KINCAR STOOD AT one of the narrow windows in the Lady Asgar’s chamber. The sky as seen through that slit showed clear rose. It was going to be a fair day, and the wind that swept the snow from the courtyard had died away. ‘
“Is it not a matter of time?” he asked without turning his head.
There was no answer, for there was only one they could make, and so far they did not voice it.
“You cannot do it—not and still wear the Tie.” Lord Dillan put into words what Kincar had known for long hours since he had made that impulsive offer. “I am not sure you could do it in any case. Such an act might cause an unthinkable traumatic shock—“
Now Kincar faced around. “It is a mark only.”
“It is a mark which negates everything in which you believe. And for one bearing the Tie—“
But for the first time in long minutes the Lady Asgar moved. “This devil’s mark must be set upon its victims with some ceremony. And the very ritual of that ceremony impresses its meaning upon the new servant of evil. It is a thing of the emotions, as all worship—whether of light or dark forces—is a matter of emotion. If a thing is done without ceremony, or if it is done in another fashion altogether—“
“You mean?”
“That mark is made with a metal branding rod, is it not? Well, it is in my mind to reproduce its like another way— without ceremony. And while it is done Kincar must think upon its falseness and the reasons for his accepting it. Let him hold the Tie in his two hands and see if it repudiates him thereafter.”
He crossed to her eagerly. “Lady, let us try!” If this was the answer, if he could have the mark without suffering inner conflict-She smiled at him. “I have many forms of magic, Kincar. Let us see if my learning reaches so far. Do you hold the Tie now and think upon what you would do for us and why. If all goes well, we shall transform you into the seeming of an obedient Hand.”
He was already clad in the alien trappings of one of the slave guards, assembled from their loot of the road attack. Now he brought out the smooth stone that was his legacy and trust from Styr’s lord. With it between his palms, he whispered the words of Power, feeling the gentle glow which answered that invocation. And then he closed his eyes.
Concentrating upon the Tie he waited. His flesh tingled under a pressing touch upon his forehead. Three times that pressure. The nothing at all. The Tie was quiescent, nor had it gone dead as he feared.
“Is that it?” asked the Lady Asgar.
“That is it!” Lord Dillan replied.
Kincar opened his eyes and laughed. “No change. The Tie did not change!”
Lord Dillan released pent breath in a sigh. “You had the right of. it, Asgar. He is free to go. Give her the Talisman, Kincar, it will be well guarded—“ But he paused at Kin-car’s shake of the head.
“Not so, Lord. It has not repudiated me. Therefore, it is Still my trust and I cannot resign it elsewhere.”
“If it is found on you, if they so much as suspect you wear it—! The result might be worse than you can imagine. In our Gorth it must be borne secretly, though there it was an object of reverence. What would it be here?”
But Kincar was restoring it to the usual place of concealment beneath his clothing. “All that may be true, Lord. I only know that I cannot render it up to anyone unless it is ready to go. That is the nature of a Tie. Were I to leave it here, I would be drawn back speedily, my mission unaccomplished. It is a part of me until my guardianship is done, which may come only at my death—or earlier if it is so willed.”
“He is right.” The voice of the Lady Asgar held a troubled note. “We have never learned the secret of the Ties, as you know. It is his trust and his fate. And somehow”—she hesitated and then added her last words with a rush^-“it may be his salvation also!”
Together they went through the hall into the courtyard. It was a very early hour, and no one noted their passing. Cim was padded and ready. And Kapal walked the larng slowly back and forth.
“You have the map?” he asked as Kincar took the reins from him and swung up on the mount. “Think again, young lord, and let me take on a slave collar and go with you!”
Kincar shook his head and smiled a little crookedly. “Back to your-wastelands, Kapal, and raise those men for a festing. Be sure I shall take care, and all we have learned •! from that guard is safely here.” His hand went to his forehead, but he did not touch, remembering what was painted there.
The captive had talked, freely, in detail. Lord Dillan, the healer of sick minds, could have thoughts forth when he wanted them. And all that other had recounted was now Kincar’s—the passwords for the frontier posts, customs, manners, minutiae that should take him safely in and out of U-Sippar, city of the lowlands.
Now, wishing no formal farewell, he headed Cim through the outer gate and rode out of the hold into the morning, down the cleft toward the openness of the lowlands. He did not once turn to see the fortress. As he had ridden out of Styr, so he now left this new security to face a future that might be largely chance, but in -a small part of his own ‘ making.
The promise of a fine morning did riot last. But at the same time the wind that pulled at his cloak was surprisingly warm. And that was a warning to the weatherwise hunter. He could now be heading into one of the thaws of mid-cold season, when drenching rains blanketed the country- side, making traps of mire for the unwary—rains that turned in seconds, or so it seemed to unfortunates caught out in them, to icy sleet and freezing cold once more.
That map, supplied partly by Kapal and partly by their prisoner and memorized by Kincar, gave him a mental picture of a broad expanse of open plain. But between him and the first outposts of the plains civilization was a stretch of woodland. He had intended to ride south along the fringe of this to a river, then follow the bank of the stream seaward. But perhaps the forest would provide better shelter if the threatening storm broke before the day’s end.
This Gorth had a different history than his own, even before the coming of the Star ships. That much they had learned in the past two days. In his Gorth the aliens landed upon a planet where the native race was just struggling out of barbaric tribal wanderings, a world without cities, without villages. The holds marked the first settlements of tribes influenced by the new knowledge of the outworld men. So their customs, laws, ways of life still held many elements of the nomads.
But this Gorth had already been well advanced from the primitive when the Star Lords had come to crush a rising civilization, hunt to extinction the native rulers who had built such fortresses as the hold, proscribe the old learning, the old religion. Where the Star men had striven to raise their own people, here they had reversed the process and attempted to reduce them to a dull level of slavery, not even equal to suard and mord or larng—for those were beasts, and their savage independence was reborn in each new generation.
Far from interbreeding with the natives, the outworlders here considered such a linkage of blood unspeakable, something obscene, so that Kapal found it extremely > hard to accept as a fact that the hold men were partly of mixed-birth. But that might work to their advantage in another way, for the ranks of the Dark Ones here were exceedingly thin. A handful of births in a generation, and many deaths by assassination, by duels among themselves, kept the balance uneven.
Between each Dark One and his fellow there was only uneasy truce, and their guardsmen warred for a whim or an insult that had no meaning to the natives. Fear fattened upon night terrors, was not to be sated, even on battlefields or in burnt-out holds. Yet at the hint of an uprising—and in the beginning there had been many as Kapal testified—the mutual distrust and jealousy of the aliens was forgotten, and they combined forces to deal quick death. Of late years the few remaining sparks of freedom were to be found only in the wastes. And now the alien rulers were methodically stamping those out, one by one, as might men bringing boot soles down upon insects scurrying hopeless in the dust.
Cim kept to the ground-covering lope of his best journey pace. This wide stretch of snow-covered grassland was better going than the crooked trails of the hill country, and by mid-afternoon that same rising land was but a faint purplish line to the northeast. Still the warm wind blew steadily, and the snow melted under its touch, allowing yellow grass to show in ragged patches. \
But the mount was not happy. He kept raising his head into the wind, snorting now and again. And twice he increased the length of his stride without any urging from his rider. They stopped for a breather on the crown of a small hillock, and Cim gave voice to a shuddering cry. Shadows moved in the far distance, and Kincar’s hand went to his sword hilt. Not for the first time he regretted that he had had to leave his new bow behind. But those distant larngs had the elongated look of riderless mounts. A band of wild ones. There should be good trapping here come warm season. Loose Cim and a couple of other trained mounts to toll the herd into a pen— Why, they should be able to supply all the inhabitants of the hold with a second larng!
But would they still be in the hold at the coming of warm days? Foreboding swept away his hunter’s enthusiasm. There had been little said during the immediate past of other gates, new Gorths to come, not since they had discovered the ills of this one. He was sure that the Star Lords were determined to do what they could to set matters right here before they essayed another passage through the ribbon rivers of cross time. And that did not mean that they would be peacefully hunting wild larngs.
Kincar twitched ear reins to call Cim to the duty at hand, and the larng began his steady, distance-eating lope once again. His rider was certain that the thick line of the southwest marked the outer fringes of the forest he sought. And he was none too soon in that sighting, for the wind that wrapped around him now was as warm as a heating unit. The patches of snow were very few, and those grew visibly smaller.
Clouds now came rolling up the rose curve of the slcy, driven by that too-balmy wind, clouds heavy and dark with rain, their sides as bulging as the water bags of wasteland travelers.
The first big drops spattered on his shoulders, caught in Cim’s cold-season wool. Kincar pulled the flapping edges of his cloak about him and ducked his head, wishing he could pull it down between his shoulders as did a Lacker lizard. Cim shook his long neck, snorted disgustedly, and then fairly flew, an arrow pointed at the promise of shelter, still distant as it was.
They were well soaked before they made it under the trees. In leaf those would have been a good canopy. But now the rain drove among bare branches with a knife-edge force. And the warmth of the wind was gone; rather there was the bite of sleet. Where the moisture ran across bark, it was freezing into a clear casing of ice.
Somewhere they must find covering. Kincar’s first annoyance became apprehension. The massing clouds had brought night in midafternoon. Blundering ahead might lose them in unmapped territory, but to halt in the icy flood was to invite freezing.
Kincar tried to keep Cim headed southwest, working a serpentine path that, he hoped, would bring them to the river. At any rate they must keep moving. He was on foot now, the reins looped about his wrist as he picked his way between tree trunks. And he must have unconsciously been following the old road for several minutes before he was aware of the faint traces left by men years before. The larger trees stood apart with only saplings of finger-size growth or low brush between. Then a tearing flash of blue-white lightning showed him smoothed blocks tilted up in the soil—a pavement here! ‘
It appeared to run straight, and he turned into it, knowing that he dared no longer wander aimlessly in search of the river. At least a road went somewhere, and if he continued to grope his way along its traces, he would not commit the lost travelers’ folly of moving in circles. A road tying the mountain district to the sea was a logical possibility. If he kept to it, perhaps he could even avoid some of the lowland outposts. And heartened by that, Kincar plowed along, towing the reluctant Cim, showered by the bushes he pushed between.
But very soon it was apparent that to find an ancient road for a guide was not enough. He had to have shelter, warmth, protection against the continuing fury of the storm. And Kincar began to search the gloom for a fallen tree against which he might erect a hunter’s lean-to.
It was Cim who ended that. The larng squealed, gave a jerk of his head to bring Kincar’s arm up at a painful angle before he could loose the reins. Then Cim reared, threatening Kincar with his clawed forefeet as he had been taught to savage a spearman in a fight. Caught off guard Kincar dropped the reins and stumbled back to avoid that lunge.
Free, Cim moved on, only dimly seen in the thickening gloom. He bobbed aside, struck away between two trees, and was gone before Kincar could catch up. Panting, floundering, the Gorthian hurried ahead, striving to keep the larng in sight. And from time to time he caught a glimpse of the lighter bulk of the mount.
Then Cim disappeared entirely. Half sobbing with frustration and rage, Kincar blundered on in the general direction in which he had last seen Cim, only to come up against a barrier with force enough to rebound into the prickly arms of a dagger-thorn bush.
His outstretched hands slid over stone glazed with the ky skim of the rain. A wall—a building—! Then those hands met nothing at all, and he had found an opening. He hurled himself forward and was out of the pelt of the storm, under a roof he could not see. Cim grunted, having found this shelter before him.
Kincar scuffed through a mass of leaves. Small branches cracked under his weight. Throwing aside his water-sodden cloak, he swept that debris together with his hands, before he brought out one of the mountaineer’s clay boxes with its welcome coal.
At first he was too busy with nursing the small fire to life to inspect the structure into which Cim had led him. When the flames took hold, he looked about him for the supply of fuel—and found it woefully limited. Drifts of leaves, age, and a few rotten branches, none of promising size. He had brought in the smallest scraps before he noticed that another door opened into an inner chamber.
There was very little hope of finding any more wood in there, but he had to investigate. So Kincar crowded by Cim and stepped through that other doorway. The firelight did not reach past its threshold. But it was not the dark that made him hesitate—nor was it any visible portal.
When Kincar had passed the alien gates of the Star men, that talisman he had borne had taken fire from their energy, had been to him a burning brand to torment flesh. What he felt now was far different.
There was a gentle warmth—no stabbing heat. But, above and beyond that, a tingling, exhilarating feeling of aliveness, of senses brought to a higher pitch, a new depth of awareness. And with it a belief in the Tightness of all this— >
How long did he pause there, allowing that sensation of well-being to envelope him? Time had no meaning. Forgotten was the fire, the need for wood to feed it, the drum of the storm on the walls and roof that encased him. Kincar moved on into a dark that was at once warm, alive, knowing, wrapped in a welcoming security as a child is wrapped in a suard robe for sleeping by its mother.
There was no dark now. It hung before his physical eyes, but he walked with a truer sight. His fingers were swift and sure at the throat of his ring jerkin, loosening it, the other leather jacket underneath—his shirt. Then the Tie was in his hands. It glowed green-blue—with the sheen of fertile earth after the growing rains, of newly budded foliage.
Before him was an altar, a square table of stone, uncarved, fashioned with the same rugged simplicity as the shrine—a plain table of stone. But Kincar had seen its like before, though never had it been given to him to awaken what lay there, to summon what might be summoned.
A table of stone with three depressions, three small pockets hollowed in its surface. Its edge pressed lightly against his thighs now, bringing him to a stop. He did not have to ‘stoop to use the Tie as it was meant to be used, a key to an unlocking that might occur only once in a man’s life time and that changed him from that moment.
“Lor!” He called the Name clearly as he dropped the stone in the depression farthest to the left. “Loi!” Now that upon the right. “Lys!” The center. And the echo of the Three Names hung in the room, making music of a kind.
Were there now three glowing circles upon the wall? Three heads, three faces calm with a non-human serenity? His mind coached by hoarded lore, the hundreds of legends, might be playing tricks and seeing things that his eyes in truth did not report. i-,or—He of the Three who gave strength to a man’s body, force to his sword arm—a youth of beauty—
Loi—He who brought power, wisdom, strength of mind— a man of middle years with experience deep written on his quiet face—
Lys—She who gave gifts of the heart, who put children into women’s arms and friendship in the heart of one man toward another. Did a feminine face center between the other two?
What Kincar did see he could never describe. He was on his knees now, his arms on the altar encircling the depressions, with the Tie glowing bright and beautiful in the hollow that was Lys’. His head drooped forward so that the mark of shame he wore touched on the sacred stone, yet there was no deadening of the Tie glow.
And he slept. There were many dreams. He was taken on journeys and shown things that he would not recall when waking, and in his dreams he realized that and was sad. But there was a reason for that forgetting, and that he must accept also.
Perhaps it was because this was a deserted shrine, and the force pent there had not been released for untold time, that it poured forth now in a vast wave, engulfing him completely. He was changed, and in his dreams he knew that, shrank from it as earlier he had shrunk from the thought of ‘his mixed blood.
It was morning. Gray stone walls, a flat table under his head marked only by three small holes, in one of which rested a pebble with a chain through it. Kincar got to his feet and strode out without another glance at that dead room, for it was dead now. What had activated it the night before was gone—exhausted.
THAT ODD FEELING of being cut off from the everyday world passed as Kincar stepped into the outer room of the shrine, just as his now dim memories of the night, of drawing upon the stored power of the Three, faded.
A blackened spot on the floor marked the fire he had started and abandoned hours ago. Cim hunched by the wall, his body heat, now that he was sheltered from the direct blasts of wind and wet, keeping him comfortable. He opened his top pair ,of eyes as Kincar crossed to him, moving his thick lips to suggest that a sharing out of supplies was now in order. But, though Kincar crumbled journeycake in his hands for Cim to lick away with every sign of healthy hunger, he himself ate only sparingly, more out of a. sense of duty than from any inner demand.
The storm had deposited an encasing crystal film over all of the outer world. But the sun was up, and it was chill enough to promise no more unseasonable thaws. Such storms as yesterday’s usually meant a space of fair weather to follow. However, the treacherous footing made Kincar decide against riding until they were out of the wood, and he picked a way with care back to the old road, Cim willing enough to follow him now.
It had been indeed a long time since any traveler had used this particular track. The forest was fast reclaiming it each season, uprooting, burrowing under, growing over. Only, those who had laid down these stones had been of the same clan of master builders as the men who had erected the hold, and they had not intended their handiwork to last only a short term of years. So the wild had not yet won.
Kincar guessed by his hunter’s knowledge that he was now heading west, if not angling so much to the south as he had first planned. And since he was well concealed on this forgotten path, he determined to keep to it, believing it should bring him through the forest and into the open country about U-Sippar where he would have to travel with greater care.
It was late afternoon before the trees began to thin, and Cim pushed through the last screen of the forest into the country bordering the sea. In fact, this tongue of woodland had run out very close to the ocean’s edge. But the port the road had once served was now a tumbled ruin of roofless buildings, battered by storms and time alike, with only slimed stone pillar heads to mark the wharves that had once extended into the brown-gray water.
