Grandmaster (32 page)

So real did they appear that Zharkov called out to them for help. He scrambled to his feet and tried to chase after one of the elusive shadows, but they seemed to dodge him deliberately.

"Help me," he screamed. "Can't you see I'll die here?"

He thought he heard a faint laugh.

Exhausted, he leaned against a boulder and slid to the ground, his feet splayed beneath him.

Around him was silence. So he had been alone, after all, he thought. There had never been a horde of painted men. It was cold. He tugged at his cuffs to cover his bare hands. The fabric sprung from his fingers; he was too weak to close them. He rested there, against the rock, until he no longer felt the wind or the cold.

At least it would be an easy death, he told himself.

He closed his eyes and allowed himself to sleep, knowing he would not awaken. But before he slept, he thought once again that he heard the coarse laughter of men behind him.

 

Zharkov was wrong. He did awaken.
He awakened screaming.

He was bound and tied on a table in a filthy pit. Surrounding him were the grease-smeared men of his nightmare delusion. But these men were real. Swarming around him like curious dogs, they poked and prodded Zharkov with dirty hands while they shouted to one another in a strange guttural language he did not understand.

He surmised from the seeping water and mildew on the walls lit by primitive stone oil lamps that he was underground. There were no windows, and the stench of crowded male bodies was oppressive. On the wall opposite was a huge fireplace in which the parts of some large animal were roasting. As the fat dripped, sizzling, from the shanks of meat into the flames, Zharkov realized that he had been aching with hunger for days.

Had these strange men rescued him? Would they feed him?

Or was he there for another purpose?

The meat
, he thought with a rising panic. Could they be cannibals? Why else would they keep him tied and strapped?

One of the men walked toward him with a knife. Zharkov screamed again. The man looked startled for a moment, then looked at his knife and at Zharkov again, and laughed. The others joined him, showing gaping mouths filled with rotten teeth as the man teased Zharkov with the blade. But when the laughter died down, the man merely cut the ropes binding Zharkov s hands and feet.

Zharkov stared at his wrists for a moment. He was being set free! But for what? He was too weak from hunger to survive outside any longer. He tried to pull himself into a sitting position, but even that was too much effort.

The man who had cut his bonds grunted and gestured with his chin for Zharkov to move. Zharkov shook his head in fatigue and desperation.

The man raised his leg and kicked Zharkov off the table.

He landed on a bare earth floor crawling with cockroaches. Slapping them away in disgust, he finally wobbled to his feet. Then one of the men tossed something his way. It was greasy and burning hot and, Zharkov realized after the initial shock of catching it, aromatic. It was a shank of meat.

Zharkov dug into it savagely, tearing off slabs with his teeth, feeling the warm, oily juice pouring down his chin. It was delicious. He thought he could never get enough, until the heavy lump in his stomach churned sickeningly. He turned aside and vomited. The cockroaches covered the spill in a swarm.

After that, he forced himself to eat sparingly. He remained in the stinking underground hole for what seemed like several days, although he never saw sunlight. The men left him alone. They gave him food—always meat—from time to time, but otherwise attempted no communication with him. His questioning gestures were ignored.

In time, his questions stopped. He lived like an animal scratching at the lice on his head, sleeping on the infested floor with the rest of the men. At least, he thought, he was gaining a little weight, and the paralyzing numbness in his limbs had gone.

Then one day a crack of light appeared high overhead. The men stopped their activity at once and looked up, squinting, in silence. The light broadened.

A door. Zharkov's heart pumped wildly. The place he was in was not a pit, after all, but a cellar of some building. But there was no stairway leading to the high door. It seemed to be cut out of the stone wall as an observation point.

Into the bright light of the doorway appeared the silhouette of a small, bent figure. Like an insubstantial shadow, it wavered in the light, turning its small head slowly right and left, as if searching for someone. Then it seemed to find what it wanted, and a thin arm rose and pointed at the mass of men below.

Several hands shoved Zharkov forward. The dark figure in the doorway nodded slowly in assent, then lowered a narrow rope ladder into the pit.

