Wizards’ Worlds (40 page)

“You have tried to break this dream?”

“Of course! But I am tied here. I think by you and the Lord Kas. Until we three try
together, perhaps we can not any of us return.”

“And Kas—now you must go searching for him?”

She shook her head. “Kas, I think, is one of the crew on this spacer about to set
down. I believe I saw him—though not his face.” Now she smiled a little shakily. “It
seems that though I am mainly the Tamisan I have always been, yet also do I have some
of the powers of a Mouth. Just as you are Hawarel as well as Starrex.”

“The longer I listen to you,” he announced, “the more I become Starrex. So we must
find Kas on the spacer before we wrangle free from this tangle? But that is going
to be rather a problem. I am enough of Hawarel to know that the spacer is going to
receive the usual welcome dealt off-world ships here—trickery and extinction. Your
three points have been as you envisioned them. There was no Welcome, but rather a
massacre, no colony ship ever reached here, and Sylt was speared by a contemptuous
man-at-arms the first time he lifted his voice to draw a crowd. Hawarel knows this
as the truth; as Starrex I am aware there is another truth which did radically change
life on this planet. Now, did you seek me out on purpose, your champion tale intended
to be our bridge to Kas?”

“No, at least I did not consciously arrange it so. I tell you, I have some of the
powers of a Mouth—they take over.”

He gave a sharp bark of sound which was not laughter but somewhat akin to it. “By
the Fist of Jimsam Taragon, we have it complicated by magic, too! And I suppose you
can not tell me just how much a Mouth can do in the way of foreseeing or forearming
or freeing us from this trap?”

Tamisan shook her head. “The Mouths were mentioned in the history tapes; they were
very important once.
But after Sylt’s rebellion they were either killed or disappeared. They were hunted
by both sides and most of what we know about them is only legend. I can not tell you
what I can do. Sometimes something—perhaps it is the memory and knowledge of this
body—takes over and then I do strange things. I neither will nor understand them.”

H
E
crossed the room and pulled two stools from a far corner. “We might as well sit at
ease and explore what we can of this world’s memories. It just might be that united
we can learn more than when trying singly. The trouble is—” He reached out a hand
and mechanically she touched fingertips to the back of it in an oddly formal ceremony
which was not part of her own knowledge. So he guided her to one of the stools and
she was glad to sit down.

“The trouble is,” he repeated as he dropped on the other stool, stretching out his
long legs and tugging at his sword belt with that dangerously empty sheath, “that
I was more than a little mixed up when I awoke, if you might call it that—in this
body. So that my first reactions must have suggested mental imbalance to those I encountered.
Luckily the Hawarel part was in control soon enough to save me. But there is a second
drawback to this identity—I am suspect as coming from a province where there has been
a rebellion. In fact I am here in Ty-Kry as a distrusted hostage, rather than a member
in good standing of the guard. I have not been able to ask questions, and all I have
learned is in bits and pieces. The real Hawarel is a quite uncomplicated and simple
soldier who is hurt by the suspicion against him and quite fervently loyal to the
crown. I wonder how Kas took
his
awakening. If he preserves any remnant of his real self, he ought to be well established
by now.”

Tamisan, surprised, asked a question to which she
hoped he would give a true and open answer: “You do not like—you have reason to fear
Lord Kas?”

“Like? Fear?” She could see that thin shadow of Starrex overlaying Hawarel become
more distinct. “Those are emotions. I have had little to do with emotions for some
time.”

“But you wanted him to share the dream,” she persisted.

“True. I may not be emotional about my esteemed cousin, but I am a prudent man. Since
it was by his urging, in fact his arrangement, that you were added to my household,
I thought it only fair he share in his plan for my entertainment. I know that Kas
is very solicitous of his crippled cousin, ready-handed to serve in any way—so generous
of time, energy—”

“You suspect him of something?” She thought she had sensed what lay behind his words.