Ruinous as it was, some life still clung to the place. A battered boat had been hauled well up on the shingle, turned bottom up with the scars of recent repairs on its rounded sides. And from a hut of ill-matched stones came a trickle of cooking-pot smoke.
As far as Kincar could see, there was no sign of any guard post, no suggestion that the mercenaries of the Dark Ones were in command here. Some fisherman, he surmised, had thrown up a shelter in the ancient port to net over grounds so long abandoned as to be worth searching once again.
He had allowed Cim free rein, and now the larng continued to jog along the overgrown, soil-drifted road, winding a way among fallen debris. Kincar, running a knowledgeable eye over the buildings, their windows like the arched hollows given skulls for eyes, believed that the place had been despoiled in battle, a battle in which the inhabitants had fought without hope but with a grim determination, from house to house, wall to wall. Even the beating of many seasons’ rains had not erased the stigma of fire. Splintered wood, powdering away, was riven with the blows that had beaten in doors and window coverings.
No wonder this had been abandoned after that day. Not many could have survived the sacking, and if the victor had not chosen to rebuild— Perhaps it had been decided to leave this as a warning and a threat for all time. In his own Gorth, traders had been handy men with a sword. They had to be; most trade roads led across wild lands. And while they did not spout challenges in every man’s teeth, they drew blades in their own defense, forcing many an ambitious hold lord to a quick change of mind when he nursed some idea of an illegal tax because a trade route lay across his land. If this had been a town of traders, well then, the attackers had not had matters all their own way. And, Kincar, having no idea of the rights of the matter, but guessing much, was very pleased to think that true.
Seashore birds, scavengers of the tides, shrieked overhead. But, save for that thread of smoke and the boat, the shore was empty of any other sign of life. He did not know how far he was from U-Sippar, though that city being a port, he need only follow the shore line to find it. But—which way-north or south? And to journey on through the coming night was unwise. A lost traveler could, by rights, demand a lodging at the nearest dwelling in his Gorth—perhaps that custom held here.
Kincar headed Cim for the hut on the shore, the hint of food cooking being irresistible at the moment. A fisherman probably lived on the results of his labors. Kincar visualized some dishes, common enough on the shore no doubt, but luxuries in the mountains—shell fish for example—
Cim’s clawed feet made no sound upon the sand, but possibly Kincar had been under observation for some time through one of the numerous cracks in the walls of the hut. Before he had time to dismount, or even hail the house, a man came out, shutting the wooden slab of door and taking a stand with his back against that portal that suggested he was prepared to defend it with his life.
In his right hand he held a weapon Kincar had seen only once, and then it had been a curiosity displayed by a trader. A straight shaft curved into a barbed point, resembling a giant fishhook—which in a manner it was. The trader had
L A
A i explained its use very graphically to the astonished men of Styr Holding. Hurled by the experienced in the proper manner, that hook could pierce armor and flesh, drag a mounted man down to where he could be stabbed or battered to death. And this fisherman handled the odd weapon as if he knew just what it could do.
Kincar looped Cim’s reins over one arm and held up his empty hands in the old universal gesture of peace. But there was no peace mirrored in the other’s set face, in his sullen eyes. His clothing, in spite of the harsh weather, was hardly better than a collection of stained and grimed rags, leaving the scabbed, cracked skin of arms and legs bare to elbow and knee, and the hollows beneath his cheek bones spelt starvation. If he got his living from the sea, it was not a good one.
“I come in peace,” Kincar said slowly, with the authority he would have used speaking to a fieldman of Styr.
There was no answer, no indication that the other heard him. Only the hook turned slowly in those hands, the sullen eyes remained fixed on larng and rider— not as if they saw only an enemy— but also food!
Kincar sat very still. Perhaps this was no fisherman after all, but an outlaw driven to wild desperation. Such men were truly to be feared, since utter despair pushes a man over the border of sanity and he no longer knows danger to put a rein on his acts. Somehow Kincar was sure that if he drew his sword, if his hand traveled a fraction of an inch toward the hilt, that hook would swing—
His own eagerness— eagerness and weakness— undid the hook man. Kincar kneed Cirn, and the larng read aright that twitch of the hands, that stiffening of the other’s jaw muscles. The hook scraped across his shoulder, caught in his cloak. Then in a flash he had it and with one sharp jerk snaked its line through the other’s hands with force enough to pull him off balance and face down in the sand. There was no sound from the disarmed man. He lay quiet for a moment and then, with more speed than” Kincar would have credited to him, threw his body in a roll to bring him back against the door of the hut once again. He huddled there on his knees, his back braced against the salt-grayed wood, his hands on either side of the frame, plainly presenting his own body as a barrier against Kincar’s entrance.
Kincar freed the hook from his torn cloak and let the ugly thing thud to the ground. It was well out of the reach of its owner, and he had taken a firm dislike to handling it. But he did not draw his sword.
“I come in peace,” he said again firmly, with an emphasis he hoped would make sense to the man at the hut, penetrate his fog of desperation. Again he displayed empty hands. He could ride on, he supposed, find shelter elsewhere. But this other was in the proper frame of mind to dog his trail and perhaps ambush him along the shore. It was too late to keep on riding.
“Murren—?”
That call did riot come from the man, but from inside the hut. And at it the guardian flattened himself still tighter, his head turning swiftly from side to side, in a vain attempt to hunt escape where none existed.
“Murren— ?” The voice was thin, a ghost of the sea birds’ mournful cries. Only some carrying quality in it raised it above the pound of the waves.
“I will do you no harm—“ Kincar spoke again. He had forgotten that he wore the clothes of a guard, bore the false brand. He only knew that he could not ride on— not only because of his own safety, but also because there was need to find what lay behind this stubborn, hopeless defense of the bookman, and who called from behind that closed door.
“Murren— ?” For the third time that cry. And now something more, a thud ringing hollow against the worn wood, as if one within beat for his freedom. “Murren— dead?” The voice soared close to hysteria, and for the first time the man without appeared to hear. He flattened his cheek against the wood and uttered a queer hoarse call of his own, like a beast’s plaint.
“Out— Murren— !” the voice demanded; the beat on the door grew louder. “Murren, let me out!”
But the man held his position stubbornly, hunching his shoulders against the slab as if the disobedience of that order was in itself a source of pain. Kincar flicked the reins, and Cim advanced a step or two. The man shrank, his snarling face upturned, his eyes wild. He must have recognized a larng trained in battle savaging, he expecting those clawed forefeet to rake him down, yet he held to his post.
He could guard the door, but he could not contain the whole hut. There came the sound of splintering wood, and the man leaped to his feet. Too late, for a second figure wavered around the corner of the hut. Its clothing was as *tattered as that of its guard, but there was a difference between them.
The man who had fought to protect the hut was a thick-featured, stocky individual of the fieldman breed. He might be a groom of larngs, a guardsman in some hold, an under officer even. But he was no war chief nor hold heir.
The newcomer was of another class—wholly Gorthian, of noble blood as far as Kincar could see, and no beaten slave. He was plainly at the end of his strength as he reeled along, with one hand on the hut wall to support himself. The youthful face raised to Kincar was delicate of feature, wan and drawn, but his shoulders were squared as if they were accustomed to the weight of a scale shirt. . He came to stand by his man, and they both fronted Kincar, weaponless but in a united defiance. The young man flung back his touseled head to speak.
“You have us, Hand. Call up your men. If you expect us to beg for a quick death, you shall be disappointed. Murren has been left unable to plead—if he would—which he would not. And I am as voiceless in such matters as your knives have left him. Let the Lord Rud have his pleasure with us as he wishes. Not even the Dark Ones can hold off death forever!” What had begun in defiance ended in an overwhelming weariness.
“Believe me—I do not come from Lord Rud, nor do I ride as one of any tail of his.” Kincar strove to put all the sincerity he could muster into that. “I am a traveler, seeking shelter for the night—“
“Who expects a Hand to speak with a straight tongue?” \Weariness weighted each word. “Though how lies profit you, I cannot see. Take us and make an end!”
Murren put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and endeavored to set him back, behind his own bulk. But the other resisted.
“This is the end, Murren. Whistle up your men, Hand of evill”
Kincar dismounted, his empty hands before him. “I am not hunting you:”
At last that got through to the boy. He slumped back against Murren, whose arm went about him in support.
“So you are not hunting us; you have not been sent out of U-Sippar to run us down. But then we shall be your favor gifts for Lord Rud. Collar and take us in, Hand, and you will have his good wishes.”
Kincar made a move he hoped worild allay a measure of their suspicion. He pulled a packet of journeycake and dried meat from Cim’s bags and tossed it across the space between them. It struck against Murren’s foot. The man stared down at it as if it were a bolt from one of the Star Lords’ weapons. The he released his hold upon the boy and scooped it up, bewildered at what he found within the wrappings.
Murren thrust a piece of the cake into the boy’s hand, giving voice to his own avid hunger with a whimpering cry. They crammed the food into their mouths. Kincar was shaken. The captives he had helped to free on the road had been, with the exception of Kapal, so sunk in their misery that they had hardly seemed human. He had tended them as he had tended Vorken when her wing had been singed, as he would have Cim. But these two were no slaves, apathetic, animal-like in their acceptance of degradation and pain.
“Who are you?” The boy had swallowed the cake, was now sucking on a stick of meat, eying Kincar as Kincar might watch Lord Dillan engaged in some Star magic.
“I am Kincar of Styr—“ It was better not to claim s’Rud here. And he must keep always in mind that this Gorth was not his Gorth. That Lord Rud, the tyrant of U-Sippar, was not the Lord Rud who had been his father.
“Styr—“ The other shook his head slowly; the name plainly had no meaning for him.
“In the mountains.” Kincar gave the setting of Styr, which probably did not exist in this Gorth.
The boy, still holding the meat stick as if he had forgotten he had it in hand, came forward to stand directly before Kincar. He studied the half-Gorthian’s face with a searching that must have planted every line of it in his. memory forever. Then with one finger he touched the mark, dropping his hand quickly.
*Who are you?” he asked again, and this time with a lord’s authority.
“You have the truth—I am Kincar of Styr—out of the mountains.”
“You dare much, mountain man!”
“How so?”
“To wear that and yet not wear it— Nay”—he shook his head—“I ask no questions. I wish to know nothing of what brought you here. We may be danger to each other.”
“Who are you?” Kincar countered in his turn.
The other answered with a wry smile. “One who should never have been born. One who will speedily be naught, when Lord Rud finds me, as he must—for we are close to the end of our wayfaring, Murren and I. I have no name, Kincar of Styr, and you had best forget that our paths ever crossed. Unless you choose to win a goodly welcome at U-Sippar by taking me there—“
“In the meantime,” Kincar said with deliberate lightness of tone, “will you grant me shelter this night?”
If the boy was coming to accept him—if not as a friend, at least only a minor menace—Murren was not so disposed. He showed his teeth in a mord’s hunger grin as Kincar came forward. Impulsively then the half-Gorthian did something that might have endangered his life, but it was the best example of good will he could think of. He went back, took up the hook, and skidded it across sand and gravel.
Murren was down in a flash, his fingers on its shaft. But as quickly the boy caught his arm.
“I know not how you are tossing your chance sticks in this game,” he told Kincar, “but I accept that you will not act after the manner of those whose foul mark you wear. Murren—not this one!”
The older man mouthed a protest of yammered sound, and in that instant Kincar saw the real horror that had come upon him—he was tongueless! But the boy pulled him aside from the hut door.
“If you would claim shelter, stranger, it is yours. Silence can be exchanged for silence.”
They had a fire, if they had no food, and in the hut there was a measure of warmth, walls against the night wind. Kincar tethered Cim nearby and gave the larng rations, Murren, ever at his side, turning the hook in his hands, kept only from its use by the influence the boy held over him. When they were all three inside, he stationed himself before the door, his sullen, very watchful eyes daring Kincar to a false move.
But the half-Gorthian was very content to settle down by the driftwood fire, hoping in time to gain some scraps of information from his chance-met companions. If they were outlaws of the coastlands, as the boy’s talk of Lord Rud made it clear that they were, then they knew U-Sippar and could set him on the trail for that city. But to ask questions without raising suspicions was a delicate problem.
He was no student of men’s minds. It needed the skill of Lord Dillan or the Lady Asgar to allay others’ fears and make them talk freely. And there was very little time in which to work. Oddly it was the boy who gave him a good opening.
“You ride to U-Sippar?”
“Aye-“
The boy laughed. “You could not be coming from there. The search for us is up. Watch how you walk—or rather how you ride—man from Styr. Lord Rud’s mords hunger, and they are appeased by those who cannot give good account of their activities.”
“Even those wearing this?” His hand arose to his forehead.
“Now perhaps those wearing that. A secret was broke in U-Sippar.” His lips twisted again in that smile that was no smile. “Though all its parts were smashed, as a man brings down his boot upon a oil-crawler, yet Lord Rud is not certain that is so. He will question all and everything for many days and nights to come. Think three times before you ride to that city without a tight tale, Kincar.”
Had he accented that word “three”? Kincar took a chance. He spread out his hand in the glow of the fire, the red gleam making plain the movements of his fingers as they shaped a certain sign.
The boy said nothing—he might not understand. His features were well schooled, and he sat quietly for what seemed a long period of time. Then his own right hand went up in the proper answer.
“More than ever, it is well that you keep from U-Sippar!”
But already all warnings were too late. Cim did not have Vorken’s superlative sight, but he had keen senses, superior to those of men. Now outside he shrilled a challenge to another male larng. The three jumped to their feet.
“This was an ill-chanced meeting, man from Styr,” said the youth. “You have been caught with us. But you can still save yourself—“ He waited tensely, and Kincar grasped his meaning.
To claim these two as his captives would be his passport to favor. .Instead he drew his dagger from his belt and tossed it to the unarmed boy, who caught it out of the air with a skilled hand.
“We shall see ill-chanced for whom!” Kincar returned.
To KINCAR there was no sense in remaining inside the hut, to be poked out of hiding as a cau-rat would be poked from its nest by a boy. Swordplay needed space. But he had to thrust Murren out of the way at the door, and the boy needs must scuffle to follow him. The tongueless man was still male-ing his protesting yammer as they came out into the twilight.
That fading light was yet bright enough to show that indeed their luck had run out. A ring of mounted men was closing in about the hut, and every other one of them balanced a lance ready to use. On Cim Kincar might have fought his way free. His larng was trained and strong enough to override these scrubby animals. But it never occurred to Kincar at that moment to desert the other two.
Only Murren was alert to such a possibility, proving himself more warrior than fieldman. It was he who sprang onto Cim’s bare back and then leaned down to swing at the boy. His fist connected with the other’s jaw, and the slight young body went limp. Murren got his master across his knees and drove Cim inland, swinging his hook as he charged against the wall of riders. And the very ferocity of his attack disconcerted the enemy as much as it astounded Kincar.
The hook rose and fell, and a stunned man tumbled from his larng, making a break in the wing. Murren used it, Cim leaping through like a hunted suard. Some of the party went after him at the shouted orders of their officer.
But the four or five who remained headed for Kincar, who set his back to the hut wall and waited tensely. Could he bluff it out—say that Murren and the boy had been his prisoners and had escaped? But the facts were too plain.
Murren had been armed and Cim had been there for his use.
Lances against sword. It was an unequal contest at the best. He held his cloak ready to entangle a lance point. Had the encounter only come at night, he might have had a thin chance of escape under cover of the dark. But they were between him and the sea— no hope of swimming out— and there was a long open stretch of flat shore before one came to the nearest ruins of the old town. However, surrender without a fight was not to be thought of.
That was what they wanted. The nearest warrior hailed him.
“Put down your sword, stranger! The peace of the Gods between us—“
Not the peace of the Three— but the peace of the Gods. Tlie false gods. And any peace of their offering meant nothing. Kincar made no answer.
“Ride him down!” came a growl from the nearest lancer.
“Not so!” someone objected. “Lord Rud must have speech with any man found in the company of—“ The other speaker bit off his words as if fearing an indiscretion. “Take him prisoner if you do not wish the Lord to overlook you, lackwit!”
They came at him from three sides. Kincar threw the cloak, shore away one lance point with his sword. Then a larng reared to bring down its raking claws. He flung himself sideways and went down on one knee. Before he could recover, a lance butt was driven against his back with force enough to burst the air from his lungs and carry him down into the sand. They were all over him in an instant, grinding his face into the shingle as they whipped his arms behind him and locked his wrists together. Then they allowed him to lie there for a space, choking and gasping, while they held consultation over him.
For the time being Kincar was occupied with the suddenly difficult job of breathing. And he had not yet given over gasping when he was raised and flung roughly face down over the withers of a sweating larng.
It was a cold ride through the night, for Kincar had no cloak. It seemed that the riders were so well acquainted with the route that they dared travel it in darkness. Or else they were in such a well-founded fear of their overlord that it was worth the risk to carry him a quick report. However, a head-down journey was not an inducement to logical thinking or the forming of future plans. Kincar was only semiconscious at the end of that ride. When he was tumbled from the larng, he was as limp as a pair of saddlebags.
Dull pain reached through the general fog as a boot was planted in his ribs to turn him over. As he lay sprawled on his back, a light flashed blindingly into his eyes.
“—is he?”
“—bears the mark—“
“Whose man?”