When Zharkov reached the base of the rope, the figure on high nodded again, and he climbed up, leaving the stink and squalor of the black-painted men behind.

The individual at the top of the ladder was an Asian of indeterminate sex. The head was shaved and the face expressionless, but the eyes shone with what Zharkov could only describe as malice. Although he could not understand why, the whole bearing of the little creature unnerved him.

Zharkov was led first to a large, steaming bath chamber where he washed gratefully and dressed in robes that had been laid out for him. Then the androgynous guide took him as far as the entrance to a large, dark room.

Even from outside, Zharkov could smell the strong incense. The guide gestured for him to enter, but for some reason he hesitated. Something frightening was inside that room. Zharkov didn't know how he knew that, but he was certain. Something frightening and deadly and almost unbearably compelling.

He felt beads of sweat form on his brow. "What's in there?" he asked, although he didn't expect an answer.

The guide answered in flawless Russian. "The goddess Varja awaits. She has sent for you."

"Why?" Zharkov asked.

The guide's eyes again smiled malevolently. "She owns you." Even the voice of the small, bent Asian was without gender.

Zharkov contained his annoyance. "What about the men? In the cellar."

"She owns them, too," the soft voice said.

Zharkov suppressed a shudder, then went inside. Those steps into the woman's chamber changed his life forever.

 

H
e slept after their lovemaking
. When he awoke, Varja was gone. The androgynous gnome stood near him.

"Where is she?" Zharkov snapped.

"The goddess Varja commands you elsewhere."

"Commands?" He stared imperiously at the little guide.

"Commands," the Asian repeated with assurance, then gestured toward the door.

Zharkov followed. He was taken to another room. It was smaller and painted stark white. There were no furnishings in it except for a large white dais in the shape of a cube. On top of the cube, covered by many layers of white silk, rested a long object.

He waited alone in the room for some time before Varja entered. She was wearing a long gown of black brocade studded with rubies, like a thousand red eyes that saw into his soul. Zharkov trembled in her presence. As before, the very sight of her mesmerized him and infused in him a sense of utter, unquestioning obedience.

She held out her hand. Every finger on it was covered with precious rings, and an enormous ruby bound her wrist. Zharkov fell to one knee in front of her and kissed it.

"You have pleased me, my prince," she said. "As reward, I have called you here to show you a gift that I will give you in years to come."

"Whatever you have chosen to give me, goddess, whenever you choose for me to receive it, I will treasure."

She smiled. "You will most certainly treasure this," she said. "It will be of great help to you later, and pleasure beyond counting. It will be yours to use as you please, and destroy when you choose."

He rose. "But I could never destroy a gift from you."

"Not now, perhaps, but someday. When you are truly my disciple, when the suffering of men and the weakness of your spirit and the need of your flesh no longer concern you, you will destroy my gift. Then will you return to me, pure, strong, complete. Then will you be my mate for all the ages of evil to come."

She made a quick gesture, and the sexless gnome appeared carrying an embroidered footstool. The Asian placed the stool beside the dais, bowed once, and departed.

He climbed to the top of the cube and removed the thick silk wrapper. Beneath it was a girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, tall and dark-haired and beautiful.

And dead.

"Her name is Duma. I have saved her for you," Varja whispered. "Enter her."

Zharkov felt a knot in his stomach. The girl's skin was cold as ice.

"Do not disobey me!" the goddess shrieked, her eyes flashing.

He turned back to the body. Swallowing the lump of nausea in his throat, he spread the girl's stiff legs and opened the robe he wore.

His organ was shriveled. Surely the goddess asked too much. Surely he could never...

At first he thought the low hiss in the room was his imagination. But when he turned toward Varja, he understood that in this place of magic, anything was possible.

Black smoke was issuing from the goddess's fingers like serpents' tails. Her eyes were rolled back in her skull, exposing only the whites, and from her mouth poured strange sounds as ancient as the magic mountains themselves.

