The Sinners of Erspia

ONE The Sinners

Histrina scarcely dared raise her head once she was in the chapel. Eyes downcast, she followed the tonsured acolyte across the tiled floor, walking between slanting slats of hard white light which entered through narrow openings high in the walls. They were like arrows picking out stone recesses and elaborate wood carvings in the cool, otherwise dim place of worship. She passed before the altar upon which a small flame burned in front of a polished stone figure, automatically pausing to press the back of her hand to her forehead in the traditional sign of submission to the Good Lord.

Then she came to the little confessional room where the priest was waiting. The acolyte disappeared through the drapes, returning after a moment. Punctiliously he folded his hands. “The Father will see you now, my child.”

Her heart beating wildly, she went in. Sitting in an ornate upright chair, wearing a maroon cope, the Father smiled at her kindly, the wrinkles of his benign face creasing.

She obeyed as he motioned her to kneel on the cushion before him. The small room seemed to enclose them both as if nothing else existed in the whole of Erspia. Only the cheep of a bird somewhere outside broke the heavy silence. There were no windows. Light came from an oil lamp on the nearby table.

Clenching her hands together, she tried to avoid looking directly at the Father’s large polished boot. She felt utterly in his power.

The Father sighed and then uttered a brief recitation. “Heerwecumlord, lighten us our bodily burdens.”

He sighed again. “So why are you here, daughter?”

The question was ritualistic. “To accuse myself, Father.”

“And of what do you accuse yourself?”

“I—” She swallowed. “I have been having thoughts, Father.”

“Tempting thoughts?”

“Yes, Father.”

“The Evil One sends bad thoughts to us all, my child. You have been taught how to resist them.”

“I don’t think I can resist them much longer, Father.” Her words came out abjectly. “They are too strong.”

“What is it the Evil One is trying to make you do, child? Hurt someone?”

“No… well, yes, sometimes he tries to make me do that. But I can resist that by concentrating on good thoughts, as we are taught. This is something else. Feelings that keep making me want to—to—”

The priest leaned forward, almost eagerly. “Yes, daughter?”

“There is a young man, Father,” she said demurely. “I keep wanting to… do sinful things with him.”

The priest leaned back, sighing again and tutting to himself. “All is clear. This is the Evil One’s most powerful weapon. The body itself collaborates with it, for the body is full of darkness and corruption.”

Her voice was a whisper. “What can I do, Father?”

“The Lord will help you to fight these thoughts.”

“But it is so difficult, Father. They are so overwhelming. Especially when night comes—”

“Yes, the Evil One is stronger at night. Stronger than the Lord himself at times. But he must be fought. If you but once give way to the lecherous thoughts he puts in your head, you will instantly be his. He will force you to do other things as well—steal, murder, lie. He will banish all the good and clean thoughts that the Lord sends to you, and your life will be one of wretchedness and crime.”

“Yes, Father. But help me—help me to be strong.”

The priest’s voice became stern. “You can help yourself, my child. When the Evil One’s fever comes over you, when you imagine that you can resist no longer—and you must believe me when I tell you that you always can resist longer—then call on the Lord by his secret name.” He leaned forward again, placing his hand on her bowed head. “I am instructing you in this because you are obviously in danger. You were told this name when you were confirmed in the ways of the Lord. Can you remember it?”

“Name, Father?”

“Yes.” His lips brushed close to her ear. “Ormazd!” he hissed. “Call on Ormazd in your time of strife. He will hear you.”

“But is that certain, Father?”

“Nothing is certain, my child,” the priest answered sadly. “The Lord and the Evil One both struggle for our souls. Who wins depends on what we love most. But you must pray—pray to Ormazd, the sacred name of God the Good. Pray tonight and every night, when temptation comes in the dark hours.”

She felt both his hands pressing down on her scalp as he mumbled a blessing. He signed for her to go.

She pulled open the wood-panel door, pressed through the drapes and found the acolyte standing outside. Histrina had arrived specially early. Others from the village were beginning to file into the chapel now, forming a queue outside the confession rooms. She stepped silently past them, not meeting their eyes.

Outside, she realized she felt strengthened a little. Tomorrow she would be at confessional again, and the priest would ask her how she had fared during the night.

Oh, how would any of them ever be able to keep the Lord’s way were it not for these daily sessions of advice and encouragement? Without the church, she was certain she would have fallen into the torments of sin long ago.

Yet for all that, this was the first time she had dared to confess the yearnings for lechery that of late had been stealing over her.

The small, bright sun was no larger in the sky than a peppercorn, and was dipping down towards the sharp edge of the horizon. On Erspia it was never possible to see very far. One could walk to any point on the horizon in a matter of minutes. To the eye it was as if the world were no more than a shelf of rock and soil that the sun was about to slip under.

Histrina, however, had never known any other world. To her this close little scene had the homeliness of normality. Night approached and birds were twittering, flying to their nesting places in the trees. She quickened her step to retrace her path to the village.

The road wound between stone-roofed cottages. An unexpected silence greeted her as she lifted the doorlatch to her parents’ house. No one was there. They must be at confession, she thought. I must have missed them on the way. Oddly, she had thought they had already gone that afternoon.

Then, on the kitchen table, she found a note. Have gone to see the Arrands’ new baby. Won’t be back till late.

Unaccountably her heart sank. Somehow she didn’t went to be alone in the house during the long evening.

With an abruptness that she had begun to find frightening, the sun winked below the horizon. Darkness began.

Already, it seemed in her imagination, urges were beginning to well up in her. She lit the lamp in the living room, then knelt before the family shrine, and prayed.

“Good Lord,” she whispered, “deliver me from these unclean thoughts. Let my liking for Hugger be pure and friendly. I don’t went to dwell on his body like this, O Ormazd.”

She heard a noise, and gasped. But it was only a knock on the door. Rising, she went to open it. A handsome, smiling young man stood there. He wore a jaunty hat with a feather in it, and newly pressed shirt and breeches. In his right hand was a lance, which he leaned against the wall.

“Hugger!” she nearly shrieked.

Still smiling, he placed one foot in the door. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

Limply her hand fell from the latch and he was in, closing the door behind him. He extended a hand. “The kitchen is no place to talk. Shouldn’t we go into the living room?”

“I suppose so. But you shouldn’t be here. My parents are out.”

“Yes, I know. I saw them going towards the Arrands.”

It distressed her that he should come here and find her alone, but it was a distress that was rapidly turning to excitement. She led him into the living room, where she immediately set herself down before the shrine and began to pray once more, silently and intently, with eyes closed.

At length she rose. Hugger was pacing the room restively.

“Why do you have your lance with you?” she asked shyly.

“I’ve been exercising with the troop. Have to stay in shape if we’re to keep the Evil One’s horde away, eh? They say it’s been growing in numbers lately.”

“Yes.”

She faced him, the lamplight falling on her pale features and making them seem as though made of porcelain. His eyes wandered down the curves of her body, discernible through her loose gown, which showed off her shapeliness most fetchingly.

“You’re looking nice,” he said gruffly. He stepped closer, put his hand on her plump arm, then suddenly caught her up and pressed her to him to give her a lingering kiss. She went limp in his arms while the kiss lasted, afterwards turning her head aside, breathing heavily.

“That’s—enough. No more.”

He held her as she tried to pull loose. “Do you remember the day before last, in the field?” he murmured breathlessly in her ear. “When we nearly…”

“No! Don’t speak of it!” In desperation she tore herself free. “We mustn’t even think such wickedness!”

She was flushed. She had felt his swollen manhood pressing against her belly when he held her. In the field—Oh Ormazd help her!—her hand had nearly…

“If we were married it wouldn’t be wicked,” he said slyly. “So why is it wicked now?”

“You know very well! If we were married we would be consecrated by the Lord. Even then, it is sinful to be too much taken up with—with—”

“With lechery.”

She nodded. Her flush turned deeper, became a blush.

Then she turned suddenly to confront him. “Have you been to confession today?”

His eyes dropped. He looked embarrassed.

“Oh, but you must go to confession every day!” Her eyes opened wide in dismay. “Nothing else can save you!”

“Well, I haven’t!” With an almost savage movement he stepped towards her again. She tried to retreat but her back was to the sideboard. He put his hands behind her shoulders and buried his face in her hair.

“I didn’t dare tell the priest what’s on my mind,” he murmured. “You’re so lovely, Histrina. You drive me mad. And I know you feel the same.” His hands were hot, and they started wandering down her back, massaging her buttocks, coming round and up to squeeze her breasts.