Fragments of questions that had very little meaning. And then one order to bring action: “Put him in the cells and then report. If he was with the young one, Lord Rud must know it.”
They did not try to get him to his feet. Fingers were laced in his armpits, and he was dragged across a stone pavement, bumped downstairs. The fetid smell of damp underground closed about him along with a deeper darkness. Then he was shoved backwards so that he rolled down a few more steps. There was the slam of a door, and light was totally gone.
He had come to rest in an awkward position, legs higher than his head, and now he tried to wriggle backwards on a level surface until his feet slipped from the stairs. He was bruised, still groggy from the ride, numb with cold. But he had suffered no real hurt, and he was aroused enough to think rationally once more.
They had mentioned Lord Rud, so it followed that he must now be in some fortress of U-Sippar. And he had entered under the worst possible disadvantage—captured while com-panying with fugitives hunted by the district’s ruler. They had noted his brand but had not marked its falsity, so he still had a faint chance to pass himself off as a man following some lord living at a distance. It was a very slender hope, but it was all he had left, and now Kincar made himself go over his story, testing its weakest points.
When that story had first been concocted back in the hold, they had never expected him to face one of the Dark Ones in person. His general instructions had been to enter U-Sippar as an unattached Hand seeking employment, but with enough loot in his pouch to keep him for a space before he had to take service. He was to keep away from the fortress, from the guards on duty there. And here he was in the very heart of the place to be most shunned.
Supposing that Lord Rud—this Lord Rud—was gifted as Lord Dillan with the power of acting upon men’s minds. Or if he was not so himself, he could summon those who were. For the first time a new idea broke. If in this Gorth th&re was a Lord Rud, might there not also be a Lord Dillan? What would it be like to confront a Lord Dillan who was different? That thought spun slowly through Kin-car’s mind.
Now, he told himself, he had only to remember that these Star Lords were not those he knew, that he must not be misled by resemblance. And he had as yet to see the proof of Lord Dillan’s statement that men could have their counterparts in other worlds.
Time in the dark was not a matter of minutes and hours. It was a thing of cold, and growing hunger, and cramp in his pinioned arms, aches in his bruised body. He squirmed across the floor until his shoulders met a wall, and then, with infinite expenditure of energy, he was able to rise to his feet. Now by movement he could fight the cold, be in better shape to meet the ordeal that no doubt awaited him.
Using the wall as a guide he encircled the chamber. It was bare of any form of furnishing save in one corner where he padded over a heap of musty straw, perhaps the bedding of those unfortunates who had preceded him in its occupancy. He came to the stairs again. And for want of a better seat huddled there until the chill from the stone drove him up again.
How many times he circled, rested, and then circled again, Kincar did not try to count. But he was seated when he felt a vibration in the stone heralding the coming of his jailors. He was up and facing the door when that portal crashed back against the wall, and light flared at him from above, blinding him once more.
“Up on your feet, are you, dragtail?” demanded a voice with that sort of hearty humor that is more sinister than a curse. “Have him forth, you stumble feet, and let his betters see if he’s ripe for the skinning—!”
Figures plunged out of the source of the light, hands fastened on him, shoulder and elbow, and he was propelled up the stairs and out into a stone-walled corridor. More stairs, then the light of a fair day, as they issued into a courtyard.
The men who hustled him along were guardsmen of the common sort, with flat, brutal faces, the spark of intelligence low behind their uncaring eyes. Their officer was a huge man. Kincar almost believed him of off-world breed until he saw the Gorthian features and the devil mark between his eyes. He grinned, showing tooth gaps, leaning over Kincar until his foul breath was thick in the younger man’s nostrils. One big hand dug deep in Kincar’s hair, pulling his head back at a painful angle.
“The mark right enough,” remarked the giant. “But you’ll find that will not save you here, youngling.”
“Do we pin him, Sood?” inquired one of the guards.
The giant loosed his grasp on Kincar and slapped his open palm across the questioner’s face, rocking him so that he stumbled against the prisoner.
“Tighten your lip, dirt! He’s pinned when Sood says pin and not before. But he’ll cry for pinning before we get the irons to him, so he will! Nay, larng scrapings, he goes to the hall; you get him there! You know who is not ever pleased to be kept waiting!”
The man who had been slapped spat red. But he made no protest at his rough disciplining, not even the inarticulate one of a glare at Sood’s back as the giant marched ahead. Kincar was pushed on across the courtyard and under a second archway into the living quarters that were officers’ territory.
They shuffled under an arch of rough stone into another world. Here was no stone, no native cloth arras as were stretched across the walls of Styr’s Hold to keep out cold-season drafts. On either hand the walls were smooth with the sheen of a sword blade. They might have been coated with metal. And over their pale gray surfaces there was a constant dance and play of rainbow color, which appeared, until one focused steadily upon it, to form pictures in an endless and ever changing series of ghostly scenes.
It was totally unlike anything Kincar had ever seen or heard described, and he guessed it was born of the off-world magic of the Star Lords. But he kept his surprise under control. He must appear to be familiar with such if he would carry out his pose as the ex-retainer of another lord in search of a new master.
A curtain of shimmering stuff fronted them. Without any touch from his guards, it parted, drew back against each wall to allow them through. Now they had come into a wide room. Sun flooded it from the roof, filtering through an intricate patterned crystal, which threw more rainbows on the floor. Evenly spaced about were a number of doors, each veiled with the strange curtains, while in the center was a square pit, some benches beside it. On those nearest Kincar, two Gorthians sat stiffly. There was no ease in their manner. They might have been fieldman bidden to eat at a hold lord’s table because of some whim of that lord, wary at \#hat would chance should that whim change. They did not turn their heads to look as Sood and the others tramped in but kept their attention upon the man at the other end of the pit, as a novice swordsman watched a master-of-blades during a lesson.
Here Sood, too, was dwarfed for all his giant’s brawn, made to dwindle in an odd fashion. He was no longer a rois.tering bully to be feared, but a servant attendant on a lord of power. He advanced no further than within a foot or two of the occupied benches and stood waiting to be noticed.
The lord of this fortress, he who held in a child’s discomfort fighting men and who dwarfed Sood, lounged at ease on a couch removed from the Gorthians by the width of the pit. He was lying full length on the padded surface, his head supported by his crossed arms as he watched something below. And there was no mistaking his birthright. This man was of the Star breed.
Hitherto Kincar had seen the off-worlders only in their silver battle dress, simple clothing designed for hard usage. This man wore a robe of some light fabric under which every movement of his muscles was plainly visible. He was as massive as Lord Dillan, but the clean, fine lines of Dillan’s body were here blurred as if someone had tried to copy him from the same mold but with no master touch. There was a curve to a jaw line that should be square and sharp, a rounded softness of lip and chin. His hair was the most alien—a dull dark red, thick and straight.
Kincar had time for that appraisal because the Dark Lord was intent upon the pit. Then there came a thin squeaking from that opening, and he laughed, levering up his head to see the better.
“Well done!” He might have been cheering on some warrior duelist. “I win again, Calpar!”
There was a duet of agreement from the two Gorthians. But they were still watching their lord rather than the pit. Now he looked up—to sight Sood’s party.
“Ah, Sood—“ His voice was rich, almost caressing, only Kincar felt a sensation of cold as if he had walked bare-bodied into an ice storm. Here was something he had never met before. He had known awe with Lord Dillan, and to a greater degree with the Lady Asgar. With Lord Bardon he had felt the admiration of a warrior in the train of a noted chief. But none had given him that daunting of spirit, that feeling of being less than a larng in their sight. From this man he did not even strike the interest he would give to Vorken— he was less than a well-trained beast.
But that realization was consumed by a growing heat within him, a heat that flamed outward, as the heat of the Tie had eaten inward when it had been so cruelly activated by the Star Lords’ magic. Perhaps the men of this Gorth had been beaten long ago into accepting that valuation of themselves—but he had not. Kincar fronted the Dark Lord straightly, striving to keep under control both his aversion and his defiance.
“What have we here, Sood—“ The purr lapped across the pit.
“The one who was taken at the hideout of those, Lord.”
“The one who aided in their escape, aye. Bring forward this hero—“
Kincar was shoved ahead, to the very lip of the pit. But those who pushed him remained a little to the rear, sheltering behind him from their ruler’s attention.
“And who may you be?” The Lord addressed Kincar directly.
“I am from the mountains, Lord—Kincar of Styr who was lately Hand to Lord Seemon—“ He had chosen the lord who had ruled the captured guard, and hoped it would prove a good choice.
“And why, my good Hand, did you leave the service of Lord Seemon?”
“There was a sword quarrel set upon me, Lord. I killed my man, but he had brothers who took blade oath to meet me one by one—“
Lord Rud laughed. “You are an unlucky man, are you not, Kincar of Styr? First you kill a man with brothers to be active in his favor and then you make a long journey only to meddle in what concerns you not, so you come to an ill fate in U-Sippar. Tell me, Kincar of Styr, why did you befriend those dirt-eaters you met upon the shore?”
“Lord, I knew nothing of them, save that they said they were flying also from a blood feud—“
“They said? Ah, but I think that one of them was incapable of saying much, or had he miraculously grown once more a certain important piece of his body which had been stricken from him?”
“The young man said it, Lord,” Kincar corrected himself.
He knew very well that Lord Rud was playing a game with himi that sooner or later the alien would give an order to finish him.
“So they were flying from blood vengeance were they? Apt enough. But they will discover that one does not fly from some kinds of vengeance. They are within my hand, even as these—“
He made a gesture at the pit, and for the first time Kincar looked down into it. What he saw was a Gorthian scene in miniature—a thread of stream, trees no higher than his tallest finger, clearings he could cover with his palm. Yet water ran, trees and grass grew, and other things moved. A suard the size of a flying beetle grazed on open land. And on a trampled bit of ground lay—
Kincar swallowed. Great was the Star magic—but this! He could not believe what his eyes reported. The inner men of the mountains were manikins, but what were these tiny things? Manlike in form, manlike in their deaths, but surely they were not, had never been living things! Then he knew that his astonishment had betrayed him, for Lord Rud was watching him closely.
“One could almost believe,” his silky words came deliberately, “that you had never seen the ‘little ones’ before, Kincar of Styr. Yet it is in my own knowledge that Lord Seemon has a fine company of such and that pit wars are the leading amusement in his hold. How odd that one of ‘his men should be so ignorant of them! Perhaps we should ask you again, and with greater persuasion, just who you are and what you do in U-Sippar, Kincar of Styr. Not only do you keep very ill company for a loyal Hand, but also your past seems hazy, and that will not do at all. Not at all—“
“Lord, not all the men who serve one of your greatness are admitted to the inner chambers.” Kincar seized upon the only argument that might save him. “I was no chieftain, nor a captain, but a young warrior. What amused my betters was none of my affair.”
“Your wits are quick enough, that is certain.” Lord Rud yawned. “Quick-witted natives are good sport. Sood, we have a puzzle here—“
The giant quivered in his eagerness, as a mord quivers before being signaled to the hunt. “Aye, Lord, shall we have him forth to the pins?”
“Sood, Sood!” The other laughed. “Always impatient. Break a man and then expect answers from the bloody bits. No, Sood, here are quick wits and perhaps something else.” Lord Rud paused. His eyes—hard, dark, and yet with a fire in their depths—raked over Kincar.. “I wonder, now, I wonder. Could Seemon have made a mistake in the dark?” He chuckled softly, as if nourishing some amusing ^ idea. “Not the pins, Sood—at least not yet. It is a wearying business, this living ever penned within walls. I need amusement. Remove this Kincar but keep him in good condition, excellent condition, Sood. I want him whole of body and mind when I summon him again. Meanwhile, Kincar of Styr, you had best examine your conscience, reckon up the number of times you have twisted the truth to your own profit, for we shall have another time for questions and then I shall have straight answers! Oh, aye, I shall have them, Kincar of Styr, for am I not a god?”
He had a breathing space, if a limited one. Kincar clung to that. Every hour so won was a small victory for him. He presented a problem to Lord Rud, and as long as he continued to interest the bored ruler, so long might he hope for a slender measure of safety.
But Kincar breathed easier when he was out of the rainbow-walled inner chambers into the open day. Sood did not return him to the foul underground cell where he had been pent on his arrival. Rather he was marched up a flight of stairs into a tower room, which, bare as it was, had a crude bed, a table, and a bench, and might have been the quarters of a very junior officer. They loosened his wrist bonds and slapped coarse provisions on the table before they left him. Rubbing his wrists and wincing at the pain of returning circulation in his blue, swollen hands, Kincar crossed to the window to look out upon U-Sippar.
THOUGH HE WAS viewing it from an unusual angle, looking down upon those roofs and towers instead of up, still U-Sippar presented the unreal aspect of some city visited in dreams, where the most commonplace is linked with the bizarre. Here were ancient stone buildings, the work of the native Gorthians who had reached for the stars with their towers and sharply slanted roof-trees before the stars came to them with such devastating results. And from that honest stone sprang other structures, excrescences frankly alien to this earth. There were not many of these, only enough to distort the general outline of U-Sippar into something faintly corrupt and debased.
The fortress was part of it, a monstrous hybrid crouched upon an artificial rise, so that its shadow moved menacingly across the packed houses below with the climbing and setting of the sun. Half of it was of the stone, the rest of it new. And that portion flashed metallic, cold, smooth, like a sword pointed to sky.
Kincar could count four—no—five similar structures in U-Sippar. They could not all be dwelling places of Lord Rud. But surely each housed some measure of Star magic. The one farthest from him was planted so that sea waves washed about its foot. Though there were ships in the harbor, anchored there for the cold season when no trained mariner attempted passage into the freakish winds, none were tied up near the tower, and what purpose it might serve was beyond Kincar’s powers of speculation.
Having seen U-Sippar, or as much of that city as could be viewed through a window slit, he set about the more urgent business of seeking a way out, not only of that room, but of the fortress itself. Unless he could shrink to’less than Vorken’s size—and possess her wings into the bargain—he could not attempt that window. And a single testing told him that the door was secured from the outside. An examination of the bed made it “plain that bare hands could not rip loose any part of it for an improvised weapon, and the same Was true of table and bench. He had been stripped by his ‘captors of his outer ring-sewn jerkin and his belt, so even the empty sheaths of his weapons were gone. And since he was no hero of the song-smith’s creation, he could not blast his way out with a well-tried spell.
But at least he could eat. And coming back to the table Kincar did just that. The fare was coarse, rations such as were given to the rank and file of guardsmen. But it was not prison fare, and he finished it to the last crumb of soggy milt-bread, the last swallow of sour frangal juice. Then he threw himself on the bed and tried to prove his right to Lord Rud’s charge of quick wits.
Lord Rud! Was this the man his father had been in that alternate Gorth? Strange— His hands folded over the comforting bulge of the Tie. Had a change in history also wrought a change in a man’s nature, the way Lord Dillan insisted that it would? This Lord Rud could not be the man he had heard extolled in the hold. This ruler was corruption, evil power, fear and death; the odor of his character was an evil smell throughout his stronghold.
Kincar wondered what would happen if the truth were made plain to this Dark One. And in the same instant he knew that no act, no betrayal, would be more fatal. No matter what chanced with Kincar of Styr—as long as he could, he must lock lips and mind alike against telling what he knew.
Had Murren and the boy escaped? Cim was better than any of the larngs he had seen in the troop that had captured him. And Murren’s desperate dash might just have broken through the circle with enough force to give them the necessary start, since Cim had had a period of rest and was fairly fresh, and the troop mounts were weary at the end of a long day. That escape had been wholly Murren’s improvisation—the boy would not have deserted another to the Hands of Lord Rud, though, because he bore the mark he did, the fugitives might have believed Kincar was in no great danger. What was the crime held against those two? From the bits he could piece together, it was enough to stir up all U-Sippar. He wished that they could have been picked up earlier by men from the hold.
So, in place of planning, his thoughts drifted from place to place, until, at last, the needs of his body could no longer be denied and he slept, while outside the sky over U-Sippar darkened into night and it seemed that Kincar of Styr was forgotten by his guards.
He was aroused by a cry so familiar that he lay blinking at the roof overhead, hazy as to where he was, certain for the space of an instant or two that he lay on his pallet within Styr’s walls. That shriek, ear-torturing, came from the hatchery on the watchtower, where Vorken was doubtless exerting her authority over some rebel. Vorken was ruler of the Styr hatchery; let any other mord challenge her at its peril.
Vorken! Kincar sat up as he remembered. Vorken was gone and Styr, too, was farther away than if the whole of Gorth’s sea lay between him and its towers! There was a square patch of sun on the floor of his prison. It must be hours late into the morning. And he had been visited during sleep, for a jug and a plate, both filled, stood on the table. Apparently, if Lord Rud had not yet made up his mind concerning Kincar’s disposal, his men were still under orders to treat their captive well.
Kincar ate as a duty. There was no reason to believe that such coddling of a prisoner would continue, and he’d best take rations while they were still coming. It was again fare of the most common sort, but it was filling and designed to satisfy men who were ready for a spear-festing.
