Part 10 (1/2)

The pavement under my boots was smooth, with no falls of rock nor crevices to provide any barrier. Then-I was brought to a halt.

I sensed a sighing-a disturbance in the air. That which had taken command of my body turned me to the left until both my outstretched hands once more sc.r.a.ped across engraven stone. And I tapped out with one foot, knowing, as surely as if I could see, that here a pit opened in the floor and the only way around it was a narrow ledge which my tapping toe located.

So I set my shoulders against that wall, my hands braced tightly against it, facing outward to the pit. Step by step I squeezed by the trap I could not see.

While from the depths came ever that sighing, and with it a stale smell. My journey seemed to take an hour, though it could only have been minutes before I was once more on a wide and solid surface of a corridor.

Now I saved my strength of purpose, no longer making those attempts to break the power holding me. For that pa.s.sage shook me greatly, the reason for it lying, I was sure, in the depths of that memory which was not a real memory.

I felt also that the pa.s.sage now sloped upward-at so gentle a curve that at first I was not aware of it. This became steeper as I went. Finally I knew that my feet unerringly had found a flight of steps and I was climbing. Here the wall to my left was smooth and I ran my hand along it for the sense of support it gave me in the dark.

Up and up-was I inside the heart of some mountain? Though I could not remember any peak of unusual height among those walling in the Valley. No, the true chain mountains lay to the north and the west-those we had come over in our venture into Escore.

My hands arose, at the command of Laidan rather than by my own desire.

Flat-palmed, they struck a surface just above my head. And I guessed that I had reached some kind of trap door sealing off this place. I exerted my strength, and not altogether at the bidding of my captor-for I wanted out of this trap.

At first I thought that exit must have been sealed or barred. Then, very slowly and reluctantly, it loosened in its frame. Gray light, thin like the last of any winter twilight, outlined a square on three sides. I arose two more steps that I might set my back to the door and, with a last compelling effort, sent that cras.h.i.+ng up and back. Ancient dust puffed into my face, making me cough.

For a moment I hesitated, for what might lie above in waiting I could not guess.

Then, because I must, I climbed into the open. There were piles of tumbled stone, even a trace of a wall, as if this hidden way had once issued into the room of a building of size and presence. But if that were so, the way was- I blinked and blinked again. For a second or two I saw clearly the desolation which had been plain enough still in existence-the fallen blocks like shadows.

Then those winked out. Walls arose out of the very earth itself, took on st.u.r.dy substance. There was a roof high over my head veiling the sky. The place of the skull-?

No-there were no pillars here and the wall was round. I could have entered the ground floor of some tower. Window slits there were, but those gave little light. Rather that came from torch rods set at intervals on the wall, pulsating with a steady, contained flame.

The opening of the trap door through which I had emerged had pushed aside a tanned, furred rug, into the making of which must have gone more than one snow-cat pelt. And there were stools and benches, much carven, a table nearer to the wall on which sat a bowl of ruddy crystal overflowing with those small red grapes which are the sweetest and the rarest my people knew. Beside that was a flagon of worked metal with the sheen of silver and gold interwoven, which had been fas.h.i.+oned in the form of a traditional dragon-its neck curved upward, its mouth open to emit whatever fluid might fill such a container.

All illusion; my mind gave a quick and, I thought, true answer. Yet when I stooped to touch the wrinkles of the rug, my fingers held the softness of fur.

So this illusion could control more than one sense at a time.

I swung around toward the table, determined to test that guess further, but there came a curdling of the air. So strange was that I stared as the atmosphere itself appeared to thicken, form a body. Then I faced Laidan.

She laughed, lifting one hand to brush a strand of flame-bright hair out of her eyes.

”So you are duly surprised, little sister? Well, time can he obedient to the will, even as is s.p.a.ce-or the other boundaries men so complacently accept as always unchangeable and fixed. This is Zephar-”

For a moment after she spoke that name her eyes were intent upon me, almost as if she expected I might recognize the word. Then she shrugged.

”It does not greatly matter whether you remember or not. But all this”-she flung her arms wide, the mistlike covering that she had worn before seeming in this setting to be more opaque and more like some normal weaving-”answers readily to my call since I once had the ordering of it. Where memory is the sharpest, there we can beat time itself.

”However, that is of no consequence. You are-”

She seated herself with deliberation on the only true chair in that chamber, one placed at mid-board by the table, its dark high back framing her hair to make those strands appear even brighter.

”Yes, we are in Zephar, younger sister. And in Zephar there is that which even in this crook-coiled time you can do.” Now she set her chin upon one fist and planted the elbow of that arm firmly on the table. Though her mouth might still smile easily, her eyes were like bits of ice drawn from the teeth of the Ice Dragon, as from them appeared to spread a chill which grew strong within that tower room.

”You are life-linked with this one you call Yonan-though once he had another name and played the part of a tool-only not well enough. He had his death of his own pretensions, but not in time-”

And the word ”time” seemed to echo through the chamber like a gong from a distance, a sound not to be denied.