She pushed at him, but her arms felt weak. “No! Stop that, Hugger!”

Now his breathing was so deep that she knew he was depraved. But that was not what was worrying her. What was worrying her most was that her heart was beating so loudly that it pounded in her eardrums and filled the whole room. She felt sure that he could hear this pounding as clearly as she could, and the knowledge embarrassed her.

He growled something incoherent as he dragged her away from the sideboard and forced her down on the couch. She squealed and struggled, but for the moment she forgot to call on the Lord.

Then her gown came up and she knew she was bared to him. He was staring avidly at her naked loins, while the tide of desire that surged through her drove her wild.

“No!” she cried. “No! Oh Ormazd! Ormazd! Don’t let it happen! Stop me from doing it!”

But she was doing it, for Hugger tore down his breeches, threw himself on her, and she felt him entering her. He went in with only a prick of pain, for she was wet with excitement, and soon a sort of motion began in which both of them were rocking to and fro and thrusting against one another. And it was the sweetest, most delicious thing she had ever imagined, which she could no more stop than she could have stopped the setting of the sun, for all that she wept the whole time and never ceased shrieking the name of Ormazd.

Then even that, the secret name of the Lord, became an agonised croak in her throat while an explosion of pure pleasure drenched her from top to toe.

They lay limply, but only for a short while—was it minutes or seconds? Their corrupted bodies had not finished sating themselves with each other. They started again, and this time it lasted longer, and the explosion when it came was of an even greater, more searing intensity.

They subsided. Histrina lay without an ounce of strength in her, whimpering with mortification.

She had done it! She had succumbed to the Evil One!

She sat up, drawing her knees to her chest and pulling her gown over herself as soon as Hugger got up from her. He rearranged his breeches. They looked at one another. Both were stricken.

A quavering groan escaped her lips.

Hugger slumped onto a chair near the table. He bowed his head. “You may as well know it,” he said woodenly. “Why I didn’t go to confession today. I haven’t been these three days past. I have abandoned the Good Lord. I have been won over by Ahriman.”

She put her hand to her mouth. “You spoke his secret name!”

“Like all his true followers.”

“But how could you let yourself—”

“The same way you have!” he said angrily. “This is how it happens!”

“You forced me—”

“No, I didn’t. You lusted for it, and you gave way to that lust. You could have stopped me but for that.”

He stood and paced the room, just as he had before throwing himself on her. “Three nights ago I knew I was lost to Ormazd. Yes, the priest told me to use his secret name to fight temptation. Did he tell you the same?”

She nodded dismally.

“It didn’t work, did it? Well, they say nothing is certain while Ahriman performs his work in the world.

Ahriman won me.”

“Didn’t you fight him?”

“Of course!” Hugger’s face blazed. “But when temptation gets stronger and stronger there comes a point where you want only bad thoughts. That’s when Ahriman has you. You revel in what’s bad. Good thoughts fade and seem silly. After that, there’s no going back.”

He stopped pacing and pulled her roughly up from the couch. “You too! You’ve done it now. There’s no going back.”

“We must try to find forgiveness!”

He shook his head wryly. “The priests won’t help us with that. It would only encourage others. You know what will happen to us. We’ve fallen from grace and disobeyed the Lord’s commandment. At the very least we’ll be excommunicated and banished, perhaps imprisoned or even executed.”

“Let’s not let anyone know what we did! We can keep it secret.”

“From Ormazd?” Hugger smiled. “Anyway, how do you suppose you can keep anything from the priests? They’re experts. You’ll be found out the next time you walk into a confessional.”

“Then I don’t know what we can do.”

“There is only one thing. We must leave immediately, and never come back.”

“Leave? But where can we go?”

He stared at her. “You know there is only one place. We belong to Ahriman now. We must join his horde.”

“Oh, but my family, and everything! I can’t leave them!”

“You have to leave them,” Hugger said gruffly. “They’ll throw you out anyway, once they know.”

She started weeping openly then, not the hysterical crying of a few minutes previously, which was so bound up with pleasure and excitement, but a soft, quiet grieving.

“You did this to me,” she sobbed.

“Yes, so I did.” Hugger’s eyes glittered with a perverted joy. “Now we can really enjoy ourselves… do anything we want.” He started kneading her shoulders again, but then broke off abruptly.

“It will be a long journey. Get yourself a cloak. And one of your father’s mantles for me.”

“No! Please, we must think of something else.”

As she would not stir, he went himself into the next room and poked about in a cupboard until he found what he wanted. He came back and draped the cloak about her. “Come on, I want to be well away from here before morning.”

“You go,” she sniffed. “I’m staying.”

“I wouldn’t leave you to face them all, Histrina. Besides—I want you with me.”

He yanked her towards the door. She hesitated.

“Shouldn’t we leave a letter?”

“No. They’d come after us. There’s only one way to do it, and that’s just to go and never think of them again!”

“Oh, my mother! My father!”

Still weeping, she allowed him to lead her outside, where he took up his lance.

“Be quiet!” he hissed. “Do you want the whole village to hear you?”

Histrina became compliant. They stole past the huddled houses of the village, from the chinks of whose shutters vagrant light gleamed. Beyond were the fields. These were eventually crossed, bringing the two fugitives to the thin soil and scrubland that covered most of Erspia.

She was not sure which feelings they were that made her obey him—fear of what would happen if she stayed, a lickerish anticipation of the delights she would experience by going with him, or simply abject acceptance that she was Ahriman’s. All these feelings jostled within her as she left her lifetime home and set off across the narrow landscape.

The stars shone bright, casting a thin glow that made it possible to make out what was around them. The temperature had dropped but the air was not too chill; Histrina had never known it to get really cold since she had been born.

They said little during the journey. This was the first time she had wandered so far afield and there was, to be sure, a fascination in seeing parts of the world she had never set eyes on before. Not that Erspia seemed to change much as one moved across it. She was surprised, for instance, to find that the star patterns remained the same despite the distance that she and Hugger travelled. Surely things should look different if one saw them from a different angle? But all the stars did was move across the sky unchanging, just as they did at home.

For some hours they walked over the coarse grass and through soft, clinging bushes, and the night-time experience was so new to her that after a while she scarcely thought of what she was leaving behind. At about midnight Hugger called a halt for rest. They sank down on the turf. Histrina’s feet ached.

“I wish we had brought something to eat and drink,” she said.

Hugger grunted. Then he moved closer to her, until she fancied she could smell his masculine sweat. He put a hand on her thigh. “We’ll feed on love,” he said.

“Please, I’m tired,” she said. “Besides, it isn’t love. It’s… Something else.”

He leaned across and gave her a full, lingering kiss.

And it started all over again. The kissing, the fondling. Then a frenzied undressing until they were both naked under the starlight. Then their bodies, sliding, pressing and oscillating, all enveloped in a most delicious aroma of venery. Their scents mingled with that of the heathery turf and with the faint night breeze. She sighed, she moaned, she uttered insane little chuckles in her throat, and during the next hour and a half they found so many ways of gratifying themselves that it was as if they had been reborn into a new world.

Afterwards, when their bodies would respond no more, they lay on their backs and stared at the stars.

“So,” Hugger said dryly, “how do you like being evil?”

“Evil?” She tasted the word, as though savouring it. “Oh, Ormazd help me, but I love it!”

“Hmph. Ormazd. Ahriman. Let me tell you something, Histrina. I don’t believe in either of them any more.

It’s all imagination. Something the priests thought up.”

“But you must believe in them. Where else do our thoughts come from?”

“What makes you think they come from anywhere?”

“They must. They just seem to appear in our minds.”

He was silent for a while. “Yes,” he said then, “I can see how the idea must have arisen. Our minds are bombarded with thoughts and feelings all the time. So we have the Good Lord, Ormazd, to send us good thoughts, and the Evil One, Ahriman, who tries to overthrow him by sending us bad thoughts. But look up there, Histrina, into the sky. Do you see either Ormazd or Ahriman? I don’t.”

“They live among the stars.”

“Where are they, then?”

“So how do we get our thoughts?”

“They come from inside us. They result from natural urges, just like being hungry or thirsty. That’s all there is to it. There aren’t any gods in the world. That’s it.”

He turned on his side, facing away from her, and picked idly at the grass. Histrina was shocked. She had heard of atheism. It was the greatest sin of all.

It was also the Evil One’s greatest triumph. When a human being began to believe that there was no such thing as temptation, no such thing as the struggle of the gods, then he offered no resistance to that temptation.

