and let himself fall down on his back, pulling them down with him.

  As they fell, Okono shouted: "Kiti-Mo-Fan! "

  In the passing of a second, the skull-masked guards shifted their aim down at the men on the ground, hesitated and were about to aim at the standing Okono, when something completely unexpected happened.

  The short robot's painted eyeballs plopped out of their sockets; its four feet locked into the ground with a hiss of suction cups, its knees clicked into a locked straight position, and a needle-thin laser-beam flickered out of the center of its swiveling head.

  The head spun like some possessed puppet, and out of the empty eye-sockets spewed crackling, rapid gunfire.

  Over the deafening noise, Threo could swear he was hearing the robot's synthetic voice shout with glee - or maybe that was only in his imagination.

  The gunfire did not hit Okono, but all around her the guards dropped like flies with bullet holes in their white masks. Anyone who was holding a gun aimed at the hostages immediately became a dead man.

  Okono took one look at the carnage around her, pointed at the staggering figure of Berluchos, and uttered a sharp command: "Kiti-Mo-Fan!"

  "No," the eyeless robot replied. "You taught me only to shoot to defend you. The target is not holding a weapon."

  Okono groaned; this was not the best time to instruct the robot in advanced ethics. Berluchos got the respite he needed, and fled from the palace into the boat they had arrived in.

  "To the harbor!" he cried. The rowers had them in motion before Kensabur had come to his feet and grabbed a rifle from the dead guards. He fired a shot in vain, and the boat disappeared behind a street-corner.

  Everyone in his party picked up a rifle. Okono also picked up and pocketed Kiti-Mo's two eyeballs. The robot's four legs detached themselves from the ground, and it bounded after its creator like a devoted dog.

  Without a word, Kensabur guided the party toward the palace entrance. He had to get his armor back, or he would be powerless to stop Berluchos.

  Gradischa held up her gloved hands in front of her masked face, and her veiled daughter clutched Gradischa's skirts; the party ignored them and ran for the doors.

  The doors slammed shut in their faces, and then came the click of bolts sliding into place. Iron bars covered all windows on the ground floor. Okono lifted one of the painted eyeballs. "Ten-second fuse!" she twisted the two halves of the ball and the clockwork inside creaked ten times.

  She dropped the eyeball by the foot of the palace doors and shouted "Hold your ears!"

  The others, including Gradischa and Bottichea, ran to the row of columns that lined the walls, and took cover between them.

  The bomb went off with a large blast, shattering every window in the front walls of the palace; the barred double-doors flew off their hinges and into the great hall.

  Before he had time to think things over, Kensabur was dashing out of cover, holding the bayonet for a charge, and the others were following him.

  "Wait, wait!" Awonso said. "I have an idea."

  The battle for the city had begun.

  Chapter 10

  The captain of the palace guard and three of his men guarded the hostages' quarters, where the drugged servants Buchu and Jacob were being held.

  The explosion shook the palace and the guards flinched as broken glass rained in on them.

  "Stand your ground!" ordered the captain. "You know what happens if the outsiders are allowed to escape the city. All our families, doomed! I expect you to fight to the end."

  The guards saluted him, with as much alertness as their masks allowed. Then, from the door behind them, came an ominous growl, and then a crash of furniture smashing against the wall.

  "Did you remove all the outsiders' weapons?" the captain asked.

  "All but the suit of armor, sir. And only the nobleman could use it, sir. He said so himself."

  "Good. Shoot to kill if anyone breaks through the doors. I have posted another four guards in the great hall. Let them try and get inside." He moved for the staircase at the other end of the corridor. The sound of fighting had intensified downstairs, and smoke billowed up from the ground floor.

  The smoke cleared in the hallway as the breeze blew in through smashed windowpanes; daylight played in the torn curtains and carpets. The four guards posted in the hallway were ready with their rifles, crouching behind columns and huge potted plants. The courtiers had fled the palace.

  "Hold your fire!" cried the voice of Gradischa from the smoke-filled palace doorway. "It is I, the wife of Berluchos! Let me and my daughter inside!"

  From the top of the wide central stairway, where he could overlook the great hall, the captain waved at his posted men and gave them order to hold their fire.

  "Can I come in?" cried Gradischa, in a
shrieking hysterical voice. "Is it safe?"

  "All clear, my lady!" shouted the captain.

  A plump figure emerged in the mist of smoke and peeked inside, then stepped forward and into the hall; the figure was wearing a torn silk robe and the wig and mask of Gradischa. After her came a shorter figure, wearing the unmistakable wide-sleeved robes of Bottichea, and the veil over her head. The head with the Gradischa mask nodded and waved, took a few tentative steps... and hurled herself behind a column. The veiled girl tossed a round ball which eerily resembled an eyeball, across the marble floor and followed the first figure into cover. A third figure rushed in from the entrance and out of sight: some four-legged short apparition the captain could barely make out.

  He screamed "Fire!" just as the tossed ball rolled up to the posted guards - and vanished in another devastating explosion.

  Plaster rained down from the painted ceiling, and guards flew through the hot air as if thrown by a giant's hand. The shockwave knocked the captain off his feet and he stumbled down the wide marble steps. The blast made him temporarily deaf, and he only felt his pulse race through his smarting ears. Smoke and the stench of death filled the hall; then came the screams of a wounded man, and the captain knew that the end must be near.

  But he had to fight on; he knew what his other face looked like beneath the face of papier-mach, and was convinced that the outsiders would destroy his family if he let the world learn the truth. He crouched, aimed through the gaps in the white stairway banisters, and fired a steady volley of laser pulses toward the point where he had last seen the two intruders.

  Outside the palace entrance, Awonso and Threo let go of the mouths of the unmasked women. Gradischa and Bottichea, stripped down to their petticoats, screamed for help. They covered their faces with their hands, and pleaded for their faces to be returned. Threo almost wanted to oblige the two women; Gradischa looked nothing like her mask.

  Like the man he had seen captured by the current city lord, Gradischa suffered an abnormal form of acromegaly caused by the hereditary form of the Plague virus. Her teeth were larger than on a full-grown horse, and her lips stretched nearly all the way to her ears to house the enormous molars.