CONTENTS
Roane fought against closing her eyes, tensed her slight body until it ached. One could argue intelligently (she could hear Uncle Offlas now with that odious patience which always colored his voice when making any explanation to her) that such discomfort was all mental. If you fastened your mind on something else, the sensation of being entombed alive while in the express bolt would disappear. But she lay now in the padded interior of the speeding bullet and tried to endure.
Though she did fight her fear—the thought of smothering here —Roane clenched her fists, bit hard on her under lip. The pain of that helped. According to Uncle Offlas you could overcome anything if you willed it. Unfortunately, she fell far below his standards. Now that she bad a chance to prove she was worth something to his plans, she must not spoil it.
Why, even the department head at Cram-brief had envied her this chance. And it was only because she was Offlas Keil’s niece that she had it. The expedition to Clio would be a family affair
Project Director Keil, his son Sandar, and Roane. She tried to breathe evenly and slowly, to keep her eyes shut, forget where she was now, and think only of the goal before her.
Maybe once in a hundred, no, closer to a thousand times, did something like this happen. And she was so lucky to be a part of it. Only right now, even her brain felt tired. All that cramming! She— Well, it was like being an osbper sponge set in a pool and given the command to absorb. Only she could not swell the way those did; she had to pack it all behind bone and flesh which was not able to expand. By rights her head ought to be so heavy with all that the briefing computers had hammered into it that she could not hold it upright.
Clio was one of the sealed planets. Yet because of the circumstances Uncle Offlas had definite orders to land there, to stay as long as it would take them to locate the treasure. Treasure! The very word gave one a shiver-though this treasure was nothing that anyone but a member of the Service would want.
Real treasure—precious, beautiful things—would not interest Offlas Keil at all. He might glance over it to classify it by historical period, but to him such would be toys. However, knowledge of the Forerunners—that was something else. And this treasure had been pinpointed by a hint there, a clue here, stretching over years of sifting, to a single general area on Clio.
Because Clio was a sealed world, the final stages of their search must be conducted in complete secrecy, as quickly as possible, using Service devices. And the Project demanded as small a task force as was necessary. Which had sent Roane to Cram-brief to learn as much of Clio as she might need to know.
She wondered what it would be like to live on a closed planet (not for the period of days they would set down there but for a lifetime). Of course, the whole theory which had established the closed planets was wrong; such manipulation of human beings broke the Four Laws. Clio had been settled two, maybe three hundred years ago when the Psychocrats dominated the Confederation, before the Overturn of 1404. It was the third such experimental planet rediscovered, though there were rumors that there had been more, no one knew how many. The blasting of the Forqual Center during the revolt of the Overturn had destroyed most records.
All those worlds had been chosen as sites for projects which were the particular interest of one of the Hierarchy of the Psychocrats. The original colonists, braincleared, given false implanted memories, were settled in communities which to their briefed minds seemed natural to their new worlds. They were then left to work out new types of civilization, or a lack of civilization—to be watched secretly at intervals.
When such inhabited test planets were now rediscovered, they were declared closed. For none of the authorities could be sure what the impact of the truth might do to their peoples. Less advanced they were, as well as mutated on at least one planet. But on Clio the inhabitants were entirely human, though they were living in an archaic way, much as Roane’s ancestors had lived several hundred years before space flight
What the Psychocrat who had established Clio had been aiming for was now not certain. But the Service thought he had set up something akin to the old Europa plan known on Terra. The large eastern continent had been divided into an irregular pattern of small kingdoms. The two western continents had been otherwise “seeded” with “natives” at a far more primitive level of culture—wandering tribes of hunters. And then they had all been left to their own devices.
On the eastern continent a series of wars for territorial expansion had ended with the establishment of two large nations, fronting each other uneasily across a border of small buffer states which still possessed their freedom, mainly because the two great powers were as yet unready to strike at each other. Intrigues, minor skirmishes, the rise and fall of dynasties were all a part of life on Clio. It was, to an onlooker from the stars, a giant game, though one in which lives were lost by a badly managed stroke of play.
In the west the tribesmen, too, fought each other; but since they remained on a more primitive level, the cost in blood had not yet been so great. However, Roane need not consider them. It was on the eastern land mass that her party would make their secret landing, in one of those small buffer states between the great powers.
“Reveny,” she said aloud now, “the Kingdom of Reveny.” It was a strange word and she had had difficulty at first in pronouncing it. But no stranger than a lot of otherworld names, some of them so utterly alien they could not be shaped or voiced by human vocal cords.
She had viewed the tri-dees of the site where they would do their prospecting, often enough to make the countryside familiar. But this was an old duty, part of her wandering life. Uncle Offlas had taken her along, sometimes like excess baggage, from world to world during his own wanderings as an expert on Forerunner archaeology.
Roane liked what she had been shown of Reveny. The district they must comb for their purposes was, luckily, sparsely settled, being mountainous and forested. Part was a hunting preserve for the royal family. The only settlement was one of verderers and keepers. The rest of the inhabitants were shepherds who moved their charges seasonally from range to range. If the off-worlders had luck and were cautious, as they must be, they would have no contact with any of these.
In the tri-dees it seemed a story tape come to life. There were actual castles with sky-pointing towers, colorful towns with crooked streets (so unlike the ordered dwelling blocks of her own people), and—But she must remember that it was very primitive. Wars were still fought across those fields. Roane shuddered, remembering a couple of tapes which had revolted both her mind and her queasy stomach.
The people of Reveny were, as far as could be determined, still under some type of conditioning process. Or else the initial training had been so complete as to repersonalize their descendants as well. She would undoubtedly find them as alien emotionally and metally, as they were akin to her bodily. That if she had any meeting with them at all.
The sway of the bullet holding her slackened. She opened her eyes as it came to a stop. With a sigh of thanksgiving that that ordeal was behind her, Roane disembarked to look around.
“You’re late-”
She turned eagerly, instinctively smoothing down the flare of her overtunic. Not that it would matter to Sandar whether she looked as rumpled as a wart skin, as she well knew. But it would be nice if he saw her, just once, as a girl and not an encumbrance.
“There was a delay at the Metro thrust,” she said quickly and then felt provoked. Why was she always in the wrong with Sandar and his father? If there was any delay, any difficulty, it always involved her, never them.
She tried to put aside the need for apology as she looked at her cousin. He had not changed, not fallen from his normal superiority. Though why should he in a matter of only two months? There was no reason why he should have shrunk from the height he carried so well, grown irregular features in place of those almost- too-handsome ones, been denuded of the charm he was willing to exert for everyone but her. Sandar could wear the grimed coverall of a tubeman and still look like a tri-dee hero. In the Service tunic he was still Sandar the Great. She had heard him named that once by a girl she had met back on Varch. The fact that she was his cousin sometimes made her temporarily popular, just long enough for it to take other girls to learn how little influence she had with him.
“Come on!” He was already walking away and she had to trot to catch up. “We have just half an hour to reach the field before countdown.”
He kept to that long stride and she had to hop-skip to match it. Resentment began to stir in her. When she was away from Sandar, Roane always hoped they could be friends. But when they were face to face again she knew how stupid that hope was.
“My kit-” she cried.
“It came through. I stashed it in a holder.” “But we have to get it. Which way—” He was heading for the outside door.
Now he reached out and his fingers closed firmly, and none too gently, about her arm above the elbow.
“We haven’t time, I told you. If you’re late you’ll have to take the consequences. And you won’t need what’s in it. There are full supplies on board ship.”
“But—” Roane wanted to dig in her heels, pull back from his highhandedness. Only she knew he was perfectly capable of dragging her along by force. She saw the set of his mouth—Sandar was in a rage about something and he would make her the target of that anger if she gave him a chance.
Her shoulders sagged. Once more she was caught in the old pattern. Her two months at Cram-brief had given her a false confidence in herself. Just how false she now realized. She would have to leave her kit locked somewhere in this hateful building.
That she would not be bereft of necessities she knew. Uncle Offlas traveled with the highest degree of comfort any project allowed. But there were personal things—some which had been a part of her for a long time. It was hateful of Sandar, a bad start for the trip.
She stood quietly, still captive in his hold, as he hailed a transport flitter. Captive, yes; resigned, no. Somehow she was going to get the better of Sandar—somehow, someday. She stared down at her hands as the flitter spiraled up with them. They were small and brown; her skin was several shades darker than Sandar’s. That both he and her uncle resented her mixed blood, she knew. Sometimes Sandar acted as if he did not even want to look at her.
The port was busy with four ships on the pads—one a stellar liner embarking a number of passengers. They swooped past its tall column to settle by a much smaller ship, which bore the insignia of Survey. Roane managed to avoid Sandar’s hand and made for the ramp, trotting up it as she had so many times before.
She fed her ident into the port checker, saw the welcome light flash. A crewman stood a little beyond.,
“Gentle Fem Hume.” He consulted a ship map. “Third level, Cabin 6, ten minutes to countdown,”
She made for the ladder hurriedly, wanting to reach the privacy of her own cabin with no more interference from Sandar. And she did, throwing herself on the bunk, although the warning bell had not yet sounded, snapping the protective take-off webbing into place.
The cabin was the standard one of a junior officer. There were cupboards in every possible section of wall space, plus a narrow slit of curtained door which must give on a cramped sliver of a stand-fresher. The bunk she lay on was comfortable enough, but the furnishings were all regulation. There was no sign of personal possessions about the dreary cell. If someone had been shifted for her, he had taken all his belongings with him.
Once more she wondered what it would be like to have a real, set-on-a-planet, immovable home where one dared accumulate things one fancied and enjoyed to look upon just because they were beautiful, or reminded one of some happy time, or were fun to own. If Uncle Offlas had ever had such desires, they were long since lost. And Sandar seemed not to care.
She hoped what he had said of complete equipment on board was true. Of course, on a dig one wore Service dress—a one-piece coverall of material suited to the climate, fashioned for hard use. And she had long known that any of the luxuries of feminine life, such as scents or the cosmetics that planet-rooted women dared to use, were not for her.
There was a warning clang overhead, the signal for last countdown. Roane snuggled deeper into the bunk’s protective cocoon. Here they went again, for the—she was not sure she could even reckon now the number of times she had gone through the same procedure. Would there ever be an end to such wayfaring for her?
It was a voyage like any other. As soon as they were in hyper Uncle Offas sent for her to put her through a searching examination of what she had learned. He did not signify at the end any more than that she would do, providing she kept her mind strictly on her work. He then gave her a load of tapes and a reader and ordered her to make the best use of space time she could. She dared not protest, since she knew that sooner or later he would demand an accounting from her.
The voyage was as dull as most. On a liner, where there were many pastimes to amuse passengers, travel might be fun. But certainly Uncle Offlas thought that such intervals between jobs were for study only.
They made landfall at last—that is, their ship went into orbit well above Clio, and they packed themselves and their gear into an LB, the standard type of small lifesaving craft, which had been specially modified for a directed landing. It was twilight when their meticulously planned descent brought them to the surface of the planet.
All three of them hurried to unload the supplies and instruments, for the LB had a time setting to return it to the parent ship. And even that would then withdraw into a longer orbit. Though any sky watchers on Clio would not recognize a star ship, yet there might be talk of any strange appearance in their sky. The first thing Roane was aware of as she manhandled out the boxes and containers was the wonderful freshness of the air. After the stale, recirculated atmosphere of the ship this was like breathing a subtle scent. She drew it deeply into her lungs.
They had no time really to look about until the last of the equipment was out. Uncle Offlas slammed the hatch and jumped back as the LB bounded up. Even during the short time of the unloading, twilight had deepened into night. Roane sat back on a box and brought out from the inner pocket of her coveralls a pair of night lenses. With these on she looked around.
They were in a glade surrounded by tall trees. Several bushes had been squashed by the LB, splintered and flattened, and the boxes they had tumbled out had torh and gouged up chunks of moss.
Uncle Offlas had a small map and was glancing from it to the right and left as if he hunted landmarks. Meanwhile Sandar forced open one of the padded containers and brought out a box which he balanced on his knees, bending close to read the dials on its top. He set two of these, then reached for another twin box to do the same.
“Good enough. Put it about twelve—no, perhaps twenty paces in that direction.” Uncle Offlas pointed left. Til do the same with this.” He picked up the second box.
Once those distorts were working they could set up camp. The distorts would prevent any unauthorized invasion of either man or beast native to this planet. Each member of their own party wore, clipped to the front of his belt, the broadcast which would nullify the effect for him.
By midnight they were settled in. Under Uncle Offlas’s expert handling a working laser had cut a pit as deep in the ground as Sandar was tall. Over this arose, for more than an arm’s length, a weather dome, which in turn was concealed by greenery which had been stass-sprayed not to wither for days. Their equipment, moved within, formed narrow partitions for three small cubbies and one larger one. And they dared to turn on a camp-sized beamer there while each prowled in turn around the clearing to inspect for any betraying light.
For a time they must work by night, sleep by day. Roane was tired enough to yawn her way to sleep as soon as she was free to curl up in her own cubby. Near by were the detects and as soon as it became dusk again she would take one in hand and begin her first sweep of the area. Sandar would go in the opposite direction, while his father was in charge of assembling the com, setting out the other tools they would need as soon as a detect gave them a lead. It was apparent that Offlas seemed very sure they would find what they sought. In the past his confidence had never been so high. It was as if he had complete assurance they would make their find shortly.
Such belief was infectious. Roane almost expected to be able to report success on her first scouting trip. But she did not; neither did Sandar. And the third night they ranged farther afield, guided back to camp by distort signals. While it was impossible to get lost, Roane found that venturing alone into the wilderness made her slightly uneasy. She had never been completely by herself before. On board ship there was the cramped feeling, even in a private cabin, of other lives close by, just as the lifeless air one breathed had, as one well knew, been recycled many times. But here—with the night lenses to give her clear vision, she began to feel at last oddly free.
Midway through the fourth night she climbed a ridge, swinging the detect on its strap over her shoulder, using both hands to pull herself up. It had rained earlier and the grass tufts and the branches which slapped at her were moisture-laden. But the waterproofing of her clothing kept her body dry, and she relished the feel of the droplets on her face and hands, even though they plastered her short hair lankly to her skull.
Roane had passed by a road earlier, in fact had tumbled into it when a sleek clay surface made her slip. It had been an odd hollow, boring through greenery which grew on grassy banks taller than her head, and it was overarched with a lacing of boughs which roofed it. Whether this had been done by purpose to make a tunnel hidden from sight or was merely the result of unchecked growth she did not know. But the surface was rutted and scored with hoofprints to tell her it was in good use. And she had hurried to climb out, using a broken branch to sweep away her own tracks there.
This ridge lay at right angles to that road and well above it. She did not get to her feet as she reached its crest, but squirmed along so that she would not be silhouetted against the sky. The moon was now well up and bright.
Thus her sight of what lay below was very plain. Roane substituted distance lenses for the night ones to study the scene carefully. For there was a village-sized collection of buildings.
Almost directly below was the major one. It consisted of two square towers about five stories high, connected by a building looking to be no more than one room wide but rising three stories. The towers and the roof of the smaller portion were all parapeted and there was a tall outer wall completely encircling the building. Two or three of the very narrow windows showed faint gleams of light, late as the hour was. The tower nearest her had a gate giving on a garden which ran to the very foot of the ridge.
The garden itself was cut by walks gleaming white-bright in the moonlight and there were beds of flowers formally arranged. But what kept Roane from withdrawing at once was that there were men busy in the garden. They worked in pairs, six in all, and the couples were setting up in the ground posts which supported large grotesque figures. Each one of these weird effigies bore on one forelimb an oval shield painted with a complicated sign, while the other forepaw, or claw, gripped the pole of a small banner.
These were being placed in line to face the lower story of the tower, and the work seemed to be no light task. The effigies were of animals or birds, or in one case a crowned and shrouded human-oid thing. But all were strange to Roane and she wondered if they had some allegorical significance.
Why they must be put in place in the middle of the night was the puzzle, and she watched until the last was braced in place. Then the men disappeared toward the buildings along a single cobbled street running to the main gate in the wall. Outside the fortress-like wall there were two lines of houses built of the same stone as the keep, but they were much smaller, the largest only two stories high. Their roofs were slabs of stone slanting sharply from the peaks, the ends of those turning up to be carved into heads of beasts.
It was a keep, a village, in miniature. And though it looked different from the tri-dee she had been shown, she knew it for Hitherhow—the principal royal hunting lodge of Reveny.
Did the setting up of the figures mean that the King was coming? If so, what would such activity in the forest mean to her own party? Of course the distorts would protect them. But if there were many hunters abroad, they would have to hide until tiie chase was over, and Uncle Offlas was not going to take kindly to that loss of time.
“What did they say in briefing?” Uncle Offlas was pacing up and down, chewing at his thumbnail, an old sign of deep thought. Now he rounded on Roane with that question. “Who might be coming—the King?”
“King Niklas is an old man, judging by planet years—would he be hunting?”
“I am asking you. You saw the tri-dees the snooper robots brought in.”
“They weren’t sure about anything. If it isn’t the King—” Roane thought of the possibilities. “His children are all dead. He has one granddaughter—Princess Ludorica—”
Sandar laughed. “Now that’s a mouth filler! How do they think up such names?”
“Be quiet! A princess—who else?” Uncle Offlas demanded. “Why does it matter?” His son refused to be subdued. “It matters a great deal, you fool! The rank of the hunter can govern the number of followers he brings along.” Sandar flushed. Uncle Offlas was really upset or he would never have been so short with his son. She hurried to tell the rest she knew.
“There’s a Duke Reddick, a distant cousin of the King but a lot younger. That’s all the snoops picked up.”
“With all the preparations you saw”—Uncle Offlas fretted his lower lip with the nail he had been chewing on earlier—”it has to be one of the royal line. If it’s the Princess we may be a fraction safer—she might be less keen on hunting. But I don’t like such activity so close. It might be well to take day watches until we do know who comes. Time!” He balled his right hand into a fist and brought it down forcibly into the palm of the left. “We have to make the best time we can. The longer we remain planet-planted, the better chance of discovery—”
Sandar’s head was up, he was sniffing the rising wind. “There’ll be cover today; storm coming. But it won’t be good to be out in it-”
His father had swung around in the same direction. The thin gray of dawn did seem to be more dusky than usual. And they could all see massing clouds.
“Several hours before that breaks. Roane,” he said to her, “you take first watch, before the storm. Report in with this if it is needful.” He handed her a wrist com. “And work your way in from the north; these foresters are trained trackers. Sandar, you set out the extra distorts. I didn’t want to use up the charges so fast, but now there is a need. Ill put a repell as well as a distort into working order.”
Roane sighed but not audibly. She did not relish crawling the long way back to the ridge. But in spite of being tired, and chancing discovery by storm, the thought of watching the pocket castle was exciting. And inwardly she was surprised that Uncle Offlas had set her to it. Except that Sandar knew more about setting distorts.
She slipped inside the camp and crammed some of the sustaining, if tasteless, E rations into her coverall. There was no reason to go hungry, and her stomach already felt empty.
Circling north brought her into new territory. She could waste no time in exploration, but she did all she could to wipe out traces of her passing, being careful to snap no branch and to smear out any boot track in the forest muck. This delayed her, so that the gray was lighter when she again reached the ridge. She had made one discovery during her travels, a second tower set in the woods, brush growing so high about it that it was almost masked. There was no door closing the opening in its side and the place had the appearance of long disuse. Perhaps it was an abandoned ruin. She would have liked to explore it and promised herself she would when she had the chance.
