Empire of the East (9 page)

Purple was gone. Now there was a red dot on the panel, and a red-lit control to handle.

ARMAMENT INOPERATIVE

A pair of thin red lines, crossing each other at right angles, had appeared on his vision-ring. Rolf pressed at the red control again, and a spurt of what looked like liquid fire came lashing feebly from one of the projections on Elephant's snout. It was as if Elephant had retched up a mouthful of pure flame, and fouled its own forequarters with its spitting. Only one drop of the flame shot as far as the doors ahead, where it hung heavily, oozing lower like a fire-tear, leaving a blackened trace above it.

Now Rolf sat still for some time, watching the spattering of fire cool and blacken on the door and on Elephant's impervious metal hide. At last he tried again the control that had brought the fire, but this time nothing came. The red dot, unlike the previous ones, stayed on the panel, along with ARMAMENT INOPERATIVE though he could make the thin red cross-lines on his vision-ring come and go.

He decided that he would go on anyway to the next color, which was a spring-sky blue. He got the blue dot to go out, and went on, testing control after control. There were others that stayed lighted, turning red. Some caused strange rumblings or cracklings around him. Some controls produced no effect that he could see, except for changing the lights on the panel.

When finally the lowest dot in the sequence winked away, the CHECKLIST legend vanished with it. And now for the first time light appeared on the two most prominent handgrips within his reach, outlining them in bright green. These two handles, sturdy enough to have fit a plow, stood one on each side of his chair. He had tried moving them before, without result. Now he tried again.

At his first gentle pressure on the levers, the roaring beneath him, which had gradually been smoothing itself down to a lower level of noise, came swelling up. Rolf hesitated, waited, and then stiffened his arms, pushing the two levers forward. Groaning anew, Elephant gave a lurching start and moved. Suddenly the doors were very close ahead. Startled, Rolf yanked both levers back. His great mount bucked, with a sound of studded metal plates laboring like monstrous claws on the stone floor, and then lurched into reverse. It gathered speed. Now the rear wall of the cave was very close behind. Again Rolf over-reacted, pushing the levers forward hard. In his haste he moved them unevenly this time, the right farther than the left. Elephant skewed toward his left as he advanced again. His right shoulder touched a door just as Rolf, fighting against panic, once more reversed his two hand controls. Any child could use a pair of reins. You had to let the creature you were driving know that you were boss. The homely thought-pattern helped him get himself under control, and when he had done that he found that the control of Elephant was easy.

Carefully, with the beginning of skill, he eased his great mount forward and backward. There did not seem to be room for a full turn, but he started a turn to the left and stopped and came back and began one to the right. At last he brought Elephant back to somewhere near his original position, standing still and quietly vibrating.

He dared then to let go of the controls, to wipe sweat from his face. He nodded to himself—quite enough for one day, yes. He had probably pushed his luck too far already. He had to find out now if he could put Elephant back to sleep.

Following what seemed to him the commonsense way to accomplish this, Rolf began to return the controls he had moved to their original positions, in the reverse order from that which he had used to wake the Elephant up. The system worked. The colored dots began reappearing on the panel, bottom to top. Soon the vision-ring dimmed, became opaque, rose up away from his head. And soon after that the roar of power mumbled down into silence, and all the characters and dots of CHECKLIST vanished behind dark glass once more.

Slowly, trembling with a tension he had not fully realized till now, Rolf climbed out of the hole in Elephant's side. At first he left the door open, the light pouring out, while he stood on the stone floor marveling. Yes, it had all really happened. There was a fresh gouge-scar where Elephant's shoulder had touched the surface of the enormous door; there were blackened spots on the door and on Elephant's own surface, where the spattering of fire had fallen—maybe Elephant's thunderbolts had grown feeble with the passing of the years. If so, it hardly seemed to matter. The size and power and metallic invulnerability of the Elephant seemed weapons great enough for any battle.