She smiled mischievously to herself. Hugger was caught by Ahriman better than he knew!

Then she found herself drifting off to sleep.

Hugger was shaking her. She opened her eyes with a start.

The sun had risen, and its point-source shone just over the horizon. A warm breeze blew from it, making the bushes wave.

“Come on, we have to get going.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“So am I.”

“We should have brought water,” she complained, struggling to her feet.

“No, we shouldn’t. I didn’t bring any on purpose. We’d take our time if we had water. Your parents might be looking for us by now.” He sounded annoyed. “We shouldn’t have stopped!”

She was shivering; they had both slept naked. She picked at the untidy heap of her clothes and began getting into them. He watched her with interest, then started pulling on his own.

They set off again, in the direction of the sun. The ground was giving up its moisture in the new warmth of day, forming a faint mist just a foot or two deep. It was a familiar sight to them both. Often they had gone to work in the fields at dawn, striding through the transient haze.

On and on they toiled. At midday the heat was uncomfortable, and began to seem fierce, parched as they were. They trailed their mantles behind them. Histrina grew weary and depressed, thinking often of turning back for home, until Hugger nudged her with his elbow.

“Look.”

A stream tinkled ahead of them. With a cry of delight Histrina quickened her pace, running ahead to throw herself down and cool her bare arms in the water, scooping it to her eager lips.

Hugger joined her and she heard him gulp greedily. When they had slaked their thirst she took off her sandals and dangled her feet in the running stream.

“Why is this the first water we’ve found? Does the world have so little of it, except at the village?”

“You don’t see a stream unless you’re right on top of it. We might have passed plenty.”

She looked about them. Apart from the water the scenery was unchanged. “Where are we?”

“By now we must be almost a quarter of the way to the other side of Erspia.”

“How far is it to the horde?”

Hugger shrugged. “They say the main camp is directly opposite the village. Right on the other side of the world.”

“Oh no! You mean we have to go on like this for another four days?”

“I don’t know. The horde moves about sometimes, attacking villages of the faithful. Perhaps we won’t find it at all.”

He splashed water on his face, wiping himself with the sleeve of his shirt. Histrina was staring across the stream. She pointed. “Over there,” she said softly.

A horseman had appeared on the horizon. Evidently he had sighted them, for he was trotting swiftly onward, a lance held at his side.

Hugger quickly snatched up his own lance. The horseman came so close that he seemed to loom over them, before halting on the other bank.

Histrina stared fascinated at the apparition. The horseman wore a fantastic garb of many colours: a billowing cloak with strange designs on it, beneath that a glittering chemise that seemed to tumble and froth down his torso, and extraordinarily baggy breeks that were tied at the ankles. On his head was perched a wide-brimmed hat whose crown was a mass of coloured feathers.

The horse was clad, too, in a sweeping blanket or skirt that reached to its knees, while feathers sprouted from its neatly braided mane.

The horseman grinned at the pair. So far he had not threatened them with his lance, whose butt he rested against the ground. “What have we here? A pretty couple out walking where mother can’t see ‘em, eh?”

“Who are you?” Hugger demanded, gripping his lance nervously.

“Don’t point your weapon at me, lad. I might get annoyed.” The horseman nudged his mount suddenly and came splashing through the shallow water. On gaining the near bank he whirled his horse, forcing Hugger and Histrina apart. Hugger received a sharp rap on the skull with the butt of the horseman’s lance, sending him reeling. At the same time Hugger’s own lance was wrenched from his grasp and flung into the river.

The horseman dismounted, jabbing his own lance point first into the turf and leaving it standing. Histrina shrank back as he approached her, still grinning.

“Where are you from, my dear? One of the villages?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Courhart.”

“Courhart?” He frowned. “I know it, I think. You’re some way from home, aren’t you, my pretty? Come and let Drosh give you some home comforts. A spot of pleasure to cure your homesickness.”

He reached out, fondling her gown. Histrina gasped in alarm.

“You’re a fine-looking one,” he complimented. “One to be enjoyed.”

Hugger, who had been on his knees, holding his head, was on his feet again. He took in the scene in an instant: the intruder, his back to him, pressing his attentions upon Histrina; the lance, carelessly left unguarded.

He stepped stealthily round the horse and pulled out the lance, but clumsily; ‘Drosh’ heard it rip turf, and turned unhurriedly, to see Hugger bearing down on him in an attempt to spit him.

Drosh did not seem in the least discommoded. He side-stepped, and in the same fluid motion drew a short sword which neither of the others had noticed beneath his cloak. Hugger was much too slow with the long lance. Drosh had turned inside his grip. The flat of his sword hit the villager’s knuckles; at the same time his left hand seized the shaft of the lance and forced it up.

His sword blade plunged through Hugger’s ribs.

It had all taken place in a second. Hugger uttered a choking sound and fell back. A sinister ecstatic look came to Drosh’s face. He lifted his hand from the sword hilt and spread his fingers, letting the weapon fall with the corpse, hilt projecting skyward from the stilled chest.

Histrina screamed wildly. “You’ve killed him!”

“It’s all in a day’s work, my dear. I’ll come to another bit of pleasantness shortly. It annoyed your friend to see me about to poke you, eh? Poked you often enough himself, I expect, has he?” While he spoke he picked up the lance which had slipped from Hugger’s dead fingers. “A stiff young fellow, was he? Let’s see him proud.”

Hugger lay with legs outspread. Drosh chuckled savagely and drove the lance into the earth at his crotch, so that it thrust up as a longer companion to the upward slant of the sword, grotesquely suggestive.

Histrina was biting her knuckles. Her eyes stared. She stumbled back as Drosh came at her, but was too frightened to run. She screamed again, however, when he caught hold of her.

At first everything was a blur to her sensibilities. He was shoving her, forcing her down on her knees by the bank of the stream. Her face entered the water, was held there and held there. He was drowning her!

She gurgled, struggled feebly, and began to experience suffocation. Then the gown came up over her rump. She felt him enter her from behind, squirming to get himself firmly in.

He let her face out of the water when his thrusting motions became regular. It was like having Hugger in her, she realized, and the feelings were taking her over just as they had then. She began to moan, to wiggle, and when he saw that she was no longer resisting he let go her wrists, which he had held behind her back in one meaty hand, and there, her forearms in the mud, splashing in the water, they coupled and coupled.

When he had finished with her he stood up. She turned over and lay propped up on her elbows, all modesty gone, legs lewdly open. She merely avoided looking at the body of her former lover, even when Drosh put a foot on Hugger’s chest and yanked his sword from the flesh with a sucking sound, wiping the blade on the dead man’s shirt.

Oh, her experiences had come so fast in the past few hours, she realized!

And she had enjoyed them all! But now she became fearful that Drosh would kill her too. She need not have worried. He merely sheathed his sword and stood over her with a cheerful grin.

“So what were you doing out here, my lovely?”

Breathlessly, she answered. “We fell from grace. We were looking to join Ahriman’s horde.”

Drosh threw back his head. His strong white teeth flashed as he laughed. “Ahriman’s horde! Well, you’ve found it!”

He held out his hand. “Come, lass, and welcome. But remember, you are Drosh’s whore.”

She accepted his hand and let him pull her to her feet. He went to his horse, put one foot in the stirrup, and was astride in one energetic leap. Then he helped Histrina to mount behind him, and reached over to recover his lance.

Histrina put her arms around his middle, resting her head on his shoulder, feeling the feathers of his hat tickle her hair. Drosh’s heels kicked the horse’s ribs. Together they went cantering swiftly across Erspia.

The rest of the day seemed to pass extraordinarily quickly, and so did the next night. Drosh explained that they were travelling counter to the sun’s motion around the world, so that it seemed to move across the sky more rapidly than usual. Histrina could not understand any of this, but it was already night for the second time when they came to the Ahrimanic camp.

The sight that met her eyes, illuminated by starlight, by torchlight, and by the light of numerous campfires, was unlike anything she could have imagined.

Instead of the orderly, peaceful cottages of Courhart, there were gaily coloured tents. Instead of well-mannered folk, there were mobs that surged to and fro, drunkenly fighting and fornicating. The air of violence was thrilling. And the weapons! There was no one who was not armed!

Or no one who counted. Drosh guided his horse through the camp, picking his way through the jostling crowd. They passed by a fenced compound where men and women sat silently on the ground, passively watching the revels around them.