“Suspect? Of what? He has been, as all would assure you freely, and as far as I would
allow, my good friend.” But there was a closed look about him, warning her off from
any further exploration of that.

“His crippled cousin.” This time Hawarel repeated those words as if he spoke to himself
and not to her. “At least you have done me a small service on the credit side of the
scale.” Now he did look to Tamisan as he thumped his right leg with a satisfaction
which was not of the Starrex she knew. “You have provided me with a body in good working
order. Which I may well need, since so far bad has outweighed the good in this world.”

“Hawarel—Lord Starrex—” she was beginning when he interrupted her.

“Give me always Hawarel. Remember! There is no need to add to the already heavy load
of suspicion surrounding me in these halls.”

“Hawarel, then. I did not choose you for the champion; that was done by that power
I do not understand, working through me. If they agree—then you have a good
chance to find Kas. You may even demand that he be the one you battle.”

“Find him how?”

“They may allow me to select the proper one from the off-world force,” she suggested.
A very thin thread on which to hang any plan of escape, but she could not see a better
one.

“And you think that this sand painting will pick him out—as it did me?”

“But it
did
you, did it not?”

“That I can not deny.”

“And the first time I foresaw—for one of the First Standing—it made such an impression
on her that she had me summoned here to foresee for the Over-Queen.”

“Magic!” Again he uttered that half laugh.

“To another worlder, much that the space travelers can do might be termed magic.”

“Well enough. I have seen things—yes, I have seen things myself, and not while dreaming
either. Very well, I am to volunteer to meet an enemy champion from the ship and then
you sand paint out the proper one. If you are successful and do find Kas—then what?”

“It is simple—we wake.”

“You take us with you, of course?”

“If we are so linked that we can not leave here without one another—then a single
waking will take us all.”

“Are you sure you need Kas? After all, I was the one you were planning this dream
for.”

“We go, leave the Lord Kas here?”

“A cowardly withdrawal you think, my dreamer. But one, I assure you, which would solve
many things. However—can you send me through, return for Kas? It is in my mind I would
like to know what is happening now for myself—in our own world. Is it not by the dreamer’s
oath that he for whom the dream is wrought has first call upon the dreamer?”

So he did have some lurking uneasiness tied to Kas!
But in a manner he was right. She reached out before he was aware of what she would
do and seized his hand, at the same time using the formula for waking. Once more that
mist which was nowhere enveloped her. But it was no use; her first guess had been
right—they were still tied. And she blinked her eyes open upon the same room. Hawarel
had slumped, was falling from his stool so that she had to go to one knee to support
his body with her shoulder or he would have slid full length to the floor. Then his
muscles tightened and he jerked erect, his eyes open and blazing into hers with the
same cold anger with which he had first greeted her upon entering this room.

“Why—?”

“You asked,” she countered.

His lids drooped so she could no longer see that icy anger. “So I did. But I did not
quite expect to be so quickly served. Now, you have effectively proven your point—three
go or none. And it remains to be seen how soon we can find our missing third.”

He asked her no more questions and she was glad, since that whirl into nowhere in
the abortive attempt at waking had tired her greatly. She moved the stool a little
so her back could rest against the wall and she was farther from him. But in a little
while he got to his feet and paced back and forth as if some driving desire for wider
action worked in him, to the point where he could not sit still.

Once the door opened, but they were not summoned forth. Instead food and drink were
brought to them by one of the guards, the other standing ready with a crossbow at
thigh, his eyes ever upon them.

“We are well served.” Hawarel opened the lids of bowls and inspected their contents.
“It would seem we are of importance. Hail, Rugaard, when do we go forth from this
room, of which I am growing very tired?”