In a moment of imagination he saw himself battering down the Castle walls, rescuing Sarah. But he must rest, to be ready for the night, when surely birds would come, and possible human help as well.

He lighted a rush, then climbed the Elephant's flank again to push shut the massive door, the door's last closure shutting off the light inside. Going up the rope with the torch between his teeth, he could envision Loford and Thomas and the others refusing to believe all he had to tell.

The upper cave was bright with midday. He took off his pack, and ate and drank a little. There was only a mouthful of water remaining in the bottle. Probably the birds would bring him more, as soon as darkness fell. Yes, they would certainly be back tonight.

Excited as he was, Rolf soon fell asleep sitting on hard rock in the high cave, and awoke only as the first darkness was welling up outside. He shook the water in his bottle, and then drank down the last of it, for now the birds would surely be here soon.

Full night came, and he looked for them with every passing moment, and yet they did not come.

Sitting now in the cave's very mouth, he could see some of the sky, and mark the stars. Let that bright blue one, he thought, pass from sight behind the pinnacle opposite, and time enough will have passed. I can be sure then that there's something wrong. But they must be here before the heavens have turned the star that far. Surely any moment now…

The blue star rode its measured course and vanished. Half-relieved at being forced to action, Rolf stood up, biting his lip. All right, then. Something was very wrong. He was going to have to leave the cave and try to get back to the swamp and find his friends. Not only was he out of water, but the information he had gained was too important to be delayed.

Still nothing but the night-wind seemed to be stirring in the dark outside the cave. He anchored his climbing rope again, put on his pack, and then began to lower himself outside. He kept the free length of the rope coiled up, paying it out only as he went down. Looking down now at what the moonlight showed him of the rocks below, he thought he must have been a half-wit or a great hero, to have made that jump that got him into the cave.

His feet touched down at last. Now was the time for the enemy, who had been waiting patiently, to rush out…but no rush came. They had never known that he was here.

After several tries he managed to whip his rope free of its anchorage above; he reached as best he could, balanced on the tumbled stones, to catch the anchor-stick as it came falling. But he failed to catch it, so it made a soft clatter when it hit. But no one came, only the night breeze still whispering softly along the canyon.

He made a quick job of coiling the long rope into his pack. And then he set off for the swamps, working his way cautiously out of the canyon and the rocks to emerge on the western slope of the mountain's foot with the river below him. He angled northward down this slope, heading away from pass and Castle. He had gone only about a hundred meters when the feel of sandy soil under his feet suggested that it might be a good idea for him to bury his pack with all its equipment. He could hardly keep quiet about where he had been if they caught him with all of that, and he would travel lighter and faster without it.

When he had covered up the pack he went on, getting down toward the east bank of the Dolles, still half-expecting to be greeted at any moment by the hooting of a bird.

He avoided the places where he and Thomas, on their way up to the pass, had seen soldiers. After a couple of kilometers he got down to the water's edge. Here he knew the river was shallow clear across; he waded in, clothes and all.

He had hardly climbed out on the eastern bank before the Castle soldiers sprang out of hiding to seize him. He turned at once to flee, but something that felt incredibly hard and heavy struck him on the side of the head.

He was face down in the riverside mud. As if through a muffling fog he could hear the voices over him.

“That settled 'im down good.” A brief laugh.

“Did this one get t' the barges? See if he's got any loot on 'im.”

Hands turned and shook and prodded him. “Naw, nothin'.”

“What'll we do, hang 'im in a tree? We haven't hung a thief on this side of the river yet.”

“Um. No, they need workers, up at the Castle. This 'un looks healthy enough to be some use. If you didn't scramble his brains.”

Thomas, still dazzled by a dance of luminous afterimages before his eyes, his ears ringing, raised his head and began to try to re-gather his wits. He was lying on the desert, where a moment ago he had fallen or had been flung. It was raining hard. He wiped a hand across his eyes, trying to see more clearly. A little distance away the farm-girl in the wide hat knelt, looking at him.