Now she watched both village and castle. There were lights in plenty at the windows. And she could see people moving about. The wooden figures were bright with color, and the flags they held snapped in the wind.
Roane was so intent on the scene that she was startled by a rising call, saw a man on the castle parapet wearing a brightly colored overtunic raise a horn to his lips to answer that. Riders were coming down into the village, led by a man who managed his reins with one hand while he blew a horn for a series of calls. Behind him rode another in the same fantastic clothing, the tunic overlaid on the breast in an intricate design.
There was a small troop of six then, riding in military formation, wearing metal helmets and carrying bared swords in formal salute. Behind them came two riders, followed by a longer train of armed men. One of the riders was a woman, her long skirt flapping on either side of her mount as if it were slit. The skirt was of a deep forest-green, and her tight jacket was of the same shade, though it bore braiding of silver in spirals across the breast. From this height Roane could not see her face, for she had the collar of a cloak turned up about her throat, though the rest of its folds had been pushed well back on her shoulders. And on her head was a broad-brimmed hat ornamented with a cockade of long yellow feathers. Her companion was in the same green from the boots on his feet to the narrow-brimmed, high-crowned hat on his head. Roane could see little of his face either, though-by his dress he must be of the high nobility.
The villagers had turned out to greet the company. Men waved their caps, women curtsied. And the woman rider raised one hand in salute. All the mounts were Astrian duocorns and thus the fact was brought home to Roane that this was indeed a settlers’ culture, established at the whim of a mind half the galaxy away, with the resources of many planets to call upon. These beasts were smaller and lighter than those Roane had seen before. But there was no mistaking their curved sets of horns as they tossed their heads, even danced a little.
Roane watched the party enter the courtyard of the keep, the woman and the green-clad man dismounting before the main door. He bowed from the waist and offered her his wrist, she touching her fingers to it formally. It was like watching a living story tape and Roane was enthralled. The brilliant colors, the people did not seem real, rather story-inspired, and she could not believe in them. It was one thing to have such reported on snooper tape, another to see it in action. She slipped away from her post reasonably sure of one thing, that it was the Princess Ludorica who had just arrived.
Who the man might be, Roane could not guess; any member of the Revenian nobility from Duke Reddick down. She held to caution in her retreat, knowing she must take the roundabout way back. And the time so spent brought the storm upon her.
Suddenly it was night-dark, so that if she had not had her night lenses she would have been lost. Wind caught the crowns of the trees with a fury which frightened her. Roane had been on many worlds; she had known storms of wind, of drenching rain, of whirling sand, wind-driven grit to scrape the skin raw. But then she had been in such cover as their camps afforded, sheltered from the full force of such gales.
Now, caught in the open, her nerve almost broke. She must find shelter. And for that there was only the ruined tower. With what strength she had left she headed for it.
Rain added to the hammer blows of the wind. Branches splintered and fell. Roane cowered away from one jagged club. The whip of lightning lashed across the dark, to be followed by a crack of deafening thunder. And the tree to which she now clung, thick and sturdy as it seemed, swayed under the pull of the gale.
She could not stay there, but dared she try to go on? There was another bolt of lightning, which found a target not too far away. Roane screamed, her voice swallowed by the thunder, and tried to run, beating at the bushes to force a path. Then she saw ahead the mouthlike doorway of the tower.
Once she gained that, she held tight, panting and gasping. Her clothing, meant to be waterproof, had kept her body dry. But her hair was plastered to her head; water dribbled across her face and into her half-open mouth. For a moment or two out there she had felt as if the force of the storm had torn away her breath.
Now she recovered enough to move on in, and then dared to use the beamer, set on its lowest power, to inspect what lay about her.
To her surprise there was furniture here. But as she went closer she could see that its presence was probably due only to the fact that it could not have been moved except by the greatest of effort. There was a table hewn from a single thick slab of dark-red stone which was veined with thin lines of gold that glittered even in the weak light when she smeared away a deposit of dust. Inset in the top of this was a series of squares, alternating red and white, perhaps to form a playing board for some game.
Facing each other across this slab, which was mounted on round balls of legs, were two chairs lacking legs at all, the seats being square boxes with the high backs and wide arms. Both arms and backs were carved, the gray dust filling the hollows of the patterns until they could hardly be distinguished. Against one wall was a massive chest, also carved. And beyond it was a stair set against the wall, the outer edge unguarded by any rail, fashioned of the same stone as the walls, not quite as ted as that of the table, but a dull rust shade.
There were, in addition, two tall standards of rust-encrusted metal, the tops of which were level with Roane’s shoulder. Each of these held a lamp, a bowl with a support for a wick.
A drift of leaves and soil spread inward from the doorless entrance. Roane went to the stair and began to climb, pointing the beamer to where the steps disappeared into a dark opening above.
It was when she came out on the second level that she discovered that the tower, which had appeared three stories high from without, was really only two. If there had ever been a third floor above, it either had been wood and rotted away or had been removed. She flashed the beamer up there to see only stone and mighty beams.
This second room had furnishings also: two more of the lamp standards, plus a chest, and on a step dais a wide bed frame of the same wood which formed the massive chairs below. It was in the form of an oblong box, full of an evil-smelling layer of what might have been rotted fabric, perhaps the remains of bed linen left to molder away.
There were windows, narrow slits, without any protection against the wind and rain which now drove spears of damp across the floor. Another bolt of lightning made the whole room brilliant. And then followed such a burst of thunder that Roane dropped the beamer and cowered against the chest, her eyes squeezed shut, hands over her ears.
It seemed to her the thunder filled the tower, which shook from the blast. Even when it had gone she was too weak with sheer terror to move. She had never known such natural fury before and it made her a prisoner.
How long that panic lasted—it could well have been more than one hour, even two—she never knew, but finally she began to think again. Uncle Offlas—Sandar—they were in the woods. Could the camp stand up to such a storm as this? What if the lightning hit—or a tree crashed down?
She fumbled with her wrist com, tried to tap a code call. But she listened in vain for any reply. The storm must be cutting off reception. If there was any longer a receiver—
Although the wind still moaned around the tower and now and then she heard a crash as if some branch or even tree fell, the very worst of the storm seemed spent. Roane brushed off the top of the chest, testing it gingerly lest it splinter under her weight, and then sat there, bringing out an E-ration tube and making a meal from its contents.
So heartened, she used the beamer once more and made a careful examination of the room. That the tower had ever been a dwelling place she doubted, in spite of the bed. Perhaps it had been intended for just the use she was now putting it to, a shelter for storm-stayed hunters.
The evil smell of the bed, which was growing stronger in the dank air, had kept her away from that portion of the room. But finally she ventured to approach it. The bed itself was like a box without a lid, the cavity holding the rotten stuffs. At the four corners stood carven posts, matched as well as tools could sculpture to the bark of trees, vines twined about in high relief, now much masked by thick spider webs which held dust and mummified insects to form a nasty draping.
But there was a small open space between the tall head (also much carven and possessing several niches in which were set miniatures of the bigger lamps) and the wall of the tower. The beamer there showed Roane something odd, a series of holes hollowed into the stone, as if they were a ladder by which one might mount to the rafters overhead. Turning the beamer on to full, she traced those as high as she could and found that they did lead to one of the great crossbeams. This had the suggestion of a secret way, which it would have been in truth had the walls been covered with any form of tapestry or hanging. She was tempted to take that climb. But prudence argued that she had better be on her way again, ready to leave the tower as soon as the storm slackened a little more. And she knew she must go when the lightning, which she feared the most, ceased. Only she was too late. Hovering at the door, watching the rain, debating whether or not she dared chance it, Roane saw a flash of color, heard the high nicker of a duocorn. Some hunters storm-stayed like herself? She jerked back, looked at the floor where the pattern of her tracks had been only a little blurred by her restless coming and going.
She jerked open the seal of her coverall and brought out a scarf mask. Using that as best she could, whisk-fashion, she retreated to the stair and the only hiding place she could think of —behind the head of the bed above.
Though she had snapped off the beamer at once, there was enough grayish light for her to grope aloft. And she reached the upper story none too soon. She was no more than into the bedroom when she heard voices, the tramping of feet below. No more taking chances. She had already been far too reckless. Roane squeezed between the head of the bed and the cold of the wall, her hands covering her nose against the putrid scent of the bed stuffs.
She could not see now—the wood before her had no cracks. But she could hear. The newcomers did not speak Basic, of course. But her briefing had given her a working knowledge of the Rev-eny tongue. And now she began to pick up words. They were coming up the stairs, how many she could not tell, though she tried hard to distinguish voices and number of footsteps. Now and again there was a metallic clang as if something had struck the wall, followed by exclamations she could not translate but thought were curses.
They moved out into the chamber and she could hear their speech plainly now.
“—ride on in this? Are you empty between the ears?” “—not like it—” The second voice was hardly above a mumble. “Back of my hand to him then! I tell you, this is as safe a place to keep her as the underway at Keveldso. Dump her in the bed there, snap this leash on her, and we can wait out the rain below. Think you she can turn herself into a snake maybe to get out one of those windows? And with us sitting nice and easy down here she is not going to come tripping down the stairs and do a flit. Nor is she going to slip this here leash neither. That is made of good sword steel and the collar’s made to hold one of His Grace’s direhounds. Try it, go ahead, try it, man.” There came the sound of metal clinking. “We snap this right around her throat, so. Now she cannot get away withouten this key, and that goes right here on my belt latching. I weren’t a hound help for nothing, not that I weren’t glad to get away from those kennels neither!” “He will not like-”
“Would he like it more if we was squashed into a jelly by some tree coming down on us? You saw what happened to Larkin. Made you sick, didn’t it just? Maybe he has plans for this little bird, but those don’t include having her smashed up—not just yet. He said to see she kept on breathing, and he said that firm, as you heard him.”
“Yes—” But it seemed to Roane that agreement was made with reluctance. Once more she heard the clink of metal, then a laugh, and the first speaker continued:
“Nobody is going to break that. She’s as well tethered as if she was half walled in this place. Come away and let her lie. Better do nothing to rouse her up; she is enough trouble limp. She was a fighting cor-cat before Larkin gave her that little love tap.”
Tramp of feet, the sound of them on the stairway. Roane dared to breathe more deeply. The fetid odor of the bedding was worse, as the settling of the captive within its box had stirred up the nasty remains. How long would she have to hide? And could she stay where she was at all? That stench made her sick. She wished she had not eaten the E ration in spite of her hunger.
There was no sound in the room, though any slight one would be covered by the rising wind. The dying of the storm seemed to have been only a lull. It was getting worse again. From the words of the men she was sure that whoever they left here was unconscious. And she must have more air or she would be sick. She could slip along the wall, gain the open beyond the bed by one of the windows. It did not matter that rain was blowing in again; she must have the clean wind on her face.
But Roane moved with due caution, stopping every few inches to listen. And when she finally got from behind the headboard she froze to watch the head of the stair. There was a faint glow of light from below. They must have brought a lantern with them. But the room was dusky with thick shadows.
She took another step, heard the rattle of metal, tensed again, turning her head to look at the bed. A dark figure arose from the muck which filled it. And the smell aroused by that stirring brought a coughing, quickly muffled, as if the cougher was trying very hard to subdue those racking spasms.
Another flash of the revealing lightning burst. There was a girl in the bed, holding both hands over her mouth and nose, her shoulders shaking. And over those muffled hands her eyes were wide open, looking straight into Roane’s.
Roane moved without any conscious volition, at least afterward she could remember none. When she was thinking again she found herself face down in the stinking morass of the bed, a struggling body pinned under her. One of her hands was across the girl’s mouth, and Roane was using her own weight to try to subdue the other’s struggles.
There was a sharp pain in Roane’s gagging hand and she snatched it away instinctively. The girl had bitten her. But the shrieks she feared might follow did not come. Instead the other spoke in a low voice: “Why try to smother me, you dolt?”
Roane jerked away, nursing her bitten hand. She fumbled her beamer out of its belt loop, set it on low, and turned it on. And with her hand about it for a shield, she held it full upon the other. The pale face caught in that light was streaked with black smears; dark hair tumbled about it. Below the determined chin was a broad metal collar, and from that a chain stretched into the dark. The girl caught at the collar with both hands, worried at it, though she continued to stare straight at the light as if seeking Roane behind it.
“If you are not one with the offal below,” she said in a whisper, “then who are you?”
“I came here to shelter from the storm,” Roane said evasively, in a whisper even more constrained. “I heard them bringing you and I hid.”
“Where?” The girl asked that eagerly as if the answer held some desperate meaning for her.
Roane switched the light so it touched the headboard as a pointer. “Behind that. There is space enough.”
“But where you were does not tell me who you are,” the girl returned sharply. “I am the Princess Ludorical” And there was a note in her voice which canceled out the dirt streaks on her face, the clinging stench, the collar that confined her.
Roane looked at that collar, and in her a small spark of anger flared. By all the urging of her training she should leave here right now. She could use that niche ladder. By the strongest oaths known to her people she was pledged not to make any contacts. Revenian quarrels were no concern for off-worlders. The old laws On noninterference were strictly enforced. And yet—that collar— “I am not of Reveny,” she said, evading once again, striving to keep her answer as low as she could.
“Thus making this matter none of your affair?” the Princess snapped. “What are you then, a Vordainian spy? Or perhaps a smuggler from over-border? He who will not reveal his face nor speak his name cannot thereafter be troubled if we see him as a walking evil.” She repeated the last as if she quoted some saying. “Can you be bought? My offer will be very high—”
Roane wondered at the calm control of the Princess. Instead of sitting in this odorous box with a chain and collar making her fast, she might have been at ease in her own palace, save that she held her voice to a whisper. And now Roane saw that what she had first thought another smear of grime across the side of the girl’s chin was the darkening of a large bruise. Now and then
Ludorica did hesitate between one word and the next, as if she found speaking somewhat difficult.
“Who are those men below?” Roane had a question of her own. That they had so dared mishandle the heiress to Reveny’s throne meant they were not common criminals. And the more she learned of what lay behind this, the better she could plan what to do. Though she already knew she could not turn her back on Ludorica.
“Since I had to play the swooning female, that they use me with less alertness, I did not see too much of them. They wear foresters’ jerkins, I do not believe honestly. And how I came into their hands—” She shrugged and the chain tightened, the collar jerked, bringing a choking cough from her. “That I do not know. I went peacefully to sleep in my bed in Hitherhow. When I awoke I was lying in a bumping cart on a forest track with the rain pouring like to drown me. Doubtless that restored my wits. Then the storm struck us full, bringing down a tree. The cart took the brunt of that to the fore. I gather that he who drove it had no further interest in the matters of this world. They pulled me out and brought me here.
“I do not think you are a Vordainian,” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “If you are a smuggler, you will be given full pardon, with a good purse added to it. Get me loose of this”— she pulled at the collar again—”and guide me to the post at Yat-ton.” She still stared ahead as if she could see Roane clearly.
When the off-world girl did not answer, the Princess set her lips tightly together for an instant and then added:
“It would seem you also have no reason to wish to be discovered by those below. Let this then be a case of your enemy is my enemy, so a truce between us for this one battle.” Again she appeared to be quoting. “Your speech is strange, you are not of Reveny, and you have not the inflection of Vordain, nor the tongue clicks of Leichstan. Unless you are some mercenary from the north— No matter, get me free and you can rest easy on the gratitude of Reveny for your future, and that is no small thing!”
There was pride in her voice, and once more Roane could forget where they were and that she fronted a prisoner and not one seated on a throne.
After all, what could some aid matter? She had already interfered, by merely being here and letting the Princess know it. If she left now, always supposing that she could climb to freedom by the wall way, the Princess, in anger at being abandoned, might call her captors, or Roane, trapped above in some manner, could be discovered. But if she were able to get the Princess away, she could contrive to lose her in the woods. Let the Princess then believe that she was a smuggler, too deeply involved in some criminal activity to be more than wary.
The Princess seemed to think her a man, perhaps because she had glimpsed, by the lightning flash, Roane’s coverall and cropped hair.
*All right.” Roane gave grudging consent. “But that collar—” She leaned over to train the beamer first on the band around the Princess’s throat, and then along the chain to where it had been fastened about one of the bedposts. There was a lock, but she could see no way of forcing it.
Which left the bedpost or the chain itself. Her hand went to a tool on her belt. To use that again went against all she had been trained and taught. It was odd, one part of her mind observed as she drew that rod out of its loop: the longer she stayed here, the more it seemed right and proper that she do as Ludorica wanted—as if the desire of the Princess awoke a companion response from her.
Roane hunched over, trying not to breathe in the fumes of the debris, held the rod out in the beamer’s small gleam, thumbing the right setting. Then she touched the rod to the chain as far from the Princess as she could reach. There was a flash of light. Roane pushed the cutter back in her belt, gave the chain a quick jerk. It broke. She heard a small sound like a sigh from the Princess.
“You will have to wear the collar yet awhile,” Roane whispered. “I dare not cut that so close lo your neck.”
“That I am free in so much is something to give thanks for. But there are still the men below. If you have a dagger—how do you-”
Ludorica had balled the chain up in one hand so it might make no noise as she moved. She reached the edge of the bed box, swung out to the floor, as Roane was doing on the opposite side. The Princess’s white robe, or once-white robe, billowed around her. One of her braids of hair had come undone and the long locks, tufted with debris from the bed, hung about her shoulders. She clawed out the filthy rags with a small shudder of disgust as Roane joined her.
The off-world girl surveyed the Princess’s clothing doubtfully. The only way out was up that toe-and-finger-hold stair, and surely the Princess could not climb it wearing all those folds of cloth. Bringing her charge (for now Roane accepted the responsibility which followed her never-clearly-faced choice) around to the back of the bed, she flashed the beamer on the holes and explained their hope. But facing it now, she found the future more dubious.
“Lend me your daggerl” Ludorica whispered. “Oh”—she made a sound close to laughter—”I do not mean to fight my way free below. But I cannot climb in this.” She gave an impatient tug to the robe.
“I do not have a dagger—” Roane returned. “No dagger? But how then do you protect yourself?” the Princess asked wonderingly.
What Roane did produce was a belt knife, and the Princess seized upon it eagerly, slashing her full skirt front and back, cutting strips to bind the pieces to her legs in a grotesque copy of Roane’s coverall. Before she returned the knife to its owner she tested its point on the ball of her thumb.
“This is like to a forester’s skinning tool, yet different still,” she commented. “You have not spoken your name—nor shown me your face—”
She caught Roane off guard as her hand shot out, her fingers dosing around the wrist which supported the beamer. The impetus of that attack worked. Before Roane could dodge, the other had focused that light to fully illuminate its owner.
Roane broke the other’s grip, but too late. The Princess had had a good look at her, and being quick-witted as she was, she must have noted a lot. Roane was developing some awe of the Other. A girl who had been dragged from her bed, brought to this place, chained up like a hound, assaulted by Roane herself, yet who managed to keep a level head, ask for aid, argue logically on her own behalf— Such was no common person, on Clio or off. And Roane wondered if under the same circumstances she would have done as well.
