Wizards’ Worlds (46 page)

Though his long hair had been clipped and the stubble of it shaven to expose the full
nakedness of his entire scalp, there was no mistaking Hawarel. He not only fought
against the clamps and straps which held him to the table, but in addition he jerked
his head with sharp, short pulls, to dislodge disks fastened to his forehead, and
from there, by wire, to a vast box of a machine which filled one-quarter of the cabin.

Tamisan stepped over the inert men, reached the side of the table and jerked the disks
away from the prisoner’s head; perhaps his determined struggles had already loosened
them somewhat. His mouth had opened and shut as she came to him as if he were forming
words she could not hear, or he could not voice. But as the apparatus came away in
her hands, he gave a cry of triumph.

“Get me loose!” he commanded. She was already examining the under part of the table
for the locking mechanism of those straps and clamps. It was only seconds before she
was able to obey his order.

He sat upright, bare to the waist, and she saw beneath, where his shoulders and the
upper part of his spine had rested on the table, a complicated series of disks.

“Ah!” Before she could move he scooped up the laser she had laid on the edge of the
table when she had freed him. And the gesture he made with it might not have been
only to indicate the door and the need for hurry, but perhaps also was a warning that
with a weapon in his hands he now thought he was in command of the situation.

“They sleep—everywhere,” she told him. “And Kas—he is a prisoner.”

“I thought you could not find him—he was not one of the crew.”

“He was not. But I have him now, and with him we can return.”

“How long will it take?” Starrex was down on one knee, searching the two men on the
floor.

“I can not tell.” She gave him the truth. “But—how long will these sleep? Their unconsciousness
is, I think, some trick of the Over-Queen’s.”

“It came unexpectedly for them,” Starrex agreed. “And you may be right that this is
only preliminary to taking over the ship. I have learned this much, that their instruments
and much of their equipment has been affected so they can not trust them. Otherwise—”
His Hawarel face was grim under its bluish, deadman’s coloring.
“
Otherwise I would not have survived this long as myself.”

“Let us go!” Now that she had miraculously—or so it seemed to her—succeeded, Tamisan
was even more uneasy, wanting nothing to spoil their escape.

T
HEY
found their way back to the corridor before the hatch while the ship still slept.
Starrex knelt by Kas and then looked with astonishment at Tamisan. “But this is the
real Kas!”

“It is Kas, real enough,” she agreed. “And there is a reason for that. But need we
discuss it now? If the Over-Queen’s men come to take this ship—I tell you her greeting
to us may be worse than any you have met here. I remember enough of the Tamisan who
is the Mouth of Olava to know that.”

He nodded. “Can you break dream now?”

She looked around her a little wildly. Concentration—no, somehow she could not think
so clearly. It was as if the exultation of fumes of that scented air had awakened
in her was draining. And with that sapping went what she needed most.

“I—I fear not.”

“It is simple then.” He stopped again to examine the tangle cords. “We shall have
to go to where you can.” She saw him set the laser on its lowest beam to burn through
the cords which united Kas to the crewman, though he did not free his cousin from
the rest of his bonds.

But what if they marched out of the hatch into a waiting party of the Over-Queen’s
guards? They had the tangler, the laser, and perhaps—just perhaps—the half smile of
fortune on their side. They would have to risk it.

Tamisan opened the inner door of the pressure chamber. The dead men lay there as they
had fallen. Fighting
nausea, she dragged one aside to make room for Starrex, who carried Kas over his shoulder,
moving slowly under that burden, a fold of cloak well wrapped about the prisoner to
prevent any contact between the cords and Starrex’s own flesh. The outer hatch was
open and beyond—

A blast of icy rain, with the added bite of the wind which drove it, struck viciously
at them. It had been dawn when Tamisan had entered the ship, but outside now the day
was no lighter. The torches had been extinguished. Tamisan could see no lights. Shielding
her eyes against the wind and the rain, she tried to make out the line of guards.

Perhaps the severe weather had driven them all away. She was sure no one was waiting
at the foot of the ramp, unless they were under the fins of the ship, sheltering there.
And that chance would have to be taken. She said as much and Starrex nodded.

