The Magic Labyrinth by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online

a woman who had done what he couldn’t do. He wasn’t as upset as he would have been on Earth or even here many years ago. This world had given him a good opportunity to see what women could do once the inhibitions and strictures of Terrestrial society had been removed. Moreover, it was he who had written: Women the world over are what men have made them. That might have been true in Victorian times, but it no longer applied.
    While going back to the boat, Loghu introduced the others. All except Burton were using their native names. He had decided this time not to use his old half-Arab, half-Pathan guise, not to be Mirza Abdullah Bushiri or Abdul Hassan or any of the many similar guises he’d used on Earth and here. This time, for a reason he didn’t explain to his companions, he was posing as Gwalchgwynn, a Dark-Age Welshman who’d lived when the Britons were making their final stand against the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
    “It means ‘White Hawk,’ Your Majesty,” he said.
    “So?” John said. “You are very dark for a white hawk.”
    Kazz, the Neanderthal male, rumbled, “He is a great swordsman and marksman, Your Majesty. He would be a good fighter for you.”
    “Perhaps I’ll give him a chance to demonstrate his skill sometime,” John said.
    John looked through lowered lids at Kazz. John was five feet four inches in stature, but he looked tall alongside the Neanderthal. Kazz was squat and big-boned, as all early Old Stone Agers were. His breadloaf-shaped head, the low slanting forehead, thick shelving brows, broad flat nose, and very protruding jaws didn’t make him handsome. But he was not subhuman appearing like the Neanderthals in illustrations or the early reconstructions in museums. He was hairy but no more than the most hirsute of Homo sapiens.
    His mate, Besst, was several inches shorter than he and just as unprepossessing.
    John was interested in the two of them, however. They were small, but their strength was enormous, and both male and female would be good warriors. The low brows did not necessarily front a low intelligence since the gamut of brilliance to stupidity was the same in Neanderthals as in that of modern humanity.
    Half of John’s complement was early Paleolithic.
    John, nicknamed Lackland because for a long time he’d not been able to possess the states he claimed title to, was the younger brother of King Richard I the Lionhearted, the monarch to whom the legendary Robin Hood remained loyal while John ruled England as regent. He had broad shoulders and an athletic sturdy frame, a heavy jaw, tawny hair, blue eyes, and a terrible temper, though that was nothing unusual for a medieval king. He’d had a very bad reputation during and after his death, though he was no worse than many kings before or since and better than his brother. Contemporary and later chroniclers united to present an unfair portrait of him. He was so loathed that it became a tradition that no one of the British royal family should be named John.
    Richard had designated his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, as his heir. John had refused to accept this, and, while fighting Arthur, had captured him and then imprisoned him in the castle of Falaise and later in Rouen. There Richard’s nephew disappeared under circumstances which made most people believe that John had slain him and then thrown the weighted body into the Seine. John had never denied or confirmed the accusations.
    Another blot on his record, though no larger or blacker than that on the records of many monarchs, was the undeniable fact that he had caused to be starved to death the wife and son of an enemy, the Baron de Braose.
    There were many more stories, some of which were true, about his evil deeds. But not until many centuries later did objective historians record that he had also done much good for England.
    Burton didn’t know much about John’s life on the Riverworld except that he had stolen Samuel Clemens’ boat. He also knew that it would