By the flickering firelight, Histrina suddenly recognised a face. She squealed, beating her fists on Drosh’s back and begging him to halt. He reined in the horse, twisting round to see what had excited her.

“Borrow!”

The bearer of the name looked up, then when Drosh signed to him, rose to his feet and trudged to the fence, peering between the stakes.

“Borrow, I know you,” she said. “You were taken by raiders from Courhart four years ago!”

He stared up at her. “I don’t recognise you, lass, but it is as you say.”

“What are you doing here?”

“The same as all do that are prisoners. We work the fields, growing food for the friends of the Evil One.”

He sounded subdued, beaten. There was no vestige of hope in his face.

Drosh laughed. “You see what a piece of luck you had in meeting me, girl! Do as you’re told, or you too might end up in the compound.”

The horse moved forward, leaving Borrow to turn away and resume his place on the cold earth. A snarling sort of music started up somewhere, a twanging of strings and the harsh bellow of some crude reed instrument. Seeing Borrow had momentarily saddened Histrina. Pangs of guilt rose in her; the camp faded before her eyes, and involuntarily she found herself thinking again of Courhart and of her family.

Then she thrust the thoughts from her mind and let her senses bathe in what was around her. They arrived before a tent larger than the others, before which two men sat at a large trestle table eating bread and meat and drinking from flagons constantly refilled by ragged girl servants.

Drosh and Histrina dismounted and Drosh tied his horse to a hitching post. He saluted the larger of the men at the table, who glanced up carelessly as he wiped meat juices from his plate with a piece of bread.

“So you’re back, eh, Drosh? Well, what did you find?”

“Much as I hoped, master. Jong village is poorly defended. It’s been too long since they were set upon, and they’ve grown careless.”

“Good. We’ll teach them a lesson in vigilance, then, eh? And have plenty of sport doing it.” The man’ s eye fell on Histrina. “What have you here? Is she from Jong?”

“No, master. She’s from Courhart. I found her wandering. I sense she has a taste for our style of life.”

The man Drosh had called ‘master’ rose and walked round the table. Histrina smelled sour wine on his breath as he stroked her smudged cheek.

He was a large, powerful man whose personal aura made him seem even more frightening than Drosh.

Like everyone else in the camp he was flamboyantly garbed. She was dazzled by the gleaming-cloth-of-gold of his embroidered tunic.

“Courhart,” he murmured, frowning. “It’s right on the other side of Erspia—the furthermost of all the villages. Maybe we’ll crush Courhart soon, my dear, and you can enjoy yourself torturing any you dislike there.”

She shrank back, appalled by the thrill of anticipation the suggestion brought her. He caught hold of her by the throat, his huge hand squeezing her windpipe, and drew her close so that his face seemed to bulge.

“If you want to be one of us,” he hissed, “you must worship Ahriman with all your heart. If he tells you to subject those who have displeased you to indignity, torture and death, you must do it with delight. If he tells you to do the same to those you once held dear, you must enjoy that, too.”

He turned to the smaller man who still sat at the table, looking on expressionlessly. “Here, Laedo, you’ve proved uncommonly fastidious over our women so far. This one still seems to have scruples—maybe you’ll like her.”

He shoved Histrina forward. Drosh pursed his lips and caught the big man’s eye.

“Oh come, Drosh, let’s be generous. Give Laedo a little gift. I’ll pay you for the girl. Tell you what, when we take Jong you can have first pick of all the women; select the five prettiest little wenches for yourself, how about that, eh?”

Drosh nodded. The master put a familiar arm around his shoulders. “Come and see what I’ve got lined up for tonight. It will amuse you.”

The two wandered off. Histrina, her eyes demurely downcast, seated herself beside Laedo.

He was a sharp-faced man quite unlike any other she had ever seen. His nose was unusually thin, not flat and wide like most people’s. His skin, too, was very pale, and the cast of his eyes was odd.

Still, he was not unattractive; but he seemed dour and uncomfortable, as if he didn’t much like being where he was.

“I’m yours now,” she said softly when he did not speak. She was uneasy at the readiness with which Drosh had dropped her. She realized that she needed someone to look after her.

A scream came from somewhere, ending in a note of choking agony. Laedo shuddered, and gulped down more wine as if it could shut off the sound.

“You’re not mine,” he said. “You can do as you like. You’re free.”

Histrina’s face fell. She looked at the turmoil of the camp, wondering if she could make her way in it without being murdered or else consigned to the compound. Perhaps she would automatically be consigned there anyway, once she no longer had a protector.

“I don’t mind being yours,” she said in a small voice.

He grunted.

She said nothing for a while, and then an incident at the nearest campfire caught her attention. A fight had started up between two gaudily bedizened youths. A third joined in, quickly helping to subdue one of the others.

This unfortunate was then pushed towards the fire. His head was forced down to the flames and glowing embers. He shrieked as his hair and clothing caught fire and his flesh singed. Still they held him fast while his struggles grew ever more frantic and he was roasted alive.

No one around did anything to try to prevent it.

Histrina watched in fascination. Laedo groaned and staggered to his feet.

“I can’t watch this. I’m off.”

He loped swiftly round the tent and into the darkness. Histrina hesitated, then ran after him.

“Can’t I come with you?” she called.

“If you like.”

They were not far from the edge of the camp. The firelight grew dim and soon they were on untrodden turf. Still Laedo kept going, on into the night.

With difficulty she kept pace with him. He did nothing to acknowledge her, but neither, apparently, did he object to her presence.

“Where are we going?”

“To my ship.”

“Ship?” The word was strange to her. “What’s that?”

He didn’t answer.

“That man,” she said a few yards on, “why does Drosh call him master?”

“They all do. He is the High Priest of the Forces of Darkness.”

She was quick to catch the personal pronoun. “They? Don’t you, then?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t come from here. I’m from another world.”

“Another world?” She slowed down, puzzled. “I didn’t know there was another world.”

Laedo barked a harsh laugh. “Don’t you know what this place is, you little fool? This Erspia, as you call it? It isn’t a world at all, in the proper sense. It’s a planetoid, no more than thirty or forty miles in diameter, with a gravity generator in the centre. It’s a set-up.”

His words made no more sense to her than had Drosh’s explanation of the speeded-up days and nights.

But now some sort of hump-formed building loomed out of the darkness, and Laedo was making for it.

By the starlight she saw that it seemed to be made not of brick or timber, but of metal.

There was no ground-level door. Metal steps mounted about five feet, where there were the seams of a panel. Laedo mounted these steps and tugged open a door. A light, already burning within, sent a bright shaft into the darkness.

Histrina followed him. After the door came a short passage, and then the strangest room she had ever seen. In some ways it was like the priest’s confessional room, for there were no windows. The light, though… the lamp was a strip, set in the ceiling, and she couldn’t see how it worked. Also, since this lamp was already lit, she had imagined there would be people here, but the place was empty. There was a table set against the wall, but on it were not household utensils, but an array of odd-looking shapes, which seemed to be fastened down to it. Other odd-looking objects adorned the walls. There were also some chairs, but Laedo sank down on a low couch large enough to take two.

“Do you live here?” she asked.

He nodded. His head was in his hands.

“How did you come from the other world? Where is the ‘ship’?”

He looked up, smiling wearily. “This is the ship. It flies up into the sky where the other worlds are. But it’s damaged and won’t fly now. I crash-landed here.”

She sat down beside him. Her hand seemed to move of its own volition, and began feeling him between his legs through the smooth cloth of the garment he wore. Automatically, absently, he lifted the hem of her gown, slid his hand up and began performing the same service for her.

“Do Ormazd and Ahriman rule in the other worlds, too?”

“Why should they? Not in the way you mean, anyhow…”

“Well, you belong to the Evil One’s horde…”

“No, I’m a guest here. The master is intrigued by me. He’s helping me.”

“Yes, but you belong to Ahriman.” She glanced down at their two slowly massaging hands and giggled.

“Look what you’re doing!”

“What?” He snorted. “There’s nothing wicked about it.”

“But of course it’s wicked.” She leered at him, and licked her lips. “I like being wicked…”

He brushed her off and stood up. “Rubbish!” He seemed annoyed. “It does no one any harm. Doing harm to people is what’s wrong.”

Histrina leaned back. “Hugger told me the gods don’t exist. That it all comes from our own minds. Is that what you think? Perhaps it’s right.”