While he munched away, he twice more heard the challenge call of a mord. But his window gave him no sight of any. The hatchery might be at the crown of the same tower in which he was locked, but mords always sought the heights when they took wing. That cry set him to a restless pacing, and, as time passed with a bar of sun creeping from crack to crack across the rough slabs of the floor, his impatience grew.
There was no doubt at all the Lord Rud planned some unpleasantness for him. And, knowing so little of U-Sippar, of this fortress, there was very little he could do on his own behalf. He would be as a child in Sood’s paws, and the giant would be very pleased for a chance to subdue him physically. As to matching wits—who could match wits with the Star men?
The shaft of sun crawled on, disappeared. Kincar was by the window again, studying his knife-edge view of the city, when the outer bar of the door was drawn. He faced Sood and the two who had brought him there the previous day.
“Have him out!” Sood bade his underlings with the loftiness of a Star Lord, or his own interpretation of such. And he stood aside sucking his teeth while the other two roughly rebound Kincar’s wrists and gave him a shove doorwards as a reminder to move.
When he would have passed Sood, the giant put out a hand and held him. Fingers bit into flesh and muscle as Sood pawed at him, as a man might examine a larng for sale. And from that grip there was no wrenching away.
“There’s good meat on him,” Sood remarked. “The sky devils will not pick bare bones after all.”
His two followers laughed nervously, as if it were very necessary to keep their officer in a good humor. But neither of them ventured any comment upon Sood’s observation.
They went down the stairs and crossed the court. As they went, the majority of the men in sight fell in behind. And they did not re-enter the inner section of the fortress but trudged on through another gate and down a road, past three encircling walls with watchtowers and ramparts.
U-Sippar’s fortress had not been built in the center of the town but straddled the narrow neck of land that extended into the sea bay from the main continent. Apparently those who had first planned the city’s defenses had had nothing to fear from the ocean, but wanted a sturdy barrier between their homes and the interior. Now the party went inland, from the fringes of the town to a wide stretch of open field. There was snow here, but the drifts had been leveled by the wind. And it was open for the maneuvering of mounted troops or for the, staging of a spectacle. Kincar suspected that it was to be the latter use now. There was a gathering of Gorthians about the edges of that expanse, with mounted guards to keep a large center portion free.
As the party with the prisoner approached from the road, there was another arrival. Out from the upper parts of the fortress shot a flying thing. It had no wings, it was not living, but some magic kept it aloft, hovering more than a man’s height—a Star Lord’s height—overhead. It circled, and as it passed over the natives, they fell face down on the ground. Then it swept up to confront Kincar and his guards. Lord Rud sat in one of the seats upon it and in the other—
Kincar had been warned—but until that moment he had not truly believedf That was Lord Dillan! But not, he told himself fiercely, not the Lord Dillan of the hold. This world’s Lord Dillan. If he had not been prepared, he would have betrayed himself in that moment. Lord Rud was smiling down at him, and that smile, gay, charming, was colder than the air in which their breath smoked blue.
“A fit object lesson, brother,” Lord Rud said to his companion.
But Lord Dillan leaned forward in his seat to study Kin-car with a searching intensity. He spoke, his deep voice a contrast to Lord Rud’s. “He is no Hand.” “He bears their mark—“
“Then it is no proper mark. You!” Lord Dillan spoke to Sood, at the same time tossing to the giant a small box he had taken from his belt pouch. “Use that upon a piece of cloth and see if you can rub away that mark.”
Sood ripped loose an end of Kincar’s shirt and, dipping it into the paste in the box, scrubbed away with vicious jabs at the mark on the prisoner’s forehead. The brand sign, which had resisted the rain and withstood all inadvertent touching since the Lady Asgar had set it on him, yielded. Sood’s astonishment became triumph, and Lord Dillan—this Lord Dillan—nodded in satisfaction.
“As I told you, brother, this is no man of ours. Best keep him for questioning. If someone has dared to plant the mark, they will dare other things. And the fault which you hold against him is relatively minor. What if he was found in the company of escaping slaves—do not all outlaws tend to herd together, until we gather them up? Or was there something about these particular slaves?”
He was eying his fellow lord sharply. And there was a dull flush on Lord Rud’s face. He flung up his head.
“You rule in Yarth, brother, I in U-Sippar. Nor did I ask you hither; this visit was of your own planning. In another man’s lordship one does not ask questions concerning his dealing of justice. This is an outlaw, come into our land to seek out knowledge to aid that rabble which others seem unable to beat out of their mountain holes. I will deal with him so that there will be few willing to follow him. Sood, make ready!”
Under his control the flier bounded higher into the air, so that Lord Dillan must clutch at his seat to keep erect, and then swerved to one side to hover.
However, Kincar had no attention to spare for the actions of Lord Rud and his brother, for the guards were on him, stripping away his clothing. His jerkin was slashed so that it could be drawn off without unpinioning his arms, and the shirt ripped in shreds to follow. But the man who tore at that paused, his eyes round and questioning, and he drew back hastily.
Sood, too, had sighted the talisman on Kincar’s breast. The big man stood, his mouth working curiously, as if he must suddenly have a double supply of air for laboring lungs, and a dull stain crept up his thick throat to darken his weathered cheeks. These men wore a brand that divorced them utterly from the Tie, but the awe of that talisman- held them as much, if not more, than it would a true believer. Perhaps, Kincar had a flash of insight then, perhaps it was because they had ritually denied all that the Tie represented that it now possessed the greater power over them.
The giant was tough-fibered, far more so than the man who had pulled off the last of Kincar’s shirt, for that guard’s retreat turned into panic flight. He threw the rag he was holding from him as he ran blindly down the field.
His comrade was not quite so moved, though he took his hands from the prisoner—Kincar might have been a fire coal—and shuffled back, his terrified eyes watching the captive as if he expected the latter to assume some monstrous guise. And he cried out as Sood’s hand came up slowly, his fingers reaching to pluck away that round stone.
Sood had his brand of courage. He had to have an extra measure of self-confidence to hold his leadership among the bullies of U-Sippar’s fortress. It was not by size and weight of arm alone that he had won his under-officership in Lord Rud’s service. Now he forced himself to a task not one Gor-thian in a hundred—in a thousand—would have had the will power, the hardened fiber, to attempt. Wearing that mark, proclaiming himself so to be what he was, yet he was prepared to set hand upon the Tie. From a barracks bully he was growing to a far more dangerous man.
“By Lor, by Loi, by Lys,” Kincar said, “think what you do, Sood.”
The gentle warmth that had answered his invocation of the Names told him that the stone was alive. What it might do to a branded one he could not g^iess, for to his knowledge such a happening had never occurred in the Gorth of his birth.
There were oily drops gathering along the edge of Sood’s helm; his mouth was twisted into a skull’s grin of tortured resolve. His fingers came closer. About the two there was a great silence. The wind had died; there was not even the plop of a larng’s foot in the snow. The men of U-Sippar were frozen by something other than the cold of the season.
Sood made his last effort. He clutched at the stone, tugging at it so Kincar was dragged forward, the chain cutting into his neck. But that chain did not break, and the stone fell back against Kincar’s skin, a blot of searing fire, to cool instantly.
Rud’s under-officer stood still, his hand outstretched, the fingers bent as if they still held the Tie. For a second longer than normal time he stood so; then, holding that hand before him, he began to roar with pain and the terror of a wounded beast, for the fingers were shriveled, blackened—it was no longer a human hand. Being Sood, he was moved to kill as he suffered. His left hand brought out a knife clumsily; he stabbed blindly with tears of pain blurring his sight.
The sting of a slash crossed Kincar’s shoulder; then the point of the blade caught on the Tie. Sood screamed this time, a high, thin sound, too high and thin to issue naturally from that thick throat. The knife fell from a hand that could no longer hold it, and the giant swayed back and forth on his feet, shaking his head, his hands before him—the one shriveled and black, the other red as if scalded.
Wounded he might be, but the blind hatred of the thing— of the man who wore the thing—that had blasted him, possessed all his senses. Kincar, his hands bound so that he could move only stiffly, was forced into a weird circling dance as the giant lurched after him to accomplish by weight alone what he had not been able to do with steel. Sood might lack the use of his hands, but to his slighter opponent he was still formidable.
The fate of the giant must have bewildered the rest of the guard. None of them moved to interfere with the two on the field. Kincar was so intent upon keeping away from the other that he heard a whistle only as a distant sound without meaning.
But the answer to that whistle had a great deal of meaning for both circling men. Lord Rud, baffled by the happenings of the past moments, but in no mind to lose control, had chosen ruthlessly to sacrifice the crippled Sood in company with this captive who knew too much. Where it had been planned that one naked prisoner would be exposed to certain death, two men moved. But the death was already in the air, and it would strike. Perhaps it would be all to the good. Sood was something of a legend in U-Sippar and should he be struck by a supernatural vengeance and the tale of it spread, it would put the countryside aflame. Let him die quickly, by a familiar means, and all that went before could be forgotten.
Kincar had not understood his fate at the whistle, but seconds later he knew it well. There was no mistaking the cry of a mord sighting meat—alive and moving meat—but yet meat for a hungry belly. And he guessed the type of death to which he had been condemned. Had his arms been free, had he a sword in his hands, he could have delayed that death—for a short space. But he could not have kept it away long. Against one well-trained mord an armed man, providing he was mounted and had a cloak, had a bare chance. Against a full hatch of them, that mounted warrior was lost, picked to the bones before blood had time enough to flow to the ground.
Sood was deaf, blind, unheeding of everything but Kincar. All the pain and shock of his hurts had crystallized into the urge to kill. He moved ponderously with deadly purpose. But, because he tried to use his hands time and time again, Kincar managed to elude his hold. The giant cried aloud, a wordless noise that was half plaint from pain, half demented rage at his inability to come to grips with his prey.
Perhaps it was that sound that drew the mords to him first. By rights the scent of the blood welling from the cut on Kin-car’s shoulder should have brought them down upon the younger man. However, the rushing wings centered on Sood, and they struck.
The giant’s cry swelled into a roar once more as, still only half aware of his peril, he beat at the swarming flesh-eaters. First he tried only to brush them aside so that he might attack Kincar. Then some spark of self-preservation awoke, and he flailed his arms vainly, his face already a gory mask.
Kincar, backing away from that horror, caught his boot heel on a turf and went down. His fall attracted several of the wheeling mords, and they swooped upon him. Claws bit into his upper arm, a beak stabbed at his eyes, and he could not restrain the scream torn out by his repulsion and fear.
But that beak did not strike him; the claws were sharp but they did not open gashes. There was the hiss of an aroused and angry mord, and the one on his body struck upward with open bill at another come to dispute her perch.
“Vorken!”
She chirruped in answer to her name. Vorken who had sought her kind in the mating season had found them—in the fortress hatchery of U-Sippar! And, knowing Vorken, Kincar could also believe that during her stay there she had with the greatest possible speed assumed rulership of the perches. Now it was only necessary for Cim to come trotting onto the field to make this truly an adventure of a song-smith’s devising.
Only it was not Cim who came to take him away from the murderous, horrible heap of twisting, fighting mords. It was the flier of the Dark Lords. And the false Lord Dillan with his own hands dragged Kincar onto its platform before it flew back to the fortress.
THERE WAS THE crackle of speech in the alien tongue of the Star Lords. Kincar, seemingly forgotten for the moment, pulled himself up against a pillar, while Vorken chuckled throatily and waddled in a half circle about his feet, very proud of herself.
The wrangle continued. Lord Rud sat on a bench spitting out angry answers to a stream of questions Lord Dillan shot at him as he paced up and down that end of the hall, sometimes bringing his hands together with a sharp clap to emphasize a point. At first Kincar was so bemused by the wonder of his own escape from a particularly grisly death that he did not speculate as to why he had been lifted from the field. Now, from the gestures, from the sullen attitude of Lord Rud, the aroused state of this Lord Dillan, he guessed that his rescue had been made against Rud’s will.
And this was borne out as the false Lord Dillan came striding away from his brother to stand before Kincar, looking him up and down.
“You are a priest of demons, fellow?”
Kincar shook his head. “I have not followed the Threefold Way,” he replied as he would in his own Gorth.
That face—he knew every line of it, had believed that he could recognize every expression its muscles could shapel Yet to look upon it and know that the man who wore it was not the one to whom he had given his allegiance was a mind-wrenching thing, much harder than he had imagined such a meeting could be.
“So—we have not yet stamped out that foolishness!” Lord Dillan whirled and snouted a stream of angry words at Lord Rud. The other did not register only sullen denial this time. He walked toward them alertly.
“This one is from the mountains,” he said in the Gorthian speech. “Look closely, Dillan. Has he the appearance of a lowlander? Without a doubt a creeper from some one of those outlaw pockets, trying to spy upon his betters. He should have been left as mord food—“
“Mord food, you fool!” Lord Dillan’s exasperation was so open that Kincar looked to see him strike the other. “After what he did to Sood in the face of all this city? We have gone to great trouble to rout out this pestilent worship. Do you not see that the tale of what happened out there is going to spread and grow with the telling? Within days we shall have secret altars sprouting up again, spells being mouthed against us, all the other things to tie rebels together! You cannot erase from a thousand minds the manner of Sood’s death. No, this one must be handled by the council. We must have out of him every scrap of knowledge, and then he must be reduced to groveling slavery before the eyes of his own kind. Abject life, not a martyr’s death—can’t you see the sense of that? Or, Rud, is it—“ His speech slipped once more into the off-world language, and brother glared blackly at brother.
“We shall take him ourselves,” Dillan stated. “We want no more natives seeing what was not meant for their eyes, hearing things certainly not intended for their ears. Send a message that we are coming by flier—“
Lord Rud’s jaw jutted forward. “You are mighty free with your orders in another man’s hold, Dillan. Suppose I do not choose to leave U-Sippar at this moment. As you pointed out, that scene on the field will doubtless provide fuel for rebellion. And my place is here to stamp such fires to ashes before they can spread.”
“Well enough. Remain and put out your fires, though if U-Sippar was under proper control, I should think there was no need for such careful wardenship.” Lord Dillan smiled slyly. “I shall take the prisoner in for questioning—“
It was very plain that that was not to Lord Rud’s taste either.
“He is my prisoner, taken by my men.”
“True enough. But you did not assess his importance until it was driven home to you. And your reluctance now to turn him over to the authorities argues that you may have some hidden reason to wish him quickly dead.” Lord Dillan fell to studying Kincar once more. “What is this great secret, fellow, for which your lips must be permanently sealed? I wonder—“ His hand closed about Kincar’s upper arm, bringing the younger man up to stand under a clear shaft of light. He eyed him with an intensity that had something deadly and malignant in it.
“The Great Law, Rud,” Dillan spoke very softly. “I wonder how many times it has been broken and by whom among us. The Great Law— Usually the fruits of its breaking can be early detected. But perhaps now and again such cannot. Who are you, fellow?”
“Kincar of Styr—“
“Kincar of Styr,” the other repeated. “Now that can mean anything at all. What is Styr, and where does it lie? Should it not rather be Kincar s’Rud?”
He had guessed the truth, but in the wrong way. Perhaps some shade of surprise in Kincar’s eyes convinced his questioner he was on the right track, for Lord Dillan laughed softly.
“Another matter for the council to inquire into—“
Lord Rud’s face was a mask of rage. “For that you shall answer to me, Dillan, even though we be brothersl He is not of my fathering, and you cannot pin law-breaking on me! I have enemies enough, perhaps of close kin”—he eyed his brother hotly—“who would be willing to set up a tool, well coached, to drag me into trouble by such a story. Look to yourself, Dillan, on the day, in that hour, when you bring such an accusation before the council!”
“In any event, he needs be shaken free of all information. And the sooner the better. It is to your own advantage, Rud, that he tells the full and complete truth before all of us. If he is not the fruit of law-breaking, let us be sure of that and speedily.”
As if to draw his brother away from a dangerous line of investigation, Lord Rud asked, “But why did Sood suffer? Let us have a closer look at that thing he is wearing—“
He reached for the Tie. Kincar pulled back, the only defensive movement he could make. But before those fingers closed upon the stone, Lord Dillan had slapped down that questing hand.
“If you value your skin, you’ll leave that alone!” he warned.
“Do you think that I’ll be burnt as was Sood? Why—I’m no ignorant native—“
“Sood’s fate was aggravated because he wore the mark,” Lord Dillan explained almost absently. “But we have no inkling as to the power of these things or how they can be used against alien bodies. And until we do know more, it is wisest not to meddle. I have only seen one before, and that was just for an instant before its destruction by the witch doctor who had been wearing it. We’d overrun his shrine at night and caught him unawares. We’ll have plenty of time to deal with this—and its wearer—when we get them to the towers. And that is where we should go at once.”
They were talking, Kincar thought bitterly, as if he had no identity or will of his own except as a possession of theirs— which, he was forced to admit bleakly, was at that moment the exact truth. The only concession his captors made to the fact that he was flesh and blood was to throw a cloak over his half-bare body after they had put him aboard the flier, to lie, bound wrist and ankle, by their feet.
Vorken had protested such handling, and, for an instant or two, it appeared that she would be destroyed for her impudence. Then the false Lord Dillan decided that her link with Kincar must be thoroughly explored. She was muffled in another cloak and bundled in beside Kincar, where her constant tries for freedom kept the improvised bag bumping up and down.
