Chapter II

The Assassin's outguards picked them up long before they reached the crags. Jeff could see nothing. But the rattle of pebbles, the rumble of dislodged boulders from so many directions was not encouraging. The Assassin had quite an army.

The crag tops winked yellow, flashlight eyes as Taen led the young doctor up a narrow, rock-overhung trail to a moss-bearded hole where an old mountain man motioned them inside with his spear.

Taen forestalled Jeff's question: "Yes sire, it is hardly what one would expect. You see, The Assassin's palace was magicked to sand and steam by the weapons of the first of your comrades to land upon this planet. They did not understand--they never have understood--that The Assassin's person is inviolate. They have blown away his prestige with their own mightier weapons. Every man can now be his own assassin, they say, or at least so my people have understood. Many of The Assassin's followers have joined your Security Guards. Many of his wealthiest clients now deal through them. So he is forced to haggle over the prices of his victims like a common tradesman, not in his mighty castle but in a poor cave." He pointed down the taper-lit passageway that stretched ahead of them.

"But be sure not to offer a bribe for your wife's life, sire. The Assassin will never come to that."

The monster bowed low and his tuberculed face smiled without intelligence as his charred, fingerless paw pointed their way into the labyrinth.

"That was Garnak," whispered Taen. "Sire, the ancestors of The Assassin netted him in the swamps. For generations he was their chief agent of death for those who could not afford a skar; a quick-moving creature with the understanding of a man, they trained him to kill without a sound. He was The Assassin's most prized possession. But the great mushroom of fire and dust your people made rise from The City of Three Spears scorched all the worth from Garnak. The Assassin beat his own head against the altar when they brought back the Garnak that you saw."

A glowing green man stepped from a side passage, and Taen gasped, pointing an unsteady finger at the apparition. But as the green man approached, Jeff realized Taen was not impressed by his luminescence, which was probably the result of a recent bath in a cave pool containing one of the species of phosphorescent algae for which the planet was noted. The mountain man was pointing at his hands, or rather his lack of them. Like Taen, this man had undergone the "treatment" for murder and survived. He was joined by another, a handsome young man convicted of some minor crime, without ears.

"The Assassin awaits, Doctor," said the green man.

"Here, light up a torch for the gentleman, Astro," said the earless one with a voice of minor authority. Turning to Jeff: "Would you care to leave your servant here?"

"My advisor," corrected the young doctor. "Of course he will accompany me."

Carrying the sputtering torch in a mount upon his head, the green man lighted their way toward a water-stained archway that cast faint shadows in their direction from lights within. They walked slowly, for the path was deeply eroded by cave drip.

"Taen," Jeff whispered. "Are all of his followers like that? It seems to me the old man at the entrance had a bent back--there was something wrong with him too."

"No doubt, sire. The Assassin has recently come to favor those who are not whole. They have greater loyalty, for there is no place else they could earn food, and there is another reason he likes their company which you shall soon see."

"Don't they know about the Training House for the Handicapped that we have opened?"

"Perhaps they have heard of it, sire, but what matter. They will have starved long before the waiting line moves up for them." His voice trailed off as they entered the flickering chamber of The Assassin.

A glint of silver shivered into a face. A pool of blood lumped into a red silken pillow. Between the two was brown, wrinkled flesh, old, etched in shadow, backed by candles and shapeless watchers with bright spears, mirrors with spider-cracked glass, and further back, dark holes, the nesting holes of skar.

Jeff's eyes refocused on The Assassin. The face was a mask, that of a newly-made, ruggedly handsome robot. The mouth was a cupid's bow smile. But the flesh of the torso was real. The ribs pushed against it and rearranged the shadows as The Assassin breathed. The arms stretched from it in an open-handed welcome.

Taen bowed low and Jeff followed his example.

* * * * *

"Be seated, reputed healer," croaked the voice of a very old man. "The other may go."

It was not until then, as he tried to find a clue to action, that Jeff noticed the mask had dents, no eyeholes.

"My advisor is inseparable to me, great one," the young doctor replied carefully. "At your pleasure, he will seat himself at my left hand." He wondered if this was too bold a reply.

Indeed, the earless young man stepped quickly from the shadows, poising a skar at shoulder height.