“You are not a man!” The beamer turned floorward between them, having done its work. “Yet your manner of dress—that I have not seen before. And your hair—so short. You are indeed strange. Perhaps the legends are true after all. If—if—” For the first time there was a tremor in the Princess’s voice. “If you are one of the Guardians then answer me true—it is my right for I am of the Blood Royal, the next Queen Regnant of Reveny—if you are a Guardian, what has become of the Ice Crown?”
To Roane her plea was a mixture of command and petition, and it meant nothing. But a sound from below did. During their struggle on the bed and their escape from it, the storm had been dying; now they could hear the men moving below.
Roane caught at the Princess’s hand as she switched off the beamer. If the men were coming for their captive, there was little they could do in their own defense. Back in camp were stunners; Roane longed for one now. But those had not been unpacked, since they had no need to fear any forest animal with the distorts on. And those of the team were well aware they were not to be turned against any native here unless in the very last recourse. She had the knife—which the Princess still held—and the tool she had used to break the chain, nothing else.
Hand-linked, they stood very still to listen. The room had grown lighter. Perhaps they would not need the beamer. Roane drew the Princess to the head of the bed and behind it. The sooner they proved whether or not the holes led to freedom, the better. “Climb!” She shoved Ludorica ahead of her and hoped the Princess could do just that. As the other faced the wall, raised her hands to the niches, Roane crouched so she could watch the top of the stair. It was too bad that they could not bar that way—say, shift the chest across it. But one good look at that told her that such a feat was impossible.
It seemed that the Princess’s breathing, the faint scratching of her fingers and toes (for she was barefoot), were very loud. Roane strained to catch any answering sound from below.
The Princess was now well above the level of the headboard, straining to reach the shadowy crisscross of the upper beams. Roane started after her. It was, she decided, about equal to climbing a steep slope, save that she took each lift with the fear of at any moment being caught. Her breath rasped harshly in her own ears and she tried to control that fear, thinking not of what might happen but of what she must do in the next moment and the next.
“There is a place of flooring here,” the Princess called down in a whisper, “and, I think, a door. This must be an overreach—” What the other might mean, Roane had no idea, but she was heartened to know that her companion seemed to recognize something well known to her. Then Roane’s hand, reaching for the next niche, scraped a solid surface and she pulled herself out on a platform laid across the junction of two beams.
“There is a door to the roof. I have drawn its bolt,” the Princess told her. “But it may take us both to lift it. It must be a very long time since this was last opened.”
They crouched shoulder to shoulder on their knees, their four hands flat over their heads against a wooden surface. The dry dust they so raised sifted into Roane’s face and hair, but she closed her eyes to it and said— “Now!”
At first it seemed that that barrier had been firmly cemented by time. Then there was a giving which led to a greater exercise of strength. A crack of light grew wide, as they strained. And, as if some further fastening gave way, the door lifted with a rush. Fresh, rain-wet air blew in upon them.
Roane drew herself up and out, turning to lend a hand to the Princess, who was making an effort to follow. They were on the roof of the tower in the full open. Around them ran a waist-high parapet. And it was day, though the rain clouds hung heavy above. Roane dropped the door into place. That they had bettered their case much was doubtful. Unless they could stay here in biding until the men below left—which she thought was a very slim chance.
But the Princess was crawling on hands and knees around the parapet, stopping now and then to run her hands over its surface, almost as if she were in search of something she was sure she would eventually find. Even as Roane watched she paused and her finger tips outlined a space first on the parapet and then on the surface under it.
“We are favored by fortune,” she said. “There is indeed an overreach here.”
Roane went to look over the parapet. Some distance away the edge of the cliff backing the tower jutted out The girl tried to measure the distance between that and the tower. But it was too far to hope for a crossing—lacking a jump belt of her own civilization. Yet the Princess was now brushing at the roof, sweeping away the debris left by years of wind sowing.
“Ah-here!”
She had crawled some distance back from the parapet, and now she dug away at what seemed to Roane an ordinary crack between those slabs of stone which made up the roof. “Your knife —give it to me! This must be loosed.”
Again Roane believed that Ludorica knew what she was about. She passed over the blade, nor did she voice the protest she felt when the Princess rammed its point into the crack.
Small rolls of black were gouged out, the Princess smear- ing them away with her hand. Now Roane could see that the break was much wider than it had first looked, so that a few minutes’ work cleared a recess wide enough for Ludorica to get her fingers into. She motioned impatiently to Roane—
“Move back—over there. This may take some time; the packing is very old. But these were meant for escape means during the first Nimp invasions and I have never seen one yet which would not answer. Though I must find the lock stone.”
She moved her hand back and forth, manifestly working her fingers within the crack. Then, even as the trap door had given, there was a thin grating sound and the stone block moved, sliding as a drawer toward the parapet. A whole section of that, as wide as the moving slab, sank out and forward as if on invisible hinges.
“Help me—” the Princess panted.
Roane scrambled to the opposite side of the slab, pushed at it. It slid on and on, passing out over the now horizontally leveled section of parapet to form a narrow bridge which did not quite touch that rocky spur beyond but came close to closing the gap. The Princess sat back on her heels, panting with effort, her dirty face flushed. “We must be quick; these do not hold long—” Roane did not try to take that narrow path on her feet but crawled on hands and knees, and was careful to keep her eyes to the tongue of stone which she must traverse. There was a giddy sensation in her head. She had never been fond of heights, though she had fought that fear through the wandering years of her Me. This was the worst test she had yet faced.
She reached the end of the slab. There was still open space between its end and the ledge. She jumped, landing heavily on the stone. Then she stood ready, holding out her hands, to aid the Princess.
It was lucky that she did, for just as Roane took firm grip of the wrists the other girl held out to her, the stone tongue trembled, moved, backed toward the tower. She was just in time to jerk Ludorica to safety. The slab rolled into place, the parapet rose, and their bridge was gone. “
“Now—for Yatton—” The Princess was trying to order the remnants of her robe. She took a step and then gave a sharp exclamation holding up a bare foot to brush at its sole.
Roane thought of her own plans—to aid the Princess and then fade away into the woods, leaving the other to go where she chose. Now she discovered that she could not desert her companion. The rain was chill and the Princess was barefoot. How long would it be before those men in the tower found their captive gone? And then—how long before they ran her down again?
“Where is this Yatton of yours?” Roane demanded impatiently. The only alternative would be to take the Princess back to camp, and she could foresee only outright disaster in that. Either way she was in deeper trouble with every passing moment
Two leagues—nearer three.” The Princess raised her other foot to brush at it. “To speak the truth, I do not believe I can walk that without shoes. It would seem my feet are too tender for such wayfaring.”
“We cannot be too far now from Hitherhow.”
The Princess, having brushed her feet, was now busied in coiling the collar chain about her slender shoulders in a strange and ugly necklace. “I do not return to Hitherhow—not until I am sure—”
“Sure of what?”
“Of how I could be lifted from my bed there so easily with no guard’s hand raised to prevent it.” She eyed Roane bleakly, and then her eyes focused on the off-world girl far more search-ingly.
“You—you are surely not one of us. But a Guardian would not have needed to climb that wall stair, cross a safety bridge. A Guardian, by all the old tales, needs merely to desire a thing and it becomes so. I do not know what you are, and you will not tell me who—”
“I am Roane Hume.” Roane had not meant to say that. It was again an odd compulsion to tell the truth which moved in her before she was aware. “I am not of Reveny, but I think I have proved I mean you no harm.”
“Roane Hume,” the Princess repeated. “Your name, too, is strange. Rut this is a time of many things which are not as they once were.” She had continued to eye Roane closely, but now she smiled and held out her hand.
And when she did so Roane experienced a melting inside her. It was as if no one had ever really smiled at her before, asking her aid, not demanding it impatiently. And her own well-tanned hand caught those whiter, if dirty, fingers and squeezed them for an instant before she remembered again that she, least of all on this world, had any right to commit herself in friendship, or even in a fleeting companionship.
“You pay no homage. In this you are like a Guardian,” commented the other. “Is it that where you come from there is no difference between those of the Blood Royal and others?”
“Something of that sort,” admitted Roane cautiously.
“I do not believe that one of Reveny could live easily in such a strangely ordered place,” the Princess began and then laughed, put her fingers to her lips as if she would catch back those frank words. “I mean no disrespect to your customs, Roane Hume. It is only that, bred in one pattern, I find such a different one bewildering.”
“We have no time to discuss it.” Roane fought back her own desire to ask questions, to know more of Ludorica. “If you cannot return to Hitherhow, and it is impossible to reach Yatton, then where will you go?” She must be on her way, but still she could not abandon the Princess.
“You have come from somewhere.” The Princess seized upon the very solution Roane dreaded. She had no idea what Uncle Offlas might do if she turned up at the camp with this bedraggled fugitive. That the end would be drastic, she could guess. But there did seem to be nothing else left to do.
“I will take you there then.” Her voice sounded harsh and cold
in her own ears. She tried to think of some other way. There was one feeble hope. She might discover a hiding place in the woods, leave Ludorica there, get supplies, clothing, footwear for her, and eventually start her off to her own people. A project in which there were as many chances for failure as she had fingers and toes. But there was nothing else—
Now she turned to study what she could see of the tower and the woods. That they would be tracked she had no doubt. Therefore she must leave as devious a trail as possible. At the same time she must give the Princess as good a chance of escape as she could.
“We must head that way—” She gestured north, away from the camp. The detour would buy them time.
They climbed down from the ledge and the Princess must go slowly. Finally Roane took her supply bag, dumped its contents into the front of her coverall, slit it with the knife, and bound the halves about her companion’s feet. That done, they were able to march at a better pace.
The rain continued to fall steadily, if not with the force of the storm, and the Princess was shivering. Roane had a new worry. Immunized as she was through the arts of her own civilization, she was aware that those without such medical protection must be highly susceptible to exposure. What if Ludorica became ill, what if— Their future was far too full of such ifs. Roane should lead her directly to camp. Only the stern conditioning of Uncle Offias kept her intent on leaving a confused trail which might ward off disaster.
But, she realized at last, Ludorica could not stand much more. Though the Princess made no complaint, she lagged behind. Twice Roane returned, having missed her, to find her charge leaning against a tree, holding to the bole as if she were lost without support. And finally she must half carry her along.
It was then they came to one of the stony hills Roane recognized as a landmark. On its side was a raw new gash. And there was the smell of burnt, smoldering wood. Lightning must have struck and, in so striking, started a landslide.
Where that had passed now gaped a hole. The slide must have uncovered a cave, or at least a deep crevice. Here was shelter and Roane brought the Princess to it
They were not too far from the camp, Roane knew. She could leave the Princess here, go for the supplies she needed and retun. And she refused to think of all the difficulties which might face her during the performance of that plan. One step at a time was best.
Once they pushed into the raw opening in the cliff wall the rain no longer reached them. And though the opening itself was narrow, it widened out, stretching into the dark as if they had entered a place of considerable space. Lowering the Princess to the floor, Roane unlooped her beamer, turned it to full.
This was no natural cave. She was startled by the evidence the light made plain. It was the anteroom to a tunnel, one that she had enough knowledge of archaeology to know had not been formed by nature. In fact the walls were so smooth that she went to lay a hand on the nearest, finding that her finger tips slipped across it as they might on a sleek metal surface—though it still had the outward look of native stone.
Swiftly she triggered the control on her detect, heard the an- swering tick which told her she was right in her guess. Not only was this a nonnatural cut into the cliff side, but it bore a reading for ancient remains. By chance she had stumbled on the very site they had been prospecting for! Roane brought up her wrist, ready to try again to relay her news via com. But before she pressed the broadcast pin she remembered.
Bring Uncle Offlas and Sandar here—let them find the Princess— They would never allow any inhabitant of Clio to go free with the news of this discovery. If their cover was so broken, they would not only be under the ban of the Service; they could be planeted for all time wherever the authorities sent them. Uncle Offlas, Sandar, their careers blasted, blacklisted in the only field they knew— Their only alternative would be to silence the girl now sitting hunched on the stone, coughing and rubbing her hands across her flushed face. That silencing would not mean death, as it might have once. (Roane had heard the horror tales of the early days of space expansion.) But it might mean memory blocking, or even transportation off world into a limbo for Ludorica. Either way the innocent would suffer. All Roane could do was buy time and hope for some miracle to occur. Her head ached with her inability to see her way clear. She did not know what there was about the Princess that so enchained her sympathies. Perhaps she was being affected by a faint shadow of the original conditioning which had repatterned the settlers here when this unhappy test world had first been conceived.
As she stood there, caught in the net of the dilemma, a hand gripped her wrist, tightening above the com which she must use if she were to be true to her people and her training. “What is this place? It is no cave!”
She had believed the Princess too sunk in exhaustion to be fully aware of her surroundings. But Ludorica was now on her feet, staring into Roane’s face, not accusingly, but as if she could not wholly believe she saw what her eyes reported.
“You have done it!” The Princess swayed as if it were hard
37 to stand on her bruised feet. “You have brought us to Och’s Hide! The Crown—give me back the Crown!” ,
“Please, I do not know what you are talking about—what crown? And Och’s Hide—” Roane protested. Was it possible that a Forerunner find had already been made in Reveny, that they were too late? But the Service snoopers had picked up not the /slightest hint of any such happening, one which would have caused stir enough to leave a deep imprint on public memory.
For a long moment the Princess stared into the eyes of the off-world girl, as if by the very force of her will she would get the truth from Roane, past any ambiguous or false answer. But whether she might have decided that her companion was lying Roane was not to know, for there was a dull roar from the mouth of the opening.
Roane whirled, the Princess clutching at her for support. Recklessly she turned the beamer on the opening to the outer world. But that door was no longer there. Instead the harsh glare of the beam showed a curtain of rocks and earth, with bits of splintered bough and torn leaf caught in it.
Crying out, Roane pushed aside the Princess, ran to tear at the fall which had corked the entrance. She was able to scrape out some of the rain-slicked clay, pull at the branches in it. But underneath was a boulder she could not move. Though perhaps she could use the power of her tool to undercut it. “Are—are we trapped?”
Roane had gone to her knees, was holding the beamer steady on the boulder. In one way her own problem was solved. For both their lives now depended upon help from outside—from the camp. Only the men there had the equipment to handle this easily.
“Yes. I do not have power enough to undercut this. I shall have to call for help.” Should she warn the Princess of the results of that? Or continue to wait, always hoping that something might happen to make a hard choice easier?
“This could be Och’s Hide. If we must wait for help, need we
remain crouching here? For if it is the Hide and I can find the Crown—” She drew a deep breath. “For me, for Reveny, this could be the greatest day in a hundred years!”
“What crown do you seek?” Roane thought of the many forms that Forerunner discoveries had taken in the past. There had been a few times when such had consisted of objects which could come under the age-old designation of treasure—gems, weird art forms of precious metal, and the like. Though what were more important by far, and what they had come to seek here, were machines, records, and the clue to such a find had been enough to make them risk search on Clio.
“Our crown—the Ice Crown of Reveny.” The Princess answered almost absently. She no longer watched Roane but gazed into the shadowed passage. Then she did turn, and her face was stricken with a shadow of fear and her hands went to her mouth, covering her lips. When she spoke again it was in a very low and shaken voice.
“That is a great secret, Roane Hume, one that only two people know—my grandfather the King, and I. And I have sworn by that which is most sacred to our people not to speak of it. Now I am forsworn.”
“But I am not of Reveny, and I shall swear as you wish to say nothing.” Roane, made uncomfortable by the bleak look on the other’s face, was quick to answer.
‘If this is Och’s Hide, then the harm is small, covered and forgotten in a greater good. But I must knowl Come, use your light and let us look—”
If they stumbled on Forerunner remains and the Princess saw them— But what did that matter now? Roane had to do what she should have done long ago.
“Let me first call for help to free us.” She fingered the com, moving its button in the camp call. Waited—and saw the answering code flash on the dial, demanding— But she interrupted with her own terse signal, of where she was and what she might have stumbled upon. Though she made no mention of the Princess.
The answering flash was a jubilant series of dashes, promising all speed. She had forethought enough to add then a warning of people in the forest, thinking of the searchers which might be combing there.
She half expected some question from Ludorica, but the Princess said nothing, only turned the beamer on the passage. “Can you not tell me more of what you seek?” Roane asked as they started on.
“Knowing a part, there is no reason now for you not to hear it alL The Ice Crown is the crown of Reveny, given by the Guardians at the far beginning. Just as the Flame Crown is for the rulers of Leichstan, the Gold Circlet worn in Thrisk—but surely all this is known to you. My grandfather, King Niklas, came to the throne while he was yet a boy and his stepmother-under-second-rights, Queen Olava, was regent in his name—though she was no true kin, not even of the Blood Royal, having been taken in a marriage on the left hand by my great-grandfather when he was well into his dotage. She was of the line of Jarrfar. They once held this hill country and tried twice to make a kingdom of their own. However, having no crown power from the Guardians, they of course failed.
“But it was in their blood to rule and they did not lose that desire, even when their lands dwindled and they held only a stead keep and two villages. Olava had great beauty, and it became the plan of her people that they might achieve by an ambitious marriage what they had not been able to do by force of arms. So they gathered their resources and brought her to court, humbly presenting her as a handmaiden.
“The King had long been a widower. Oh, he had had his ladies during those years, but they were only passing fancies, and he chose shrewdly such as would be easily satisfied with small favors and not beg for greater. But though Olava seemed of a like sort in the beginning, she was not! And—well, it is said she had had occasion, before she came to court, to visit a certain wise woman who dabbled in things better left alone. But then such is always
40 whispered of a woman who rises rapidly in the favor of a highborn man. As time passed she became first a wife of the left hand and minor law, and then the Queen—though she was not allowed to touch the Crown lawfully, for all her pleading and intrigues. My great-grandfather might be besotted with her, but he was royal bom, and it is very true (though some today think this is also a legend) that the crowns choose who will wear them. And once they have so chosen, that king or queen cannot surrender them during his lifetime. It is a protection the Guardians set upon them. Though sometimes it has led to death for the proposed wearer, he being killed that another might present himself to the crown.
“So Olava had to bide her time until death reached for the King, hoping that before his son might confront the Crown for its choosing, her own candidate might take it. And he was her son—though the King would never let him drink from the kin-cup and thus acknowledge him as a true blood son before the Court, since he was not fully of the Blood.
“When the King died, they went to fetch the Ice Crown for the choosing. Though Olava tried to prevent my grandfather from standing before it, the choosing went as it has always done and he was proclaimed king. However, he was but a child and there were great lords enough favoring Olava to say that the old King had named her regent with them as a council to advise her. “A common enough tale, one which has been told before. But what had not happened before is that when my grandfather came of an age to put on the Crown and thus assume all power, the Crown, brought from safekeeping for the ceremony, disappeared immediately thereafter before it could be returned.
“For Olava dared what never had been dared before. She took the Crown, meaning thus to defeat my grandfather. And the power of the Crown blasted her as it always does those handling it unlawfully. But before she died, my grandfather finding her privately, she laughed and said that it had gone to Och’s Hide and that only chance might now find it Her clan, she said, would guard the way to it, and only when it accepted one of them would to appear again. ,
“Since then there has been this hidden darkness in Reveny. We dared not let any know of the loss. And since it has not yet been needed to hail a new king, the secret has been kept. My father died during a hunt in these very hills, but what he sought was no animal of the chase, but Och’s Hide. Two of my uncles also died young. The third disappeared. And now—King Niklas is very old, and it has fallen on me to take up the search. For if I cannot stand before Reveny with the Ice Crown when death claims him—then our line comes to an end. And Reveny itself will be overrun by Leichstan or Vordain, where true wearers of crowns rule. A land without a crown is a land without name or being. So the Guardians decreed in the far beginning.”