To fly through the air was a terrifying experience. Kincar had ranged the mountain heights since he had been large enough to keep his seat on a larng pad and follow Wurd hunting, in the years before the old lord of Styr had been reduced to level country riding and at last to his bed. And Wurd’s acquaintance with sheer ledges, far drops, clifi edges had been wide. But to stand with ones’ boots planted on solid rock and look out upon nothingness was far different, Kincar discovered, than to rise into that nothingness knowing that under one was only a flat platform of no great thickness.
He fought his panic, that picture his imagination kept in the forepart of his mind of the platform dissolving, of his helpless body turning over and over as it fell to the ground below. How had the Star men been able to travel the sky and the depths of space? Or were they alien to this fear he knew? He wriggled about, but all he could see of the two were their feet. The Star Lords of his own Gorth had had no such fliers. However, they might well accept such traveling as natural.
There was a windbreak on the front of the platform, and he was lying behind the control seats. Yet the chill of- that journey bit deep, and the cloak was but small protection. As the minutes passed, Kincar’s panic subsided, and it seemed to him that from the Tie spread a gentle heat to banish the worst of the cold. He had been afraid on the field when the »ord hatch had turned their attention to him, but that was an honest fear to be fully understood. Now he knew a queer apprehension, the same quiver of nerves and tenseness of muscles that a swordman knows before the command to charge is given at a spear-festing. He tried to school himself with the knowledge that for him there would probably be no return from this flight.
Against Gorthian captivity a man could plan, foresee. But among the Star Lords what chance had he? There was but one thing—Sood’s amazing experience with the Tie and this Lord Dillan’s wariness of that same token. A slim advantage—perhaps. He had listened to talk in the mountain hold. There were unseen powers—“energies” the Lord Dillan he followed called them. Some of these energies had activated the between-worlds gates through which they had come into this Gorth. And during that passage the Tie had also proved to be a conductor of energy, as Kincar could prove by a scar he would carry until he passed into the Forest.’
The Tie, in addition, might have its own “energies,” which would be inimical to the aliens. That night in the forgotten shrine, the talisman had been recharged with the power native to it. It must carry a full supply. If he only knew more of its potentialities! But he had had no desire to follow the Threefold Way, to train as a Man of Power—for he had understood that he could not have the Way and Styr together and his heart had lain with Styr. So all he had to guide him were the mystical invocations of any believer, the legends and half-whispers. Had he been adept with the Tie, what might he not have accomplished—what could he not do?
The flier swooped, and Kincar fought sickness from the resulting flare of panic. Was it falling, coming apart to crash them to the earth?
But the swift descent slowed. Walls flowed up to cut off the light. They might be dropping down the mouth of a well. The flier came to a stop with less force, than that with which a foot is set upon the floor, and both Star men arose. They had reached their destination.
Lord Rud made no move toward the captive. It seemed that he disliked laying hand upon Kincar. But Lord Dillan pulled the half-Gorthian up, cut the thongs about his ankles and, surprisingly enough, those about his wrists also. His arms fell heavily to his sides, his hands swollen. Lord Dillan picked up the bag containing Vorken and thrust it at him. He caught it clumsily, making a silent resolve not to display any sign of the intense pain any movement of hands or arms cost him.
“You will walk quietly where you are told.” Lord Dillan spoke with the exactitude of one giving orders to a slow-witted child. “For if you do not, you shall be burned with this force stick.” He had taken from his belt a rod not unlike the one- Kincar had used in suard-hunting. “It will not kill, but the pain will be worse than death by mord, and you shall never be. free of it. Do you understand?”
Kincar nodded. He could believe that the Dark One meant exactly what he said and uttered no vain bluff. Could he hope for a speedy death if he attempted flight? Would he flee if that were the end? As long as a man was alive, he could nourish hope, and Kincar had not yet reached the point where he would try for death as a hunter tries for an easy thrust at his prey. Carrying Vorken, he obediently followed Lord Rud out of the chamber where the flier rested, down a sideway, while behind tramped Lord Dillan, weapon in hand.
The living quarters of the fortress at U-Sippar had been of alien workmanship and materials. The narrow passage in which they now walked was as unlike that as that had been from the Gorthian architecture upon which it had been based. Here were no flitting rainbow colors, only an even sheen of gray, which, as he brushed against it, gave to Kincar the feel of metal. And the passage ended after a few feet in a stair ascending in a spiral, the steps no wider than a ladder’s treads. Kincar grasped the guard rail, Vorken in the crook of his left arm. He kept his eyes resolutely on the legs of Lord Rud going up and up, refusing to yield to any temptation to look down into the dizzy well beneath them.
They passed through a series of levels from which ran other passages, emerging from the floor of such a level to climb again through its roof. Kincar could not even speculate upon the nature of the building in which so unusual a staircase formed the core. On the third such level Lord Rud stood away from the stair, turning into a side corridor, and Kincar went after him. So far they might have been in a deserted building. Though the noise of their climbing feet echoed hollowly up and; down that well, there had been no other sound to break the quiet, no sign of any guardsman or servant on duty. And there was a queer, indefinable odor— not the dank emanation of the hold walls, of U-Sippar’s fortress, but in its way as redolent of a remote past, of something long closed against the freshness of wind and cleansing sunlight.
The passage into which Rud had turned was hardly more than a good stride long. He set his palm flat upon a closed door, and under that touch it rolled back into the wall so that they might enter an odd chamber. It was a half circle, a curved wall ending in a straight one—the shape of a strung bow, the door being in the straight wall. Spaced at intervals along the curved surface were round windows covered with a clear substance strange to Kincar.
A padded bench ran along the wall under the level of the windows, and there was an equally padded covering on the floor and over the walls. Otherwise the room was bare of either inhabitants or furnishings. Lord Rud glanced around and then stepped aside to allow Kincar to enter. When the Gorthian had passed through the door, he went out and the portal closed, leaving Kincar alone.
He pulled loose the covering about Vorken and evaded the exasperated snap of her bill, loosing her on the bench where she waddled along with her queer rolling gait, her claws puncturing its padding and having to be pulled out laboriously at every step. Kincar knelt on the same surface to look from one of the windows.
No U-Sippar lay without. The structure he could survey was totally unlike anything he had seen on either Gorth. Beyond were several towers, not the square stone ones he had known all his life. Fashioned of metal, they caught the sun and reflected its beams in a blaze of fire. All were exactly alike, round with pointed tips that stood tall in the sky. Kin-car surmised that a similar building harbored him. Linking -all of them together—by pressing tight to the transparent pane he could just make them out—were a series of walls-walls thick enough to contain corridors or rooms. But those were of the native stone. Metal towers—pointed—
Kincar’s swollen hands closed upon the edge of the window until he felt the pain of that grip. Not towers—no, not towers. Ships! The sky ships of the Star men—here forever earthbound, built into a weird fortress. He had heard them described too many times by men who had visited Terranna on his own Gorth not to recognize them. Was this the Terranna of this Gorth? It could be nothing less than the heart of the Dark Ones’ holdings.
On his own Gorth those ships had gone forth again—out to the stars. Here that must be impossible. They had been anchored to the earth. They had rooted their ships, determined to possess Gorth for all time.
As he studied that strange mating of ship and stone, Kin-car could spot no signs of life. Nothing moved along those walls, showed at any of the round ports that now served as windows. And there was a sense of long absence of tenantry about it all. A storehouse—Kincar could not have told why that particular thought took possession of him nor why the conviction grew that he was right. This must be a storehouse for the aliens. As that it would be well guarded, if not by warriors, then by the magic the Star men controlled. A race who flew through the air without wonder would have weapons mightier than any sword swung by a Hand to protect their secret place.
The age-old thirst that arises in any man at the thought of treasure tempted Kincar. This whole city, fortress, whatever it was, must be thinly populated. If he could get free of his present lodging and explore—I But the door was sealed tightly. Vorken hissed from the bench. She was uneasy in this closed room as she had never been in the hold. Kincar went from one window to another. Three,merely showed him other aspects of the tower-ship building, but the other two gave him a view of the countryside.
There were no trees, but odd twisted rocks. Some, with a puff crown of snow, were vaguely familiar. He had certainly seen their like before. Then the vivid memory of their ride through the wasteland desert to the first gate returned. There were no signs of vegetation here, unless its withered remnants lay under the snow. But in the distance was the bluish line of hills, the mark of mountains. And seeing those, Kincar’s hopes rose illogically.
Vorken’s head bumped against him. She raised a forefoot to scrape his arm and draw his attention. Though none of his race had ever believed the mords lacked intelligence, it was generally conceded that their mental mazes were so alien to that of mankind that communication between the two species was strictly limited to the recognition of a few simple suggestions, mostly dealing with food and hunting. But it was plain that now Vorken was trying to convey something in her own way. And he did what otherwise he would have hesitated to try, since mords were notoriously averse to handling. He sat down on the bench and lifted her to his knees.
She complained with a hiss or two. Then she squatted, her red eyes fastened upon his as if she would force upon him some message. She flapped her wings and mouthed the shrill whistle she gave when sighting game.
Kincar’s preoccupation with Vorken was broken by the sudden heat on his breast. The Tie was glowing. Somewhere within the ship-tower an energy was being loosed to which that highly sensitive talisman responded. He hesitated. Should he take it off lest he risk a bad burn and incapacitate himself—or should he continue to wear it?
To his overwhelming surprise, Vorken stretched her skinny neck and butted her head against him, directly over the Tie, before he could fend her away. She pressed tightly to it, lifting her claws in warning when he would have moved her, giving voice to the guttural battle croaks of her kind.
The warmth of the Tie increased as the mord pressed it tightly against him. But that did not appear to disconcert Vorken. Her battle cries stopped. Now she chuckled, the little sound she made when she was very content with her world. And Kincar himself felt relaxed, confident, fast losing his awe of both surroundings and captors.
THAT SENSE OF well-being persisted. Vorken’s beak gaped in a yawn. Her eyes closed as she huddled close, her grotesque head still resting against him. But Kincar felt far from sleepy. Instead he was alert mentally and physically, as he had never been before that he could remember. The feeling that there was no task beyond his accomplishing grew. Was this how the full blood of the Star breed lived? It must be! This supreme confidence in one’s self, the certainty that no difficulty was too great—
Kincar laughed softly. And something in that sound struck below the surface of his present well-being, brought a tinge of doubt. Perhaps because of the Tie he was doubly alert to any hint of danger. Did that emotion, the self-confidence, stem from the energy in the talisman, or was it more magic of an alien sort? It would be very easy to work upon a man’s mind—if you had the Star resources—to give him an elevated belief in his own powers until he was rendered careless. So very easy.
There was one way of testing that. Kincar lifted the Tie by its chain, slipped the chain over his head, and put down the stone at a short distance from him on the bench. The warmth on his flesh was gone. Vorken stirred. Her head arose as she regarded Kincar with an open question. But he was too preoccupied to watch the mord.
Pressing in upon him, with the force of a blow from a giant’s fist, was an overwhelming and devastating panic, a fear so abject and complete that he dared not move, could only get air into his cramped and aching lungs in short gasps. His hands were wet and slippery, his mouth dry, a sickness ate him up inwardly. In all his life he had never known such terror. It was crushing all identity from him, turning him from Kincar into a mindless, whimpering thing! And the worst of it was that he could not put name to the reason for that fear. It was inside him, not from without, and it was filling all of his burnt-out body shell—Vorken squalled, a scream that tore at his ears. Then the mord struck, raking him with her claws. The pain of her attack broke the spell momentarily. He made a supreme effort, and by its chain drew the Tie back into his hands. In those sweating palms he cupped it tight as Vorken ripped at him. But once he had it, the panic was gone, and when the chain was again over his head, the Tie resting in its old place, he sat weak and shaken, but whole and sane once more—so whole and sane he could not quite believe in what had struck him as viciously as the mord.
Blood trickled from the scratches Vorken had given him. Luckily she had not torn deeply. Now she crouched once more on his knees, turning her head from side to side, giving voice to a whimpering complaint as one of her punishing forefeet raised to the Tie. It was that talisman that had saved them both from utter madness—the why and wherefore of that deliverance being more than Kincar could understand. He could only accept rescue with gratitude.
Kincar had left Styr with no more training than any youth who could confidently aspire to the lordship of a holding, and a small, mountain holding at that. He had ridden away under the shock of the abrupt revelation of his half-blood, unable to quite accept that heritage. Word’s secret gift of the Tie, with all that meant, had been an additional push along a new path of life. His painful experience at the gates, and his acceptance thereafter by Lord Dillan and the Lady Asgar as one who had rightful guardianship of a power they respected, had tempered him yet more. Perhaps his volunteering for the expedition into the lowlands had been born of a spirit of adventure, rooted in the quality that sent any young warrior to a spear-festing. But with it had gone the knowledge that he alone of the hold was fitted for that Journey.
What had happened that night in the forest shrine he did not understand.- He was no adept to be able to recall the work of the Three. But now he believed that he had ridden away from there subtly altered from the Kincar who had taken shelter. This last ordeal might be another milepost on his road. He would not be as the Star Lords, nor as the ruler of Styr that he might have been had Jord not taken from him that future—but a person he was not yet able to recognize.
Kincar was sure he was no mystic, no seeker of visions, or wielder of strange powers. What he was—now—he did not know. Nor did he have the time to become acquainted. It was better to accept the ancient beliefs of his people—his mother’s people—and think that he was a tool, mayhap a weapon, for the use of the Three, that all he did was in Their service.
There was a security in that belief. And just now more than anything else he desired security, to trust in something outside his own shaken mind and body.
He had been right in his surmise that he would be allowed scant time for self-examination. The door of the chamber rolled back into the wall. Vorken hissed, flapped her wings, and would have taken to the air in attack had not Kincar, fearing for her Life, made a hasty grab for her feet.
Lord Dillan stood there. He did not speak at once, but, though he did ‘not display surprise by any sign readable to Kincar, the latter thought his alertness astonished the other.
“Slave—“ The harsh grate of the Star Lord’s voice was meant to sting, as the whips of the Hands had stung their miserable captives.
Kincar stared as steadily back. Did the Dark One expect from him a cringing plea for nonexistent mercy?
Now the wand of power was in Dillan’s hands as he spoke again.
“We have underestimated you it seems, fellow!”
“It appears that you did, Lord.” The words came to Kincar as if someone else who stood apart and watched this scene selected them for his saying.
“Rud’s offspring in truth!” Lord Dillan laughed. “Only our own kin could stand up against a conditioner set at that level Let him try to deny this to the council. Come—you!”
He gestured and Kincar went. Vorken had struggled free of his grip and now balanced on his shoulder, a process made painful by her claws. Yet he was glad to have her with him, a steadying reminder of that other Gorth where a man could not be so beset by magic.
“Up!” The single word set him climbing once more, up the ladder spiral of the stairway. On the next level they came upon something he had not sighted from the windows. Connecting one ship with another, strung far above the ground, was an aerial bridge—temporary, Kincar judged, for so lightweight a creation could not survive the first real windstorm.
But frail as it was, it was also now their road. Kincar clung with his full strength to the hand rope, some of the fear he had known on the flying platform sweeping back. To stop at all, he guessed, would be fatal. So he made the crossing, step by step, his attention all for the port door ahead.
He was within a foot or two of that door when he remembered Vorken. He had no way of escape—that he could see now—from the towers, not with the armed Lord Dillan ready to blast him. But perhaps Vorken could be saved. Still holding to the guide rope with his left hand, he half turned, flicking out with his cloak, at the same time giving the hunter’s call for a sky search.
Was it by luck alone that the edge of the cloak entangled with the Star weapon? He had been well trained in the swordsman’s art of using the enveloping fabric to bewilder and disarm an opponent, but he had never attempted such a throw under these adverse circumstances. Skill or luck, he engaged the rod until Vorken was up and away, rising can-nily not in her usual spirals but headed in an arrow’s flight for the distant hills.
Oddly enough, Lord Dillan made no effort at retaliation. He loosened the cloak, and it went flapping down into the chasm below them, where Kincar dared not look. He had not been lucky or skillful enough to have dragged the weapon from the other, and now it was centered upon him.
”Go on,” Lord Dillan ordered, and Kincar, sure of Vorken’s escape and treasuring that small triumph,, went ahead, passing through the port into the second of the Star ship towers.
Two more of the Star Lords awaited him there—but neither were doubles of those he had known in the hold. To be faced by a Lord Frans, a Lord Bardon, a Lord Jon who were not what they appeared would have added to his burden at that moment. These men were all younger than Lord Dillan, if he could judge the age of the Star breed rightly, and both looked soft, lacking that alertness of mind and body his captor possessed—traces of which Lord Rud had displayed. They had that inborn arrogance that comes not from the authority of a man who has rightfully held leadership over his fellows through innate traits of character, but that which is based instead upon never having one’s will disputed, and having absolute power over other intelligent beings by birthright alone.
Neither concealed his amazement at Kincar, one asking Lord Dillan a question in their tongue. He snapped an impatient answer and motioned them on.
“Follow!” he told Kincar tersely.