But The Assassin's mask turned with the pulsing of the airsquid. His voice rasped with such painful effort that the doctor in Jeff tentatively listed it as a symptom of cancer of the larynx: "Whoever you are, return my weapon to its cote. If the doctor so wishes, his advisor may remain." His mask stared straight ahead once more. "You have come to purchase the life of Konrad. Good. If I were not The Assassin, with an ethic more rigid than man's, I would have ended him myself, for it is said that he is the Earthman who ordered death to the City of Three Spears."

Jeff glanced at Taen and the mountain man nodded significantly, stroking his prosthetic hands together as if counting out money. The shadows leaned forward eagerly.

"No," Jeff's voice exploded. "I want only the return of Kit's life. Of course I do not ask you to consider anything unethical," he added with more care. "I want to learn from your own lips if there are any legitimate steps I can take to have her restored to me."

"Konrad purchased a life," croaked the voice behind the mask. "Thirty thousand credits made me the instrument of the contract, a traditional one, no side alleys or higher offers. Now only the purchaser may cancel, and will forfeit a third of his purchase price in doing so. For that you must see him."

"It is as I feared," Jeff replied slowly while a germ of a plan propagated in his mind. "All now rests with your skars. I have said I do not wish the life of Konrad. I could easily afford it. But I am a healer and, like you, have responsibilities greater than those of a common man. My purpose is to save life, just as yours is to serve others in its removal. I do not stoop to personal revenge, just as you have not. I will trouble you no more with my personal affairs."

"That is right," replied The Assassin. "You recognize that I am disadvantaged among men. I am a symbol, an institution. For my hereditary self to exact revenge for my personal self would be unthinkable. It would destroy the impartial death symbol for which I stand, for which my clan has stood for generations. Although Garnak was ruined by him and other insults as well have been inflicted on me by Konrad and his followers, like you, I cannot stoop to personal revenge."

"It is good to hear such wisdom in these law-smashing days," Jeff replied, as Taen raised his eyes in disgust toward the vague ceiling.

"Prince of Assassins," Jeff continued. "We will now speak as kindred minds, not buyers and sellers of life. Although as a doctor I can see your life is flickering out, as a friend, I feel what you feel, that to see again, to open one's eyes to the flame of the sunset, the strength of the black crags, would be the pinnacle of life."

The mask nodded quickly.

Jeff continued, his mind eyeing his plan from many angles, "I am a healer. Apart from desire for my wife's life, without obligation, I offer you sight."

The Assassin's fingers rose trembling to his mask.

"This is not a bribe?"

"It is not a bribe unless you accept it in that spirit?"

"I had not realized an Earthman would help a mountain man."

"Let your attendants tell you of my advisor's hands."

As the earless one spoke quickly in The Assassin's ear, the old man's hands struggled clumsily with the straps of his mask. When the equally nervous fingers of the earless young man replaced them, The Assassin croaked breathlessly: "If you can give me sight and your advisor hands, perhaps you will return the arms and legs, the eyes and ears of my followers. Since you are by no means a wealthy man, we will contrive to pay you for your work."

As his hands rose to the heavy circle of gold about his neck, the mask clattered across them to the floor.

Shock of horror stiffened Jeff's face. He had expected the external eye processes to be atrophied but hardly the great, scar-blackened holes that stared at him. It would be a wonder if there was any optic nerve left to tie into. Even the optic chiasma might be dead. This extreme degeneration might extend all the way to the frontal lobe of the brain.

"Let us begin your magic at once," croaked The Assassin, his death-pale face acrease with hope.

"This is not magic to be worked with the wave of a hand," Jeff replied. "It is a series of delicate operations done in quick succession: one to clear away dead tissue and see exactly what repairs need be made; a second to prepare surviving afferent and efferent nerve paths and the necessary artery and eye-muscle attachments; the third, extremely difficult, to plant the eye, to make the nerve, vein and muscle connections. These electrolystic, hormone-catalyst splices are so minute I will have to do most of the work under at least fifty power magnification."

"Then let us begin at once. There is little time."

Jeff wondered what the old man meant by that. His time? Whose time?

"As you say. My advisor and I go now to select eyes from the Body Bank. Your spies can no doubt lead you to my house. The consulting room opens on Harspa Way."

When the Earthman rose to go, a thin voice spoke from the shadows: "If this should be your idea of revenge. If our master should die upon your operating table, your end, and that of your wife, will be particularly unpleasant."

"That one is next in line when I am finished," croaked The Assassin.

Although he strained to see among the dancing shadows Jeff could not make out that one's face.