“Where do we go?”

“Anywhere away from the city. Give me but a little shelter and time.”

“Vermer’s Hand over us and we can do it,” he returned. “Here—take this!”

He kicked an object across the metal plates of the deck and she saw it was one of
the lasers used by the crewmen. She picked it up in one hand, the tangler in her other.
Burdened as he was by Kas, Starrex could not lead the way. She must now play in real
life such an action role as she had many times dreamed. But this held no amusement,
only a wish to scuttle quickly into any form of safety wind and rain would allow her.

The ramp being at such a steep angle, she feared slipping on it and had to belt the
tangler, hold on grimly with one hand and go much more slowly than her fast-beating
heart demanded, anxious lest Starrex in turn might lose footing and slam into her,
carrying them both on to disaster.

The strength of the storm was such that it was a battle
to gain step after step, even though she reached the ground without mishap. Tamisan
was not sure in which direction she must head now to avoid the Castle and the city.
Her memory seemed befuddled by the storm and she could only guess. Also she was afraid
of losing contact with Starrex; as slowly as she went, he dragged even more behind.

Then she stumbled against an upright stake. She put out her hand and fumbled along
it enough to know that this was one of the rain-quenched torches. It heartened her
a little to learn that they had reached the barrier and that no guards stood here.
Perhaps the storm was a life saver for the three of them.

Tamisan lingered, waiting for Starrex to catch up. Now he caught at the torch, steadying
himself as if he needed that support.

His voice came in wind-deadened gusts, labored. “I may have in this Hawarel a good
body, but I am not a heavy duty android. We must find your shelter.”

There was a dark shadow to her left; it could be a coppice. Even trees or tall brush
could give them some measure of relief.

“Over there.” She pointed, but did not know if, in this gloom, he could see it.

“Yes.” He straightened a little under the burden of Kas, staggering in the direction
of the shadow.

They had to beat their way into the vegetation. Tamisan, having two arms free, broke
the path for Starrex. She might have used the laser to cut, but the ever-present fear
that they might need the charges for future protection kept her from a waste of their
slender resources for defense.

At last, at the cost of branch-whipped and thorn-ripped weals in their flesh, they
came into a space which was a little more open. Starrex allowed his burden to fall
to the ground.

“Can you break dream now?” He squatted down beside Kas, as she dropped to sit panting
near him.

“I can—”

But she got no farther. There was a sound which cut through even the tumult of the
storm, and that part of them which was allied to this world knew it for what it was,
the warning of a hunt. And—since they
were
able to hear it—they must be the hunted!

“The Itter Hounds!” He put their peril into words.

“And they run for us!” Mouth of Olava or not, when the Itter Hounds coursed on one’s
track there was no defense, for they could not be controlled once they were loosed
to chase.

“We can not fight them.”

“Do not be too sure of that,” he answered. “We have the lasers, weapons not of this
world. The weapon which put the ship’s crew to sleep did not vanquish us; so might
an off-world weapon react the other way here—”

“But Kas—” She thought she had found a weak point in his reasoning, much as she wanted
to believe he had guessed rightly.

“Kas is in his own form, which is perhaps more akin to the crewmen now than to us.
And, by the way, how is it that he is?”

She kept her tale terse, but told him of her dream within a dream and how she had
found Kas. She heard him laugh.

“I was right then in thinking my dear cousin might well be at the center of this web!
However, now he is as completely enmeshed as the rest of us. As a fellow victim he
may be more cooperative.”

“Entirely so, my noble lord!” The voice out of the dark between them was composed.

“You are awake then, cousin. Well, we would be even more awake. There is a struggle
here in progress between two sets of enemies who are both willing to make us a third.
We had better travel swiftly elsewhere if we would save our skins. What of it, Tamisan?”

“I must have time.”

“What I can do to buy it for you, I will!” That carried the force of a sworn oath.
“If the lasers act outside the laws of this world, it may be that they can even stop
the Itter Hounds. But to get to it!”