“You are not dead,” she was saying. “Oh, I'm glad. You're not one of them, are you? Oh no, of course you're not. I'm sorry.”

“Of course I'm not.” Let the young woman be dried out a little, he thought, and she would be quite good looking. He noticed that there was no wedding ring on her finger. “Why did you yell a warning? How did you know what was going to happen?”

The girl had turned away from him, and was looking around her now, as if for some lost object. “Since I did save your life, will you help me now, please? I've got to find it.”

“The thing that was in that case, hey?”

“Yes, where did it go?”

“If it was mine I'm not sure I'd ever want to see it again.”

“Oh, but I—must.” She stood up, peering this way and that.

“My name is Thomas.”

“Oh—I am Olanthe.”

“Of the Oasis? I see you wear one of their hats.”

“I…yes. Now will you help me find the Stone?” She seemed to realize too late that the last word had let slip another bit of information.

“The Stone, hey?” An idea struck him. “The Oasis of the Two Stones; I suppose the name means something. Would this Stone you're looking for be one of those? I'd just like to know what it was that nearly killed me.”

The rain was slowing down. Olanthe turned away from him, searching, walking a widening spiral over the sand.

“Olanthe? I have good reason to be curious, don't you think? I wish you no harm out in your Oasis. I was a farmer once myself. Say, how did you get out past the guards?”

“You were a farmer? What are you now?”

“Now I fight.”

She gave him an appraising glance. “I hear the real fighters are in the swamps.”

“And I do want to thank you for shouting a warning. You could have done it sooner, though, hey?”

Her eyes turned away, roving distractedly over the nearby dunes and bushes. “I…did see you, bending over the dead reptile. At first I thought you might be only a bandit.”

“This Stone of yours draws lightning somehow, and it killed the reptile. You followed me, waiting for the lightning to come again, so you could pick up the Stone from my burned body. And then you couldn't do it.”

“I didn't know you, I was afraid,” she said in a small voice. “Help me find it, please, it's very important.”

“I can understand that. Look, you don't have to be frightened of me, farm-girl, if what you say is true. Keep your Stone. We in the swamps don't need its rain.” The rain had all but stopped; Thomas looked up at the sky, where rents and gaps of blue were showing through the cloudy mass. “Since you seem to be no better friend than I am of the reptiles, you'd better take shelter under one of these bushes, as I intend to do.”

“First I must find the Stone! It can't be far.”

“All right, I give up. If they see you running around here they'll find me too. Does the thunderbolt actually hit the Stone? At least ou can tell me something about it while we search.”

They were both casting over the mounded desert now, eyes on the ground, walking in loops and circles that moved them apart and brought them together again. Olanthe spoke rapidly. “The bolt always hits the Stone directly, yes, and sometimes throws it for many meters. After that the storm can end.” She added what was probably a warning: “You see, whoever formed the Stone meant to make it proof against any one creature's greed. Only when possession of it passes from one to another does its virtue take effect, and summon up a thunderstorm.”

Thomas had just seen something, twenty meters away. It was the Stone in its case, if he was not mistaken, but picking it up was not going to be easy.

In a moment Olanthe had noticed his fixed attention and was walking at his side. “Oh!” she said, seeing what he saw. The blackened metal case was half-submerged under what appeared to be the flat shimmering surface of a pool of water some eight meters across, filling a small hollow between dunes. “Mirage-plant!”

Thomas nodded. “And about the biggest one I've seen.” There was no doubt about what the thing was; reason told that any such flourishing pond of real water here was totally improbable.