“Has it ever happened that a country did lose its crown?” asked Roane.
The Princess shivered, but with more than just the chill of the passage through which they walked now.
“Once, in Arothner. The crown—it was the Shell Crown, for Arothner was of the sea—was destroyed in a tidal wave. And what followed was horrible. The people—a madness fell upon them. They turned upon their own lords, upon each other, so that all the nations on their boundaries set up armies to keep them in their own torn land. And thereafter it has been accursed and no one goes there for fear the same mind-blasting force might strike them. What was once a great nation with many ships, and the trading city of Arth as its capital, is now only barren waste, and if any still live there, they are no longer men—
“At least the Ice Crown has not been destroyed, for then the same fate would have fallen on Reveny. And to that hope we hold. But it must be found!”
“It would seem that there are those who also know the secret and do not want this crown discovered—if your father and the others died and this has happened to you.” “Yes.” The Princess’s lips tightened. “I guess and think I guess rightly, though I have no proof, that it is Reddick’s doing. Though I never thought he would go so far as to have me taken out of Hitherhow when it was well known I was within those walls. There must be some desperate need to bring him so into open action. It may be this passage he would protect. Roane, does it seem warmer here to you?”
Ludorica slowed, put out her hand as if to touch the wall, but did not quite complete that gesture.
She was right! The chill which had closed about them in the fore part of the passage was gone. This was like walking under a gentle sun, just comfortingly warm. Roane touched the wall. There was warmth there, more so than in the air about them. And also something else, a faint vibration.
Excitement surged in her. A Forerunner installation still alive? It had happened on other worlds—Limbo, Arzor. If that were possible then this would be one of the big finds, and anything—even breaking cover on a closed planet—would be forgiven the discoverers! This could be the answer to her problem.
“What is it?” Ludorica, watching her closely, must have read the elation on her face.
“I do not know—not yet—” Roane returned quickly and then asked:
“Who is Reddick, and why would he want to hold the Crown?” “Though the King would not claim Olava’s son, he ennobled the boy and gave him command of Hitherhow in his lifetime, a right which must be renewed in each generation. Reddick is his grandson. But so might he have the secret of Och’s Hide. If I can only find the Crown, Duke Reddick has no chance. Then he cannot lay hand to it before the King’s death, or as long as I live-”
“As long as you live,” Roane echoed her meaningfully.
“You mean—but of course! That is why—he had a double purpose.” The Princess nodded. “Stop me from searching, or else make sure if I did chance upon it— Which also means—” Her face now mirrored not only determination and cold anger but also fear.
“Roane, I have not seen King Niklas for five days. It was he who told me I must make haste to find the Crown, gave into rny hands all he had denied me for years, the clues he had tried to gift and follow, all that my father and uncles had when they went seeking. Perhaps he is more ill than he would have me know, or else has since grown worse. And Reddick knows this. If the King were himself, the Duke would never have dared to have me stolen from Hitherhow.” “Do you not have someone to depend on?” “None sharing the Crown secret. But if I can now find that and reach Yatton or the border, I can cross over into Leichstan with the Crown and gain a breathing space in which to rally the loyal lords. My mother was a princess of Leichstan, though she died at my birthing and he who sits the throne there is but a distant cousin. Yet I can claim blood kin, and all must aid one who wears a crownl”
She flicked the beamer ahead. “Come! If it lies here—do you not See? I must have it, and soon!” Now she began to run.
But the beam had picked up something else, a change in the wall to their right. Roane pressed to that side and then halted at a slab of transparent material. Inside—an installation! It could be nothing else. Rows of machines, with here and there a flashing point of colored light. She pressed her face to the glass, trying to see more of what lay there. But the light was too intermittent—she had only glimpses as one flash was echoed by another. Green, blue, red, orange, a multitude of colors and combinations. Yet those did not reflect into the passage where she stood. “Come on!” The Princess was ahead, paying no attention to what held Roane fascinated. “Why do you stop?” “The lights—this must be an installation. But what—” Ludorica came back reluctantly. “What lights?” she demanded, flashing the beamer directly onto the panel, thus revealing two machines of pillar shape inside, spinning off flecks of color. “What lights?” The Princess pulled at Roane’s arm. “Why do you stand staring at bare wall and talking of lights? Are you mind-twisted?” She dropped her hold, drew back a little. “What do you see there, then?” Roane asked. “Wall—just as there, and there, and there—” With a stabbing finger the Princess pointed ahead, to the side, behind them. “Nothing but wall.”
Roane was shaken. But she did see a strange installation behind a transparent panell She could not be mistaken or imagine that! There could be only one reason why the Princess did not see it too—conditioning!
And such conditioning could mean something else. Roane’s thoughts took a leap into dark surmise. Perhaps what they had uncovered was not Forerunner remains, but rather something left by the Psychocrats who had decreed Clio’s fate. While such a find might not have as much impact as the discovery of a genuine Forerunner installation, it could be important in another way. The Service knew little of the techniques of conditioning on the various closed worlds. To discover part of such an experiment might excite those in fields beyond that which Uncle OfBas represented. So she might have a bargaining point after all, some claim for consideration for the Princess.
“It is just bare wall!” Ludorica proclaimed again, still backing away from Roane, now eyeing the off-worlder as if she expected some dangerous outburst.
“A trick of the light.” Roane thought that a feeble answer, but she knew that if the Princess was conditioned she would resist even the thought of what might lie there.
“Trick of the light?” repeated the Princess doubtfully. “Oh, perhaps Olava set her own safeguards against seekers. I have heard of such tricks but they only work with some people.” She now regarded Roane pityingly and put out her hand. “Let me guide you past. I cannot be so bemused, you know. None of the Blood Royal can be caught in a fore-set mind-maze.”
Ironic, Roane thought with wry amusement, a case of the blind leading the sighted. But if the Princess was, willing to accept that explanation, she should be thankful. She did not look again at the panel.
Shortly thereafter the nature of the passage changed. The wider, smoothed walls gave way abruptly to a narrower way With rough rock on either side—as if those who had cut this path had used a natural break in the cliff for their purposes and this was the original cave unmarked by their improvements.
As the beamer caught the narrowing of those rough walls the Princess slackened pace, looked puzzled.
“Why should it change so?” she asked, more as if she questioned in her own mind than expected an answer from her companion.
“Do you still think this is Och’s Hide?”
“What else could it be? There would be no other reason to cut a passage through rock. Yet—”
‘ “Wait!” Roane lifted her free hand, held it before that crevice. There is air—a current of it. Maybe there is another way out ahead.”
They found the narrow passage a rough one. Twice walls closed to, so that they had to scrape through, and Roane had no idea how far they might be from the entrance. What if those from camp cleared the blockage there and did not find her? But at least they would have her report and so go exploring. Of course, the men might run into difficulties raised by some hunting the Princess and thus be delayed.
As they emerged into a wider space Roane spoke:
“I do not know about you, but I am hungry.”
“Do not speak of food!” retorted Ludorica. “When one has nothing, it is better not to dwell on that lack. Let us get out of here—”
“But I have provisions of a sort,” Roane countered. There was no use in trying to conceal such things as tubes of E ration when so much else in the way of cover had been broken, and she was painfully hungry.
“Where? You carry no provision bag—” The Princess once more turned the beamer on Roane, who had already unsealed her coverall and brought out one of the tubes. There were only two left, and with their rescue still uncertain, it was better that they now divide one between them.
The Princess stared at the tube. “You carry food so? But there is not enough in that to make even a quarter of a meal if you hunger as I do.”
“This is a special kind of food, made for travelers,” Roane explained. “A small portion, say half of this tube, is equal to a full meal. It does not taste as the real food you know, that is true. But it is as good for the body, and it will give us strength. If you hesitate, I shall eat first.” She measured off half the length of the tube, squeezed the contents bit by bit into her mouth without touching the edge to her lips.
Her companion watched her with deep interest. And when Roane had done and passed her the tube, Ludorica put it to her mouth in turn. She made a slight face as she tasted the paste, swallowed.
“It has little flavor, as you warned. Truly I do not think I would relish many meals taken so. But when one hungers there need be little choice of dish; any food will do.” She finished the tube quickly and gave it, empty, back to Roane.
From long training the off-worlder wadded it into a ball, which she hid under a loose stone. The Princess had set the beamer upright as one might a candle, and its light, reflected from the roof over their heads, showed them that the space in which they now stood was a true cave.
But it showed something else, too. Roane gave a start as she caught sight of it, snatching up the beamer to turn it full upon what lay there. That had been a man once. But she had seen ancient burials enough not to be squeamish. These bones lay half buried under a fall of rock which concealed the skeleton above the waist.
She heard an exclamation from the Princess as the light caught a spark of fire to one side of the crushed bones. Roane stooped to pick up a band of metal in which were set small gem stones. It was a fine piece of work, the stones making small flowers among raised leaves of the metal.
A moment later the circlet was snatched from her hand, the Princess turning it about in her own fingers.
The arm ring of Olava! This is Och’s Hide! And the Crown-the Crownl” She turned around, searching the walls of the cave as Roane swept the beamer. But the side wall opening which had once existed where the skeleton lay crushed was filled in past their exploration. There was now no opening at all that Roane could see.
“If it was ever here,” Roane pointed out, “then it must now be buried under that fallen rock.” Privately she thought the bracelet a very small clue.
“But it can be dug free!” Ludorica crowded as close to the mound as she could and still avoid the skeleton. “You say those you know will come to free us from the outer cave. They surely can aid here to find the Crown! Let me but rest my hands on it and Reveny has naught to fear, for then as long as I live no one else can claim it—”
“As long as you live. What then, if, once you have found the Crown, your enemies find you? How long will you continue to live?”
The Princess looked back at Roane, her eyes wide with what might be shock.
“But no common man can raise his hand against the wearer of the Crown; such are under the protection of the Guardians. Any such death must come before the Crown has rested on the cho-sen’s head.”
“But the Crown now would belong to your grandfather, would ft not? So long as he remains alive you will be in danger.”
True. But if what I fear is also true, and that is in a manner proved by the fact that Reddick moved against me so openly, theft the King is very near to death. The Crown will know that; it has many strange powers. All the crowns do. They are the hearts of the countries possessing them and their lives are those of the nations—as was proved at Arothner. No, when your people come they must dig for the Crown. It still exists and I must find it!”
And that influence she was able to exert at times, which Roane recognized but somehow could not resist, brought Roane to half agreement now. Yet enough of her fought that compulsion so that she was able to persuade the Princess to return to the other end of tile passage to meet their rescuers.
That Uncle Offlas would come she had no doubt, but how long he would take was another matter. Especially if he had to avoid searchers in the woods. And she said as much in warning to the Princess.
“But you can send a message—though why tapping on that ugly arm circlet carries a message—” Momentarily she was diverted. “I do not know who you truly are. But that you are not of Reveny, nor of any kingdom I know, I will swear to. Had you Bot brought me out of that tower, I would not—” Again she paused. “But I stand here and not in the hands of Reddick’s men, so I have a measure of trust in you. Send another message to those you say will come to unseal us; tell them to use my name to the garrison at Yatton. There is there Colonel Nelis Imfry. He was of the palace wards before he took service with the March Guards. Summoned in my name, he will come. You may tell your people, if those clicks really talk, to say to him—”
“No.” Roane shook her head. “They will not go to Yatton nor any other place for your guard, no matter what message I send.”
Perhaps she was wrong in being so definite about that. It might arouse Ludorica’s suspicions even further. But she must make plain before the camp party arrived that they would not give the Princess any help in solving her complicated problems of dynastic inheritance.
“My people are sworn”—she tried to put the situation into words the Princess would understand—”by oaths, very tightly binding, to have naught to do with the affairs of others. I have already broken this oath by what I have done since we met. For this I shall have to pay. But you will find deaf ears if you ask for any aid from those who come.”
They were passing the wall panel which the Princess could not see but which so fascinated Roane. The latter kept her eyes resolutely turned from temptation. And at that moment the com on her wrist flashed. She did not need the beamer light to read the sparked code.
Sandarl But no mention of Uncle Offlas. Only a sharp demand that she turn the call beam higher so that he would have a guide. “They are here now!” She began to run along the smooth flooring, not caring whether the Princess followed or not.
Back in the entrance cave she again faced that plug of stone and clay, cautiously, since she did not know the force of the tool they would use to clear it. And she threw out an arm to hold the Princess to an equally safe distance.
The latter had given no vocal protest when Roane had denied her help. But she was smiling with anticipation. There was such an aura of confidence about her that Roane was uneasy. Perhaps she should have given her the whole truth in warning—not only that Ludorica could expect no aid, but that those who came might take her into another captivity, that her quest for the Crown might well come to an end here and now. Roane half opened her lips, was about to say what she must, when there was a shifting of earth about the plug. The stone which was its anchor disappeared.
Roane caught her breath. They were using that tool! Then indeed they were ready for desperate measures; such were unboxed only at times of extreme need.
She glanced at the Princess. What effect had that sudden disappearance of a very large and heavy rock had on her companion?
But she could detect no sign of surprise, only a deepening of that confidence which was going to be so rudely shattered soon.
Fresh air bearing the damp of the rain blew in. Then Sandar, stooping a little, came through. He was alone, and in his hand—
Roane gasped but she had no time to move, to warn. He had already pressed the button of the stunner. Beside her the Princess wilted to the rock floor. For the first time in her life Roane faced her cousin with open anger.
“Why did you do that? You did not even know what—”
His mouth had the same twist as Uncle OfHas’s could wear upon occasion. But this time it did not daunt her as it might have in days only shortly past.
“You know the rules. I saw a stranger—” he said harshly. “Now—” He looked down at the detect he carried, as if Ludorica were no more than the rock he had blasted out of existence. Then his face lost a little of its grim cast. “But you are right! There is a find here—”
Roane was on her knees by the Princess, lifting her limp body to lie against her shoulder. Ludorica would sleep it off, of course, but she must not remain here. The dampness of that inflow of air was already reaching her. Roane did not know how disease might develop on Clio, but she was certain that the inhabitants could not endure long exposure without suffering for it.
“Leave her—she’ll keep!” Sandar came to her side. “What’s inside?”
“An installation. You can see it through a plate in the wall down there.” She made no move to guide him.
Nor did he wait for her, but switched on his own beamer and trotted away in the direction she pointed, while she was left With the problem of the unconscious Princess. Uncle Offlas and Sandar would be solidly united against any plan of freeing Ludorica; Roane had known that. But she determined that the Prin- cess would have shelter and care even if she herself had to face such pressure of their wills as had always before frightened her.
She was still holding the girl against her for warmth, interposing her body between that of the Princess and the damp inflow of air, when Sandar returned.
“I don’t know what it is. It may be Forerunner. But at least it is not of present-day Clio,” he reported.
“Maybe something of the Psychocrats, to do with the settlers’ conditioning.”
“How do you—” he began and then shrugged. “Who knows before we take a closer look at what is in there? Now—there are men searching the woods. I had Eight-fingered Dargon’s own luck trying to dodge them. Father has had to extend the distorts to cover this area. Who are they after—her? If so, we give her a brain wash and dump her where they can pick her up. Then our troubles are over.”
“No.”
“No, what?” He stared at her, Roane thought (with wild laughter stirring far within her), as if she had suddenly grown horns or turned blue before his eyes.
“No brain wash, no dumping. This is the Princess Ludorica.” “I don’t care if she’s the Star Maiden of Baganork! You know the rules as well as I do. You’ve broken them already by being with her at all. How much else have you spilled?” He was twirling the setting on his stunner. Boane went cold with more than the wind.
She drew the small cutting tool from her belt. “You try brainwashing, Sandar, and I’ll burn that stunner out of your hand. Drop it—now—or see how you like a seared finger! I mean exactly what I say!”
He eyed her with even greater astonishment. But he must have read the determination in her eyes. There had not been many times in the past when Roane had been faced by some major demand upon her will and courage, but twice that had occurred in Sandar’s company and he must remember now her reaction.
“You know what you are doing?” His voice was very cold. He still held the stunner, but she noted, with a small sense of triumph, that his finger was now carefully away from the firing button.
“I know. Toss that over to me!” Her tool did not waver. She might have used close to its full charge when she cut the Princess’s chain, but there was enough left to give Sandar a burn and at that moment she would not hesitate to do just that. The captivity, her own feeling of inferiority and helplessness, to which the domination of the Keils, father and son, had sentenced her for so long was like the Princess’s metal collar and chain.
That restless desire for freedom which had been born at Cram-brief was coming to a flowering here on Clio. Certainly she might know far less than her uncle and Sandar, be now under their orders, but she was also a person in her own right, not a robot they had programed.
Not that all this flowed coherently through her mind now. But she was determined to stand up to Sandar. His callous solution to the problem of Ludorica had acted on Roane like the cut of a whip—not to lash her into a slave line, but rather to awaken her resistance.
Sandar did not try to reason with her. Not that he ever had. He had given orders, she had meekly obeyed—until he and his father had had her wrapped in a cocoon of acceptance. But larvae develop in cocoons and in time they break free.
He tossed away his stunner. Roane steadied the Princess against her, held the cutter steady until she could reach out and close her fingers about that weapon.
“Are there any searchers near here now?”
“As long as the distorts are on they will keep their distance without knowing why—you ought to know that! But that will hold only for a short time. We shall have to move quickly.”
“Good enough.” Roane tucked the cutter back in the belt loop, kept the stunner in her hand. “Now we’ll go. You carry her.”
“It won’t do any good,” he said. “You know that. Father has discretionary powers. He’ll make the final decision and there will
54 be no repeal. Also, you’re finished with our team. I trust you understand that!”
Roane would consider that future when she had time. The here and now were more important—getting the Princess to shelter and seeing she stayed out of the hands of her enemies. “You’ll carry her,” she repeated.
Carry her he did. Enough of Roane’s training remained, even as she enjoyed the heady sensation of ordering Sandar around, to prompt her to use the last of the tool’s powers to bring down another fall of earth as a mask for the hole. She hoped that would keep its secret. For what lay within and the fact that she had discovered it were all she had left to bargain with.
Though the distorts were on, Sandar took no chances, setting a fast pace, even though he had the inert weight of the Princess draped over his shoulder. Roane walked behind, intent on concealing their back trail.
So they reached camp. At least Uncle Offlas was not there, and Roane ordered Sandar to put the Princess in her own private cubby. She set to work then, stripping off the soaked, mud-caked rags Ludorica wore, tugging loose the strips of cloth making her improvised leggings. And she had the Princess rolled into a heated sleeping bag when the chief of their party did tramp in.
He came straight to the cubby and looked at the Princess with no readable expression on his set face. “Who is she?”
“The Princess Ludorica, heir to the throne of Reveny.” “And the story?”
He had a recorder ready, Roane noted bleakly. She was going to be condemned out of her own mouth. But there was nothing else she could have done. To her, Sandar’s suggestion was unthinkable.