Hugger had been no fool, she thought. He was able to think for himself, and not many people could do that. This man Laedo seemed sceptical, too. And he saw no sin in fornication, so…

But his next words surprised her. “Your thoughts don’t come from within you,” he said quietly. “Not entirely. Ormazd and Ahriman do exist. They live up in the sky and struggle for domination of Erspia.

Here, I’ll prove it to you.”

He beckoned to her and went through a door in the opposite wall from the one they had come in by.

Curiously Histrina followed him up a steep ramp which she found she could climb just as if it had been a staircase, due to the way her sandals clung to its surface. Then they went through a poky little corridor and eventually came out into a large room filled with rows of racks, all laden with variously shaped objects whose purposes she couldn’t guess.

Laedo led her to what seemed to be an enormous metal block secured to the floor. He touched a button and part of the block swung open, revealing that it was hollow inside, like a cabinet or kiosk. But its walls, she saw, were more than a foot thick.

“This cabinet is used for storing radioactive materials,” he told her. “It’s made of a lead compound that stops any kind of radiation known. I was taking it to Harkio, but here on Erspia I’ve found my own use for it.”

She stared at him in incomprehension. “Get inside,” he ordered. Then, when she didn’t move, he pushed her in, joining her himself and closing the narrow door behind them.

It was dark until he produced from his pocket a strange stick-like gadget which gave off a soft glow and illuminated the interior. They sat on the floor facing one another, knees touching. Laedo gazed absently at her face, as if expecting something.

For what seemed a long time nothing happened, and Histrina was merely bewildered. But then a sense of peace seemed to come over her. The compelling thoughts that for the past hours had been bubbling with gusto in her head—thoughts of lechery, of cruelty, even of murder—died away, and all at once seemed foreign to her.

But the other thoughts, those that lately had been defeated and which previously, when supported by the priests, had ruled her—they faded too. Thoughts of good and proper behaviour, of kind actions which she must always seek to do, of social niceties which must always be observed. These, now, seemed just as foreign to her as did the bad thoughts.

She was simply neutral, peaceful and calm.

“Neither Ahriman nor Ormazd can enter here,” Laedo said softly.

She delved into her mind. Yes, she could summon these thoughts if she wanted to. They were still there.

But it took an effort of will. She had to make herself want to savour them. They did not rush in and force themselves on her attention, as formerly they always had.

It was like waking from a dream. Her mind was her own, in a way it never had been before.

“I noticed it very soon after I landed,” Laedo said. “Thoughts, urges, pulling and twisting me in two different directions. A lot of people might not have suspected anything, since after all they’re the same urges that people are apt to get anyway, with varying degrees of obsession. And of course there’s the social thing, which masks it to some extent. The two gods tend to win over social groups, rather than individuals, since people are inevitably influenced by those around them. Paradoxically it’s the more individualistic, with naturally stronger minds, who more readily accept impulses from whichever is the enemy god. That’s what happened to you, right? You come from a village ruled by Ormazd. But you fell prey to Ahriman.”

She nodded, understanding his final words, at least. “So the gods are real,” she replied wonderingly.

“You could say that. But why is it they can’t get into my anti-radiation chamber?” He smiled broadly. “I come in here twice a day just so as to calm down. But for that I’d probably end up like those out there.”

He jerked a thumb.

She liked the new feeling of calmness, so much so that she was loth for him to open the door. But eventually he did. They stepped out, left the hold and went back to the control cabin-cum-living room.

After a few minutes she found desirous thoughts jostling in her again, like a crowd of deranged satyrs.

He carried on talking. “I noticed that Ahriman is stronger during the night and Ormazd during the day.

That gave the game away altogether.”

He moved to the table and touched one of the queer-looking objects there, spinning a little disk. Histrina gasped as a section of wall suddenly changed colour and then seemed to disappear altogether, so that she was looking beyond it into the starry sky. But surely she should only see another part of this strange house’s interior?

“Don’t be afraid,” Laedo said, noting her amazed expression. “It’s only a picture. You’re looking at the night zenith.”

As he spun the disk again something sprang into being in the centre of the picture and grew swiftly. It became a ball, or globe, with a cylindrical shaft or well projecting from one side of it and pointing almost directly at them.

The object was pale cream in colour and gleamed dully in the starlight, though one side seemed much more brightly lit than the other.

“This is Ahriman,” Laedo told her. “Or rather, this is where his thoughts come from. See that cylinder?

That’s the projector.”

Again he flicked switches and spun disks. The picture was replaced by what appeared to be blue sky dotted with fleecy cloud, with the sun flaring fiercely in the centre. The clouds swelled, then vanished and once again there was blackness and stars, with, contradictorily, the sun still glowing, a hard, steady point of light.

And there ahead of them was an identical ball and cylinder, this time shining in the glare of the sun.

“And this is Ormazd,” he announced. “The sun is artificial, too. It’s no bigger than a medicine ball. That’s why shadows are abnormally large here—but of course, that doesn’t seem abnormal to you, does it?

You probably think the sun circles your world, but in fact all three objects are in a static configuration and Erspia has a twenty-eight hour rotation beneath them. They wouldn’t need much power to do that: they are outside the gravity well. Anyway, the configuration seems stable enough. The nearest star is about four light years away.”

He uttered the technicalities automatically, careless that she was unable to understand them. She stared at the screen, eyes glazed. “So this is how the gods speak to us,” she breathed.

“Twin powers, pulling in opposite directions. Having to pass through the bulk of Erspia attenuates the beams only slightly, just enough so that Ahriman has the advantage by night, and Ormazd by day…”

He tailed off. Perhaps she would grasp enough to help her resist. If he could persuade her to make use of the lead cabinet, she might be prevented from falling into the kind of life which was offered here in the encampment.

He still could not fathom what was behind the set-up. It was obviously a contrived travesty of Zoroastrianism, the ancient dualistic religion in which a good god and an evil god fought over possession of the universe. It even used the same names for those gods. That, together with the way their force diminished in alternation with the diurnal rotation of the planetoid, had given him the idea of searching for them beyond the shallow atmosphere.

Earlier he had demonstrated his findings to Hoggora, the man who called himself the High Priest of the Forces of Darkness. Hoggora, to give him his due, possessed an unusually sharp brain. He had quickly understood the notion of spaceships, of viewscreens that could see out into space and even round the curve of the planetoid, and showed by his questions that he understood nearly everything Laedo said to him. He had been delighted at the sight of the Ahrimanic thought-projector, calling it ‘Ahriman’s mouth’.

When Laedo suggested that the evidence was in favour of Ahriman not being a god at all, he had simply shrugged, as though the question didn’t interest him.

Laedo had heard of experiments in thought-rays, using low-frequency radiation, but to his knowledge they had never been even moderately successful. The twin beams that bathed this little world were highly sophisticated and fully effective, able to persuade the recipient that the suggestions invading his mind were his own. Laedo did not think the projectors were of human manufacture.

And the inhabitants of Erspia—how had they got here? They all spoke fairly good Argot Galactica, the interstellar language of human intercourse, but had no traditions or legends that told of them arriving from anywhere else. As far as they knew, they had always been on Erspia.

He killed the picture on the screen, replacing it with a view of the camp. By the blazing lights of the fires, banners were raised. Whatever entertainment Hoggora had planned was in progress.

He keyed in sound. A swell of screams and triumphant, hoarse shouts filled the cabin. It was the same every night. There were always plenty of prisoners to satisfy the horde’s bloodlust.

Laedo wondered what it would be like to give way entirely to sensuousness, greed and violence.

He blanked out the screen and turned to Histrina. “Okay,” he said with a sigh, “let’s get to bed.”

In the following days Laedo suffered a number of disappointments. Histrina consented, at first, to join him in his twice-daily sessions in the lead cabinet—including one at midnight, to ward off Ahriman at his strongest. But after a while he sensed her reluctance to continue. Once she disappeared into the encampment for an entire day, to return at dawn, flushed, bright-eyed and exhilarated.

He did not ask her what she had been doing. He had come to realize that a person’s eventual allegiance to one god or the other owed something to an inner disposition as well as to social influences. The Ormazdian priests had become adept at blocking sinful thoughts, and likewise the worshippers of Ahriman had learned to block any good or worthy thoughts.

Something in Histrina liked Ahriman better than it liked Ormazd.

His second disappointment concerned the work Hoggora had ordered an artisan to do for him. Laedo’s forced stay on Erspia had lasted several weeks now. When his star engine failed he had at first suspected something amiss with the fuel rods, which he had bought cheap from a roadside vendor. But he had checked them out and found them all right.

