"True, O Jorian. Little though I esteem fornication, I fear I must condone it this once."
"Well, that's something. At least, I don't suppose Sahmet will turn into a gigantic serpent, as did the princess Yargali. Now, I can see why Sahmet might not find Ishbahar to her taste as a bedfellow. But why pick on me?"
"You were to hand; she has seen you—or claims she has seen you—in her visions; and perhaps she finds you attractive."
"If I'm attractive to her looking like this, she'll find me utterly ravishing when cleaned up. Well, I daresay I can hold up my end, in all senses of the phrase. We won't tell Estrildis about it and hope that, if she find out, she'll forgive me natheless."
"Your secret is safe with me, my son."
"Good. But why need the king anything so costly as this tunnel for his connubial visits? Why cannot he cross the Lyap in a boat, like everyone else?"
Karadur shrugged. "Some say that King Hoshcha—who was not of the line of Juktar the Great and whose right to the throne was therefore questioned—was full of fancies about being assassinated as he rode through the streets. Others aver that he wished the tunnel as a means of escape from his palace in the event of revolution. In any case, he began the use of the tunnel for the Divine Marriage, and his successors have imitated him."
"What finally happened to Hoshcha?"
"After all his precautions—which included wearing a steel breastplate under his robes—he slipped in getting out of his bath and fractured his skull."
At the head of the long, narrow flight of steps that ended Hoshcha's Tunnel, Jorian rapped four times on the heavy door. When the peephole opened, he held up Sahmet's ring.
A bolt clanked and the door groaned open. There stood King Ishbahar in a dressing gown, without his wig. The lamplight shone on his egg-bald pate. A pair of guardsmen stood behind him; beyond these, servants hovered.
"By Nubalyaga's cleft!" cried the king. "Jorian! Whatever befell you, my boy? Come in, come in! You, too, Doctor."
They stepped into the king's dressing room, and Jorian told briefly what had happened to him and his companion since the start of the riot. A guardsman closed the door, which became merely one more panel in the wall. The handle of the bolt that secured it looked like a piece of gilded ornamentation.
"You did the proper thing," said the king. "We shall order the arrest of those villains Borai and Yiyim. You two shall sup with us this even. But first, my dear Jorian, you must clean up. You look as if you had been fighting a dragon and getting the worst of it, heh heh. You shall have the use of our royal bathtub, no less!"
"Your Majesty's consideration overwhelms me," said Jorian.
"Stuff and nonsense, my boy! We are friends, not merely sovran and subject. Evvelik! Conduct these gentlemen to the bathroom and furnish them with the needfuls."
The royal bathtub was a huge affair of burnished copper. As Jorian soaked and soaped, he murmured to Karadur, who was washing his face and hands:
"O Karadur, is this king deemed a little queer?"
"Nay; barring his fondness for the table—"
"I mean, with a lust for boys or men in lieu of women."
"Oh, ah I see. Nay again. Whereas that aberration is rife in Irazi, I think not that the charge has ever been laid against Ishbahar. When young, he had several wives, of whom all but two have died or been cast off; but I know of no other outlet for his lusts. Forsooth, methinks his only present passion is for rare victuals. Why?"
"Why else should he seek to make a bosom friend and confidant of a nobody—a mere foreign artisan—like me? It makes no sense."
"Perchance he simply likes you, my son. Or again, perchance it is concerned with Sahmet's plans for you."
"Oh. We must look further into this matter. And by the bye, meseems this tub were an admirable flying vehicle for our foray into Xylar. If we kept the weight well down in it, 'twere stabler than the common flying carpet or broomstick."
Karadur shook his head dubiously. "It would take a mighty demon to loft such a weight, and demons resist being imprisoned in copper or silver, since they know it is difficult for them to escape therefrom."
"Why not try Gorax, whom you keep mewed up in that ring? He's the strongest demon I know of."
"Alas, Gorax owes me but one more labor. Then he will be free to return to his own plane. Hence I dare not release him save for the direst need."
"I should have thought that being chased by that mob this afternoon were a case of direst need."
"True; but so scattered were my old wits that I never thought of Gorax at all."
Over one of King Ishbahar's colossal repasts, Jorian asked: "How went the riots, Your Majesty?"
"Luckily for Iraz, the rain waxed so heavy that it dispersed the factionists. Hence only a few score were slain and a few houses looted and burnt. This factiousness is a dreadful thing, but we know not how to end it. Have some of these oysters, which have come all the way from the coast of Shven, packed in ice."
"Why not simply stop the races, sire?"
"Ah, one of our predecessors—Huirpalam the Second, as we recall— tried that. Then the two factions united to revolt, drag poor Huirpalam to the Hippodrome, and tear him to pieces—a small piece at a time. We would not invite a similar fate, heh heh."
"If you will pardon your servant's saying so, methinks Your Majesty will have to face these factions down, soon or late. But that is Your Majesty's concern. Tell me, sire, what is this about Madam Sahmet's wishing me to take part in a service to the moon goddess?"
The king looked startled. "She has told you already? One moment." He signed to everybody present save Jorian and Karadur—even the bodyguards and the food taster—to leave the chamber. Then he said, barely above a whisper: "Know you the fate of a futterless king in Penembei?"
"I have been told of it, sire."
"It is true." The king pointed to a massive bracket overhead, whence hung a lamp. "All too true. They take away that lamp, and we are supposed to toss the rope over yon gallows. We stand on a table, make fast the knot, and overset the table—ugh! Thus they get rid of an unwanted monarch without laying impious hands on his sacred person."
"Is Your Majesty finding his sacerdotal duties—ah—"
"Arduous? Have we your solemn oath of secrecy?"
Jorian and Karadur both swore. Ishbahar went on: "Our life is in your hands. We would not entrust it to you gentlemen, save that desperate conditions demand desperate remedies. For several months, now, our lady Sahmet has been dissatisfied with our performance; and forsooth, we had as lief abandon such games, since our girth imposes mechanical difficulties upon the coital process, and the fires of youth have long since burnt low.
"So, you see, our life is already in the hands of Madam Sahmet. She has but to tell her nominal husband, High Priest Chaluish, and he will pay us a visit with the sacred rope. She refrains for two reasons: Imprimus, that she hates High Priest Chaluish and would do nought to favor him; secundus, that I have promised her a lusty springald with an iron yard as my surrogate, an she will keep tacit about my limitations. And you shall be he."
Jorian: "I trust I shall prove worthy of the honor. But we once had a king in Kortoli who faced a similar predicament."
'Tell us, dear boy."
"This was King Finjanius, who reigned just after the Dark Age following the fall of Old Novaria to nomadic invaders from Shven. The Kortolian rule was that, when the king was no longer for any reason deemed worthy to rule, the chief priests of the kingdom called upon him to present him with a goblet of poison to drink. If he drank not, they said, the magical nexus betwixt him and his land would be broken, and the crops would wither and the people starve.
"Now, Finjanius was sent to the Academy at Othomae for his higher education. The Academy was then a new institution with but a handful of professors—none of the ivy-clad buildings it now boasts. In the Academy, Finjanius absorbed what were then deemed heretical 'modern' ideas. Shortly after his return from Othomae, he succeeded to the throne when his uncle, the old king, died.