In the clear, terse manner of making a report which had been drilled into her, Roane began her story—the storm, her refuge in the tower—their flight, the cave—what she had found there—the Princess’s tale of the Ice Crown, and all the rest.
Uncle Offlas listened without comment, though Sandar stirred now and then as if he wished to voice some derisive interruption. Yet he did not. And having concluded, Roane waited for the storm to break, knowing that verbal lightning could be as disastrous as the real.
“As for this girl,” he said first, “we can attend to her when it is needful. But this find of yours—you saw it, Sandar?”
“Yes. What I could make out through the panel. It may not be Forerunner, but Psychocrat. It could have something to do with the experiment on Clio.”
“Either way, it is apparently a find of importance. We can report that, along with this.” He looked at the Princess as if she were not a human being at all, but some object which must be disposed of. “However, we have a matter of two days before the com can relay properly to the right orbit pickup, and by that time we should have much more information.”
“What about the Princess?” his son demanded. “They are going to keep hunting her, and we can’t run the distorts on high for long. If we do as I wanted and brainwash her—then leave her where they can find her—”
Roane knew better than to voice another “No” right now. She had no weapon to back it up. That confidence which had supported her began to ebb. She might be able, for some moments of wrath, to stand up to Sandar. She had no defense against Uncle Offlas.
“For the moment they are hunting to the north. And I would like to know more about this crown she believes hidden in there. Once her memory is erased we can learn nothing. We haven’t the equipment for being selective in such matters. We can wait— for a while. Now, I want to look at that installation.
“As for you”—he spoke to Roane—”you must realize what you have done. You are not a blind fool, just a fool. And I would suggest you think upon that folly. Consider the future which you have just thrown away.”
This was much milder than the blast Roane had expected.
Though a moment later, after the men had left the camp shelter, she realized that considering a bleak future was a punishment in itself. The least she could hope for was to be planet-bound on some world the Service selected, forbidden ever again to use any skill she had learned. They might even demand that she be brain- censored also. She shivered and put her face in her hands, though she could not shut the dire pictures out of her mind.
Why had she done all this? Looking back now, she was certain she could have remained hidden in the tower, perhaps even made that climb into safe hiding above, without having dealings with the Princess. Such evasion had been a part of Roane’s training from the start. What flaw in herself had forced her out of the ways of prudence?
Again, she could have left the Princess once they were free of the tower. She might have done this—or that— But in every choice, she had made the one to condemn herself to Uncle Offlas’s justice and she knew what she could expect from that.
She could not use her find as any bargaining point. Uncle Offlas would claim it had been made by chance alone. The only new information she had was that the Princess was conditioned not to see the panel—and any more Ludorica could supply about the Ice Crown.
Since they did not have the techniques here to drag information out of Ludorica against her will, perhaps she could be forewarned to bargain— But for that she must be conscious, and how long-
“What did they say about me?”
Roane was startled. The Princess could not be conscious—she had gone down at Sandar’s stunner blast. But her eyes were open and watching Roane.
The off-world girl had no idea how this miracle had come about —unless a difference in planetary inheritance was responsible. She had never known one to recover so quickly from a stun beam. But she must take advantage of it before the others returned, give the Princess warning.
“Listen!” Though there was no one in the shelter and she made sure the recorder was safely off, Roane leaned very close before she spoke. “They want to take away your memory, so you cannot remember us. And then—then they may give you to those hunting you.”
She had expected some expression of disbelief from the Princess. But though the other’s eyes narrowed a little, she showed no surprise. Instead she asked:
“And you believe that they can do this thing—take away my memory?”
“I have seen it done to others.”
“I believe you believe it, yes. But whether it can be done to one who has the right to a crown—” Ludorica frowned. “If I could get the Crown—I must get the Crown!”
But Roane had a question of her own. “How long have you been awake? It is important for me to know.”
“A memory which is useful, eh? Very well, this I remember clearly—a young man wearing clothes such as yours. Why is it with you, Roane, that men and women dress alike? Even our peasant girls delight in their bright skirts and would think your wear very ugly and drab. Yes, a young man. Then all is blackness as in a sleep without dreams. Until I lay here—wherever here may be—and you were taking from me those disgraceful rags to make me clean and warm. But I thought it well to learn what I could before those others knew I was awake.
“So they wish to take away my memory and give me to those who would like me best in the far deeper sleep of death. Why would they do this to a stranger who has worked them no harm?”
“They fear your knowing of their presence here.”
“And what act of thievery, or worse, do they plan that they fear any knowledge of their presence may spoil?” There was a new sharpness in the Princess’s voice. “It is the Crown! You seek the Crown! But it is the truth that I told you—for one not of the Blood to take it means a wasting death. Which one of our neighbors sent you to destroy Reveny so? And are you so careless or dedicated that you will kill yourselves to achieve your ends?” It was no use. Roane could not explain without telling all. But with a conditioned mind—would Ludorica accept her explanation any quicker than she would believe in the installation she had not been able to see?
“We came here to search for a treasure, but I will swear to you by any power you wish to name that that was not your crown! Until you told me of it, I did not know of its existence. Nor would it mean anything to me. What we seek is not of your time. Oh, I do not know if I can make you understand. Before Reveny was a nation, before your people came—at a time so distant we have never been able to reckon it—there were others. They may not even have been like us in form and they were gone before our form of life came to be.
“But in some places they left things behind them, hidden things. And from these our wise men try to learn something of them. They had greater knowledge than we possess. They were able to do things which we can hardly believe are possible. Yet we know that they did them.
“And every such find we can discover adds to our small store of knowledge, makes it more likely that some day we can learn more of their secrets. My uncle and my cousin, the young man you saw, are both trained to hunt down such treasures. And I have been schooled to help them, since I am of their family and supposed so to keep their secrets.” She was trying hard to set this within a framework of planetary custom. “By revealing myself to you I have broken a very strict law, and I shall have to pay for that. But you are not at fault—”
“So you believe this is wrong, the taking of my memory?”
“Yes. And yet—”
“Yet you also have a way of Me to uphold, even as we of the Blood,” the Princess interrupted. “Yes, that I can understand. But I tell you, Roane, I do not propose to let them take my memory and give me to Reddick. Nor do I mean to lose the Crown when my hand may be only inches from it. I am treating you as one treats an honorable enemy. If it be war between us, let us say so, and from this moment the rules of war will hold.”
“I do not want war. But my uncle, my cousin—”
“Yes. And what will happen to you, Roane? Will they also take away your memory as a punishment for aiding me?”
“They might, yes. Or they can send me to a place where I shall have to abide for the rest of my days.”
“A prison? And you will let them do this to you?”
“You do not understand. They have powers you cannot conceive of. And there are others behind them more powerful still. They will do with me in the end just as they choose.”
The Princess sat up. “I do not understand you. You are strong of body, quick of mind. This you have proved. Yet you will let them take you—you sit here and wait for them to take you!”
“You do not understand!” Roane thought of the devices they could use to hunt her down. Uncle Offlas might even call in Service aid. The Princess might be conditioned in one way, but, Roane saw now, she herself was conditioned in another, unable to break free without aid—
“Stay if you will,” Ludorica said. “But I do not remain here to have them play with my mind.”
“Where will you go?”
“To Yatton, if I can escape Reddick’s net. He is a stubborn man and will not lightly let me out of his hands. And you—will you remain here waiting for prison?” There was a faint scorn in that.
But Ludorica could not know. To run was hopeless, ending in defeat. If Roane could persuade the Princess to bargain with Uncle Offlas— Only the time for bargaining might already be passed. Roane shook her head. Slowly she arose.
“If I help you to Yatton—” At least she might protect her from Reddick’s men. If she could keep the Princess safe, there might be a little hope for a later bargain.
“If you help me to Yatton, I think there will be no more talk of memory stealing, nor prison, for either of us!”
“Food first.” Roane went to the stores, triggered the heat caps on those containers she thought held the most sustaining nourishment, brought back her selection.
There was clothing, too. Ludorica’s collection of rags was useless. Roane could give her an extra coverall—it would, with its strange make and fabric, be one more thing to explain to any native, but there was no help for that. She had compromised her standing with the Service past repair. But there was no reason why the Princess should be surrendered to an alien “justice” which to her would be the rankest injustice.
As she hunted for clothing and boots she rubbed her forehead with her scratched fingers—not because of any ache there but because she could not wholly understand how she had been drawn into this tangle. Roane had wanted nothing but shelter from a frightening storm, and all this had come from that perfectly natural desire. Somehow it was as if all her training, all she had been drilled in as “right” or “wrong,” had been overturned once she met the Princess.
With a sigh, she spread out the coverall, ready for Ludorica, who was sampling cautiously the contents of a container.
“But this is good!” commended the Princess. “It is much better than what you carried with you in the cave. How is it that you have it hot? For you did not take it from any stove— I saw you!”
“It is another of our ways,” Roane told her wearily. She was very tired, wanting nothing more than to lie down in the warm and comfortable bed bag, to sleep. But instead she mouthed two sustain tablets, which would ease her fatigue. Then she ate her share of the meal.
The Princess finished first and was now fingering the coverall. She and Roane were much of a size and Roane did not think it would be an ill fit. She showed her how to work the inseal by merely running a finger tip along it, and the Princess gave an exclamation of surprise and pleasure.
“But what ease you have in dressing! Though there is a beauty to buckles and lacing. And”—she surveyed her slender figure, muffled now in the alien dress—”I do not think I would like to wear this for long. Wait until we reach Yatton, Roane. Then I shall exchange gifts with you—and I think”—she eyed the other critically—”you will look well in our dress. Though it is a pity about your hair. Perhaps it will grow in time. Ah, I know! You can wear a Charn bonnet, that will be proper. Wine yellow for your dress, and a bonnet with tyra ribbon for cording—”
Roane laughed. She felt as if she had slipped from the real world into fantasy. How could she, Roane Hume, be sitting in a Service camp listening to the Princess of Reveny describe a dress of high Clio fashion meant for her to wear? Perhaps it was best to treat this venture as a dream, to drift along with the tide of events rather than trying to fight them. But for a wistful minute or two she wished it could be true, that once she could see herself as the Princess visualized her.
“Best hold a dress in your hands before you don it,” she commented. “I know we are a long way from Yatton—if we ever make it”
Roane took what precautions she could against being traced. She unbuckled her work belt and laid it straight on the floor to study its cargo of tools. The beamer—yes, with fresh charges. Not the detect, nor her wrist com either; they were linked to devices in the camp. The cutter—no. Though she had betrayed the Service in some ways, she would draw the line with that. It could be lost—and, found by another, arouse too much speculation. A small medic kit and—
“Have you aught here to free me from this?” Roane looked up at the clink of metal. The Princess was pulling at the collar, its chain dangling down over her shoulder. “Come closer to the light and let me see.”
The Princess stooped so that Roane could inspect the small lock hole, which had not been visible in the tower. The off-world girl brought a larger kit. She tried two of the tools it held, inserting their tips into the hole, prying with them. Then, with a click, the collar sprang open.
“Ah.” Ludorica jerked it off to rub her throat where red marks showed. Roane reached for the medic kit, squeezed out a finger-load of soothing paste, and applied it carefully.
“Ahh—” The Princess sighed again. “That takes away the soreness. Another of your many marvels. With your food in me, your clothing on my back, and now your paste of herbs, I feel as if I could front Reddick and be victor. Though I know well that is a belief I should not put to the proof.”
Roane continued to choose supplies. Not a flamer, of course—but a stunner was another matter. In the first place, its inner workings would be instantly destroyed if handled by anyone who did not know its use. Service personnel had to be furnished with some form of protective weapon for other worlds, and this refinement was the ultimate result of much research. It could not kill, though on the highest voltage it could cause brain damage—as Sandar had proposed to use it.
She had refurnished her belt—beamer, stunner, the medic kit, a bag of rations, but nothing which would link her to the camp or the camp to her. When she was done and ready to go, she saw that the Princess had gathered up the collar and chain, winding the latter around the former for easier carrying. “Why take that?”
“Why? Because it was put on me. There are those I shall show it to when I tell my tale, and they will be the hotter against Reddick. Women are not treated so in Reveny. Even more will it be resented that a Princess of the Blood was chained like an animal. I do not know how deep or wide Reddick has made his move against the throne, but that he has done this to me is a warning. There may be those who follow him without knowing what manner of lord he is. And to those such a symbol as this”—she shook the collar and the links clashed against one another—”will lead to second thoughts. Let me but reach Nelis—”
Roane took a last look at the camp. It was no different from the ones she had known on half a dozen worlds. Yet now she had the feeling that once she walked away she was turning her back on everything which had always been. So, as she glanced from this to that, all had a slightly unfamiliar cast, as if they were already strange and she was one apart.
At least yesterday’s rain had stopped, though there were still effects of the storm to be seen as they moved from the bubble half buried in the muddy earth. Out in the open Roane was wary, not only of Reddick’s men, but of Uncle Offlas and Sandar. She quickened pace. And the Princess, her feet now protected by boots, matched her stride for stride.
That Yatton lay to the north was all Ludorica could tell Roane. The Princess was not used to traveling except by well-defined roads, and all that lay here were foresters’ tracks. Nor had she any idea how far away from their goal they might now be.
“Sending Nelis there three months ago was perhaps another move of Reddick’s,” she commented. “All I know is that he is loyal only to the true line. Ahh—though these boots are better to tramp in than bare feet, I wish for a duocorn. My good, fleet Zar-
64 pher—or even Batlas, though I have named her slug-crawler in the past!”
She paused, one palm against a tree trunk for support. Her face was drawn and there were dark shadows, almost matching her bruises, beneath her eyes. It had been well into afternoon when they had left the camp, though the cloudy sky made it dusk in the thicker parts of the woods. Although they had borne north as steadily as they could, there had been many detours forced by the rough country, so they could not have covered too much distance. The only hopeful note was that they had seen no searchers.
Roane, to her surprise, discovered that the Princess had an acuteness of sight and hearing besting hers, often pointing out some trace of bird or animal Roane missed. She smiled at Roane’s comments, saying that Hitherhow had been her favorite place when she was a child and that she had often gone with the foresters.
“But that was when Duke Reddick was still a palace squire in Thrisk. And would that he had remained there! He was sent to Thrisk in exchange for the second son of the Duke of Zeiter. I think all hoped he would make a marriage of merit. What did happen”—she shook her head—”not even I know. Though the King was told. And after, he sent Reddick for two years to Tul-stead. Which is a place to make a man think twice before he wishes to settle therein. Reddick came back much altered—for the better, my grandfather thought. Though he might have known that the blood of Olava was not to be so purified. Anyway, the Duke’s actions thereafter were such that he could not be denied his rights to Hitherhow. That beautiful place! To be so tainted! But let me get the Crown—”
“And what of your grandfather?”
“We are blood kin,” Ludorica answered slowly. “He is an old man and to him I am merely a means of preserving our House. He wanted a prince; he must take me. So for the years since my Uncle Wulver’s disappearance, I have not been a person—my-
65 self—but a tool in his hand. That he is right makes it no more easy for me. If he dies I shall be a little sorry, for in his way he is a good man, and has always done his best for Reveny. But it will not be true heart-sorrow. I have none close enough to me to strike that deep.” She spoke as if stating a fact she had long faced.
“And with the Crown you rule Reveny?”
“I do! Then Reddick shall learn what it means to reach for what is not his. I have already made plans—since I do not know how far he has flung his net, nor in what places it lies to entangle me. I shall get Nelis and his men to escort me, and ride to Leich-stan, crossing the border where one may slip over with no eyes upon one. Then we shall go to Gastonhow where the High Court summers. As blood kin I can treat with King Gostar—” She hesitated and the chain of the collar rang as she turned it.
“He has sons, two still unmarried. One such would be an acceptable prince consort for Reveny, and such a marriage would pacify that border at least. So he will be ready to listen to me. Then—with a chance to gather loyal forces—I shall find the Crown and ride to Urkermark City. If I enter with the Crown and with border peace secured, Reddick will have no one left to guard his back. The ambassador at Gastonhow is Imbert Rehling, who was cup-brother to my father in their youth. He will arrange it all once I get to him. Yatton, the border, Gastonhow—it is all a straight move.”
It might seem a straight move to the Princess, but Roane thought she could see a good many places where trouble lay. However, that was none of her concern. She would get Ludorica to Yatton, if she could. What happened thereafter would be the result of the Princess’s actions, while Roane returned to camp to take what would be waiting for her there. All she would have to offer in her defense was that the future Queen of Reveny would be in her debt—always supposing Ludorica did become Queen.
“And how do you get the Crown?”
“We know now where it lies. Once I have support behind me I can find it. But those to go there with me to loose it from the
66 rocks must be carefully chosen. This is a story which must not spread. Nelis I can count on to the death and beyond. He will know others that I can trust.”
Roane wondered if she was as confident as she sounded. But the off-world girl was not prepared to question it. She was too intent now on the fact that night was coming. The night lenses-she had forgotten those. How could she have been so stupid? The effect of the sustain tablets she had taken was wearing off, too. And it was very apparent that, for all her push and courage, the Princess was in an even worse state. They would have to rest, eat, and perhaps spend a portion of the night in whatever shelter they could find.
That in the end proved to be in the lee of the trunks of two trees brought down in the storm, their broken limbs still flying rags of withering leaves. The girls tramped the smaller branches and leaves into an untidy nest and hunkered in together. Roane brought out E rations and they ate. By the time they had finished it was dark.
The Princess slipped into an exhausted sleep, lying in a tight curl, her head pillowed on a tree limb. But they would have to keep watch! Roane battled her own deep fatigue as the long minutes slipped by.
Sharp pain in her shoulder— Sandar was prodding her with a Gamelean longsword. He wanted her to get up—march—show him a crown of ice. If he took that into his hands he would be a ruler— He drew back the sword, to turn the point on her again—
Roane opened her eyes.
“Up!” The command came out of deep dusk, was enforced by a prod in her ribs. Not Sandar—
One of Reddick’s men! Roane’s sleep-rooted daze cleared a little. She moved her hand toward her head, only to meet with a sharp blow on her wrist, delivered by the man standing over her.
“Keep your hands in sight—try nothing. And on your feet!” His orders were terse, and she could see he held a weapon ready to enforce them.
So they had been captured in their sleep. But Roane was still too tired to know more than a remote dismay.
“What do you do, Sergeant?” That demand came from the Princess.
“My duty. You are on Royal land without a warrant. You shall so answer to the Captain.”
“That is right, Sergeant,” the Princess replied briskly. “But you will act with more courtesy, or you shall answer to the Captain, and that answering will not be pleasant. Touch us not again!”
Perhaps the imperiousness of that command had its effect, for he withdrew a pace or two. There was pale sunlight about them. And in the full light stood three men. They wore a uniform of boots, tight breeches, and tunics which were latched from throat to waist with metal, the skirts cut to flare out over the hips to mid-thigh. These coats were of a rust brown, and each bore on the right breast a complicated symbol worked in purple and green, the same colors appearing in a small tight crest of feathers jutting from the bands of their high-crowned, narrow-brimmed headgear.
Each wore a sword slung in a shoulder baldric, and their leader had drawn his weapon in threat. But in addition they had other weapons Roane recognized as being the most lethal on Clio, hand arms which fired a solid projectile.
