Blade was glad he had all this firmly in mind before the day came for him to meet the Master of the Hashomi.

It was just before sunset, and Blade was sitting on a cushion on the terrace of one of the buildings that served as a hospital. On the valley floor far below the terrace, the fields of wheat and flax were already disappearing behind a rising veil of mist.

A wooden railing ran along the edge of the terrace. It was only waist-high and painted white for visibility in the darkness. Beyond the railing, the valley wall plunged away, four hundred vertical feet to the fields below. The rock of the cliff was as free of handholds as a billiard ball. Anyone going over the railing to escape would not get far.

There was another way out of the hospital, to be sure. It lay through a tunnel carved from the solid rock behind the ledge where the hospital buildings stood. The tunnel began just behind the attendants' huts and ran straight, to come out five hundred feet farther along the valley wall and a hundred feet below the hospital. Several smaller side tunnels or caves opened off it on the inward side. Each one was closed off by a heavy wooden door with a small iron grating in the center. Blade caught faint smells and still fainter sounds through these gratings that hinted of prison cells or even worse behind the doors.

He could move freely up and down the chill, dim tunnel. He could not leave it. A few yards beyond the lower end of the tunnel was a twenty-foot gap in the ledge, spanned by a light wooden footbridge.

Beyond the bridge was a shallow cave. In that cave fifteen or twenty of the fighting Hashomi were always on guard duty. No one could come out of the tunnel mouth and across the bridge without being seen and met by the guards.

Blade knew he would not be getting out of the hospital without the consent of the Hashomi. At least not downward, and as for going upward, that would require more time. Time to regain his full strength, time to study the slopes above him, time to assemble some sort of climbing gear, food, and weapons. He would not plunge back into the mountains with nothing but a knife and raw goat's meat between him and death, not when the Hashomi might be hard on his trail.

He was considering where to look for climbing gear when he heard someone padding silently across the stones of the terrace behind him. Blade rose, turning until he could face the newcomer without having his own back to the edge of the terrace and the cliff below.

He knew with a single glance that this must be the Master of the Hashomi. No one else in this valley would be carrying himself like this man, with the same air of command, of confidence, of total assurance that no one would show him anything but due and proper obedience.

From the remarks he'd overheard, Blade would not have been surprised to find the Master a man seven-foot-tall and broad in proportion. He was taller than any man Blade had seen among the Hashomi-a hair under six feet. He was slender and supple as a whip, almost gaunt. Instead of trousers and vest, he wore a dark-blue robe embroidered with white poppy flowers, gathered in at the waist with a white sash. His bare feet were leathery brown, as was the face framed by a square-cut gray beard. His skull was bare and hairless. Two knives were slung at his waist and he carried one of the long staves in his left hand. This one was thicker than the one carried by the leader in the battle at the bridge. It seemed to be gilded, and there was a large silver ball at one end, perforated with a number of small holes.

Blade decided against kneeling or bowing, even though it was probably expected. It might help to seem a man who could not be intimidated, cowed, or brought to obedience against his will. That might anger the Master, but it might also arouse his curiosity. Such a man could be something new in the Master's experience, something not to be destroyed until its possibilities had been explored.

It was a gamble, but it was a gamble that offered Blade more hope than jumping off the terrace or hurling himself barehanded at the guards below the tunnel.

Blade stood calm and straight, hands clearly visible and motionless at his side. He never took his eyes off the Master, and particularly the Master's hands. Both hands were long fingered and narrow, with prominent bones, encased in tightfitting white gloves. In those gloves they reminded Blade of the hands of a corpse or a skeleton.

Then the Master spoke.

«So. You have come to the Valley of the Hashomi, in the shadow of the White Mountain. That is a journey that few have made. None have returned from it, except as Hashomi or as corpses carried away by the streams of the mountains that shield us. Which will it be for you, far-traveling stranger?»

Blade shook his head. «Neither.»

The Master's wide black eyes narrowed slightly. «That cannot be.»

«With all respect, Master of the Hashomi, you are wrong.»

Being flatly contradicted was defiantly something the Master seldom experienced. His eyes narrowed practically to slits, and his free hand tightened into a fist. His whole body seemed to be vibrating slightly, like a plucked harp string.

Here was the first crisis. The Master's notion of dealing with opposition might be a simple «off with his head.» In that case Blade had only a few minutes to live. The Master had even less. Blade was not completely well yet, but he knew he was perfectly able to wring the Master's lean neck.

The crisis passed. The Master's fist unclenched, his eyes opened, and he hooked a thumb into his sash. With a look that might have held the hint of a smile, he nodded at Blade.

«Very well. You will not become either a Hashom or a corpse. Tell me how this is to be.»

«My name is Blade,» said the Englishman. «In my homeland, I was of an order not unlike the Hashomi» He gave a quick description of the British Intelligence Service, translating it into terms the Master would grasp. He described J as a man who'd been a mighty warrior in his youth and now instructed the young adepts of «the British agents.» Lord Leighton was a scholar and doctor, so learned and with so many devices and potions at his command that some suspected him of wizardry.

«Do not think that because my Order has two men to do what the Hashomi do with one Master, we are weaker. In Britain, it has been found that the warrior and the scholar each do their own task best when they do not have to do the other's as well. Matters seem to be different among the Hashomi, and I would gladly learn why.»

«If you become one of the Hashomi, you will learn that and much else,» said the Master.

Blade smiled. «I am sorry, but that is not possible. I cannot become of the Hashomi. At least I cannot become of the Hashomi as you have made them, with the drugs you take from the flower on your robe.»

«I think it is for me to say what is and is not possible, herein the Valley of the Hashomi. If you become of the Hashomi, handr potions will be in your body. If you do not become of the Hashomi-«

«Yes, I know, I know,» said Blade. «Then my body will be in the mountain streams, food for the fish. You have said this before, and I know well enough what you believe: I say that this is not so. May I tell you why?»

Either the Master was getting used to Blade's contradicting him, or he was curious about how Blade proposed to accomplish the impossible. He nodded.

«You may speak further.»

«We use no drugs among the British agents, except for one. That is a drug that makes it impossible for us to receive any other drug into our bodies.»

«How-impossible?» The Master at least seemed willing to hear him out.

«Any other drug that is given to us will either kill us or at least make us sleep like men struck on the head.»

«Any drug?»

«Yes. The more powerful the drug, the more likely we are to die. The drugs you give the Hashomi must be very powerful. Also, I have not yet gained back all my strength. So if you were to give me the drugs of the Hashomi, I would most certainly die.»