Eighth Circle

The way he handled the guardians was nothing short of amazing. One moment they wanted to kill him. The next, they were hanging on his every word. Hundreds had gone through the same experience and ended up dead. After a session of debauchery with the sirens they had met their fate at the hands of the furies.

That hadn't happened to the professor. Instead of watching him die, the guardians had bestowed him with honours. The man was a genius. He knew what sort of people he was dealing with. No one had to tell him he had fallen prey to a mob of homicidal maniacs. He summed them up in an instant.

The professor knew that the only way to survive was to tempt the guardians with something they desperately needed. They had wrecked their own realm and wanted a new one so they could start all over again. That was what he promised them. He got them so worked up they voted to make him a guardian. That told you how clever he was.

Tom ambled up the few last steps.

'Prince Crispin. I didn't know you watched gladiators fight.'

Crispin grinned back. 'I didn't know you played baqsheal, Professor.'

'Nor did I. The game is new to me.'

'You don't have anything like it in the Sixth Realm?'

'We don't have trolls in the Sixth Realm, Crispin.'

'You surely have gladiators.'

'Not for the past two thousand years. If anyone tried to stage anything like that in the Sixth Realm, they would be locked up.'

'You mean they don't allow blood sports?'

'No, Crispin and they don't allow zombies either. They don't breed trolls and they don't capture people and turn them into surrogates.'

'I thought the Sixth Realm was more primitive than ours, Professor. That's what the legends say ...'

'Legends. They're for children.'

'They say the saviour will come from the Ninth Realm ...'

'Forget the numbering system,' Tom cut him short. 'It doesn't tell you anything. I've seen three realms and I should know.'

'Perhaps they got the number wrong.'

'Legends get a lot wrong, Crispin.'

'That's not all they might have got wrong,' Crispin nodded thoughtfully. 'They might have been wrong about what he would be like. They said the saviour would radiate goodness and not be like ordinary men.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'Have unseemly feelings towards women.'

'What are they, Crispin?'

'Sexual urges, Professor. If he came from a realm where the primitive imperatives of the inner mammalian brain are not suppressed by the application of drugs and surgical procedures then he might get them.'