”Now he would play the fool again,” she continued. ”But the past must not be reversed, rather it shall be improved upon. You, and through you Yonan (who is nothing but who unfortunately can move to destroy what a lifetime-twenty lifetimes-cannot bring once more into being), must be used. Therefore-younger sister-you shall take a hand and all will be as we wish- I found my tongue at last. Perhaps it was the thought that she would make of me a tool to pull Yonan down which brought that croak out of me, rusty-sounding as if I had not given tongue in a score of years.

”As you wish-” Had the two of us ever stood and bargained so before? A teasing ghost of memory a.s.saulted me once more. Perhaps not just in this same way, I believed, but we had been opponents long ago. Then I must have known more-much more- For a second time she laughed. ”If you hunt down that very forgotten trail you will not find much at the end of it-save that you failed then even as you will fail now. Believe me”-her eyes were afire or else had put on the diamond brightness ice can sometimes show under the sun-”you will fail. You are even less this time than you were when once before we fronted one another. Yes, you shall give me Yonan and all shall be well. I will make very certain of that.

Come!”

She arose, beckoning me. And, as it had been since I had come into consciousness this time among the hills, I was wholly subservient to her will.

She did not even glance back to see if I followed. Rather she went directly to where a stair spiraled around the circular inner wall of this place and climbed quickly, I constrained to follow.

We came so into a second and upper chamber where the ceiling was not so high.

Here were shelves and tables holding all manner of basins, beakers, and small boxes. From the ceiling and along the walls dangled bunches of withered vegetation which I thought I recognized as dried herbs. But the center of the chamber had been kept bare of any furniture. And there, set into the floor in various colored stones so that it would ever be permanent and ready to hand, was the pentagram of witchery. On the points of the stars were thick black candles, which had been lighted before, as drippings of evil-looking wax ridged their sides.

Beyond the pentagram was a smaller circle, this bordered by runes which had been drawn on the pavement in black and red. But lying in the middle of that, tightly bound, a gag forced between his wide jaws, was-Tsali! Though how the Lizard man could have been brought here I could not guess.

Chapter Four.

Instinctively my mind reached to touch his. Only my thought send recoiled from an unseen barrier so intricately woven that nothing could pierce it-more of Laidan's sorcery. She had turned her back upon me, and there was contempt in that. She must now have believed me so poor a thing that she no longer even had to exert her power to hold me in control. Rather she was concentrating upon a search along those crowded shelves, taking down here a closed pot of rude workmans.h.i.+p, there a flask in which liquid swirled as if it had life.

I looked into Tsali's eyes and strove, though I could not reach him mind to mind, to make contact. And I saw that he knew me, yet there was that about his gaze which held shock-and-did I read repudiation?

In the beginning I had learned what I knew of my Talent because I could communicate with other life forms-those which are not the lesser (though ignorant men may deem them so because they do not walk, speak, or think after our fas.h.i.+on). The Lizard people, the Renthans, the Vorlungs of the Valley-they had arisen from stock totally unlike our own forefathers, but they were no less than we, only different.

Just as a fish lying in a sun-dappled pool, a p.r.o.nghorn grazing in a meadow, a snow cat stalking in the upper reaches, have in them all the love of life, a way of thought equal to our own in power even if we cannot understand it.

I have also called to me the scaled ones. And I remembered now, in a small flash, how greatly I had troubled Yonan when he had once found me and a serpent as close-linked as was allowed by our divergent natures.

But all those were clean beasts who had nothing of the rot of the Shadow in them. While here in Escore prowled creatures which to mind-touch would be to open wide a gate through which I, myself, could be invaded. How much did Laidan use those born as a result of ancient meddling on the part of a people grown so decadent that they would tamper with nature to amuse themselves-or to provide servants for further evil?

The Lizard man was clearly an enemy. And that she planned worse for him I did not have to be told. But since she had lifted from me most of the force of her will, leaving only enough to keep me here, I began tentatively to look about me, seeking any weapon, any ally I might find.

This cradle of sorcery had no windows, and the thick stone walls were all shelved. Also, the ceiling over my head was much lower than that of the chamber below. Now I could see that in the corners of that there hung the soft thickness of years of webs, some so heavy with settled dust that they seemed small ragged bits of curtains. And in those webs-I sent out a very small quest of thought.

The mind that I touched was totally alien, the spark of intelligence frightening in its cold avid hunger. I had never tried to summon any of the insect world before. But that I had managed to touch at all was a small triumph. And, apparently, Laidan, in her preoccupation, had not been warned that in so much-or so little-I had begun to evade the geas she had laid upon me.

I located another creeper consciousness, a third. It was very hard to hold to them, for their level of consciousness was so different from my own it was like grasping a cord which was constantly jerked from my fingers, caught again just before it had totally escaped me.

There were huntresses in those dusty webs, cold and deadly. Of our concerns they knew nor cared nothing at all. But they were there. And now I made an effort, concentrating on the largest and what might be the oldest of the webs. Something moved in the hole that was its center. So-I had drawn its inhabitant thus far into the open! I had no plan at all, nothing but a hope which was very dim at that moment. But I put my own talent to the test, summoning those who dwelt above. They seemed to have fared very well, for when they appeared their bodies were bloated with good living-and that in the largest web was larger than my palm.

These were no ordinary spiders. There was poison in their jaws. They could immobilize their prey, enclose it in the web for future eating while it still lived. And their tiny eyes were sparks of evil light.