“You are of the Jontar Cavalry,” Ludorica said. She faced the Sergeant and he stared at her, plainly puzzled. ‘Tour Colonel is Nelis Imfry. Him I would see and speedily.”
“You will see the Captain.” The Sergeant might have been momentarily disconcerted by her attitude but he had regained his composure. “March.”
March they did, through a tangle of brush into a road which was a trail of beaten earth. And there waited four duocorns, another man holding their reins. Roane found herself uncomfortably mounted behind one of the men, the Princess behind another. This was not, the off-world girl decided, an easy way to travel. But it did bring them to another tower, or rather a set of towers, not too unlike the one in which Roane’s adventure had begun. Only these were in use, and they formed the pillars of a gate with a threatening portcullis, through which the forest track went to join a much better road.
The Sergeant had spurred ahead, and by the time the rest arrived, there was an officer awaiting them. The insignia on his collar was in the same purple and green and his cockade of feathers had an extra metal embellishment.
He looked curiously at Roane, but when his glance went to the Princess his eyes widened and his astonishment was plain. He moved swiftly to the side of that mount and held out his hand to aid her down.
“Your Highness!” Then he turned upon the Sergeant. “Off with you to the Colonel; tell him we have found the PrincessI”
The Sergeant took a second look and climbed back into the saddle. Under his spurs the duocorn leaped under the gate arch, thudded out into the road beyond.
Roane was aided from her own perch far more gently than she had been bestowed there. And she followed the Princess up to the second floor of the left-hand tower, where chairs were hurriedly brought, the second having been summoned by a hand wave from the Princess for Roane’s accommodation.
“Your Highness, we have been out hunting for you. When the word came by courier bird last night that you had disappeared from Hitherhow, the Colonel dispatched three companies in search—led the first one himself. But how—” He had glanced several times at her coverall, and at Roane, as if he wanted explanations he dared not ask for openly.
“I was taken from Hitherhow,” Ludorica answered, “from my very bed. By the grace of the Guardians, and the good will of the Lady Roane Hume here, I escaped whatever fate was intended for me. For the rest—it is not to be discussed openly. But you I have seen before. You accompanied Colonel Imfry to Urkermark on the occasion of the last birthday review of His Majesty. You are Captain Buris Mykop, and you come from the stead of Benedu.” ,
“Your Highness, but only once did I have the pleasure of being presented to you—and you rememberl”
She smiled. “Does anyone forget those who serve them faithfully? It is not strange to do so. Rather it would be unfitting and strange if one did not.”
She leaned forward suddenly and tossed the collar wound with the chain onto the top of a nearby table.
“You see there, Captain, a small keepsake of my adventure. That collar was fitted to my throat for a space, the chain was well anchored to hold me at another’s pleasure.”
The Captain looked from the Princess to the chain. He put out one hand to touch the collar. When he turned, his face was grimly expressionless.
“And who did this, Your Highness?”
“I do not know—yet. But doubtless all shall be made clear in time. It suffices for now that that did not hold me as was meant. And for that, thank my Lady Roane.” She nodded to her companion, and the Captain gazed at the off-world girl as if he would impress the sight of her on his memory for all time.
“What day is this? We have been turning night into day for our traveling. I can no longer reckon clearly.” “It is the fourth day of Lackameande, Your Highness.” “And it was on the second that I rode to Hitherhow,” she said. “There has been no word of weight out of Urkermark?”
“None, Your Highness. By all accounts the King rests comfortably with no change in his condition.”
Ludorica relaxed a little. But that she did not altogether rely on that report was proven when she asked:
“The Leichstan border is within two leagues of here, is it not? This is the Westergate?” “That is true, Your Highness.”
“And what—” But what she might have asked was lost in sounds below. A moment later another man came into the room with a rush which halted when he saw Ludorica. He was tall and young, but there were already lines of responsibility on his face.
Beside Sandar’s finely cut features his would seem blunted, plain, of a coarser mold. Yet Roane found she was staring at him as the Captain had earlier done with her; she wanted to fix his face in her mind. Though why, she could not have told.
His hair was close to the shade of his tunic, a rusty red-brown, but his eyebrows were as black as the Princess’s, and one had an upward tilt which gave him a slightly cynical look.
The way he eyed Ludorica now made Roane a little uncomfortable, as if to be witness was taking an unfair advantage. Then that expression was gone as he crossed the room, took the hand Ludorica held out to him, and raised it to his lips, bowing before her with a grace Roane would not have credited him with had she not seen it for herself. “Good greeting, my Princess!”
“Good indeed, kinsman.” It seemed to Roane that the Princess stressed that last word deliberately. It might have been a private code, or a warning. “I hear you have been searching for me.”
“Did you believe we would not?” He spoke with a drawl, and he smiled as if inviting her to share some small joke. “But as always, my Princess, you have managed to prove yourself a worthy daughter of kings and have not needed our efforts after all. Captain,” he said to his subordinate, “we might well all enjoy a glass of lasquer, and—have you yet lunched, my Princess?”
“Lunched?” She laughed. “Kinsman, we have not yet breakfasted. Though we did sup—by my Lady Roane’s good will.” She nodded to Roane. “Roane, this is my good kinsman and dear friend, Colonel Nelis Imfry, of whom I have already told you.” The Colonel bowed, perhaps not quite as low as he had to Ludorica, but with that same amazing grace. Somehow Roane found her tongue—though as she was not quite sure of the formal terms of address in Reveny she fell back on those of her own civilization.
“I am honored, Colonel—”
“The delight is mine, my lady.” t
“It is by her hands alone I am found again, kinsman. And now —Captain Mykop says there is no ill news.”
The Captain himself had disappeared.
“You expected some?” the Colonel asked.
“Because of my adventure, yes. Nelis, he would not have dared such a move had he not had some private news which led him to believe the King was near his end.”
“But I will wager nothing can be proved against your charming cousin,” the Colonel returned, the adjective in that speech made an epithet by his tone.
“Naturally not. But, Nelis, there is something else—a secret. You must hear it, and perhaps also others, those you can well trust. May we speak openly here?”
“Yes. Let them bring refreshment. Then you can talk. It cannot be so immediate that you must go fasting to tell me, can it?”
But the Princess did not echo his smile. “It may be, Nelis, it may just be.”
He frowned. But just then the Captain entered, behind him a soldier with a laden tray, the burden of which he set out on the table while the Colonel poured yellow liquid from the bottle the Captain had produced.
“You also, Nelis, and Captain Mykop.” Ludorica motioned to the waiting goblets.
“I give you a toast,” said the Princess when they each held one of those, “and that is the King’s good health!”
Roane let the slightly tart, refreshing liquid fill her mouth. She read meaning into what might be a conventional toast. Ludorica indeed had need for the continued health of her grandfather, unless she could gain her long-lost crown.
Roane glanced from the Princess to the Colonel and back again, wondering what lay between the two, who seemed to have forgotten her existence. Though the Princess made an obvious point of addressing him with warmth, yet he in return appeared to set some barrier of formality between them. They faced each other now across the table where the remains of the best meal Roane had yet had on Clio still lay.
Ludorica had told her story in terse language—of the loss of the Crown, of where she now believed that it lay. And when she finished, the Colonel made no comment, but instead looked to Roane.
“And how does the Lady Roane come into the matter, beyond the fact that she has been of great service to Reveny in her actions toward Your Highness?”
Since the Princess made no answer, Roane spoke for herself. Again she must say more than she wished to. Always she plunged deeper and deeper into disaster for an off-worlder.
She told the edited story she had given Ludorica—of the hunt for ancient remains which had brought her people here. But when she had done the Colonel looked far from satisfied.
“You do not, Lady, say from whence you come, you and these other treasure seekers—”
Roane hesitated a long moment. “Colonel, have you never served under orders given to you in confidence, which you cannot disclose to others? Or, if you have not done this, are not such cases known to you?”
“That is true. Though I have not, until this hour, dealt with aught which is not common knowledge.”
“Then accept that I must be silent. But I swear to you that those I serve mean nothing ill to Reveny. In fact before we came here, we were pledged to do nothing to bring us to the knowledge of your countrymen, nor to influence affairs here. In this I have erred, and I shall have to pay for that.”
“They can make her lose her memory—or put her in prison—” broke in the Princess.
“She told you that?” The Colonel’s eyes were cold now. “Yes,” Roane returned baldly. It was plain he doubted her. “They can do this—whether you believe it or not!” Her chin went up a fraction of an inch as she met disbelief with defiance. “And now,” she said to the Princess, “I promised to bring you to your friends. This I have done. So I shall go—”
“Not so!” The Colonel’s words came sharp and swift. And Ludorica put out her hand, caught Roane’s wrist where it rested on the table, as if to hold her prisoner.
“Whether you wish it or not,” the Colonel continued, “you have chosen your path, my lady, and you must continue to follow it until the Princess is out of danger. Your Highness, let this lady remain with you. It is fitting that you have a companion when you cross the border. And it would seem fortune favors you with one who dares not betray secrets lest she betray herself even more.”
Roane flushed. Did he jeer at her now, or issue a challenge to prove she was as she said? She was a little afraid, for she did not doubt he meant what he said—evidence that he was prudent, for the wise thing for him was to keep her close. That she had not foreseen this simple end to the action puzzled her. It was all a part of that muzzy thinking which she had done ever since she met Ludorica. Almost as if she were conditioned-Conditioned! What if the Service techs had been wrong and their off-world guards did not hold? Or at least not entirely, so that subtly she had been taken over by the force which existed to make Clio a closed world? A new spark of fear was born in her. She was she, Roane Hume, who could perfectly remember a Me beyond the stars. She was not a subject of a ruler on this forgotten, living museum of a world! And that thought she must hold to.
“You are set on this plan then, Your Highness—to go to Leich-stan for aid?” The Colonel, having delivered his order, seemed to have forgotten Roane again.
“There is the Crown. I do not think that, even if Reddick knows where it lies, he quite dares to reach for it while I live. But with my death, he believes—or I would in his place—that the Crown will acknowledge him. For unrecorded though his descent may be, there is a trace of the Blood in him. He may have taken me only to make sure I was under his control when the word he expects comes. But that he ever meant I live on past that hour—” She pointed to the chain and collar. “That is good evidence he did not. And Leichstan can prove a refuge until we are sure of what we do face now.”
She seemed to accept very calmly the fact that she was the target of her cousin’s intrigues. But perhaps such intrigues were so common on Clio that they were a part of daily experience. Maybe one held one’s position here through a series of struggles in a deadly game.
“Reddick must still be at Hitherhow. We can take him there!” The Colonel’s brown hand twitched as if the fingers wished to hold some weapon.
“Not knowing how far his plans extend or what support he can summon? That would be folly. But if I go to Leichstan I can claim aid, and I have put myself beyond« Reddick’s reach, given us time to find the Crown and learn the true state of the King.”
“Leichstan is ambitious,” the Colonel returned slowly.
“So is Vordain to the north. If we must ally ourselves—which? I wish this no more than you do, kinsman. But if one must choose between alliance and alliance, Leichstan through friendship is better than Vordain by force.”
The Colonel looked down at the cup he held as he turned it around and around. He might be reading some message in its depths.
“There is a price for such alliances,” he observed in a very level voice.
“That I know also,” the Princess returned. “But to everything on this earth there is a price, kinsman. And to me Reveny comes first, its safety and future. I am what I am by reason of birth, of much training. Were there another of my House to carry sword in battle, perhaps I could turn my thoughts from what must be done. But there is not. And I believe that this lack is also of Reddick’s doing. Before the Crown falls into his grasping hands I will do much. And the way lies through Leichstan—though I must go there without any of the trumpeting of a royal progress. You have wardered the border long enough to know its secrets. Nelis, there must be some hidden way across, and not far from here—”
“Smugglers’ ways are rough going.”
The Princess laughed. “None can be worse than that I have lately used. Though this”—she looked down at the coverall—”is very durable clothing for such work, I think it would be better if I entered Leichstan wearing something less noticeable. I know that I cannot expect an army post to produce clothing for a lady, but can such be obtained for us both?”
Nelis Imfry smiled, as if the Princess’s request had a somewhat lighter note.
“We do not have much provision for ladies, that is certain. If you are willing I can send to Fittsdale for peasant clothing.”
“Well enough. That they be fit for riding is all that is necessary.
And you have an escort for us who knows these smugglers’ ways?”
Now the Colonel laughed. “Indeed I do, Your Highness. We have held these hills so long that we know the four sides of every rock. And since the smugglers in question are bound for Leich- stan and not for our side of the border, we have no ill will to fear.”
But when he had left, Roane made one last attempt to break free from this current carrying her farther and farther into danger.
“I must go back!”
Ludorica shook her head, a smile on her lips.
“But, my dear Roane, indeed you must not! If what you said is true, that they will treat you ill for what you have done on my behalf, then all the greater reason not to. Also, suppose you are taken by Reddick’s men—do not think that he will not use harsh means to learn all you can tell him. The mere fact that you are found in a Royal forest after my escape will make you suspect You wear such clothing as is strange, carry mysterious tools and weapons— Yes, you would make a puzzle Reddick would work hard to solve, and the solving would not be to your comfort. We ride for Leichstan. And when the Crown is in my hands, then shall we in turn treat with your people. Never go to a bargaining, Roane, unless you have that on your side which is a mighty aid.”
The Captain came to show them to his quarters in the third story of the tower, and there Ludorica announced they had better get what rest they could, since no one could guess how long the journey across the border might last. That she was as close a prisoner as if she now wore the collar and chain, Roane knew. There would be no slipping away from this place, unless she used her stunner freely. And then the chaos she would leave behind— She shook her head. She could do nothing but hope for the future.
She slept, and it was twilight when the Princess aroused her with a gentle shaking. On the floor sat a very large tub, into which Ludorica now poured steaming water. ,,
“As a bath,” the Princess remarked, “this is a primitive affair. But we are undoubtedly lucky in this time and place to have one at all.”
She shed her clothing and stepped carefully into the tub, kneeling to splash its meager contents over her, rubbing with a bunch of rough fibers which left foaming streaks on her smooth skin.
“If you will pour the rest now—” Ludorica indicated another jug and Roane obeyed. The Princess arose and made good use of the towel her companion handed her.
“Now—if we empty this into that other—”
The Princess anchored the towel more firmly about her as they dumped the water into an outsize bucket and refilled the basin for Roane. Though this was far different from the more efficient freshers she had always known, she found it good. The soapy substance oozing from the matted fibers of the scrubber had a fresh, herbal odor she liked.
Ludorica sorted a pile of clothing, holding up one garment and then another to measure against her body. She laughed.
“Nelis has the name of being one who does not notice women too closely. But this is proof his cold reputation is not deserved. These are a good fit. We shall go reasonably well clad. Now—the brown for you, and I will take the blue.”
Roane dressed in the unfamiliar clothes. They were clean, if creased, and to them, too, a good herb scent clung. There were no mirrors, but she thought the Princess right. These fitted well. The skirt was full, ankle length, and its folds felt odd against her legs so long used to coveralls. In contrast the bodice was tight, laced from belt to just under her throat with silken red strings. Embroidery of the same shade of red bordered those lacings. The dress itself was a pleasant yellow-brown. There was also a hooded cloak lined with red, and a close-fitting cap with a turned- back border, embroidered all over with small, very skillfully fashioned red feathers.
The Princess wore dark blue, her trimming a vivid green but otherwise differing none from Roane’s. There was no cap for her. Instead she combed and braided her long hair, allowing the braids to lie free on her shoulders.
“Very good.” She looked from Roane down along her own person, then back to Roane. “We eat now and then we ride. At least it is a clear night. Nelis thinks it will remain so, and he knows this country well enough to speak with authority.”
They descended to the lower room, where the table was once more set with food, rounds of cold meat, bread, and fruit. The man who rose to greet them was not in uniform but wore a dusty gray suit, with a close-fitting cap which allowed only his face free, for it had a lower frill lapped about his neck, fastening under the chin.
“Nelis!” Ludorica seated herself in the chair he drew out for her. “You?”
He laughed. “Did I not tell you that I knew these hills well? Do you think I would let you ride them alone, Your Highness?” Then he became serious. “You will have your escort of picked men, men from my own stead. They own me overlord as well as field commander.”
“But if Reddick learns you are gone, he may suspect—” “We have worked out a scheme for that. Remember, you are lost out of Hitherhow. I am searching for you with a flying column and am thus hard to reach, very hard. As far as this company is concerned—though we can answer for their loyalty—they will march within the hour to patrol west of Granpabar, which is territory I do not think the Duke dares invade as yet—seeing as how the lord there has good reason to dislike him.” “Trust you, Nelis—” The Princess laughed, too. “I hope you can, Your Highness,” he cut in, still sober. “I hope you can! I understand your reasoning, and it was ever the way of your House to play boldly at need. But there are many ways this play can go wrong. Do not be too confident—”
“Which urging I have had from you many times in the past! No, there is something now which gives me confidence, Nelis. Reddick could not have foreseen the arrival of Roane to spoil his plan. So far every throw of the wish sticks has turned up in my favor. Oh”—she held up her hand when he would have spoken— “I cannot count on such fair fortune’s continuing. But while it is with me, let us make the most of it, just as we shall now make the most of this most excellent food.”
They were not, Roane discovered to her silent relief, expected to ride duocorns alone. She had never guided such a mount in her life, and to begin riding lessons now—there was no time.
To keep their cover of peasant women, who did not usually ride alone, she and the Princess must ride pillion, the Princess with the Colonel, Roane behind one of the other men. All wore the drab civilian dress. And under the cloak she still had her belt, which she determined to cling to. Possession of that gave her the feeling that she was still Roane Hume, not a stranger to herself also.
By dawn, after threading a maze of dusky valleys and scrambling up hillsides where they must dismount to walk their animals, they reached a pass through which the wind blew cruelly cold. Roane was glad of the cloak. Twice they had halted to let the third man of the party scout ahead. But there had been no alarms. And now the Colonel pointed down the slope before them.
“Leichstan, but Gastonhow lies a good eight leagues on. We shall have to rest and change mounts before we reach there.”
“We cannot go to any inn,” the Princess protested.
“Neither can we go far on worn-out duocorns,” Imfry returned. “With those clothes you are of Reveny right enough, but many border families have kin on either side. There may well be a wedding to which we have been bid—”
“Not so! A wedding would have been far-cried. These people will know what chances even from hamlet to hamlet. It had better be a birthing, perhaps in a head homestead. We can pick straw for a babe garland as we go.”
“It never ceases to amaze me, Your Highness, how you know all customs—”
“But it should not, kinsman. Of what use is any ruler to her people unless she understands their ways? Oh, I know that there is in some countries the odd belief that there is no common meeting point between king and subject. But that is not so with my House and never has been.”
“A point which has kept your line safely enthroned.”
“Until nowl And then that dark shadow comes not from my own people but from kin. And kin quarrels are always the most bitter.”