They were about to descend another of the spiral stairways. Descend it! A glimmer of a plan was born—a fantastic plan—perhaps so fantastic that it would work! Success would depend upon how quickly Kincar could move, whether he would be able to take his guards by surprise. He did not think too highly of the newcomers, but Lord Dillan was another matter. However, the cloak trick had worked against him. Kincar could only try, desperate as the plan was. And, making his first move, he clutched at the hand rail of the stair. What he intended might well burn the flesh from his hands. He must have some protection for them— He was bare to the waist; there was no way to tear any strips from his hide breeches. If he only had the cloak again!
One young Star Lord was already passing through the first of the well openings. He was the only barrier between Kin-car and the realization of his plan. And he was wearing not the tight weather suit of Lord Dillan but a loose shirt of some light material.
Kincar started down the ladder with a meekness he trusted would be disarming. The steps were so narrow, the incline so steep that he hoped Lord Dillan would have to give a measure of his attention to his own going and so might be a second or so late in attacking when the prisoner moved.
The young lord was disappearing into the well at the next level now and Lord Dillan was waist-deep in the first, Kincar on the stair between them. The Gorthian threw himself forward, his weight on his hands. To the watcher it might seem he had missed a step. His foot swung out and caught the young lord on the side of the head. The other gave a choked cry and caught at the floor. It was that instinctive move to save himself that aided Kincar. He landed beside the alien and tore at his shirt, the thin stuff coming away in his hand. He pushed through the well opening, pulling over the half-conscious man to block it after him, and slid down the spiral, with only his hands on the rail as support.
He whirled about, wondering if he could brake his descent now. There were shouts behind, perhaps calls for help, and the clatter of boots. Friction charred the cloth under his hands, pain bit at his palms, but he held on. Two more levels, three; there was a regular din behind him now. Beneath him, two levels ahead, was solid floor, and he made ready as best he could to meet it. With dim memories of how he had taken falls in his first days of riding, he willed his muscles to go limp, tried to ball together, and prayed against the horror of broken bones.
There was blackness, but even in the semiconscious state he still strove for escape. When he was again truly aware of his surroundings, he crawled on smarting hands and aching knees down a narrow corridor.
Praise be to the Three, he had come through that landing unbroken, though his body ached with bruises. Wincing at sharp stabs, Kincar got to his feet and lurched on, only wanting now to put as much distance between himself and the noise as he could.
The walls about him changed as he stumbled over a high step. They were stone, hot metal, now. He must be within one of the walls that tied together the ship-towers—far nearer ground level. Surely here he could find a door to the outer world.
Though he did not know it until afterwards, Kincar was perhaps the first prisoner within that maze who was in command of his mind and body, unbroken by the conditioner. To the men who hunted him, he was an unknown quantity they were not prepared to handle. They did not give him credit for either the initiative or the speed and energy he was able to muster.
The stone-walled corridor wove on with no breaks of either windows or doors. He sped along it at the best pace he could keep, nursing his scorched hands against the Tie, for it seemed to him that there was some healing virtue in the talisman. At least it drew away the worst of the pain.
To his dismay Kincar came to a second of the ridge steps, marking the entrance to another ship-tower. But there was no turning back, and, with all the chambers that must exist in the ships, he could either find a hiding place or access through a port window to the top of a connecting wall. The dim light that radiated from both walls of stone and of metal showed him another spiral stairway. He made a complete circuit below. Two doors, both fast closed, and neither would open. He dared not linger there. Necessity sent him climbing.
The first level gave upon more doors all closed, all resisting his efforts to force them. Another level, the same story. He leaned, gasping, against the hand rail, fearing that he had been driven into a trap with the Dark Ones able to pick him up at their leisure.
The third level, and as his head arose through the well, he could have shouted aloud his cry of triumph—for here, a door gape’d. In his eagenerness he stumbled and went to one knee. And in that moment he heard the unmistakable pound of feet below.
He fell rather than sprang through the door. Then’he set his hand flat against it as he had seen Lord Dillan do. It moved! It fell into place behind him! He could see no way of locking it, but the very fact that there was now a closed door between him and the stairwell gave a ghost of safety.
The corridor before him was a short one, and he burst into a small, round room. The walls rose up to the open sky— He had seen it—or its like before—for here was berthed a flier like the one that had brought him here.
He was trapped. There was no climbing the smooth walls of the well that held the flier. Soon—any moment now—the Dark Ones would be through that door he could not lock, would take him as easily as one roped a larng in the spring trapping pens. Why they had not already been upon him he did not know. As he hesitated there, he heard, more as” a vibration through the walls than a sound, the pounding feet. But there was no fumbling at the door. Kincar guessed that his pursuers had gone to the next level, that the closing of the door had momentarily hidden his trail. Should he—could he dodge out now and backtrack while the hunters were on the higher levels? He could not bring himself to that move. The wild slide down the well ladder in the other tower and his run through the passages had worn him down; his energy was fading fast.
What did he do now? Remain where he was until they searched from chamber to chamber and found him? He swayed to the flier, dropped on one of the seats within it, his hurt hands resting palms up on his knees. If he had only the proper knowledge, he could be free—away without any difficulty at all. The buttons on the panel before him were frustrating—if he only knew which ones—
The vibration of the hurrying hunters reached him faintly. They were coming back down again—or could that be reinforcements arriving from below? Dully Kincar studied the controls. Nothing in his dealing with the Star men he knew had given him a hint of their machines. But he could not be taken again—he could not! Better to smash the flier and himself than to sit here tamely until they broke in.
Kincar closed his eyes, offered a wordless petition to those he served, and made a blind choice of button. Only it was the wrong one. Heat walled up about him as if a cloak had been flung about his shivering body. Heat answered that button. He counted one over, relieved that disaster had had not resulted from his first choice.
A shaft of light struck upon the rounded wall before him, flashing back into his dazzled eyes. It startled him so that he triggered the third button before he thought.
He grabbed the sides of his seat in spite of the pain in his hands. His gasp was close to a scream, for the flier was shooting up, out of that well, at a speed that almost tore the air from his lungs. The machine broke out of the well, went on and on up into the sky. It must be stopped—or he would reach star space. But how to control it he had no idea.
With the faint hope that the function of the button next to the last one he had pushed might counteract it, he thrust with an urgent finger. He was right, inasmuch as that sickening rise stopped. But his flight was not halted. The flier now skimmed forward with an equally terrifying speed, as might an arrow shot from a giant bow. But for the moment Kincar was content. He was not bound for outer space, and he was headed with breath-taking speed away from the towers. He crouched on the seat, almost unable to believe his good fortune.
When he grew more accustomed to flight, he ventured to look below, keeping a good grip on the seat and fighting vertigo. The same chance that had brought his finger to the right button had also dictated the course of the flier. It was headed across the waste plain, not for the sea lowlands and the cities ruled by the Dark Ones, but toward the distant mountain range—only not so distant now—where Kincar might have a faint hope of not only surviving but eventually rejoining those at the hold.
There remained the problem of grounding the flier. Just at the moment he had no desire to experiment—until at least one mountain lay between him and pursuit. And, thinking of pursuit sent him squirming about to look behind. The Dark Ones must have more than just one such flier—would they take to the air after him? But above the rapidly diminishing dot of the fortress he could see nothing in the air.
What might have been two—three days’ travel for a larng flashed below in a short space of time. Then he was above the peaks he had seen from the ship-towers, skimming—just barely skimming—over snow-crowned rock. If he only knew how to control the flier! Its speed was certainly excessive. His elation gave way once more to anxiety as he imagined what might happen should the machine crash head-on against some peak higher than its present level of flight.
IF NO OTHER flier arose from the ship-towers to intercept Kincar’s runaway transport, something else did. He first knew of his danger when a piercing shriek of rage and avid hunger carried through the rush of air dinning at his eardrums. Compared to that challenge, Vorken’s most ambitious call was a muted whisper. Kincar stared aloft and then shrank in the seat, for what swooped at him now was death, a familiar death, well known to any Gorthian who had ever roamed the mountain ranges.
Vorken was a mord, but she was counted a pygmy of her species. Among the frigid heights lived the giants of her race, able to carry off a larng at their pleasure. And their appetites were as huge as their bodies. They could be entrapped with a triple- or quadruple-strand net and men well versed in the tricky business to handle it, but such a netting meant days of patient waiting, luring the creature to the ground with bait. Once on the surface of the mountainside or plateau, they were enough at a disadvantage to be snared, though it was always a risky business, and no one was surprised if such a hunting party returned minus one or more of the hunters.
No one had ever faced a sa-mord in the air. No one had lived through an attack made when the attacker was wing borne and free. And Kincar had no hope of surviving this one.
With the usual egotism of a man, he had reckoned that he was the aim of those claws, whereas, to the sa-mord he was merely an incidental part of the thing it attacked. It made its swoop from the skies, talons stretched to grasp the flier, only to discover it had not properly judged the speed of this impudent air creature, missing its strike by a foot or more.
It plunged past in an instant, screaming its furious rage, and was gone before Kincar could realize that he had not been pierced through by those claws. Had he then been able to control the flier, he might have won free or tired the creature out to the point where it would have given up the chase. But such evasive action was beyond his power. He could only stay where he was, half sheltered by the back of the seat and the windbreak, as the flier bore straight ahead, while behind, the sa-mord beat up into the sky for a second strike.
Like their smaller relatives, the sa-mords had intelligence of a sort, and most of that reasoning power was centered upon keeping its possessor not only fed but alive. The sa-mords were solitary creatures, each female having a section of hunting territory where she ruled supreme, ready to beat off any of her kind who threatened her hold on sky and earth therein. And to such battles each brought accumulated knowledge of feint, attack, and the proper use of her own strength.
So when the sa-mord now struck for the second time, from a yet higher point, she had recalculated the speed of the flier and came down in a dive that should have brought her a little ahead and facing the enemy with waiting claws, a favorite fighting position.
Only again mechanical speed proved her undoing, for she hit directly on the flier’s nose. The windbreak was driven into her softer underparts by the force of that meeting. Claws raked across the shield, catching on the seats, as she squalled at her hurt. Kincar, wedged in as flat as he could get, felt rather than saw that gaping beak that snapped just an inch or two above him as blood spurted from torn arteries to flow greasily.
The machine faltered, dipped, fought against that struggling weight impaled on its nose. It was losing altitude as the sa-mord beat and tore at it. Only the fact that the flier was metal, and so impervious to her attack, saved Kincar during those few moments before they were carried into a thicket of snow-line scrub trees. There the sa-mord’s body acted as a shock absorber and cushion as they slammed to a final stop.
Kincar, the breath beaten out of him by the sharp impact, lay where he was, the stench of the torn creature thick in the air. Gone was the heat that had enfolded him. Shivering in the lash of mountain wind, he at last fought his way out of the grisly wreckage and staggered along the splintered swath the flier had cut. One sa-mord to a hunting territory was the custom. But there were lesser things that could scent blood and raw meat from afar. Weaponless he could not face up to such carrion eaters. So, guided more by instinct than plan, he reeled downslope.
Luckily the flier had not crashed on one of the higher crests, and the incline was not so straight that he could not pick a path. Here the scrub wood was thin. It was possible to set landmarks ahead to keep that path from circling.
It must be far past midday, and he would have to find shelter. From upslope there came a muffled yapping, then a growling, rising to roaring defiance. The scavengers had found their feast, and there was no hope of returning to the wreckage. In fact, that din spurred Kincar to a faster pace, until he lost his footing and fell forward, to roll into a snowdrift.
Gasping, spitting snow, he struggled up, knowing that to lie there was to court death. Only by keeping on his feet and moving did he have the thinnest chance. Fortunately the sky was clear of clouds; no storm threatened.
That fall and slide had brought him into a valley with a trickle of stream at its bottom. The water was dark, flowing quickly, with no skim of ice. He wavered down to it and went on his knees. Now he could feel the faint, very faint warmth exuding from the riverlet. This must be one of the hot streams, such as he had discovered in the hold valley. He had only to trace it back to its source and that heat would grow, promising him some protection against the cold of the coming night.
It was an effort to get to his feet again, to flog his bruised body along. But somehow he kept moving, aware through the fog of exhaustion that there were now trails of steam above the water, that the temperature in the valley was rising. Choking and coughing from the fumes, he fell against a boulder and clung there. He had to have the heat, but could he stand the lung-searing exhalations of the water?
Slowly he went down beside the rock, certain he could go no farther, and no longer wanting to try. It all assumed the guise of a dream, and the inertia of one caught in a nightmare weighted him. There was the grit of stone against his cheek and then nothing at all.
The sa-mord loomed above him. He had been very wrong. It was not killed by the flier, and now it had tracked him down. In a moment he would be rent by claw and beak. Only it was carrying him up—higher than the mountains! They were swinging out over the waste to the ship-towers. A flier bore him—no sa-mord but a flier! The machine was rising at the nose—it would turn over, spill him down—
“Get him up if you have to lash him! We can take no chances on this climb—“
Words coming out of the air, words without meaning. Warm—it was warm again. He had not been killed in that fall from the flier. Now he was lapped in the waters of the hot riverlet, being borne with its current. Watery, he saw the world only through a mist of water, and before him bobbed another dim figure. Then that shadowy shape turned, and he saw its face and knew that there was no escape. Lord Dillan! They had traced him, and he was once more a prisoner.
“Not so!” He heard his own cry as shrill as a mord’s scream as he tried vainly to win free of the current, away from the Dark One. But it was no use; he could not move and the riverlet carried him on.
It was night, but not the total dark of the U-Sippar dungeon, for stars swung across Lor’s Shield resting above him. And those stars moved—or did he? Dreamily he tried to work out that problem. The homely smell of larng sweat had driven away the stink of the river. But he was still swinging as if cradled in water.
“There is the beacon! We are almost in now—“
In where? U-Sippar? The ship-tower fortress? He had solved the mystery of the movement around, under, about him, realizing that he was lashed securely in a hunter’s net swung between two of the burden larngs. But how much was real and how much was a dream he could not tell. He closed heavy eyelids, worn to a state of fatigue in which nothing at all mattered.
But perhaps he was too tired for sleep, for he was aware of arriving in a courtyard, and roused again to see the one who loosed the fastenings of his net.
It had been no use, that wild attempt at escape, for it was Lord Dillan who gathered him up and carried him into light, warmth, and sound. They were back at the ship-towers, and now would come the questioning—
They must have returned him to the padded chamber. He was lying on_the softness of the bench there. Feeling it, he kept his eyes closed obstinately. Let them think he was unconscious.
“Kincar—“
He tensed.
“Kincar-“
There was no mistaking that voice. They might duplicate Lord Dillan but—the Lady Asgar? He opened his eyes. She was half-smiling, though watching him with a healer’s study. And she was bundled in cold-season riding clothes, her hair fastened up tightly beneath a fur hood. Vorken sat on her shoulder appearing to examine Kincar with a measure of the same searching scrutiny.
“This is the hold?” He doubted the evidence of his eyes; he had been so sure he was elsewhere.
“This is the hold. And you are safe, thanks be to Vorken. Is that not true, my strong-winged one?”
Vorken bent her head to rub her crest of bone peak caressingly against the Lady’s chin.
“We were hunting in the peaks and she came to us, lead-ing us to a feast—“ Asgar’s expression was one of faint distaste. “And from there it was easy to trace your path, Kincar. Now”—she stooped over him with a horn cup in her hand while someone behind raised his head and shoulders so that he might drink—“get this inside of you that you may tell us your story, for we have a fear that time grows ‘very late indeed.”
It was Lord Dillan who supported him. But his own Lord Dillan and not the dark master of the ship-towers. Braced comfortably against that strong shoulder, Kincar told his story, tersely with none of a song-smith’s embroidery of word. Only one thing he could not describe plainly, and that was what had happened to him in the ruined shrine. And that they did not ask of him. When he told of his meeting with the fugitives at the shore, Lord Dillan spoke for the first time.
“This we have heard in part. Murren could not master Cim, and the beast took his own path. He brought them to our gates, and they were found by Kapal and a foraging party. We have heard their story, and it is a black one.” There was a dark shadow of pain in his eyes. “It will be for your hearing later. So—you were taken by the ruler’s men,” he prompted, and Kincar continued.
There was Vorken’s providential appearance on the field where he had been condemned to death, and then the interference of the Dark Lord Dillan—
The man who held him tensed at his description. “Not only Rud—but I—here too’
“Did we not know that it would be so for some of us?” queried the Lady Asgar. “And in the end that may prove the one weapon we have. But where did they then take you, Kincar?”
His memories of the ship-towers were so deeply etched that his account of the action there was more vivid. Both of the Star-born were moved by his recounting of his trial by fear.
“A conditioner!” Lord Dillan spat the word. “To have perverted that!”
“But that is a small perversion among so many,” Asgar pointed out, “for their whole life here is a perversion, as well we know. Because that particular machine is a tool known to you, Dillan, it may strike more deeply home, but it is in my mind that they have made use of all their knowledge— our knowledge—to weld slave chains. And mark this—the conditioner was defeated by something native to this Gorth! Kincar believes that he was sent on this path, and it seems to me that he is right, very right! But you escaped from these earth-bound ships, and how was that done?” she de-Hianded of the young man.
