Zardoz Read Online Free

knowledge.
    Zed checked his crystal ring – was this one of its hallucinations?
    Then there were others, suddenly visible as their combined song rose. They sat in groups within the high branches and at the foot of one great tree, a giant cyprus. They were apart from him, in some other world that he could not see, joined by their song, their meditation.
    Was the beautiful girl inviting him to join with them, to become one with their music? It could be no trap, Zed felt, yet it seemed to offer a new and infinite universe for him as he went forward, drawn toward it.
    She waited on her horse, passive and all-knowing. She was no illusion but more beautiful than any of his vivid sleep-visions where such godlike women often walked.
    Then she was gone, the spell broken. Leaves fluttered in another direction. The carriers of the maimed ones approached; Zed followed them closely, but still kept under cover. It brought him nearer to the house. The smooth green grass rolled out in front of him. In the center of the lawn stood a pyramid, as tall as he, made of a hard bright smooth substance that almost rang with reflected light. Those carrying the bodies walked behind the pyramid, and did not reappear, the long line somehow eaten up by this small structure.
    Zed leaned back against a tree, gazed at the ring, the pyramid, the house. He breathed deep, and then moved quickly, running down through the woods, to something which he knew and needed – clear water.
    Zed drank deep. The cold surface reassured him. It reflected the clouds and the dark lands beyond that he knew well. The icy liquid refreshed him3 clearing his thoughts. This was all real. At the lakeside Zed regained himself.
    Someone approached silently along the water’s edge. A woman, moving on foot, evenly, directly at him, for him. He turned and swung toward her, gun aiming. He felt it was too late, although she was nearly naked, and unarmed, alone upon the beach. He was afraid.
    Sharp blinding pain leaped from her eyes and into his. He staggered out into the shallows, the gun flying from him, whether thrown from his hand or drawn from it he could not tell, except that she was the source of his agony.
    Disarmed, he faced her. She had a beauty like the other woman, yet it was stronger – there was a threat here. Her auburn hair flowed around her face, the eyes were slightly slanted and, like the corners of her mouth, they held a mocking certainty, a power and grace. She was an adversary.
    “Do you know where you are?”
    “A Vortex…”
    “You come from the Outlands. You were told about the Vortex?”
    “Zardoz says…” He looked about him nervously, the pain she had given him was real, he felt defenseless. What was her plan? Could she see into his mind, determine truth from falsehood? He must have time.
    “What does Zardoz say?” Her eyes bored into his. He rose up.
    “Zardoz says that if you obey him you’ll go to a Vortex when you die and there you’ll live forever…”
    “Happily?”
    “Yes.”
    “So you think you’re dead?”
    “Am I?”
    He looked out over the silent dreaming lake. He who knew death so well was yet a stranger to it. Could this be the place beyond death?
    He was still sweating but he felt more confident. He must avoid those painful eyes. She moved toward him. His back was to the lake, he could not run.
    “You’re an Exterminator?” Another question-statement for him.
    “I kill for Zardoz.” He could back away no farther, yet still she advanced.
    “You came here in the stone head.”
    ”I don’t know.”
    “It’s the only path and passage into the Vortex. You will show me how you come to be here.”
    It was quiet. Light from the setting sun played on the water. A shaft of sunlight made a Jacob’s ladder between them. Her face was averted as she stood, deep in thought.
    He was able to appraise her as a woman for the first time as the sun illuminated the line of her full breast, her narrow hip. Then she turned to face him.