But it seemed that the Princess’s plan was not to be put into practice, for their scout returned with the news that a party was traveling the main road to the nearest inn and that he had recognized one face among the travelers. “Kaspard Fancher!” the Princess repeated. “I fear”—the Colonel had dropped his voice a little—”that our period of favoring fortune is over. Fancher is—”
“I know well what he is,” Ludorica interrupted. “Which means that Reddick has given me credit for trying to reach King Gostar. But he also knows that I am not altogether stupid, however much he wishes that so. Very well. Fancher may be riding with all the support the Duke can raise for him, but Reddick is not yet King of Reveny, nor even close to the throne. I am the Princess, and Imbert Rehling was my father’s good friend. He will smooth my path to Gostar, and Reddick cannot prevent that.” “If we reach Rehling—”
“The Court is at Gastonhow, so all ambassadors will follow. It is early in the season for such a move, but King Gostar cherishes this young second queen of his. The rumor has it that she may present him soon with a princeling—so he has brought her to drink the waters of the Faithwell.”
“Superstition!”
“Perhaps—but then again perhaps not. Xhere was a Guardian at the Faithwell; that has been attested to beyond any doubt. And also there have been many cases of women in difficult childbirth being soothed by its waters. Why, Gastonhow was built by Queen Marget because she feared to lose her fourth child, having three others die as she still lay in bed from the bearing of them. She stayed there during the major part of her time of carrying and thereafter bore five sons and three daughters with no ills.”
“History! What does it matter now about Queen Marget? If the court is at Gastonhow and Fancher goes here, we must be very sure of our ground. Best send a messenger—”
“But why should we not just push on the faster to Gastonhow ourselves?”
“Not until I am sure what awaits us there.”
“Sure of what? That Fancher is here to make what trouble he can? We know that. Lord Imbert will prevent him from seeing the King, and he cannot work mischief with Imbert himself. But —perhaps— Perhaps you are right, Nelis. It is better not to spoil our plans now for the want of a little caution. And I shall give the messenger that which will get him speedy speech with Lord Imbert.” The Princess pulled at one of her long braids, breaking loose five hairs, which she counted carefully before she knotted them together. “Now a resuah leaf—”
“Games?” asked the Colonel.
“Games—with a purpose. But a game Lord Imbert will remember, for I shared it with him. It was when he came to me after my father was newly dead. He had taken me to his Lady Ansla—she who was High Lady of Kross in her own right—for the King would have me away from the Court as he ailed. Lord Imbert liked the old tales. He has ordered many of them collected from the Tork singers and copied out that they may not be forgotten. And one was of the Lost Lady of Innace. The geas which was laid on that lady was broken by leaf and hair. Yes, he will remember and listen to your man.”
The Princess had been searching through the vegetation around and now made a swift pounce, catching up, earth-covered root and all, a plant with long narrow leaves. The largest of these leaves she twisted free, wrapping her knotted hair about it.
After their messenger departed, mounted on the duocorn Imfry judged their best, they headed on at a much-curtailed pace. Here, dose to the heights where they had crossed the border, the country was wooded, so that they had to turn into one of those overhung, branch-roofed lanes. And this brought them to a bridge which was more ornate and even wider than the road they had come, as if the latter had once been a more important thoroughfare than it now was. On the opposite side of that arch was a small single-story tower, built in the form of a triangle firmly wedded to the bridge. Even the two very narrow windows in it were wedge-shaped.
“Have you any way money?” Ludorica asked the Colonel. “I see this is a vow bridge.”
“An old one. The vow must have long since been fulfilled.” “How can we know that? Have you money for the alms slit?” He brought a small bag from the front of his tunic, passed it back to the Princess.
“Be sparing with that, Your Highness. I had no time to gather a fortune before we left.”
She loosened the drawstring, felt within the bag, and pulled out a round of metal.
“A plume will suffice. We travel with clean hands and no malice at heart.”
As they came to the three-cornered building, the Princess leaned from her pillion and tossed the coin into the open window near to hand.
“For the good of him who built the way, for the good of those who walk the way, for the good of the journey, and the good, surely, of its final ending,” she intoned as if speaking some formula.
“His name”—she moved her forefinger through the air, tracing
83 the curves and angles of some weather-worn carving on the wall —”was Niklas and he was lord of— The stead seal is too badly worn to read. But it is a good omen that we ride by one Niklas’s favor!”
The road ahead was not concealed by drooping tree branches, but rather edged with hedge walls. It was wider, also, and the dust of its surface was slotted with wheel ruts and hoofprints, as if the road which joined from upriver brought more traffic.
No longer could the duocoms be kept to a steady trot. When their riders stopped urging them, they fell into an amble. The morning they had met in the pass was now well advanced. They had broken their fast in the hills but Roane was hungry again. And it seemed to her stiff body that they had been riding or walking for half a lifetime. Those with whom she traveled seemed to need little rest.
Suddenly Imfry reined in his mount, held up his hand. One of the duocorns blew and then was silent. Far off Roane heard it now—the sound of a horn, clear and carrying.
Roane stood at the window. Between her fingers she held caressingly the soft folds of the heavy curtain. She loved the feel of that, the strange luxury of the room behind her—it was like coming out of the cold to the warmth of a welcoming fire. As yet it was early morning, and no one seemed to stir in the great house. But there was life in the street before its tall courtyard gates. A boy had come out of a shop, sprinkling down the cobbles before the door from a holed can which he sloshed back and forth without care, nearly sending its spray on the wide skirts of a passing woman. Those skirts were gray, with scarlet flowers bordering them, to match in vivid color the bodice of her dress. She walked with a free, swinging step, one hand raised to balance a basket on her head, its contents hidden by a covering of leaves.
She was only the first of a small procession of such wayfarers, their gray and scarlet almost a uniform, each with a basket aloft. The boy with the sprinkler cried out something and they turned smiling faces to him. It was all like watching a live tri-dee.
Roane remembered her impression of the house as they had come to it the night before. It was large, three stories high at least, all of stone, the windows on the lowest level being very narrow. There was no growing thing to break the drabness of the courtyard pavement, and the only spot of color was the symbol on the house face—she could see an edge of it from here—facing the gate, representing the might of Reveny.
She had not met the ambassador on whom Ludorica relied so much. In fact she had not even seen the Princess since they had entered a side door and been shown almost furtively through dark hallways by a single servant. Though she could not complain about the room in which she stood, nor the willing serving maid she had sent early away. Only—Roane felt uneasy as well as somehow charmed by her surroundings.
All of it had a dreamlike quality. Though in the beginning it had been more of a nightmare when that horn blast had sent them into quick hiding. There had been a troop of horsemen, and the identity of two of the riders had disturbed the Princess and the Colonel, though neither had explained why to Roane. Instead of pressing on themselves after that other party had passed, they had waited until nightfall. Then they had ridden hard, across fields many times, to reach a crossroads. There they were overtaken by a carriage, curtained at the windows, with four of the large draft duocorns to draw it.
Their messenger rode on the box beside the driver, and the letter he delivered to the Princess banished the shadow from her face. She waved it triumphantly before the Colonel.
“Did I not say so? Lord Imbert gives us good welcome—and certainly softer travel. Ah, I feel as old as the hills with every bone in my body aching to tell me so!”
The interior of the carriage was dark, but no one raised its curtains. Roane found it hardly more comfortable than riding, in spite of Ludorica’s words. The swaying of the body on a sling of straps—which took the place of any springs—made her queasy. But her companions settled back against the cushions as if this
86 were the height of comfort, and the Princess went to sleep, her head against Roane’s shoulder.
Twice they stopped for fresh animals, and the second time a basket of cold but good food was handed in. Only Roane, hungry as she might have been under other circumstances, could but nibble and wish herself back in normal life.
They had come to Gastonhow in the middle of the night. And she had fallen half-dazed into the great curtained bed behind her. But for all her fatigue she had awakened early, as if she had been alerted by some inner alarm.
Now she turned from the window to view the room again, seeing much more than the limited lamplight had shown her. The bed, which dominated the room, was extremely large, almost a quarter the size of a camp bubble. Having most of her life fitted into very narrow spaces, in camp, on board ship, she was not used to such freedom. It stood on a two-step dais and had four posts carved with flowers and leaves to support a canopy with curtains that Roane had not suffered the maid to draw about her, tent-fashion, the night before. Both the curtains and the cover on the bed were fancifully patterned by needlework.
All the colors were bright, almost too strident for her taste. The walls were boldly painted with designs in the same shades. There was a table with a wide mirror, a backless stool set before it, to her left. On her right stood a tall cupboard with double doors. And there were chairs, stools, and a smaller table or two scattered around.
She moved before the mirror to gaze at her reflection. The white folds of just such a night robe as the captive Princess had worn hung about her slim body. Against that her weathered hands and face looked very dark and brown. Her short hair had grown enough since she had left Cram-brief to form a fluff on her forehead and behind her ears. And that too was odd against her deep tan, for the locks were a pale yellow-brown which sometimes held a hint of red when the sun touched them. By the standards of her own civilization Roane had no beauty
87 and had early learned to accept that. And, since her roving life had taken her into the wilderness of unknown worlds, she practiced none of the cosmetic arts used by the women of the inner planets. Beside the Princess she was certainly very insignificant. How much so, she had not realized until now.
There was an array of pots and bottles on the table. Roane sat down eyeing them, wondering who had supplied these, what they held. Then, emboldened, she investigated. The first was a small yellow pot, very smooth to her fingers, lidded by a stopper fashioned as a half-opened flower. It contained a paste with a sweet smell. She ran a fingertip tentatively over it but had no idea what might be its use. As her explorations continued she made many guesses. There were smaller pots of red which perhaps colored lips or cheeks, though she had not seen anyone wearing the elaborate designs painted on forehead, cheek, or chin which were in high favor on some worlds. There was one narrow box of black stuff flanked by a tiny brush—and more beautifully shaped bottles and flagons, each of which held a sweet scent.
“My lady?”
Roane started and nearly dropped a delicate transparent bottle. Over her shoulder in the mirror she saw the maid carrying a tray on which rested a covered bowl and a cup.
Roane gave the morning greeting of Reveny. “Sun and a fair wind rising—”
“With thanks to you, Lady. Will you morn-sup now?”
There were berries in the bowl, intermixed with what seemed cooked grain, sweet contrasting with tart. The mug contained a thick, hot drink she could not identify. She was sipping at that when the door opened again and she faced the Princess.
Now Roane saw her in clothing becoming her station—the full-skirted dress of a deep green, with wide lace flecked with threads of silver turned back in cuffs, a collar of the same dew-and-cobweb material lying on her shoulders. The hair which had swung in braids during their journeying was now piled and
88 pinned into an imposing structure on her head. There was about her such an air of consequence that Roane arose to pay her tribute.
“Roane.” Ludorica did not move with a stately gait but sped across the room to catch the off-world girl’s hands in hers. “We are safe here. And my good Lord Imbert has gone to speak to the King. Fortune has favored us. And once we see King Gostar—” She laughed. “Oh, Roane, you will enjoy it here! There will doubtless be a ball—did I not say he had sons to be settled, and what better way can a gallant display than at a ball? And we will ride in the Brogwall in an open carriage as is the fashion and—and— and-”
The Princess could be any girl from one of the inner planets thirsting for pleasure. But Roane found she could not match the other’s high spirits. And Ludorica must have quickly sensed her lack of response, for she lost some of her sparkle as she asked: “What is it, Roane? Truly we are safe here, perhaps more so than in Reveny, until the full of Reddick’s schemes be known. And you—you do not have to fear losing your memory or being shut in a prison. This is a day for a light heart, not a sober face. Or perhaps yours merely looks sober because you are still wearing a night robe. White is not a color which becomes you! But that is speedily remedied.”
She pulled upon a bell rope and the maid returned, to scurry about under a rain of orders so quickly delivered, Roane was not sure of their number or kind.
It was later, when she sat once again looking into the mirror, that the dream seemed even stronger. There were drugs, forbidden drugs, which could do this to one, produce an alternate life for their user, so entrancing a life that he or she clung to the fantasy, fought return to reality. She had not used those and yet she was enmeshed—surely that reflection was not of any Roane Hume she knew.
The soft fabric of her gown was a shade of yellow, but woven in such a way that each fold as she moved was overcast by a
89 hint of rose. Lace, not as wide or as ornate as that which bedecked the Princess, but still finer than any other she had ever seen, ruffled about her brown wrists, rose a little behind her head to make a fragile frame for her thin neck. Not for her the piling of hair, but rather a lace cap curving to a point over her forehead, from which folded back two wired wings, as if an alien bird had settled there.
And her face—they could not take away the browning that years of exposure had painted on her, but they had made knowing use of the contents of many pots and bottles. So that brown was enhanced, and she was vividly alive as she had never seen herself before. Viewing herself so, she gained the courage natural to her sex, the armor a woman dons by knowing she looks her best.
Ludorica clapped her hands and laughed. “My Lady Roane, but this is how you were always meant to look! Not to go in that ugly dress like a man. Why do you desire to look so plain when it is not necessary? Do you not know, dear Roane, that it is the true duty of any woman to look the best she can, no matter how the Guardians may have designed her face at birth? Come now, you must learn to walk properly in skirts, my dear-like-a-man-that-was!”
Exiling her doubts to the back of her mind, Roane followed the Princess. They came out into a wide hall, one side of which was hung with panels of needlework between other strips painted in the same bright colors which had lightened the bedroom. The other wall had windows, four of them set out in bays. And those windows were checkerboarded with clear and colored glass, the colored being wrought in complicated patterns. Overhead the ceiling was molded in balls and leaves in high relief, those also painted. And at the far end was a large fireplace, while at intervals down the length of the hall were braziers of metal on tripod legs, from several of which curled scented smoke.
There was no one in that hall, neither servant nor master. But when they went through the door at the far end and came to a
90 staircase a man did appear, to stand at the foot of the stair awaiting them.
He uncovered his head (for he had been wearing a soft flat hat of colorful stuff with a big ornament of gold) as the Princess descended, and bowed. His clothing was richly trimmed with metallic embroidery and he fitted well with his surroundings. “Your Highness—”
He was middle-aged and had allowed his facial hair to grow, a custom new to Roane, who knew only spacers, who went with smooth cheeks and sometimes even totally denuded heads so that space helmets would fit the better. But the lower part of his face was masked by wiry gray hair.
“My dear lord.” The Princess held out her hand. “You must meet my good companion, the Lady Roane Hume. Roane, this is Lord Imbert, who gives us shelter in our troubles.”
He bent his head to kiss the Princess’s hand. Then he turned a searching glance on Roane, one she found disturbing though she met him eye to eye.
“I am honored, my lord.” Gathering up the full folds of her skirt with either hand, she essayed what she hoped was a passable curtsy. She was not too graceful. And those eyes watching her had in them that which daunted her confidence.
“We have much to be grateful to you for, my lady, we of Rev-eny.” Unlike his stern and rather colorless outward appearance, his voice was warm and rich. Roane’s first estimate of him changed. When he spoke it was as if another person awoke behind the mask he presented to the world. “We have our Princess safe, and all who serve her now are very welcome.”
He bowed again with a smile. But when she watched him without listening to his voice, Roane felt a chill in his manner. Words could provide screens for thoughts. Though the Princess valued Lord Imbert Rehling so highly, Roane did not feel for him that trust the Colonel inspired in her. “You are very kind.” Her words sounded feeble. The stately language of Reveny was so foreign to the clipped Basic of her own people that Roane found it difficult to u.s,e it readily.
“We are going to view your garden, my lord.” Ludorica smiled at him with a sparkle in her eyes. “What I have seen from the window of my bedchamber promises well—”
“Your Highness”—his voice took on a deeper timbre—”such a faring would not be wise at this time.”
“A walk in the garden not wise? But why?”
“Your Highness, as you know, Fancher is in the city. And the Soothspeaker Shambry as well. You yourself saw them both traveling hither.”
“But this is Gastonhow and the Embassy of Reveny under the mastership of my best of friends, Lord Imbert Rehling himself,” she countered. “What have we to fear from Fancher, a man without any lord here in Leichstan? As for the Soothspeaker, yes, we saw him. But what has he to do with us, or Reveny?”
“It would seem something,” Lord Imbert began and then glanced at Roane, as if he willed her withdrawal. Perhaps that was the fashion of the court, but she did not pretend to be more than she was, a stranger caught up by chance in their ways. She stood where she was and the Princess said impatiently:
“Do you speak openly—the Lady Roane knows all.”
He shrugged and continued. “Very well, Your Highness. The Soothspeaker has foretold King Niklas’s death to the exact hour.”
She sobered instantly. “How much value can we put to his words? No, I will not ask you that, my lord. We all have our own opinions of such gifts or talents. And Shambry has foretold with remarkable success on several occasions. Though I have beardless loudly—that he has also had his failures. To foresay the King’s death, however—he must be very sure to do that. But why comes he out of Reveny into Leichstan? Unless—”
Ludorica looked down at her own hands as if she held there something very precious the others could not see. “Unless he would be out of Reveny before his foreseeing can be proved. What excuse does he give for coming?”
“That he has matters of great moment for King Gostar which will affect the future of his House, and that he was bidden by his gift to come.”
“By his gift! Then he is very sure—”
“Just so,” cut in Lord Imbert. “And it is against all custom for him to be so persistent. He has lately been at Ichor, and the Lady of Ichor-”
“Was once Reddick’s very dear friend. But surely here, well guarded in your house, my lord, I need not fear any web to entangle my feet. Why, you yourself said to Nelis that he could leave us here and go with a free mind. Why, if you had these reservations, did you say that?”
“For the simple reason, Your Highness, that this news had not yet come to my ears when the Colonel rode forth. And it is best also that he return to his command, for if your journey has not yet been discovered, his return will help to keep it secret.”
“A secret? I did not think that here—” She hesitated and then continued. “But let me see King Gostar and all will move as we wish.”
“There, too, you must practice patience, Your Highness. The Queen is not in good health and King Gostar is much concerned about her. He is never at the best an easy man to deal with. Rather is he sometimes prey to odd whims and sudden changes of mind, so that no one can predict what he will do. For the past three months, since he learned the Queen is carrying a child, he has not even been to the secret sanctuary of the Flame Crown for guidance.
“He will receive no delegations from the council and has refused his ministers audiences. Even to reach him with a message may take some time.”
“And time we may have in scant supply!”
“I understand, Your Highness. But I am being frank with you. We shall have to approach the King with care. An incautious move on our part may arouse him to refusal before we even state the case. He has done such many times, more times even than
93 his people have general knowledge of. Now—you will note, Your Highness, that you have seen few servants in this wing of the house. That, too, is on purpose. The fewer who know that you are here, until I have some understanding with the King, the better. For we have not only to fear his changeable tempers, but also interference, perhaps directly from Fancher, indirectly from Shambry—or so I suspect.
“The Queen is much taken with foreseeing and there is good reason to believe that once she knows Shambry is here she will have him summoned to read for her. Once gaining her attention, he could defeat us with ease. For he is a subtle man with more to him than the usual Soothspeaker. He already tells the day and hour of His Majesty’s death with confidence. What if he adds to that some direful word concerning yourself? Could you then get a fair hearing for your plea? Ill luck is too real a thing to most kings and lords.”
“What hour and day—no, I do not want to know lest I begin to believe it too. So I can do nothing but wait?”
“Hard as it seems, Your Highness, that is so. And not only wait with good grace, but also stay within these walls and let none have a chance to see you. You thought yourself safe at Hitherhow, and what happened? I have guards here, but how can I swear that all of them, and of my servants, are true to the old loyalty and that none of them secretly supports Reddick?”
