Roger Zelazny - If at Faust You Don't Succeed

The celebrations were in full progress. Kublai and the other dignitaries were arranged on the dais as he had seen them that morning. Marco was there, and so was the princess Irene, and so was the court wizard in his star-spangled gown. A small orchestra was tuning up, and on a little stage a Mongol comedian in baggy goatskin pants and painted nose was saying, "Take my yak… please, take my yak."

But no one was listening. All eyes were turned to Mack.

Mack felt more than a little embarrassed by the attentive silence with which his arrival was greeted. He coughed and cleared his throat, and said, "Marco, I'm glad I've reached you in time. There's this plot against you. I overheard it in the courtyard where the soldiers were exercising. There were these two guys from Tyre, see, and they were saying—"

Marco held up a hand, stopping him in midword. "Are you referring to these two over here?"

Mack saw the two bearded soldiers he had overheard in the courtyard. "Those are the guys," he said.

"Very interesting," Marco said. "They came here an hour ago to warn me of a plot that they say was instigated by you."

"That's not the way it was," Mack said.

"They're just trying to get out of it themselves! Marco, I've told you the truth!"

"Your behavior has been suspicious," Marco said. He turned to the Khan. "May I proceed to demonstrate the duplicity of this fellow?"

"Do proceed," Kublai Khan said. "Western techniques of litigation and interrogation have long fascinated me."

"I call upon the princess Irene," Marco said.

Princess Irene arose from the little throne that had been set out for her on the main dais. She had had time to change into a sky blue mantle decorated with embroidered buttercups. She looked the model of innocence as she said, in broken Mongol, "This long-legged jackanapes came to my chambers, which no man is allowed to do. He made indelicate suggestions toward me, speaking to me in my native tongue, but in the familiar dialect that is used only among family members, or by uncultured persons with a homicidal streak. I was in fear of my life, for when strangers talk to you in that dialect, it means, if they're not related, they're planning to kill you. I fainted, and when I awoke he was gone, frightened away, perhaps, by some noise in the corridor—for he seems a cowardly lot—and I changed into my sky blue mantle and ran down here."

"Lies, all lies," Mack said. "You, Marco, sent me to talk to the princess yourself!"

"I sent you to the princess?" Marco said, rolling his eyes and glancing at the Khan with a showman's gift for innuendo. He turned to the assembled nobles. "You know me, gentlemen. I have been here seventeen years. Would I do something that is prohibited by Mongol law, to say nothing of common decency?"

The only sound that could be heard in Kublai's Banquet Hall was the creaking of necks as heads among the audience shook, no, no. And even the severed heads piled up in pyramids seven feet high on the corner stones of the pillars seemed to shake, no, no.

"This is a setup!" Mack declared hotly. "It is clear to me now that Marco Polo, for his own reasons, is out to get me. He probably can brook no rival at the Khan's court. And he probably feels inferior since he's only a Venetian merchant, whereas I am the ambassador from Ophir."

"As to that," Marco said, "let the court wizard speak."

The wizard stood up and rearranged his star-splattered robe. He adjusted the wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose, cleared his throat twice, harrumphed a few times, and said, "I have made enquiries of all the learned men in Peking who are especially skilled in geography. They agree that there is no such place as Ophir. They further assert that if it ever did exist, it perished long ago in a natural cataclysm. And they conclude that if it did exist today, it would never employ a German as its ambassador."

Mack waved his hands in frustration. Indignation raged in his brain, annoyance set his fingers to clicking and his toes to tapping, but he couldn't think of a thing to say.

Kublai Khan said, "I don't like to do this, because my court is renowned for its gentleness and high standards, but this man has been found guilty before a jury of his peers of being an impostor and a fake representative of a nonexistent country, as well as being a seducer of royal women. Therefore it is the judgment of this court that he be taken from here and brought to the common prison, where he is to suffer such tortures as are indicated for impostors, and then be strangled and disemboweled and drawn and quartered and burnt."

"An excellent suggestion," Kublai said. He raised his magic scepter and made a gesture. From the back of the room a fat bearded man came forward. He was dressed in a chamois loincloth and matching waistcoat, and he wore an enormous turban.

"Royal executioner at your service, Great Khan," he said.

"Do you have your bowstring handy?" Kublai asked.

"I always keep it on me," the executioner said, untying it from around his waist. "You can never tell when it might come in handy."

"Guards," Kublai said, "seize that man! Executioner, do your duty!"

Mack turned and tried to run from the place, hoping to hide himself in the interminable corridors of the Khan's palace until some better notion came to him. But Marco, smiling maliciously, stuck out a leg and Mack stumbled over it and fell sprawling. Bowmen seized him and held him tightly. The executioner approached, twirling the bowstring in his hand like the professional he was. Mack called out, "Your Majesty, you're making a mistake!"

"If so, let it be so," Kublai said. "To err with confidence is the prerogative of power."

The executioner bent over and whipped his bowstring around Mack's throat. Mack tried to shout, but no sounds came. He had a moment to reflect that one's life really doesn't flash in front of one's eyes at the moment of death as they say it does. All he could think of as the bowstring tightened around his throat was an afternoon lying on the banks of the Weser during a school holiday, and remarking to a student friend from the monastery, "You know, a man can never guess how he will die." And that was true, because he could never have imagined at that time (he was no more than fourteen then) that he would end up a couple of hundred years in the past, being executed at the court of Kublai Khan at the instigation of Marco Polo while engaged in a contest on behalf of the forces of Light and Dark.

And then there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke, and Mephistopheles appeared.

Mephistopheles was annoyed, and at such times he made extremely spectacular entrances, as he did this time, employing an entire panoply of fireworks and causing various prodigies of vision to appear in the air and then fade away mysteriously. He had found that spending a few moments setting up the atmosphere saved time in the long run, because those to whom he appeared were in such awe that they never thought to oppose him.

"Release that man!" Mephistopheles thundered. - The executioner fell back as though struck by lightning.

The bowmen collapsed in terror. Kublai Khan cowered back. Marco ducked under the table. Princess Irene fainted. Mack stepped forward, a free man.

"Are you ready to go?" Mephistopheles asked.

"Ready, my lord!" Mack replied, getting up and dusting himself off. "Just one last thing."

He walked up to Kublai Khan. As Kublai looked around for help, Mack lifted the magic scepter from his hands and tucked it into his pouch. "Now see how long your reign lasts!" he cried spitefully. And then Mephistopheles made a gesture and both he and Mack had vanished.

Marco said, "I think we have witnessed a genuine supernatural occurrence. It puts me in mind of something that happened to me when I was in Tashkent. It was spring, and the flowers of the valley—"