In retelling, his flight from the weird fortress sounded matter-of-fact and without difficulty, though Kincar strongly doubted that he could face it again. Action was far easier to take in sudden improvisation than when one knew what lay in wait ahead.
When he had done, the drink they had given him began its work. The aches of his bruised body faded into a lethargy, and he slipped into a deep sleep.
He woke again suddenly, without any of the normal lazy translation from drowsiness to full command. And when he opened his eyes, it was to see the youth from the seashore hut seated not far away, his chin cupped in both hands, studying Kincar as if the other held some answer to a disturbing puzzle. The very force of that gaze, thought Kincar, was enough to draw one out of sleep. And he asked, “What do you want?”
The other smiled oddly. “To see you, Kincar s’Rud.”
“Which you are doing without hindrance. But there is more than -just looking upon me that you wish—“
The boy shrugged. “Perhaps. Though your very existence is a marvel in this world. Kincar s’Rud,” he repeated the name gravely, not as if he were addressing its owner, but more as one might utter some incantation. “Kincar s’Rud— Kathal s’Rud-“
Kincar sat up on the pad couch. He was stiff and sore, but he was alert and no longer weary to his very bones.
“Kincar s’Rud • I know weD,” he observed. “But who is Kathal s’Rud?”
The other laughed. “Look at him! They have told me Hiany things, these strange lords here, and few of them are believable, save to one who will swallow a song-smith’s tales open-brained. But almost I can trust in every word when I look upon you. It seems, though we can both claim a Lord Rud for a sire, it is not the same Lord Rud. And that smacks of truth, for you and I are not alike.”
“Lord Rud’s son—“ For a second Kincar was befuddled. Lord Dillan had spoken of brothers—no, half brothers—who could name him kin. But they had gone with the Star ships. Then he understood. Not his father—but the Lord Rud of this Gorth, that man softened by good living, rotted with his absolute power, whom he had fronted in U-Sippar. “But I thought—“
“That there were no half-bloods here? Aye!” The boy was all one bitter protest. “They have even spread it about that such births are impossible, like the offspring of a mord and a suard. But it is true, though mostly we are slain at birth— if our fathers know of it. To live always under a death sentence, enforced not only by the Dark Ones, but by your other kin as well—it is not easy.”
“Lord Rud found out about you; that was why you were running?”
“Aye. Murren, who was guardsman to my mother’s kin, saved me twice. But he was handled as you saw for his trouble. Better he himself had knocked me on the head! I am a nothing thing, being neither truly of one blood or the other.”
As he had studied Kincar, so now the other reversed the process. This was no duplicate other self, no physical twin, as were the two Dillans. So some other laws of chance and change had intervened between them. Kathal, he judged, was the younger by several birth seasons, and he had the fine-drawn, worn face, the tense, never-relaxed body of one who, as he had just pointed out, lived ever with danger. No happy memories of a Wurd or of the satisfying life of Styr were behind him. Would he have been as Kathal had he been born into this Gorth?
“You are safe now.” Kincar tried to reassure him.
Kathal simply stared at him as one looks at a child who does not understand how foolishly he speaks.
“Am I? There is no safety ever for one who is s’Rud—no matter how it may be in the world from which you came.”
“The Lords will change that—“
Again that bitter laugh. “Aye, your Lords amaze me. I am told that all here are full or half-blood—save for the refugees and freed slaves you have drawn in. But what weapons have your lords? How can they stand up against the might of all Gorth? For all Gorth will be marshalled against this hold when the truth is known. Best build another of these ‘gates’ of which they speak and charge through it before you feel Rud’s fingers on your throat!”
And Kincar, remembering the ship-towers, the flier, could agree that other weapons and wonders must rest in the hands of the Dark Ones, His confidence was shaken for a moment.
“—and a deft server you shall find mel” That half sentence heralded Lord Dillan, who pushed through the door curtain, walking with exaggerated care because he held in both of his hands an eating bowl, lacy with steam and giving off an aroma that immediately impressed upon Kincar how long it had been since he had eaten. Lord Bardon was close behind him, his fingers striving to keep in one bundle several drinking horns of different sizes. Following on his heels came the remainder of the Star Lords, dwarfing the younger half-Gorthians with their bulk.
Kathal slipped from his seat and backed against the wall. He gave the appearance of a man about to make a lost stand against impossible odds. It was Lord Jon who put down the leather bottle he was carrying and smiled.
“Both in one netting. Feed yours, Dillan, and 111 settle this one and see that his tongue is properly moistened for speech.” His clasp on Kathal’s shoulder was the light one he would have used on his own son, and though the half-Gorthian fugitive had not lost his suspicion, he did not try to elude that grip.
Kincar spooned up the solid portion of the stew and drank the rich gravy. He had had no such meal since he had ridden out of Styr. Journeycake and dried meat were good enough for travelers, but they held no flavor.
“This,” announced Lord Bardon, but his tone was light enough to war with the sense of his words, “is a council of war. We have come to learn all you can tell us, sons of Rud.”
Perhaps Kathal flinched at a title that in this world meant shame and horror. But Kincar found it natural and was pleased at that link with the soft-spoken but sword-wary men about him. A measure of that confidence that had been frayed by Kathal’s suspicions was restored. He had seen the Dark Ones, and to his mind none of them were matches for the Star men that he knew.
“We shall begin”—Lord Dillan took charge of the assembly as he was wont to do—“with a naming of names. Tell us, Kathal, who are the Dark Ones—give us a full roll call of their number.”
“IT CAN NEVER be set one piece within the other properly again!”
Kincar sat back on his heels. There was a broad smear of suard fat across his cheek where his hand had brushed unnoticed, and before him lay a puzzle of bits of metal salvaged from the broken flier. Brought from the point where it had cracked up, the machine was in the process of being reassembled by the Star Lords and half-bloods alike, neither certain of the ultimate results.
Lord Dillan sighed. “Almost it would seem so,” he conceded. “I am a technician of sorts, but as a mechanic it appears I have a great many limitations. If it could only remember more!” He ran his greasy hands through his close-cropped dark-red hair. “Let this be a lesson to you, boy. Take notice of what you see in your youth—it may be required of you to duplicate it later. I have flown one of these—but to rebuild it is another matter.”
Lord Jon, who had been lying belly-down on the courtyard pavement to inspect parts of the frame they had managed so far to fit together, smiled.
“All theory and no practice, Dillan? What we need is a tape record to guide us—“
“Might as well wish for a new flier complete, Lord.” Vulth got to his feet and stretched to relieve cramped muscles. “Give me a good sword tail, and I’ll open that box for you without this need for patching broken wire and shafts together.”
Lord Bardon who had earlier withdrawn from their efforts to fit the unfitable together, protesting that he had never possessed any talent for machine assembly, laughed.
“And where do we recruit a tail for spear-festmg, Vulth? Lay a summoning on the mountain trees to turn them into warriors for your ordering? From all accounts any assault straight into the face of danger will not work this time. I wonder-“ He was studying the parts laid out on the stones. “That gear to the left of your foot, Dillan—it seems close in size to the rod Jon just bolted in. Only a suggestion, of course.”
Lord Dillan picked up the piece and held it to the rod. Then he observed solemnly, “Any more suggestions, Bard? It is plain that you are the mechanic here.”
Kincar was excited. “Look, Lord. If that fits there, then does not this and this go so?” He slipped the parts into the pattern he envisioned. He might not know Star magic, but these went together with a Tightness his eyes approved.
Dillan threw up his hands in a gesture of mock defeat. “It would seem that the totally unschooled are better at this employment. Perhaps a little knowledge is a deterrent rather than a help. Go ahead, children, and see what you can do without my hindrance.”
In the end, with all of them assisting, they had the flier rebuilt.
“The question remains,” Lord Bardon said, “will it now fly?”
“There is only one way to test that.” Before any of them could protest, Lord Dillan was in the seat behind the controls. However, even as his hand moved toward the row of buttons, Kincar was beside him, knowing that he could not let the other make that trial alone.
Perhaps Dillan would have ordered him out, but it was too late for that, as inadvertently the Star Lord had pushed the right button and they were rising—not with the terrifying speed Kincar had known in his last flier trip, but slowly, with small complaints and buzzes from the engine.
“At least,” Lord Dillan remarked, “she did not blow up at once. But I would not care to race her—“
They were above the hold towers now. And Vorken, seeing them rise past her chosen roost, took to the air in company, flying in circles about the machine and uttering cries of astonishment and dismay. Men walking, men riding larngs she understood and had been accustomed to from fledgling-hood. But men in her own element were different and worrying.
Kincar, with only too vivid memories of the mountain sa-mord, tried to wave her away. Vorken could not smash the flier with her weight as had the giant of her species. But if she chose to fly into Lord Dillan’s face, she might well bring them to grief. Her circles grew closer, as she swung in behind the windbreak, her curiosity getting the better of her caution. Then she made a landing on the back of the seats and squatted, her long neck outstretched between the two who sat there, interested in what they would do next.
“Do you approve?” Lord Dillan asked her.’
She squawked in an absent-minded fashion, as if to brush aside foolish questions. And seeing that she was minded to be quiet, Kincar did not try to dislodge her.
Dillan began to try out the repaired craft. It did not respond too quickly to the controls governing change of altitude or direction. But it did handle, and he thought it could be safely used for the purpose they planned. After flying down the wide valley guarded by the hold and making a circle about the mountain walls, he brought the machine back for a bumpy but safe landing in the courtyard.
“She is no AA job, but she will take us there—“ was his verdict given to the hold party and the natives from four liberated slave gangs. The hold archers now kept a regular watch on the mountain road and freed all unfortunates dragged through that territory.
Kapal had assumed command of these men, and out of those who still possessed some stamina and spirit, he was hammering a fighting tail of which he often despaired but bullied and drilled all the more grimly because they fell so far below his hopes. He had taken readily, greedily, to the use of the bows and was employing both the men and the few women from the ex-slave gangs to manufacture more. Now he insisted that it was time for him to lead his band in some foray on their own.
“It is this way, Lord,” he had sought out Bardon the night before to urge. “They have been slaves too long. They think like slaves, believing that no man can stand up to the Dark Ones. But let us once make even a party of slave-driving Hands surrender, or rather let us blood our arrows well on such eaters of dirt, and they will take new heart. They must have a victory before they can think themselves once more men!”
“If we had time, then I would say aye to that, Kapal, for your reasoning is that of a leader who knows well the ways of fighting men. But time we do not have. Let the Dark Ones discover us, and they have that which will blot us out before finger can meet upon finger in a closing fist. Nay, our move must be fast, sure, and merciless. And it should come very soon!”
Kathal had given them the key to what might be their single advantage. Occasionally the Dark Ones assembled at the ship-tower fortress. In spite of their covert internecine warfare, their jealousies and private feuds, they still kept to some fellowship and a certain amount of exchange of supplies, news and man power.
Though they laughed at native traditions, stamping out any whenever they found them, they themselves were not wholly free of the desire for symbolic celebrations. And one such, perhaps the most rigidly kept, was that marking their first landing on Gorth. For this anniversary they assembled from all over the planet, making a two-day festival of the gathering. It seldom ended without some bloodshed, though dueling was frowned upon. The natives, excluded from the meeting, forbidden even to approach within a day’s journey of the ship-towers, knew that often a Lord did not return from the in-gathering and that his domain was appropriated by another.
“It has been our hope that they would continue to deal with each other so,” Kathal had said, “using their might against their own kind. But always it works to our ill, for those Dark Ones who treated us with some measure of forbearing were always the ones to return not, and the more ruthless took their lands. Of late years there have been fewer disappearances—“
“How many Lords are there left?” Lord Frans had wanted to know.
Kathal spread his fingers as if to use them in telling off numbers. “Who can truthfully say, Lord? There are fifty domains, each with an overlord. Of these perhaps a third have sons, younger brothers, kinsmen. Of their females we know little. They live secretly under heavy guard. So secret do they keep them that there are now rumors they are very, very few. So few that the Lords-“ He had paused, a dark flush staining his too-thin face.
“So few,” Lord Dillan had taken that up, “that now such as your Lord Rud has a forbidden household, and perhaps others do likewise. Yet they will not allow their half-blood children to live.”
Kathal shook his head. “If the Lords break that law, Lord, then they are held up to great shame among their kindred. To them we are as beasts, things of no account. Mayhap here and there a half-blood, who was secretly born, lives for a space of years. But mostly they are slain young. Only because my mother had a sister who kept her close did I come to man’s age.”
“Say perhaps one hundred?” Lord Bardon had kept on reckoning the opposition.
“Half again more,” Kathal replied.
“And they will all be at the ship-towers twelve days from now?”
“Aye, Lord, that is the time of the in-gathering.”
The hold began their own preparations, working all day and far into the night, for if at no other time all the Dark Ones would be together, then they must strike here and now. They dared not wait another whole year, and they could never hope to campaign against fortresses beaded clear across Gorth.
As soon as they were certain the flier could take to the air again, the first party, mounted on the pick of the larngs moved out, armed and prepared for a long ride across the mountain trails that the inner men had shown them.
Kapal and his ragged crew, or the best of them, padded through the secret ways of the mountain with Ospik for a guide, heading for the agreed-upon point overlooking the waste plain on which the ship-towers stood.
Kincar had expected to ride with the other half-bloods in the mounted party. But, as the only one who had ever been at the ships, he was delegated to join the Star Lords.
The flier would carry four at a time—reluctantly—but it would rise and, at a speed greater than a larng’s extended gallop, get them over the ranges to the last tall peak from which they could look down upon their goal. All wore the silver clothing insulated against the chill, giving them more freedom of movement than the scale coats and leather garments the Gorthians and half-Gorthians were used to. And Kincar, clad in a suit hastily cut to his size, moved among them looking like a boy among his elders.
On the heights they took cover, but four pairs of far-seeing glasses passed from hand to hand, Kincar having them in his turn. And so they witnessed the arrival of swarms of fliers at the towers.
“That makes one hundred and ten,” Lord Bardon reported. “But each carries several passengers.”
Lord Dillan had the glasses at the moment.
“I wonder, Bard-?”
“Wonder what?”
“Whether those ships were ever deactivated?”
“They must have beenl Surely they wouldn’t have built them into those walls otherwise—“
“Ours were not. In fact, Rotherberg said that he didn’t believe they could be.”
“Do you mean,” Kincar demanded, “that they could take off in those ships right now, as the Star Lords did in our Gorth?”
“It would solve a lot of our problems if they would do just that, but I hardly think they will oblige us by trying it.”
Lord Dillan did not answer that. He continued to hold the glasses to his eyes as if memorizing every detail of the ships. “No arrivals for a long time now,” remarked Lord Bardon. “Do you suppose they are all here?”
“It would appear so. We’ll wait until morning to be sure.” Lord Dillan was still on watch. “We’ll camp and leave a scout to keep an eye on them.”
The camp was a temporary affair, set up in a gulch, with a heat box to provide them with the equivalent of a fire and journey rations to eat. Kincar took his turn at scout duty close to dawn. There had been no more arrivals at the ship-towers in the darkness, and the party from the hold concluded that all the Dark Ones must be in the fortress.
“We could use double our numbers,” Lord Bardon remarked as they broke their fast.
“I could wish more for Rotherberg of Lacee.” “Hmm.” Lord Bardon gazed hard at Lord Dillan. “Still thinking of that, are you? But none of us are engineers—we would not stand here if we were. Those who had that in their blood chose to go with the ships.”
“Nevertheless, I believe we should keep the idea in mind!” “Oh, that we shall do.” Lord Bardon laughed. “Should I chance upon the proper controls, I shall set them for a take-off. Meanwhile, the escape hatches seem the best entrances— we should be able to reach them from the tops of those •walls. Shall we head for the nearest?”
“We shall. And before it grows too light.” Again the flier was pressed into ferry service, transporting their small band across the waste to the base of one of the corridor walls close to the foot of the nearest ship-tower. Lord Sim swung overhead a rope with a hook attached-twin to the weapon Murren had used. The prongs caught on the top of the wall and held against his heaviest tugs, and by the rope they climbed up. Lord Tomm planted himself with his back against the smooth side of the ancient ship, bracing his feet a little apart to take weight, and the lighter Lord Jon stood on his shoulders, facing inward so that he could touch an oval outline that showed faintly on the ship. With a tool from his belt he traced that outline carefully, and then pushed. It took two such tracings to cut through the sealing, but at last the door came free and they were in the ship.
Kincar was the third inside, sniffing again that odd musty odor of the silent tower. But Lord Frans, following him, gave an exclamation of surprise as he stood in the corridor.
“This is the Morris!”
“Their Morris,” corrected Lord Dillan. “You can guide us, Frans. This is twin to your father’s ship—“
“The control chamber—“ Lord Frans frowned at the wall. “It has been so many years. Aye, we’ll want that first”
“Why?” Lord Jon wanted to know. He was looking about him with some of Kincar’s curiosity. Himself two generations younger than the original space travelers, the ships were almost as strange^ to him as they were to the half-Gorthian.
“If she is still activated, we will be able to use the scanner.”
While that meant nothing to Kincar, it apparently did to the others.