“Be at peace, you shall have action enough when the Great One desires it,” the officers
by the crossbowman answered. “The ship from the stars has been sighted, the
mountain beacons have blazed twice. They seem to be aiming for the plain beyond Ty-Kry.
It is odd that they are so single-minded and come to the same pen to be taken each
time. Perhaps Dalskol was right when he said that they do not think for themselves
at all, but carry out the orders of an off-world power which does not allow them independent
judgment. Your service time will come. And, Mouth of Olava—” He took a step forward
to see Tamisan the better. “The Great One says that it might be well to read the sand
on your own behalf. For false seers are given to those they have belittled in such
seeing, to be done with as those they have so shamed may decide.”

“As is well known,” she answered him. “I have not dealt falsely, as shall be seen
at the proper time and in the proper place.”

When they were gone she was hungry, and so it seemed was Hawarel, for they divided
fairly and left nothing in the bowls. When they were done he said, “Since you are
a reader of history and know old customs, perhaps you remember one which it is not
too pleasant to recall now—that among some races it was the proper thing to dine well
a prisoner about to die.”

“You choose a heartening thing to think on!”

“No, you choose it, for this is your world, remember that, my dreamer.”

Tamisan closed her eyes and leaned her head and shoulders back against the wall. Perhaps
she even slept a little, for there was the clang of sudden noise and she gasped out
of a doze. The room had grown dark, but at the door was a blaze of light and in that
stood the officer, behind a guard of spearmen.

“The time has come,” he said.

“The wait has been long.” Hawarel stood up, stretching wide his arms as one who has
been ready for too long. Then he turned to her and once more offered his wrist. She
would have liked to have done without his aid, but she found herself stiff and cramped
enough to be glad of it.

They went on a complicated way through halls, down stairs until at last they issued
out into the night. And awaiting them was a covered cart much larger than the chair
on wheels which had brought her to the castle, this one with two grypons between its
shafts.

Into this their guard urged them, drawing the curtains, pegging those down tightly
outside, so that even had they wished they could not and looked out. And as the cart
creaked out, Tamisan tried to guess by sound where they might be going.

There was little noise to guide her. It was as if they now passed through a town deep
in slumber. But in the gloom of the cart she felt rather than saw movement, and then
a shoulder brushed hers and a whisper so faint she had to strain to hear it was at
her ear.

“Out of the castle—”

“Where?”

“My guess is the field—the forbidden place—”

The memory of the this-world Tamisan supplied explanation. That was where two other
spacers had planeted—not to rise again. In fact, the one which had come fifty years
ago had never been dismantled but stood, a corroded mass of metal, to be a double
warning—to the stars not to invade, to Ty-Kry to be alert against such invasion.

It seemed to Tamisan that their ride would never come to an end. Then there was an
abrupt halt which bumped her soundly against the side of the cart, and lights bedazzled
her eyes as the end curtains were pulled aside.

“Come, Champion and Champion-maker!”

Hawarel obeyed first and turned to give her assistance once more; but he was elbowed
aside as the officer pulled rather than led her into the open. Torches in the hands
of spearmen ringed them around. Beyond was a colorful mass of people, with a double
rank of guards drawn up as a barrier between those and the dark of the land beyond.

“Up there—” Hawarel was beside her again.

Tamisan raised her eyes, almost blinded by the glare as
a sudden pillar of fire burst across the night sky. A spacer was riding down on tail
rockets to make a fin landing.

B
Y
the light of those flames, the whole plain was illumined. Beyond stood the hulk of
the unfortunate spacer which had last planeted here. And there, drawn up in lines
was a large force of spearmen, crossbowmen, officers with the basket-hilted weapons
at their sides. However, as they stood they might seem a guard of honor for the Over-Queen,
who sat raised above the rest on a very tall chair cart—certainly not an army in battle
array.

And those in the ship—they might well look contemptuously on such archaic weapons
as useless. How
had
those of Ty-Kry taken the other ship and her crew? By wiles, treachery—as the victims
might declare—or by clever tricks, suggested that part of Tamisan who was the Mouth
of Olava.

The surface of the ground boiled away under the descent rockets. Then the bright fires
vanished, leaving the plain in semi-darkness until their eyes adjusted to the far
lesser light of the torches.