In itself, the illusion was flawless. Sunlight sparkled off the seeming surface of the pond (though the rain, which had now stopped, would have fallen through without splashing and shown the pond not to hold water.) Small green plants, genuine enough, living on moisture doled out by the quasi-intelligent masterplant below, rimmed around the illusive pool. This camouflage gave an appearance of coolness to the surface of the pond, which was in fact only a plane maintained between layers of air of different temperatures. This surface rippled faintly, like real water, with the wind. Thomas knew that if one bent to drink and brought his eyes within a meter of the surface, the illusion failed. Man or animal would jump back, once that point was reached; but if they were that close, none lived who could jump fast enough.

Thomas frowned at the sky, where the clouds were still dispersing, not gathering anew. “Did you not tell me that a new storm was summoned up every time the Stone changed hands, and that a bolt must come to strike the Stone itself? If so, we need only wait, and our little pond here will be safely boiled.”

They had stopped about ten meters from the mirage. Olanthes hook her head. “A storm comes only when the Stone is taken up by human hands, or by a creature like the reptile that is capable of speech.”

The Stone rested in a shallow part of the seeming pool, under the surface. It would seem to be very easy simply to step forward and pick it up.

Thomas got some rope out of his pack and made a lasso, with which he had a try at casting around the case. The loop sank silently through the surface of the “water,” and then at once snapped taut. Thomas dug his heels into the sand; Olanthe came to lend her slender strength to his aid, but shortly it was either let go or be dragged in. From just outside the zone of real danger, the two of them watched with fascination while the rope's tail whipped out of sight like that of a plunging snake. But there was evidently little to the mirage-plant's liking in the rope—a few moments later it was spat out, wound into a knotty ball and looking otherwise the worse for wear, spat or tossed through the air to land a dozen meters away.

At Olanthe's suggestion they next had a try at filling in or smothering the mirage-plant with sand. But the sand was flung back at them faster than they, keeping at a safe distance, could scoop it into the depression. And there were no rocks available to throw.

“If only it would spit out your Stone, as it does sand and rope,” Thomas griped. “But no, it must have a taste for magic.”

Now that she knew where the Stone was, Olanthe did not seem much worried about retrieving it. She said, “Well, then, one of us must just try to distract the creature, while the other rushes up and grabs the Stone.”

“Oh, just like that? Your life is not overly important to you?”

“The Stone is life, to the people at the Oasis.” She looked at him haughtily. “Oh, I will be the one to expose myself to danger and create a distraction. It is my property that we are trying to save. And your plan of lassoing it did not work out very well.”

The last accusation was undeniable, but he still had not connected it logically to the new plan when he found himself volunteering insistently to create the distraction himself—though if he gave himself time to think about it, he was not at all sure which of the two roles was the more dangerous. The girl couldn't have maneuvered him into taking the part she wanted him to have, could she? Just that quickly and easily?

Having rehearsed their plan briefly, Thomas and Olanthe separated, then approached the innocent-looking pool from opposite sides. After an exchange of nods, Thomas rushed forward shouting. In one hand he was carrying his knife, in the other the chewed-up rope, which he had partially untangled. He braked to a halt at the last instant, going down on all fours in the sand. He reached forward and lashed with the rope at the surface of the mirage. It seemed that the trick might work, for the creature beneath began grabbing again at the once-rejected fibers.

Olanthe was very quick, and her timing perfect. Unfortunately however she fumbled the Stone in the instant of picking it up, and was forced to reach for it again. Looking across from the other side of the pool. Thomas for the first time saw the deadly tendrils of the mirage-plant as they shot above the surface of the illusion, looping and snapping about the girl's body with marvelous speed. He shouted. He hurled himself around the edge of the pool and plunged into the struggle, slashing with his knife.

Only when he was enmeshed himself did he realize that, incredibly, the deadly network had not been able to hold the girl, that she was backing away quite free. He had no time to wonder about her luck, for his own was not so good. He was gripped around the waist and head. His blade severed one of the tough, elastic tendrils, but two more snapped around him, their suckers thirsting for his blood. One curled around his right arm, in which he held his knife. His left hand was already caught behind his back. He was sprawled on the sand, only his feet, dug in desperately, keeping him from being dragged to his death. The apparent water-surface had entirely vanished now, as the carnivorous plant devoted its full energy to hauling in this stubborn prey. When the pull of it dragged Thomas half upright again he could see down into the hollow, see the nest of writhing mouths and the white animal-bones between them, where the illusion had shown nothing but a sandy bottom.