Lord Frans guided them, not to a center well ladder-stair such as Kincar and his captors had used, but to a narrower and more private way, hardly large enough for the Star men to negotiate. The steps were merely loops of metal on which to rest toes and fingers. They went up and up until Lord Frans disappeared through a well opening and Lord Bardon after him. Then Kincar climbed into one of the most bewildering rooms he had ever seen.
There were four padded, cushioned objects, which were a cross between a seat and a bunk. Each was swung on a complicated base of springs and yielding supports before banks of levers and buttons to which the controls of the small flier were the playthings of a child. Above each of these boards was a wide oblong of opaque stuff, mirrors that reflected nothing in the room. Kincar remained where he was, a little overawed by this array of Star magic, with a feeling that to press the wrong button here might send them all off into space.
Lord Dillan walked across the chamber. “Astrogator.” He dropped his hand on the back of one of those odd seats, and it trembled under the slight pressure. “Pilot,” he indicated another. “Astro-Pilot.” That was the third. “Corn-Tech.” The fourth and last was the seat Lord Dillan chose to sit in.
As soon as his weight settled in the chair-bed, the bank of buttons slid noiselessly forward so it was well within his reach. He was in no hurry to put it to use, deliberating over his choice before he pressed a button. Above the control bank that square mirror flashed rippling bars of yellow light, and Lord Jon broke out eagerly, “She is still alive?”
“At least the corns are in.” Again the words meant nothing to Kincar. But he would have paid little attention to any speech at the moment. He was too intrigued by what was happening on the screen. It was as if Lord Dillan had opened a window. Spread out there was a wide picture of the wastelands and the mountain range as they existed outside the ship.
He had only an instant to make identification before that picture changed, and they were looking at a room crowded with a mass of metal parts and machines he could not have set name to—
“Engine room,” breathed Lord Jon softly, wonderingly.
Another movement of Lord Dillan’s finger, and they had a new view— a place of tanks, empty, dusty, long disused.
“Hydro-“
So they inspected the vitals of the ship, cabin to cabin. But in all their viewing nothing was living, nor was there any indication that anyone had been there for a very long time. At last Lord Dillan leaned back, sending his support jiggling.
“She is not the one—“
Lord Bardon was studying the banks of controls fronting the pilot’s seat. “They would be more likely to hole up in the Gangee. After all she was the flag ship. Hm— “ He did not sit down in the pilot’s place but leaned across to move a lever. There was a brilliant flash of red in a small bulb there, and from somewhere about them a voice rasped in the speech of the Star ways.
“She’s still hot!” Lord Jon exploded. Lord Dillan smiled, a chill smile that Kincar knew he would not care to have turned in his direction.
“And she will be hotter.” He arose and crossed to join Lord Bardon. “Five hours ought to give us time enough. Let us see now—“ He counted levers and studs, peered closely at dials, and then his hands flew, weaving a pattern over the board. “Let us be on the way now. We’ll try the Gangee next.”
“She’ll lift?” demanded Lord Tomm.
“She’ll certainly try. In any event she’ll wreck this part of the building.”
They made their way back to the wall top, out into the early morning sunshine. Lord Dillan pivoted, examining each of the other towers.
“Might as well split up now. Jon, you and Rodric, Sim and Tomm, get in those other end ships. If they are empty, set them to blow—five hours from now or thereabouts. Bring with you any of”—he rattled off a string of queer words incomprehensible to Kincar—“you come across in their store rooms. We’ll try for the Gangee.”
They nodded and separated, heading for different ships.
THERE WAS A different “feel” to the Gangee. They made their entrance through the old escape port of the ship without opposition or discovery. But, as they clustered together at the foot of the ladder to the control cabin, even Kincar was conscious of a faint heat radiating from the walls about them, a lack of dead air long sealed in.
“This is the one.” Lord Bardon was satisfied.
“Controls again?” Lord Frans wanted to know.
“Just so!” The words were bitten off as if Lord Dillan was reluctant to make that climb. Did he think they might find others occupying that chamber?
But he sped up the ladder, Lord Bardon at his heels, and the rest strung out behind. They climbed by closed doors on every level. And twice Kincar, brushing against the inner fabric with his shoulder, felt a vibration through the ship, like a beat of motive power.
The control cabin, when they reached it, was, at first inspection, very little different from that of the Morris—the same four chairs, the same banks of controls, the same vision plates above them. Once more Lord Dillan seated himself in the Corn-Tech’s place and pressed a stud. They glimpsed the outside world, and then the picture changed. The engine room—but this one was not silent, dust-shrouded. Rods moved on dials set in casing. The Hydro garden was stretches of green stuff growing, and the Star Lords were surprised.
“Do you think they are planning a take-off?” asked Lord Jon.
“More likely they keep the Gangee in blast condition as a symbol,” Lord Dillan replied. “Which may be their salvation HOW—“
Once more the picture flickered and cleared. Kincar started. It was so vivid, so clear, that he had the sensation of looking through an open window into a crowded room, for it was crowded.
An exclamation in his own tongue burst from Lord Frans, echoed by one from Lord Jon. It was an assemblage of the Dark Ones they spied upon.
“You— Great Spirit of Space! Dillan, there you are!” Lord Bardon’s voice shook as he identified one of those men. “And Rud— that is truly Rudl Lacee— Mac— Bart— but Bart’s dead! He died of the spinning fever years ago. And— and— “ His face was a gray-white now beneath its weathered brown, his eyes wide, stricken. “Alis— Dillan, it’s Alls!” He flung away toward the other door of the chamber.
Lord Dillan barked an order, sharp enough to send Kincar moving. The other Star Lords were frozen, hypnotized. by what they saw. Only to Kincar to whom it was just a company of aliens did that command have meaning.
“Stop him! Don’t let him leave this cabin!”
Lord Bardon was a third again his size, and Kincar did not know how he could obey, but there was no mistaking the frantic urgency of the order. He hurled himself across the door, clasping the stay rods on either wide, imposing his body between Lord Bardon and the portal. Lord Dillan was hurrying to them, but he did not reach there before his fellow had crashed into Kincar, slamming the half-Gorthian back painfully against the ship metal, before he began tearing at him, trying to drag him away.
A hand caught at Lord Bardon, brought him partly around, and then a palm struck first one cheek and then the other in a head-rocking duo of slaps.
“Bardon!”
Lord Bardon staggered, that strained stare in his eyes beginning to break. Lord Dillan spoke swiftly in their own language until Lord Bardon gave a broken little cry and covered his face with both hands. Then Lord Dillan turned to the others.
“They are not there, understand?” He spoke with a slow and heavy emphasis, designed to drive every word not only into their ears, but also into their minds. “Those down there are not the ones we know—knew. I am not that Dillan, nor is he me.”
Lord Jon caught a quivering underlip between his teeth. He was still watching the screen longingly, and Lord Dillan spoke directly to him.
“That is not your father you see there, Jon. Keep that in mind! This I know.” He swung upon them all. “We must have no speech with these, for our sakes—perhaps for theirs. There is only one thing to do. They have poisoned this Gorth, as we to a lesser extent poisoned ours. And now they must go forth from it—“
He had laid his hand on the back of the pilot’s seat when Bardon spoke hoarsely.
“You can’t blast them off without any warning!”
“We will not. But they shall only have enough to ensure their lives during take-off. There must be payment for what has been done here—the risk they shall run in entering exile will be toward the settlement of that account.”
The Star Lords were occupied with their problem, but Kincar had been watching the screen again. Now he ventured to interrupt.
“Lord, are they able to see us as we do them?”
Dillan whirled, his head up, to front the vision plate. There could be no mistake; the party they spied upon were quiet, all heads turned to face the screen. And the blank astonishment of most of their expressions was altering to concern. That other Lord Dillan moved, advancing toward them, until his head alone covered three-quarters of the plate.
It was something out of a troubled dream to see one Dillan stare at the other, if only from a screen. A huge hand moved across the corner of the plate and was gone again. Then a Voice boomed out above them, speaking the Star tongue. Dillan, their Dillan, snapped a small switch beneath the plate and made answer. Then his hand swept down breaking contact, both eye and voice.
“We have little time,” he said unhurriedly. “Dog that door so that they may not enter until they burn through—“
It was Lord Frans and Lord Jon who obeyed. Lord Bardon remained by the pilot’s chair—until Dillan turned on him.
“We shall give them more than just a slim chance, Bard. Once in space they can make a fresh start. We are not dooming them—“
“I know-I know! But will the ship lift? Or will it-“ His voice faded to a half whisper.
“Now,” Dillan told them all, “get out—away from here— as fast as you can move!”
Kincar was on the1 ladder. The fear of being trapped and torn skyward was very real. Lord Jon and Lord Frans came after him. All three were in the outer air before Lord Bardon joined them. And he lingered in the hatch, one hand on the rope, waiting.
They were hailed by the other parties. Lord Jon waved them off with wild arm signals. Then Lord Bardon dropped from the hatch and a last silver figure appeared in the oval opening. He brought that door to behind him and slid down the rope.
“Run, you fools!” he shouted, and Kincar found himself pounding away from the Gangee along the top of the wall. He had no idea how a space ship, especially one built up by masonry would take off, but he could guess that the results would be earthshaking at ground leVel.
A large arm clamped a viselike grip about his waist, and Lord Dillan gasped, “Jump now, son!”
He was borne along by the other from the top of the wall. They hit hard and rolled. Then he was punched into a ball half under the other’s bulk as the ground under them rocked and broke. There was the clamor of mistreated metal, the rumble of a world coming to an end, and a flash so brilliant that it blinded him—to be followed by a clap of noise and a silence so complete that it was as if all sound had been reft away.
Broken lumps of stone rained noiselessly from the sky. There was no sound at all. Kincar struggled free of a hold that was now only a limp weight. He sat up shakily, his head ringing, red and orange jags of light darting back and forth before his eyes when he tried to focus on his surroundings. His groping hands were on warm flesh, and then on stickiness that clung to his fingers. He rubbed impatiently at his eyes, trying to clear them. But, above all else, the dead silence was frightening.
He could see now, if only dimly. Red crawled sluggishly over a silver back beside his knee. Dazed, he rubbed his eyes again. A ringing began in his ears, worse when he moved, making it very hard to think-
But he could move. Kincar bent over the quiet body beside him. There was a gash on the shoulder, a tear in both the silver clothing and the flesh beneath it. Already the bleeding was growing less. Cautiously he tried to move the other, exposing Lord Dillan’s face slack and pale. The Star Lord was still breathing. Kincar steadied the heavy head on his arm and ripped open the sealing of the tunic. Under his fingers there was a steady heart beat, though it seemed too slow. The flier— if he could find the flier and the supplies on it—
Kincar settled Dillan’s head back on the ground and stumbled to his feet. He had an odd sensation that if he moved too suddenly he might fly apart.
Before he could turn away, another silver figure hunched up from the ground. He could see Lord Jon’s mouth open and shut in a grimed face, but he could not hear a word the other said. Then others ran toward them. Miraculously they had all survived the blast-off of the Gangee, though for long, anxious moments they were afraid that Bardon had been lost. He was discovered at last, stunned, but still alive, on the other side of a cracked and riven wall.
Kincar was deafened, unable to understand the others as they gathered at the flier. Dillan, revived, bandaged, and propped up against a heap of rubble, was giving orders. Both Jon and Bardon were unable to walk without support, and the rest were busy exploring the remaining ships and coming back to report to Dillan. Twice they brought boxes to be piled at the improvised camp site.
Lord Frans used the flier to ferry their spoil and the injured to a point well out in the waste, several miles from the ship-towers. Where the Gangee had formed the core of the queer structure, there was now a vast crater, avoided by the Star men, smoking in the morning air. And the walls that had tied it to its sister ships were riven, reduced to gravel-rubble in places. Studying the remains, Kincar marveled that any one of them had survived. He might have been even more deeply impressed by their good fortune had he possessed the information shared by the men around him.
“—took off to the mountains—“
He had been watching soundlessly moving lips so long, with a growing frustration, that at first he did not realize he had caught those words, faint as a whisper, through the din in his head. Lord Frans was making a report of some importance, judging by the demeanor of those about him.
Men scattered to the ships at a trot, and the flier returned. Lord Dillan and Kincar were motioned aboard her, to be transported to the mid-point camp. Then the others came in groups until they were all well away from the ship-towers. They must have triggered the other ships, all of them. Those slim silver towers would follow the Gangee out into space, untenanted and derelict.
Again his ears cleared, and he caught a sharp hail. A string of mounted men were riding out in the waste, the party from the hold. They rode at a full gallop, as men might go into battle, and Vulth spurred well ahead, a Vulth shouting news as he came. He threw himself from his mount and ran up, to skid to a stop before Lord Dillan, his aspect wild.
“That demon—the one with your form, Lord—he has turned the freed slaves against us!”
Kincar noted an empty saddle among the oncoming party. Where was Jonathal? Two of the other men were wounded. “They will circle back to the hold-“
Lord Dillan cut through that crisply. “Aye, that is his wisest move. So we must get there speedily. Frans, you take the controls—Sim—“
“Not you, Dillan!” That was Lord Bardon’s protest. “Most certainly me! Who else can face him so successfully and reveal him to be what he is? And”—his eyes went to Kincar—“and you, Kincar. This may be the time, guardian, for you to use that power—“
Dillan’s energy got them on the flier after a flood of orders had sent the mounted party around to come at the hold from the plains side with the remainder of the Star Lords in their company, leaving the wounded, Lord Bardon and Lord Jon to stay at the waste camp and check on the blast-off of the rest of the ships.
The flier lifted over the ridge, heading straight for the hold. Lord Frans pushed the limping motor to its utmost, and there was no talk among the men in her. A familiar peak cut the sky before them—they were almost to the valley.
“He’ll use your face as his passport,” Lord Sim commented.
“Asgar will know the truth.”
Aye, the Lady Asgar would be able to tell true from false, but could she distinguish that in time? And how had the False Lord Dillan managed to get out of the Ganges before she blasted into space? Kincar speculated concerning that, ( but, having seen the preoccupation of his companions, f; thought it better not to ask for any explanations. [ From the air the hold appeared to be as it always had i, been—until one marked a body lying before the door of the main hall in the courtyard. Save for that grim sight there was no other sign of life—or death.
Frans brought the flier down in the courtyard. Now the ringing in Kincar’s ears could not blot out the clamor issuing from the hall. He was on his feet, his sword in hand, but he had not moved faster than Lord Dillan. And running side by side they entered the core of the hold.
A handful of Gorthians, the women among them, were backed against the far wall—but they were aimed and waiting. Towering among them stood the Lady Asgar. And she faced a silver figure who was the duplicate of the man beside Kincar. Fan-wise behind the false lord was a rabble of ex-slaves. Kapal, writhing feebly as if he would still be on his feet to match blades, lay with the Lady Asgar’s people. And beside her, half-crouched to spring at the false Dillan’s throat, was Kathal s’Rud.
The hold people were at bay, held so by the weapon the false lord fingered—the blaster with which he had once threatened Kincar. One of the slaves in his tail caught sight of the new party. His mouth opened on a scream of undisguised terror, and he flung himself to the floor, beating his fists against the stone pavement and continuing the yammering screech, which went on and on. His fellows cowered away, first from him, and then from their erstwhile leader as they saw the other Lord Dillan.
Even one with an iron will could not keep his attention from wandering at that interruption. The false lord glanced once to what lay behind him, giving those he held in check their chance. The Lady Asgar was at him in a fury, striving to wrest from him the blaster, while Kathal and Lord Jon’s eldest son leaped to her support.
The rest of the party from the flier rushed in. Dillan, fresh stains of red seeping out on his bandaged shoulder, faced himself—but the likeness between them was no longer mirror-exact, for the Dillan of this Gorth snarled, his face awry in a grimace of rage. Asgar had torn the weapon from him. Now his bare hands reached for his rival’s throat.
Kincar, as he had done to save Lord Bardon from the needle knife, clove through the distance between them, his left arm striking hard against the false lord’s thighs, his sword tripping the other up. And they smashed down on the pavement as others of the half-blood piled upon them.
“I show you a man of your own to lead you—“ He turned slowly to face that other who was also s’Rud.
Kathal’s hands came up slowly, as if they moved by some will outside his own. Kincar tossed the talisman into the air. It flashed straight across the space between them into those waiting hands. And as the stone touched flesh once more, it glowed! He had been right—the Tie had chosen to go from him. He could not, if he wished, take it again.
A faint promise of the coming warm season mellowed the stone at his back. Kincar breathed the fresh air from the courtyard. Vorken squatted on his shoulder, chirruping now and again.
“Stay with us, Lords—we need you—“
They had heard that plea repeated so many times during the past months. And, as ever, the same patient answer came.
“Not so. Us you need least of all. This is your world, Kathal, Kapal; shape your own roads through it. We did not sweep away one set of alien rulers to plant another. Take your fortune in your two hands and be glad it is truly yoursl”
“But—where do you go, Lords? To a better world?”
Out in the valley was the shimmer of the now complete gate, erected from materials looted from the vanished ships. Did they seek a better world through that portal when on the morrow they went into a second self-imposed exile? Kin-car reached for his bow. Would they ever find a Gorth to fit their dreams? Or did that greatly matter? Sometimes he thought that an endless quest had been set them for some purpose, and that the seeking, not the finding, was their full reward. And it was good.