She had no proper conductor, nothing but her will and the need. Putting out her hands
she touched the bare, wet flesh of Starrex’s shoulder, was more cautious in seeking
a hold on Kas, lest she encounter one of the tangle cords. Then she exerted her full
will and looked far in, not out.

It was no use, her craft failed her. There was that momentary sensation of suspension
between two worlds. Then she was back in the dark brush where the growing walls did
not hold off the rain.

“I can not break the dream. There is no energy machine to step up the power.” But
she did not add that perhaps she might have done it for herself alone.

Kas laughed then. “It would seem my sealer still works in spite of all your meddling,
Tamisan. I fear, my noble lord, you will have to prove the effectiveness of your weapons
after all. Though you might set me free and give me arms, necessity making allies
of us after all.”

“Tamisan!” Starrex’s voice was one to bring her out of the dull anguish of her failure.
“This dream—remember, it may not be a usual dream after all. Could another world door
be opened?”

“Which world?” At that moment her memories of reading and viewing tapes were a whirl
in her head. And the voiceless call of the Itter Hounds to which
this
Tamisan was attuned made her whole body cringe and shiver, addled her thinking even
more.

“Which world? Any one—think, girl, think! Take a single change if you must, but think!”

“I can not. The Hounds—aheee—they come—they come! We are meat for the fangs of those
who course the Dark Runnels under moonless skies! We are lost!” The Tamisan who dreamed
slipped into the Mouth of Olava, and the Mouth of Olava vanished in turn, and she
was only
a naked, defenseless thing crouching under the shadow of a death against which she
could raise no shield. She was—

Her head rocked, the flesh of her cheeks stung as she swayed from the slaps dealt
her by Starrex.

“You are a dreamer!” His voice was imperative. “Dream now then as you have never dreamed
before! For there is that in you which can do this, if you will it.”

It was like the action of that strange scented air in the ship; her will was reborn,
her mind steadied. Tamisan the dreamer pushed out that other weak Tamisan. But—what
world? A point—give her but a decision point in history!

“Yaaaah—” the cry from Starrex’s throat was not now meant to arouse her. Perhaps it
was the battle challenge of Hawarel.

There was a pallid snout, about which hung a dreadful sickening phosphorescence, thrust
through the screen of brush. She sensed rather than saw Starrex fire the laser at
it.

A decision—water beating in on her. Wind rising as if to claw them out of the poor
refuge to be easy meat for the hunters. Drowning—sea—sea—the Sea Kings of Nath!

Feverishly she seized upon that. But she knew so little of the Sea Kings who had once
held the lace of islands east of Ty-Kry. They had threatened Ty-Kry itself—so long
ago that that war was legend, not true history. And they had been tricked, their king
and his war chiefs taken by treachery.

The Ill Cup of Nath. Tamisan forced herself to remember, to hold on that. And, with
her choice made, again her mind steadied. She threw out her hands, once more touching
Starrex and Kas, though she did not choose the latter; her hand went without her conscious
bidding as if he must be included or all would fail.

The Ill Cup of Nath—this time it would not be drunk!

Tamisan opened her eyes. Tamisan—no—she was Tam-sin! She sat up and looked about her.
Soft covering of pale green fell away from her bare body. And, inspecting that same
body, she saw that her skin was no longer warmly
brown but was instead a pearl white. What she sat within was a bed place fashioned
in the form of a great shell, the other half of it arching over head to form a canopy.

Also—she was not alone. Cautiously, she turned a little to survey her sleeping companion.
His head was somewhat hidden from her so that she could see only a curve of shoulder
as pale as her own, hair curled in a tight fitting cap, the red-brown shade of storm-tossed
seaweed.

Warily, very warily, she put out a fingertip, touched it to his hunched shoulder—and
knew! He sighed, began to roll over toward her. Tamisan smiled and clasped her arms
under her small, high breasts.

She was Tam-sin, and this was Kilwar, who had been Starrex and Hawarel—but was now
Lord of LockNer of the Nearer Sea. But, there had been a third! Her smile faded as
memory sharpened. Kas! Anxiously she looked about the room, its nacre-coated walls,
its pale green hangings, all familiar to Tam-sin.