Thomas cried out something. He saw the girl, a look of anguish on her face, reaching into her small pack. Her hand emerged holding a grayish, egg-shaped object which she thrust out toward him. “Here!”

He had to drop his useless knife to take the thing she pressed into his clutching fingers. It was hard and heavy in his grasp. Before he could wonder what he was supposed to do with it, he felt the mirage-plant's grip loosening. It was as if his skin and clothing had suddenly developed surfaces of oil and melting ice. In a moment he had pulled free and was several meters away. He lay gasping on the sand while he watched the frustrated tendrils wave about disconsolately and then withdraw.

Olanthe, the Thunderstone in its battered case still under her arm, came to kneel beside him; she reached out a tentative hand to take back the small gray Stone that Thomas still held; but instead he shot out his own hand and took her by the wrist.

“One moment, my girl. Bring out yet another Stone and destroy me with it, if you will, but first I will have some explanations.”

Still, when she made no answer but only struggled silently to pull away from him, he let her go. When he had done this, she was willing to sit on the sand nearby, looking apologetic. “I—I have no more Stones. There are no more.”

“Aha. That's something. Yes, that's good. If it were the Oasis of the Dozen Stones, I don't know what—” He broke off suddenly and looked up. “The sun is being hidden once again. I take it we may soon expect another thunderbolt?”

She waved a slender hand impatiently. “Oh yes, of course, since the Thunderstone has changed hands again in coming back to me. But that's all right. I'll leave it here on the sand, and we'll just go a little distance off and wait. Then after it's been hit I'll be able to carry it safely.”

“May I suggest that you leave it at a safe distance from the mirage-plant? So that we won't have to…hey? And while we sit through another rainfall, you might explain to me the virtues of this other Stone.”

The clouds were swiftly thickening once more. Thomas and Olanthe, their clothing not yet dried from the previous storm, left the Thunderstone in a gentle hollow between dunes and went a few score paces distant to sit together under the useless shelter of a desert bush.

She blurted out, “I didn't want you to know about the Stone of Freedom too. Otherwise I could have simply walked up to the mirage-plant and taken my property back.”

“Yes, I see that, now.”

“I'm sorry. Those suckers didn't draw any blood, did they? Good. Well, now you know our secrets, and I must trust you. We need help at the Oasis. The invaders are—we can't endure them.”

“Who can? We may be able to help each other.” The new rain began to fall. Thomas was thoughtful. “Tell me more about these Stones.”

The origin of the two Stones, Olanthe said, was lost in the past. Since the beginnings of the history of the Oasis the farmers there had possessed them both. The folk of the Oasis for the most part lived in harmony with one another, content to stay half-isolated from the rest of the world, though they had been friendly and hospitable to visitors and exhausted travelers who strayed in from the desert. The secrets of the two Stones had been kept within their settlement.

The desert soil was rich, lacking only water. And whenever the fields of the Oasis needed rain, he who held the Stone of Thunder at the time would present it to his neighbor; so water came just to suit the farmers' wishes, and drought and flood were alike unknown. The other talisman, called the Stone of Freedom or the Prisoner's Stone, was kept hidden, and only the elders of the Oasis knew of its existence. It was of little use to honest men as long as freedom ruled the land.

Then the foul invaders from the East had come, in force too strong to be resisted. The elders had somehow managed to preserve the secrets of both Stones.

“Alas, it was my own father who broke the pact of secrecy. Oh, he acted not through any wish to help the invaders, no, the very opposite.” After saying that Olanthe fell silent for a moment, her eyes downcast, rain dripping from the brim of her wide fieldworker's hat.