“It is hard to believe,” Ludorica said slowly. “I feel, as one trying to cross the Bog of Snelmark, that any step may be the wrong one. But suppose the King—” She turned a little away. “Very well —tell me, how long does this smooth-tongued Soothspeaker give him yet?”
“Four days—until high noon.”
“Four days! And he would not dare to make such a prophecy if he were not sure it would be proved true. Four days, and if I am not back to Urkermark by then with the Crown— I must consider this carefully, Lord Imbert.”
“Do so, Your Highness. In the meantime, for your own sake,
94 keep within these walls and out of sight. What I can do to reach King Gostar, and there are several ways that can be tried, that I shall do.”
He left them with another bow and the Princess turned to Roane. “It would seem that we cannot enjoy the garden except through a window. But that we can do in the gallery. Come aloft again.”
They returned to the long upper chamber and Ludorica brought Roane to the middle bay so they could look out. There were few flowers below, rather hedges and shrubs trimmed and clipped into fanciful shapes, many resembling the statues which had been set out at Hitherhow before the Princess’s arrival.
“It is very well kept,” commented Ludorica. “One has the feeling that were even a single leaf misplaced such would be instantly noted. Lord Imbert has a liking for such formality. There is a large garden such as this about his stead keep in Reveny. The Lady Ansla never cared much for it. She had her own place and the sweetest-smelling flowers grew there. Also a pond with an erand nesting, and the bird used to stand so still in the water one would believe her a statue—” “The Lady Ansla—she is here?”
“She is gone.” The Princess did not look away from the window. “It was the frost fever. I did not even get to put the fare-forth candle in her hand—though she had been so good to me. When I came she was already closed away. I think that when I was small she was the only one who cared for me, Ludorica, and not because I was the Princess.”
Though they could not go out into that stiff garden, nor even out of the section of rooms which had been made over to them, they found enough to occupy their time. Ludorica amused herself and Roane (to the latter’s mild astonishment) by coaching her temporary lady-in-waiting in the duties of her position and furnishing her with the current gossip of the Court of Reveny— though due to the King’s age and illness Court life had shrunk to a few shadowy functions and those only observed through neces- sity. Roane absorbed it even as she had the learning at Cram-brief, but found it more interesting. The Princess’s description of the nobles and courtiers, their backgrounds and motives, were so detailed that the off-world girl thought she would know each when she met him—if she ever met him.
Deep in Roane herself something began to grow. She would smooth the soft flow of her skirts, glance now and then into a mirror, finger some cushion glowing with beautiful needlework or an ornament. All this was far different from the treasures of her own civilization, yet surrounded by such she was not ill at ease nor unhappy, but rather relaxed. If she was dreaming, she wished less and less to awake. At least, as she reflected with dry humor, if she ever got back to her own people she could supply enough data on this Psychocrat experiment from the point of view of those caught in it to amaze the Service.
On their second night at Gastonhow she was sitting in front of the mirror about to unpin the birdlike bonnet when Ludorica slipped into the room, a long, fur-lined cloak over her arm, her eyes alight with excitement.
“Imbert has done it! I am to go to King Gostar secretly. But not alone, Roane—Lord Imbert thinks you should be with me, that you can bear witness about the tower and your testimony will carry force. Hurry—there is a coach waiting. Where is a cloak?”
She opened the wardrobe and rummaged among its contents. Roane hurried to the bed, to her private hiding place. She felt under the wide pillow and drew out her belt with its off-world equipment. Even temporarily she was not going to be separated from that.
The coach awaiting them in the dark courtyard was like the one which had fetched them to Gastonhow. As then, heavy curtains hung in place across the windows, and in the light of a single lantern the interior looked very dark. Lord Imbert himself stood to hand them in, and he murmured something in a very low voice to the Princess before putting out his hand to Roane as she tried to manage the folds of her skirts on the small step.
There was no Colonel to share their ride this time, but the cushions were softer than those of the equipage which had brought them to Gastonhow. The door closed and they were in the total dark, for there was no riding lantern.
“No light!” Apparently the Princess found this strange, but then she added, “I suppose Imbert wishes us to be as inconspicuous as possible.”
“Where do we go?” Roane pulled her cloak about her. The evening was chill and there was a cold which seemed part of the coach itself, as if the vehicle had not been recently in use.
“To Gastonhigh. It is a stead used by the royal family—by Immer Lake. I suppose the Queen wishes mere quiet.”
A swing of the coach sent Roane against the Princess and she heard Ludorica laugh.
“My dear Roane, feel along the wall and you shall find a hold strap. It is best to make use of those when the pace is swift.”
Roane groped for the anchor, running her hand over the side she could not see, though now and then came a faint glimmer of light around the edge of the curtain, as if they drove by some well-lighted site. She found the loop and took firm hold on it, but she wished they could raise the curtains, just so she did not have the impression that they were imprisoned in a jiggling, swaying cage. And once more her stomach rebelled against this form of travel.
“My mother was King Gostar’s cousin,” the Princess said. “I wish I knew on what terms they were. It might strengthen my appeal if they had parted in friendship when she went to Reveny to wed. If he had kind memories of her—”
“Is there any reason why he would not?” Roane asked.
“There are feuds not only among the stead lords, but also in the royal Houses. Am I not so caught with Reddick? And the House of Hillaroy, which is King Gostar’s, have been noted for their quick tempers and many strange actions, even as Imbert has warned us about Gostar. It would seem that since the Guardians cut communication with men there have been many changes in the course of history. Only when we hold the crowns can we be sure of surviving such changes. I must get the Crown! At least Nelis will do what he can to further the search.”
“You sent the Colonel to hunt the Crown?” Roane tensed. What would that mean for Uncle Offlas and Sandar? If a large party of Revenian troops showed up to prospect along the cliffs and so meet the men from the camp— She could see such trouble as had never disgraced a Service operation before. Why, they might even have to lift off!
“He knows the country, and him I can trust. If he moves in boldly, Reddick cannot face him, since I do not believe that until the King is dead the Duke will dare to come into the open.”
“But the Crown—I thought you wanted to keep others from knowing it was hidden.”
“No one shall. For Nelis will wait for me to take it up. None can touch the Crown save me. Nelis is only to find the way to it.”
But what of her own people? Roane thought of them and clung to her strap anchor as the coach rocked on. They must now be traveling at the fastest pace this vehicle was capable of maintaining.
“King Gostar must be impatient,” she commented. “It would seem that he wants us in a hurry, or is this the usual speed of a royal coach?”
The pace grew even faster. In spite of that anchor loop she was shaken back and forth, and she gulped and swallowed with grim determination not to yield to the queasiness of her much-abused interior.
“This—is—too—fast—” The Princess’s words came in little gasps as if shaken out of her. “What can they be—”
There came still another burst of speed and the swing of the coach was such that Roane was sure she could not stand it long before disgracing herself by being thoroughly sick. She held her free hand over her mouth and fought for control.
“What—” The Princess’s voice rose a note. “Roane!” And now her cry was a danger alert. “Feel along the edge of the window if you can. Are you able to raise the curtain?”
Roane tried, but found it difficult. Finally her groping hand did touch what she judged was the edge of the curtain. But that did not yield to her tug. It was rather as if it had been nailed or otherwise sealed in place.
“It is the same on this side! The curtains are fastened down. Now, Roane, can you lean forward, find the latch of the door?”
It seemed perilous to try that. Roane feared that if she loosed her finger-cramping grip of the anchor strap, she might be thrown against the narrow seat facing her. But she stretched and, be-
99 tween more and worse jolts which sent her back and forth, ran her other hand over the inner surface of what she was sure was the door. There was no latch, nothing but a smooth surface. And her fear of a trap added to her sickness until she longed to scream for them to stop. Then came another spell of really violent rocking.
“I—cannot—find— It—is all—smooth!” she gasped.
“Nor—can—I—on—this—side—”
“But why—” Roane began when Ludorica answered her.
“Why? Because we are prisoners. But of whom? Lord Imbert? No—unless he feels he must manage me for some reason he has not told me. But I can guess, Roane, that we are not now bound for Gastonhigh.”
“Where—” Roane was thrown back by a particularly heavy jolt and cried out at a sharp pain in her side.
“What is it?”
“My—but how stupid! I have a light.” The belt she had brought with her, how had she come to forget it? That lapse of memory was another symptom of the fuzzy thinking which had bothered her for days. It was almost as if she did not want to, or could not, remember the familiar things which had been a part of her off-world life. With one hand she worked the beamer out of its loop and turned it on low.
“The doors!”
But she did not need that direction; she had already turned the light on the one through which they had entered. And her exploration by touch had told the truth. There was no sign of a latch. When she moved the beam up to the windows they could see the strips of wood which sealed the curtains down.
“We are prisoners until we arrive and they—whoever they may be—are willing to let us out. But our future hangs on who is behind this-”
“Reddick?”
“Not with Imbert aiding—unless there had come a message purporting to be from the King. Or a substitution of coaches, or— We could offer as many reasons as we have fingers and perhaps still skip the real one. It suffices that we are prisoners, and the reason is less important now than the fact. What other tools or weapons have you that may get us out of here?” As usual she went directly to the most important matter.
“I have this beamer, and a medic kit, and a weapon.” Roane thought of the stunner. “It does not wound, only puts to sleep the one caught in its ray—”
“Such a weapon as your cousin used on me in the cave? But how clever of you to have brought that, Roane! We need only wait until they let us out and then you can put them to sleep and-”
“I shall do what I can,” Roane said slowly. What she did not want to admit was that disturbance which came upon her when she had to make a choice between off-world and Clio matters, and which she now felt. She had used the beamer without really thinking, but to handle the stunner so was a different matter-Never before had she experienced anything like this. Or had she? Conditioning! She had gone through conditioning on numerous occasions—mainly to prepare body and mind to resist some planetary stress hostile to her species. But once that was done she had never been consciously aware of its effects upon her. Now it was as if her mind, when turned in certain directions, worked more slowly, and she shrank from off-world weapons—weapons fashioned to repel aliens from their use.
To prove this point to herself, she held out the beamer to the Princess. “If you will hold this—”
Then Roane laid her hand upon the butt of the stunner, although she did not draw it. And she had to force herself to that move. Her fingers shrank from touching the smooth metal. By the Tongue of Truth, what had happened to her? The cover which kept such a weapon inviolate on another world was operating against her! She was frightened as she had never been before in her Me. Ludorica must have read that emotion in her expression, for she asked quickly:
“What is it? What is the matter?”
“It is nothing,” Roane said quickly. The Princess was entirely too sharp-eyed, and she must not let her’suspect—the more so when she did not know the truth herself. “The rocking—it makes me sick.”
Ludorica grimaced. “I have traveled often by coach, though it is better to ride mounted, but never at such a wild pace. I, too, would like to—”
What she might have said was never uttered, for the gallop began to abate and the swing became less violent. They slowed and came to a halt.
“Be ready,” the Princess ordered. She still held the beamer, training it on the door to shine full in the face of whoever opened it. Roane forced herself to ready the stunner.
But nothing happened. They listened closely and could hear, very muffled by the walls, a faint jangling. Only the door did not open.
“I think we are changing duocoms!” the Princess said. “A fresh team, which means a longer journey. Already we are far past the distance to Gastonhigh.”
She must have been right, for only moments later there was a shudder through the coach and they were on the move again, first easily and then back to the rocking run which shook them so. Roane stowed away both stunner and beamer, not wanting to exhaust the charge in the latter. She was battered, sore, as if she had been beaten and bumped. But mercifully that second pounding did not last long. Once more they slowed to what was hardly more than a walking pace. The coach body tilted at an angle which suggested that they climbed. The Princess spoke again:
“We return to Reveny.”
“How can you tell?”
“This is hill country and the only hills close to Gastonhow are those of the border. Now there are only two possibilities as to who will meet us—some representative of the King, or Reddick!”
“But you think the latter.”
“Imbert must have been tricked. Yes, it will be best for us to expect the worst. I was foolish indeed—”
Either the dark which had held them for so long was lightening a little or else their eyes had adjusted. Roane could now make out the outline of her companion braced beside her on the seat. “Fancher and the Soothspeaker—and how many others, some planted certainly in Imbert’s own household as he suspected. But even he could not have thought how deep their plans ran. Nelis —we can depend upon Nelis. Perhaps we shall have a chance after all. It rests now on where they take us.”
The Princess was quiet and Roane believed she must be weighing one chance against another. She had respect for Ludorica’s courage, endurance, and wits. But even those three in combination could not bring her safely out of some kinds of disaster.
It was time, surely it was time, for Roane to begin to think of herself. She had the stunner, against which on Clio there was no defense, and with it she could break free from any party ready to greet their arrival. Then, back to camp—if camp still existed and Uncle Offlas had not gone off-world.
The toiling of the coach became even more labored, and then its climbing slant leveled and it stopped. Again no one came to the door. There was a wait, during which they became fully aware of all their aches and bruises. When they started on, it was plain that they were now going downhill—luckily at a very slow pace or they would have been flung forward against the other seat. The slope of the road they followed must be steep. It did level out later, so that they rode in more comfort, and the light seeping in around the curtains grew stronger.
“It is full day. And we must cross the border soon. If we pass a gatehouse—” Then Ludorica shook her head. “No, they would not risk such passage unless they have good reason to believe this carriage will not be inspected. Yet this must be the main highway. A coach could not travel a lesser road. They must have a good plan—” She stopped so short that Roane turned to look at her. The furred hood of the Princess’s cloak had fallen back, her head was a little forward, and she was staring at the coach wall directly ahead. Roane followed the direction of that survey.
From some crack there puffed a thread of white vapor. Roane caught the taint of a new odor against the musty closeness of the atmosphere.
“They—they drug us! That is upus smoke!”
Ludorica dropped her hold on the anchor strap, threw herself at the wall, holding a fold of her cape over the inflow of white. But it was little use—there were two more spirals at opposite sides. They could not hope to stop them all. Roane’s own move was not to try to hold out the menace but to force her belt into as small a package as she could.
Squirming about, she got up the heavy folds of her skirt and fastened the belt under it, though her fingers worked slower and slower and her head spun so that she had to fight to finish that job. Her last view of the Princess was of Ludorica sliding down the wall of the coach, away from the vent she had tried to cover, to lie upon the seat. And a moment or two later Roane followed her into the same unconsciousness.
She was warm, too warm. This was like lying under the desert sun of Cappadella. Roane stirred, brought up a hand to shield her face, her eyes, from the bite of the sun. But she did not lie on sand. Fabric of some kind drew and wrinkled under her as she moved. She opened her eyes.
Above her was dark wood, while across her face a bar of sunshine nearly blinded her. She turned her head fretfully. Her mouth was dry; her lips stuck together, and she parted them with difficulty. She wanted water, more than she ever had in her Me, even in the desert country the sun reminded her of.
In the rays of the sun, on a small bench not too far away, stood a flagon. The shape of it promised what she needed so badly. Roane pulled herself up. Movement was a trial of strength, for she needed all the force of her will to make her body obey. She braced herself on stiff arms, her attention all for the flagon which might hold water.
Swinging her feet to the floor was an exhausting effort. She did not even dare to try to stand, but instead fell to her hands and knees and crawled toward that bench. She raised her dead-weight hands and somehow forced the fingers to close upon the sides of the flagon, pulling it toward her, tipping it so that its contents did splash, not only into her gaping mouth, but across her chin and down the front of her dress. The moisture in her mouth brought her farther out of the daze. She sat on the floor, the flagon still between her hands, and looked about.
The room was small with a single window, across which was a screen of bars. The walls were stone. The bed from which she had crawled lacked any ornament and beside it, on another bed, lay Ludorica.
The Princess’s cloak trailed half off her, her face was flushed, and she breathed with a puffing sound, clear to hear now that Roane had time to note it. Even as the off-world girl watched, she stirred, flinging out her arm as if to ward off some danger in a none-too-pleasant dream. And she murmured words Roane could not distinguish.
The small beds and the bench on which the flagon had stood were the only furnishings. There was a door opposite the beds. It had metal banding across it and a lock plate as large as Roane’s palm. She had no doubts that if she managed to reach it she would find it securely fastened. There was no question that they were prisoners. But of whom and where?
Carefully she put the flagon back on the bench and struggled to her feet. Her head swam and she closed her eyes, fighting vertigo. From the bench she lurched in the direction of the window, bringing up against that opening. But at least she kept her feet.
What she saw below was a courtyard with a wall around it, a solid gate fastened by a bar. Beyond that wall showed the green tops of trees, and yet farther away were rises of heights not un- like those about Hitherhow. Hope glimmered in her. If they were in that country she could find her way back’to camp.
“Hot—thirsty—” The murmur from the bed brought Roane around, holding to the wall for support as she moved.
The Princess struggled up. She was pulling at the lacing of her bodice as if to loosen it. The delicate lace of her collar was crumpled and her fine dress smeared with dust and badly creased.
Roane preserved her balance as best she could, made for the bench, and then to the bedside with the flagon. She held it with both hands for the Princess to drink,
Ludorica drank, sucking with the same desperate need Roane had known. And when she signified she had had enough, there was very little left.
Now the Princess surveyed the room. Her eyes fixed upon the window and she wriggled off the bed, wavered to the wall, and inched her way to that opening, catching the bars with her hands. Roane joined her.
“Do you know where we are?”
Ludorica did not look around as she answered.
“As to where we are exactly I cannot say. But that peak”—she loosed her right hand to point—”I know. It is within a half league of Hitherhow. And I think we must be on some minor stead-perhaps Famslaw—so it is Reddick after all.”
“You mean this is his land?”
“Land of close kin. But how—” Then she gave a little gasp.
“Look there!”
At one side of the courtyard very close to the wall was a coach with a brilliant device painted on its door. It had carefully curtained windows, and although there were no harnessed duocorns and no coachman, Roane was certain it was the one which had brought them here.
“The coach—” she began.
“Of coursel But that symbol—on its door—”
Roane could not understand the importance of that but the Princess was continuing: lob
“That is Lord Imbert’s own! No coach with that on it would be stopped at the border. That was how they got us across.”
“Wait—” Roane’s memory stirred. She thought back to the dusky courtyard at Gastonhow, when Lord Imbert had handed them into what was to become a prison. She had seen the door in the lantern light; there had been no design then—or else it had been covered in some manner. “That was not on the door before.” “What does it matter? It served its purpose.” From somewhere over their heads there was a sharp call, which was answered by a horn note. And that fanfare was answered in turn by activity. Men appeared in the courtyard. They wore green or gray and fell into two lines at attention while two of their number ran to draw the gate bar. “How dare he?” demanded Ludorica. “What is it?”
The Princess turned a flushed face to Roane. Her eyes were wide and there was about her such an aura of barely leashed anger that Roane was glad it was not she who had aroused that emotion in her companion.
“That is the royal call! No one but those of the Blood dare use it. It is my call—mine—by birth alone. I am heiress to Reveny— there is no other!”
The gates opened and once more the call sounded close and loud, as the trumpeter himself rode through. Over his tunic he wore a loose-sleeved coat stiff with metallic lacing, one half red, one yellow. Behind him came a second rider wearing a yellow uniform tunic, his hat hiding his face. But the breath came out of the Princess in a furious hiss.
“Reddick! And he rides behind the heir’s own herald! Treachery, black treachery!” Her hands closed and wrung upon the bars as if she would pluck them out of their stone setting and hurl them spear-fashion at her cousin.