There had been nothing for it but to strip down the engine. He had cursed himself mightily for not providing himself with a proper tool kit, but fortunately the fault had come to light as soon as he got the cowling off. A transductor had fractured. It was lucky the spilled energy had not melted down the entire ship.

It would be no good trying to weld it. Essentially, however, the part was simple—merely a rectangular conduit about six feet long, with a precisely aligned arrangement of internal flanges. There were a number of skilled metal workers in the camp, and Laedo hoped that mild steel, if he put a refrigeration jacket on it, would hold out long enough to get him to the nearest inhabited star, where he could get one made of the proper HCferric.

The artisan bungled the job. The flanges were much too rough, and were not precisely positioned. The energy hazing from the fuel rods, instead of being whirled into a plasmic vortex, would instead erode the pipe before he got half a light year.

He debated whether to inform Hoggora of the metal worker’s failure. Hoggora would likely have the fellow burned alive for it. Laedo was not sure what his own fate would be, either. Hoggora regarded him as a pet, an exotic plaything. He was entranced by Laedo’s tales of other worlds among the stars and plainly meant to visit them himself when the ship was in order—as well, possibly, as make a pilgrimage to Ahriman’s mouth, where he felt sure he would be well received as High Priest.

One afternoon, four days after he had accepted Histrina into his household, Laedo came out of the anti-radiation cabinet and trudged to the main cabin, where he found her just emerging from her bed. He took some coffee and food slabs from the dispenser, gave them to her and took some for himself, munching the slabs absently while he gazed at the viewscreen, which was focused on the encampment.

There was a great deal of activity in the camp. Hoggora was planning one of his periodic crusades in which he would mark off some section of Erspia and attempt to destroy all vestige of Ormazdian worship inside it. A constant war was being waged on the planetoid, perpetually inconclusive because the Ahrimanics, for all their ferocity, were matched by a stout defence on the part of the Ormazdian villages—who in turn would, if they could, annihilate the servants of the Evil One.

Histrina slurped the coffee, enjoying its novel flavour (the only beverage on Erspia was a weak beer brewed from maize, the staple crop). Laedo’s mind was on the orbiting thought projectors. It occurred to him that he might find what he needed there. Tools, materials, repair robots, most likely. The projectors had been there a long time and there would have to be some provision for maintenance.

His ship, even though it couldn’t go into star drive, could certainly travel a few hundred miles on its manoeuvring engine, even a few thousand miles. It was worth trying, especially since the only alternative was to stay here until he could get a serviceable transductor made, which might be never.

Energised by this thought, he sprang up and made his way to the engine compartment, where he levered in place the baffles that would prevent the fuel rods from delivering any of their power through the cracked transductor. They would now service only the close manoeuvring engine.

He spent some time checking the pipes and joints. Quite a bit of energy haze had leaked into the works generally. It wouldn’t do to get total failure a hundred miles or so up.

What of Histrina? Might as well bring her along with him, he thought. If he got what he wanted he’d take her on to Harkio, rescuing her from this damned planetoid, though he didn’t know why he should bother.

Otherwise, they were back to square one.

By the time he had finished, Erspia’s terminator line was approaching and the point-source sun was about to slip below the horizon. Histrina, when he returned to the cabin, was lounging on a couch, staring vacantly. On seeing him she smiled and invitingly opened her legs.

Laedo ignored the gesture. He moved to the control board, unlocked it, and keyed in the power. A fuzzy, high-pitched note sounded beyond the wall.

“What’s that?” Histrina asked, sitting up suddenly.

He pointed to the screen. “Watch.”

She clung to the couch as the view on the screen swung, dipped, then fell away. The ground vanished.

“What is it?” she screeched.

“We’re flying. Didn’t I tell you this ship could go to the stars?”

“You said it didn’t work any more.”

“Not to get to the stars. We’re going somewhere nearer.”

Unlike a normal planet’s, Erspia’s shadow cast an expanding, not narrowing, cone into space, as a consequence of the sun’s tiny size. Laedo had decided to make for the Ahrimanic projector rather than the Ormazdian one, so as to avoid approaching that sun, which at close range might well be dangerous.

The manoeuvring engine strained as it lifted the ship up the gravity well. Laedo became afraid that the small motor might not make it, but then the gravity field suddenly ended, cut off sharp in the manner typical of gravity generators. From now on there was only the natural attraction of the planetoid to contend with, and the ship accelerated easily.

He located the small disk of the projector, locked a course on it, then turned back to Histrina. She was still clutching the couch and staring at the screen, which now showed only stars, the sun having disappeared.

“It will only take a few minutes,” he told her.

“Where are we going?”

“Hoggora calls it Ahriman’s mouth.”

“Ohhh…” Her eyes opened wide in surprise.

He returned to the board, curious to see the object at close quarters. As it swelled, he became aware of a malevolent bubbling in his mind, like a spring of evil water breaking through from below. Conscious of Histrina at his back; he suddenly experienced thoughts concerning her that were so violent and disgusting that they shocked the more detached part of him.

He fought to push the feelings away—he had became adept at turning aside Ahrimanic suggestions. But the impulse grew stronger, became a gloating, rejoicing sense of wickedness which threatened to overwhelm him.

Of course! he thought. I imagined Ahriman was stronger by night because Erspia’s bulk absorbs the beam as it passed through. Instead it’s because one is nearer to Ahriman at night. The beam has to emanate in a cone if it’s to cover the whole planetoid. It’s more concentrated towards the apex!

A stinging blow in the back of his neck made him stagger. He spun round. Histrina was crouched, her face twisted in a grimace, a knife from the dining table in her hand. She had stabbed him in the neck with it.

Luckily it was not a very sharp piece of cutlery, neither had she used it very expertly. Feeling the blood trickle down his back, Laedo was momentarily seized with thoughts of what he would do to Histrina. He lunged, trapped her wrist, then twisted her hand till she dropped the knife. He put his hands round her neck and began to squeeze.

Oh, he was enjoying it! He squeezed harder, till her tongue edged out between her teeth. Then, with a supreme effort, he let her go and stepped back.

She collapsed, coughing painfully and holding her throat. But it didn’t take her long to get to her feet again. She threw herself at him, her fingers hooked into claws, the nails seeking to gouge out his eyes.

Laedo threshed with his arms, fending her off while tussling with the maddening impulses that were growing stronger by the second.

The thought projector was looming large. On the screen Laedo could see that the spherical surface was ribbed and striated. He attempted to get to the controls, but by now Histrina, howling in an ululating note of savagery, was on her knees, trying to mangle his testicles with both hands. He kicked her hard in the stomach.

She rolled over, retching. For some moments Laedo was torn between what he wanted to do and what he knew he must do. What he wanted to do was to get hold of Histrina and subject her to the worst experiences a totally depraved mind could devise. In the end, he did what he knew he should do. He moved a control wheel, and the ship swung aside.

Out of the path of the beam.

He sank to the floor, holding his head in his hands. Nausea overwhelmed him. It was as though a spring of evil-smelling liquid, that had soaked his feelings and driven him crazy, was draining back to where it had come from, into his censored unconscious, no longer prodded and awakened by Ahriman’s lance.

Histrina did not calm down quite so quickly. When her pain abated she continued to make animal-like gestures, clawing the air with her hands as though to strike at him, and hissing like a snake. But after a few minutes her gestures became mechanical and empty, then ceased altogether.

“Do you feel any better?” Laedo asked.

She nodded.

“We were too close to Ahriman,” he explained, noting as he spoke that her eyes still gleamed in a rather unpleasant way. “He was too strong for us. Ormazd’s influence is so weak out here.”

He adjusted the screen. The Ahrimanic sphere appeared in side view, the chute-like shaft projecting from it like the barrel of a gun.

He wondered what flying up the Ormazdian beam would be like. Paroxysms of benevolence, perhaps.

Carefully he scrutinized the sphere for some sign of an entrance, and spotted a circular crack that was, possibly, a hatch. If it would open he could presumably get inside without exposing himself to thought projection again. But he realized that his action in coming here had lacked discrimination, had been too subjective. He was now frightened of what he might find inside the Ahrimanic stronghold.

The sphere of Ormazd sounded safer.

He turned the ship away and set a course for the opposite side of Erspia. As they passed out of shadow the sun became visible, glaring against the stars.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be all right,” he told her without conviction. “We’re going to Ormazd instead.”

“Why are you doing this?”

