Remo smiled, bewildered. "Wait a minute. Haven't you ever heard of afterglow? This is where we're supposed to cuddle up and make plans for the future."
"Go quickly, before it is too late," she said, rising to her feet and slipping on her clothes.
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"Why?"
"I—" She pushed him away from her. "I have done a terrible thing," she said.
"Tell me," Remo said. "Whatever it is, tell me."
"My master understands that you are an extraordinary man," she began, trying to compose herself. "Difficult to kill. I was sent to weaken you, so that you may be taken. The guards are outside now. Come with me. I will shield you with my body, for I am the sheik's concubine and may not be killed unless Vadass himself orders it."
"Chiun," Remo said, pulling on his clothes. "What about Chiun?"
"The old man has been poisoned. It was the tea. He drank, but you did not. He is dead by now."
Remo swallowed hard. He clenched his jaw as he thought of the frail old Oriental lying poisoned somewhere in the palace, out of Remo's reach. "Where is he?" he demanded, shaking the girl by the shoulders.
"I do not know," she sobbed. "I cannot be forgiven for this. I cannot forgive myself."
Suddenly the door burst open and the light outside the room silhouetted four archers like ghostly shadows, their bows trembling in a wake of arrows shooting blindly across the room.
The girl gasped. Remo saw the arrow enter her chest beneath her throat. With a noise that sickened Remo, she staggered under the impact of the arrow, then fell, blood streaming from her mouth in black strings, darkened by the candlelight.
Remo's attention wavered for a split second when he saw her. It was long enough for another arrow to pierce his right shoulder.
He recoiled with the pain, but it brought him
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back to alertness. He forced his mind away from the girl and focused on the hail of arrows, which he fended off easily using only his left arm and his legs. He formulated a plan. Following Chain's example with the spear warriors outside the palace, he would wait until the archers ran out of arrows, then charge them. He would kill all but one, and would force that one to lead him to Chiun.
But before the arrows were depleted, an eerie crackling electronic noise filled the room, and a woman's voice said, "Stop."
Immediately the bows were still and the archers slipped silently out the door. When it closed behind them, Remo was left again in the shadowy firelit room, which already had begun to smell of death.
There was laughter in the room, familiar laughter, and soon Remo recognized the woman's voice as Randy Nooner's. "All the girls love you, don't they, Remo?" she asked from four different points in the room, her voice amplified painfully.
"The last one betrayed her master for you. That's quite an honor, you know. The sheik's concubine," she sneered. "She was so sure she could protect you, the little ditz."
"Where is Chiun?" Remo demanded.
"Sleeping peacefully. I wouldn't disturb him if I' were you. He'll be sleeping for a long, long time."
He squinted through the darkness to locate the loudspeakers, which were hidden behind the sheets of silk on the walls. He blinked, trying to ease a growing pain in his eyes. Even the dim candlelight of the room began to burn with a terrible intensity. And the crackling of the speakers . . . Convulsively, Remo covered his ears to block out the sound.
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The movement jolted through his shoulder, reminding him of the arrow wound. It had entered cleanly and gone out the other side—a small wound, insignificant compared with many he had taken—but the pain was worsening fast.
"Uncomfortable, Remo?" Randy's voice crooned. "It's a native poison. Works like strychnine but it's undetectable. No smell, no taste. Sharpens the senses to the breaking point. The old man drank his dose with his afternoon tea. Yours was more direct."
Remo pinched his ears shut to block out some of the booming sound from the loudspeakers.
"This is just the beginning, Remo. It gets worse. Much worse. Listen." Through the crackling of the speakers, Remo heard the amplified shuffling and clanking of gadgets as Randy readied herself. Then his eardrums nearly burst. The ring of a large bell clanged through the room, growing louder with each echo as Randy pumped up the volume on her controls. Remo covered his head with his arms, as if he were protecting himself from falling bombs.
"You should never have looked further than Fort Vadassar," the voice snapped, still shrouded in the echoes of the bell. "You had Artemis. You could have blamed everything on him. That was the point. Instead, you decided to come after me. It was the wrong decision."
"Stop," he cried. "I can't stand the noise."
"Poor Remo. You're so cute when you're vulnerable. Boyish. I like you this way." She laughed again, a high, cruel laugh like a hyena's, which echoed and roared through Remo's ears.
He forced his head up. The sound was deafening, and the light from the candles seared him. When he
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breathed, the incense in the room nauseated him with acrid smoke.
He struggled to his feet, the room awhirl around him, and looked for a weapon. There was nothing.' The pillows, the candles, the incense—everything in the room was soft and pliable. The place was as harmless as a padded cell.
Straining his eyes, he looked at the incense again. The glowing cones were burning in tiny brass lamps. They weighed two ounces at most, but they were shaped in an aerodynamically sound wedge. If he threw them exactly right, weighting his thrust from the middle of his back, at exactly the right angle, he could knock down the loudspeakers and stop Randy Nooner*s laughter from pounding in his ears.
His right shoulder was throbbing demonically. He would have to use his left arm. He tried to aim one of the little lamps at the speaker's base, but the speaker was covered with the silk wall draperies, and the poison that the arrow had carried into Re-mo's body was distorting his vision. The objects in the room appeared to waver and melt together like party-colored spaghetti.
He missed. He stumbled to retrieve the lamp, threw it, and missed again. The effort left him limp and gasping for breath.
Randy's witchy laughter cackled over the speakers again. "The fighter to the end," she said. "It won't do you any good. Your Oriental friend knew that. He didn't struggle at all. He just lay down quietly, the sweet little thing."
"Chiun," Remo whispered. "Hang on, Little Father. I'm coming for you."
It was then that Remo saw the camera. It was poised over the door, hidden in the shadows beneath
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the drapes of silk. Summoning the small strength he had remaining, he weaved his way across the room and stared up at it.
"You found me," Randy said. "Good. I'd like a closeup of you as you die. The fihn will make a good conversation opener when I show it at parties." Her laughter reverberated in Remo's brain. "Can you hear me, Remo? I don't think I'm getting my message across. I want you to die."
Her words rang and cracked as the sound became louder.
"I'm turning up the sound, Remo, so that you'll understand me clearly. Die, Remo."
"Die, Remo. Die, Remo," the distorted, disembodied voice echoed.
"Die."