And as Zharkov breathed in the acrid smoke and his ears filled with the droning, savage sounds of Varja's words, his mind raced backward, back beyond memory, before his own birth, through empty centuries to the time of his ancestors. What he saw in his half-conscious state were only impressions, brief pictures: a tree with a bark of iron ... a saber, flashing with inner power ... Black. Hats, the mark of a magic long buried ... an old man, a severed hand, a golden snake...

"No!" Zharkov screamed.

A golden snake bearing death, death for ages, death forever.

"The Wearer of the Blue Hat has returned," Varja warned.

Zharkov clutched his forehead. It felt as if a dagger had just pierced it. A dagger ... or a bite from a golden snake.

"He became the snake and destroyed our kind, but I have kept our power alive," the goddess said. "This time, he must die. He must die ... he must die ... he must die ... This time you failed to kill him. The next time, you will not fail...."

Her voice receded in his mind, replaced by the thunder of his own obsession. The golden snake! Like Jehovah destroying the kingdom of Edom, the golden snake had obliterated the sacred cult of the Black Hats and the unbounded power they possessed. Only if he killed the snake would his own kind be permitted to thrive again. Thrive and rule, with Zharkov himself, the Wearer of the Black Hat, to lead them ....

His flesh quickened. He kissed the belly of the dead girl beneath him, and her cold, lifeless body filled him with aching desire. His hardness throbbed for her. With one deep thrust he entered her, groaning in twisted pleasure. The room was warming, Zharkov realized. And not just from the heat of his own loins, but from the flesh beneath him as well. What was once a cold slab of meat was emanating heat and lust and the sweet fragrance of a woman.

The body was coming to life.

"Take her, Prince of Death," Varja said, her thousand red eyes glowing. "Take her with your body now. Later you will love her. And later still, you will kill her. For me."

"For you, my goddess," Zharkov said, closing his eyes to the exquisite pleasure of the girl's awakening limbs. She rolled her hips to his rhythm, raising her knees to let him penetrate her more deeply. Her hands, once still, clawed at his back like a cat's. She lifted her breasts to give him suck. Then he galloped her, and she cried low in her throat, pressing him to her. At the moment when he burst, frenzied and hard as iron inside her tight wetness, the girl's eyes fluttered open.

They were blank eyes, neither worldly nor naive. There was nothing behind them, no feeling, no fear, no joy, no remembrance. They looked past Zharkov into space.

The smoke cleared away in an instant. Varja spoke. "You have awakened from life-in-death to aid him who now controls you."

"Yes, my goddess," Duma said. She still did not look at Zharkov.

"You will be taught everything you need to function in the world of men. When you are prepared, you will be sent to him."

"I understand."

"Do you remember any of your life before the moment of your awakening?"

"No, goddess."

"Whom do you serve?"

"I serve the great goddess Varja and those she selects to carry out my destiny."

Varja smiled. "Then it begins," she said with satisfaction. "Our time has come again at last."

On the dais, Duma looked into Zharkov's eyes for the first time. He thought he saw something like disappointment register in them fleetingly, but the reaction vanished as quickly as it came, if it had come at all. The girl's face was as blank as a mannequin's.

 

 

A
t seven-thirty in the morning
, Zharkov went to Sergei Ostrakov's office in full dress uniform. He waited in an anteroom until Ostrakov arrived minutes later, smiling.

"My dear comrade, come in," he said, taking Zharkov's arm. Zharkov brushed his hand away.

"Why did you place Katarina Velanova's apartment under surveillance?" he asked bluntly.

"Alyosha." The general spread his arms and grinned broadly. "It will all be explained to you soon. But I can tell you that my orders originated from the highest sources. The highest, you understand."

"And did these high sources order you to break into Velanova's home in the middle of the night, too?"

Ostrakov made a disapproving noise with his mouth. "You are so dramatic, Alyosha. There was no breaking in. Comrade Velanova invited us inside most graciously. She is a charming woman, your friend. You ought to marry her."

"My private life is no concern of yours."

Ostrakov shrugged. "How much you have changed, Alyosha. I'm only suggesting that one could do worse than to marry a beautiful woman who is also a loyal Party member. A very loyal member."