As succinctly as was practicable, Laedo explained that he was seeking help to escape from Erspia and return to the world he had come from. “Or rather, worlds,” he ended. “There are hundreds of inhabited ones out there, all of them a hundred times bigger than the one you know. You’ll like it, Histrina. Erspia is like never leaving your own back yard. It’s amazing you’ve turned out as bright as you are.”

He could see the idea appealed to her.

The sun grew near, and the viewscreen automatically tuned down its increasing brilliance. Laedo took care to stay clear of the thought cone, and soon found himself facing a ribbed, striated globe that was, to appearances, identical to the one he had just left.

He pondered on how to gain entrance. There was a ploy for such situations which often worked on human space vehicles, but there was no clue as to whether this one was of human or alien manufacture.

The ploy was to hurl a mass of radio signals at the lock, if there was one, which would often respond by opening. Laedo had a recording of the most likely signals (such items could be purchased at any space port for a paltry sum) and he fed it into his transmitter.

Hopefully he edged his ship closer to the hatch. The sphere itself was large; several times the size of his own ship, and larger, in fact, than a decent-sized cargo vessel. Large enough, he reminded himself, to be manned.

At first nothing happened. Then the hatch began to rotate. Instead of withdrawing or projecting, however, it seemed to roll aside, leaving a gaping pit.

“Karaka!” Laedo cried.

Histrina frowned. “What?”

“We hit the spot.” Laedo had been quoting from a numbers game. He put out landing legs so the ship could grip the wall of the sphere, then put down. He found he didn’t need to use sticky-extrusion: the sphere was magnetically permeable and the legs were able to clamp on it that way.

Opening a locker, he took out a suit and a weapon. “You stay here,” he told Histrina. “I’m going to take a look.”

“No! Don’t leave me on my own!”

He held up the suit. “There’s no air out there. You have to wear one of these to breathe. You’ll be scared.”

“No, I won’t.”

He sighed, took out a spare suit and threw it to her. “Get into it, then.”

Fastening up the slim suit for her, and connecting her to him by a line in case she lost her footing and went floating off into space, he led her through the passageway airlock. They stepped down onto the metal surface of the sphere.

Histrina was not reassured by the lifeline. She floundered, and then panicked on seeing herself surrounded by such a strange and alien environment. Laedo took her arm and guided her to the entrance, showing her how to place her feet so that she wouldn’t cast herself adrift.

He had to manhandle her over the lip of the circular pit that led to the inside of the sphere. Once standing on its inner wall, however, normal weight returned. As he had expected, there was a manipulated gravity field inside.

The tunnel was perhaps ten yards long, and it was lighted by a pale green glow. When they had reached the halfway mark Laedo felt a puffing on his body that told him the passage was filling with air, or at least some kind of gas. Glancing behind him, he saw that the lid had rolled back in place. He bit his lip. This he hadn’t expected. it looked as though they might be trapped.

He needn’t have worried. When they had almost reached the end of the tunnel a similar lid there rolled aside. Beyond it was a level, well-lighted area. And blocking the way, standing in a line to confront him and Histrina, were four men. The cast of their features was similar to that of the natives of Erspia, except that they were somewhat paler, and their hair was cropped short. They wore long white gowns, cinched at the waist, and on the chest of each of these simple garments was a golden sun blaze.

One of the men held out his hands, palms upward. Hesitantly, he spoke.

“Do you come… from the Great One?”

Inside his helmet, Laedo smiled. it was tempting to give the answer the man clearly expected, but he knew he would never be able to sustain the deception, and he shook his head.

A wave of reassurance swept over him. He knew he had nothing to fear from these people.

It was also a great relief to find that the keepers of the projector were, after all, human.

“I can well understand that the mental environment on Erspia was strange to you,” Kwenis said mildly, pouring a fragrant, hot liquid into little cups from a tall, elegant pot. “Bewildering, even. I am taking your story at face value, of course.”

Laedo sat in a tidily furnished room. Kwenis passed one of the cups across the low table between them.

The beverage, almost purple in colour, was less bitter than coffee but refreshing. It was some species of tea, Laedo concluded.

He had been in the projector station for nearly an hour. Kwenis had taken him on a tour of the place, showing him the massive thought projector, the living quarters, and an installation which Laedo was certain was a star drive. There seemed to be a staff of eight on the station, four of them women with whom Histrina at this moment was also taking tea.

Kwenis called himself Chief Guardian of Ormazd. The other staff members were also guardians of Ormazd, apparently.

It was clear to Laedo that Kwenis was also vastly relieved that he was not, after all, receiving a visit from the ‘Great One’, whoever that might be.

“But what’s it all for?” he asked. “Who’s behind it? The ‘Great One’, I suppose. Who’s he?”

Kwenis sipped his tea reflectively. “I will tell you the whole story. ‘Great One’ is a reverential term for a being whom otherwise we know as ‘Klystar’. Klystar is a naturally evolved creature, like ourselves, but one with superior intelligence, so we believe, or at any rate superior ability. Klystar leads a roaming existence. Some time ago he happened to visit this region of the galaxy, and during his stay here he became interested in certain facets of human psychology. In particular, he was intrigued by the human mind’s suggestibility to thoughts, no matter where those thoughts come from. To Klystar it was most curious, for instance, that one person can persuade another of something, irrespective of whether or not it is reasonable. Most beings, in Klystar’s experience, form their thoughts and conduct independently of any swaying influence, as he himself does. We are queer creatures indeed from Klystar’s point of view. At any rate, he set up an experiment to investigate this phenomenon. He fashioned Erspia, and put people upon it. Above the planetoid he poised the two great thought projectors, one beaming what in conventional morality are ‘good’ thoughts, the other ‘bad’ thoughts. And he named them after the good and bad gods of a dualist human religion from a time when this morality was the rule in human society.

“But Klystar decided to leave before the experiment reached its final stage. So he placed us in the projector housings to act as servitors, to maintain the projectors should they malfunction, to carry out the final stage of the experiment, and to record its results. If, after a certain time, he had not returned, we were free to leave, and for that purpose he also gave us a star drive, as he did the guardians of Ahriman.”

“And what is the final stage?”

“The final stage is to switch off the projectors, and then to monitor events below to see whether the attitudes and beliefs they have inculcated will persist.”

Laedo was fascinated. “So all those people down there are just experimental animals!” He shook his head, smiling sardonically. “And when are the projectors due to be switched off?”

Kwenis looked uncomfortable. “According to schedule, thirty years ago. But we have not done it.”

“Indeed? Why not?”

Placing down his cup, Kwenis fidgeted, and then sighed. “As a guardian of Ormazd, I am unable to lie.

We would have obeyed Klystar’s instructions and switched off our projector, no matter what it cost us.

But the Ahrimanic servitors were of a different mind and refused to do so. We are fearful of what the consequences would be down below if only the Ahrimanic mode of thought were to operate—though, as a matter of fact, switching one or other of the projectors on again for a short period was to have constituted an additional sub-programme. So we have left matters as they are. To be honest, it is in our interest to do so.”

“Oh? How is that?”

Kwenis raised his eyebrows. “Why, because we are immortal for as long as the experiment remains in force. How else could Klystar ensure that we can service his equipment for centuries? When the experiment is finished, the life-giving force is withdrawn also.”

After absorbing this, Laedo snorted. “Perhaps motivation is another aspect of human behaviour that Klystar didn’t understand,” he suggested acidly.

Kwenis shrugged. “Perhaps. As I said, we would have obeyed. The backwash from the projector irradiates us, you know, and makes us truthful, honest and conscientious. But with the Ahrimanic servitors it is another matter, and there I can well believe that Klystar miscalculated. It is lucky you did not fall into their hands, for one can imagine how it is with them, steeped in deceit, selfishness and hatred.

It is a wonder they have not all killed one another, but we know they are still alive, for every year they send us the obligatory signal. Klystar, no doubt, saw to their survival. As for ourselves, what harm is done? It is plain that Klystar is not going to return. We are happy here, living in harmony with one another, in benevolence, truthfulness and chastity. And our lives do not end.”

“The losers, of course, are the people on Erspia, who don’t have possession of their own minds.”

“Neither do we,” Kwenis reminded him. “Does anyone? That was the point of Klystar’s experiment. And anyway, it is better for them than if Ahriman were to reign supreme. That is the alternative.”

Nodding, Laedo decided to drop the subject. It was not politic to criticise the people he was hoping would help him.

“My own star drive is broken,” he said, coming straight to the point. “Can you help me repair it? It’s a simple sort of repair. Then I can be away from here—I’m sure you don’t want me as a permanent guest.”

“I shall have to see. Lylos, Dugas and Markeer are our technical experts. I’ll ask them what they can do.

Meantime I’ll show you to the sleeping quarters you can occupy while here.”

He rose, then turned to Laedo, blushing slightly. “You will, of course, occupy separate sleeping quarters from your companion’s. I know you have been down on Erspia where licentiousness is rife, but we can brook no such behaviour here!”

“What?” Laedo rose too, a disbelieving grin on his face. “But you just admitted Ormazdian morality is all arbitrary—the product of a machine!”

Shaking his head, Kwenis put up his hand as though thrusting away such an interpretation. “We are chaste, and kind to one another. We take seriously our role as Guardians of Ormazd.”

Oh boy, Laedo thought, wouldn’t Klystar like to see this! Knowledge conquered by suggestion! But he said no more, and obediently allowed Kwenis to lead him away.

The next ‘day’, as the guardians reckoned time, was as frustrating to Laedo as had been his experience with the metal-worker on Erspia. The ‘technicians’ prided themselves on being able to repair the projector and any of the equipment on the station. But their repair work, he discovered, consisted of pulling out malfunctioning modules and plugging in replacements from a ready-made stock, an operation which was required on average once every ten years. Klystar, like many technically proficient beings, did not have a fetish about sophistication. The whole thing could have been handled automatically with a little built-in redundancy, or, with better components, could have been made unnecessary. From the look of the station, Laedo guessed it had been put together in a cursory, even careless, manner. Hence the human crew: they were good enough, so why take more trouble?

When Laedo showed them his broken transductor, they clucked, tutted, and shook their heads.

He told Histrina. She became depressed. Already she had promised herself a wider world than Erspia.

He detected, in her disappointment, a private fury.

“So when do we go back to Erspia?” she asked bitterly.

“We don’t go back,” he said in a low voice.

“How… ?”

“There’s still a star drive here. I can hope to persuade the guardians to use it.”

“Or we can steal it,” she said quickly.

“I don’t see how.”

“No… you wouldn’t.”

Her tone was contemptuous. She walked away, her bare feet leaving damp imprints on the shiny floor.

Two days later Laedo’s proposal to the guardians that they should abandon their long vigil clearly was not going to get anywhere. Further, it became apparent that since his own drive could not be repaired, the guardians expected him and Histrina to return to Erspia before too long.

That night, he fell asleep mulling things over. Later, he was awakened by a hand shaking his shoulder.

Histrina stood there. She swayed slightly. Her face had a glassy look. In her right hand was his gun.

“It’s done,” she said.

He sat up. “What are you doing with my gun?” he demanded harshly. She must have taken it from the locker where their spacesuits were kept, he realized. She turned away, and beckoned.

Silently he followed her. She took him to the sleeping cubicle adjoining his. On the pallet, covered by a thin sheet, lay Lylos, one of the guardians who had been introduced to him as a technician.

Histrina pointed to his head. Laedo leaned closer.

Blood trickled from a neat hole bored just to the rear of Lylos’ temple. It was a close-focus shot from Laedo’s handgun.

Laedo had seen violent death many times on Erspia. He tried not to be shocked, especially when he thought of the pitiless experiment on which the guardians were engaged. But despite himself he was shocked. More than that, he felt frightened at having Histrina by his side, still holding the gun.

Wordlessly she led him to the other cubicles, first the men’s, then the women’s. In each skull the same neat hole had been drilled. Histrina had brought the centuried life of the entire projector station staff to an end.

“Now we can leave,” she said calmly.

He stared at her. “How could you do it?” he said blankly. “Especially in here… where Ormazd reigns.

Didn’t you feel his influence?”

“He doesn’t reign over me. ” Her face lost its look of trance. Her eyes flashed, became alive. “Ormazd can’t touch me now. Something happened to me when we flew towards Ahriman. He got deep inside me.”

Laedo said nothing. Perhaps it could happen, he thought. At such intensity the beam might work a permanent change in someone—if they were receptive to it.

He was becoming more impressed with Histrina’s mental sharpness. It was remarkable enough that she had guessed the gun to be a weapon, when there were only lances, swords and bows and arrows on Erspia. But that she had learned to use it so quickly…

This question was answered when she took him into her own sleeping cubicle. The walls were sprayed and splashed with molten material where she had experimented with the gun’s focusing ring.

“Here’s where I practised,” she told him. “Simple, really, isn’t it?”

He held out his hand. “Give it to me, Histrina.”

She drew the gun back, holding it behind her. “Oh, no, I want to keep it. Give it to me as a present.”

Laedo sighed. Histrina had become clever and evil. He was going to have to learn not to turn his back to her.

The first job was to get rid of the bodies. This they did together by the simple expedient of throwing them out of the hatch towards Erspia. They would, with fair probability, end up falling through the shallow atmosphere to land as flaming meteors.

Laedo realized that he had acquired a valuable property in the station. Thought projection was a technique with limitless possibilities, once it was understood. There were people who would pay him a vast sum for the projector. He set himself to studying the station’s controls. They were, he found, surprisingly simple to operate. Klystar had modelled them on the human technology then currently available—for the benefit of the human crew, no doubt—which wasn’t so very different from today’s.

Laedo didn’t bother himself over where Klystar had obtained the human beings to people his exercise in practical psychology, but the drive unit, too, appeared similar to that he was used to.

Not wanting to lose his own ship, he employed a trick familiar to spacemen, manoeuvring it round the globe to reposition it precisely on the axis of thrust, directly opposite the drive unit. In any other position it would have been torn away once the globe was in motion, for the drive unit’s energy field would only partially engulf it. If he had aligned it correctly it would now stay put, carried along by the globe’s velocity.

Within hours he was ready to take off. Histrina still had the gun, but she seemed well disposed towards him and he didn’t feel too uneasy—and anyway she needed him, he told himself. He abandoned thoughts of luring her back down to Erspia and leaving her there. She was too sharp for that. But he would try to buy some psychological rehabilitation for her in Harkio, he decided.

One thing he left till last. He had found himself reluctant to switch off the projector, knowing the field would be left to purely Ahrimanic influences. But what else could he do?

So, at the last minute, when he sat before the station’s control board ready to energise the engine, the projector was still emitting. But already he had taken a key which he had found hanging from the neck of the dead Kwenis, and had opened the lid of a sturdy box bolted to the board. Inside the box was a massive switch of the old-fashioned lever type.

Laedo’s arm seemed extraordinarily heavy as he moved his hand to the switch. The lever seemed to resist him, and he thought for a moment that it might be corroded in place. Then, with a clunk, it shifted.

The invisible mental searchlight went out. Without pause he energised. The globe of Ormazd shot away from Erspia, into the interstellar realm and towards Harkio.

The sun had set and Hoggora, High Priest of the Forces of Darkness, felt vigorous and confident. True, the villagers, contrary to Drosh’s report, had assembled a force to match his own. He was faced, in fact, by an alliance of villages, and this would be a battle to go down in legend. But darkness had come, and the darkness always made him feel strong. He looked forward with joy to the carnage that was about to commence.

His cavalry was lined up on one side of a shallow river, the infantry jostling behind. On the other side of the water was a less colourful, but more rigidly disciplined parade. It was a case of ferocity versus fortitude, as it had always been. But this time the outcome would give one side or the other a decided advantage for years to come.

Beyond the silent ranks, the priests of Ormazd, in their tall, coiffed headdresses, raised their faces to heaven in rapt prayer. Hoggora prayed, too, hurling his voice hoarsely to that point in space where he knew the Mouth of Ahriman hovered.

“Ahriman! Aid us!”

And then, as if in answer to his supplication, an event took place that caused the entire assembly, on both sides, to pause and become stock-still. It was an invisible event, but one that was yet felt by everyone present. In the perpetual tussle that took place in each man’s mind, one of the contending factors abruptly went missing. Ahriman alone remained, to exult in his victory.

It was as if a shadow of evil swept over the world, a shadow that could never be lifted. The priests, sensing the death of the Good God, wailed in disbelieving horror. The ranks arrayed before them shivered and moaned as they, too, felt the strength of their lord leave them.

But among Hoggora’s army an incredible chafing joy took hold. Hoggora screamed a command, howling in triumph. A volley of arrows whistled across the river. Lances were levelled, pennants flew. With a great shout, the Horde of the Evil One surged across the shallow water to claim its own.