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  There was a moan running through the company. But Andas was no longer aware of them—he saw only Kidaya. Now, as her mask of confidence broke and she allowed emotion to show fleetingly upon her face—consuming hate—he traced a likeness to the Princess Abena, faint though it was. The princess was at the beginning of a crooked and shadowed road. This woman had walked the full way to stand at its end.

  She laughed. “My poor littling! Now you have thrown away what small protection you ever had. As the Old Woman has eaten your safeguard, so shall she now eat you.” She fell then to crooning, rubbing her hands caressingly along the sides of the mask, so that Andas could see that she did not need to steady the thing on her knees, but that it rested there of itself.

  Kidaya crooned, and the mask began to grow larger and larger until it hid all of her, save her slender feet and the hands that still gentled it. If this was illusion, the hallucinatory power behind it was very great.

  The eyes were alive, and they looked upon him with a stare as if to draw him forward to death, while the mouth opened and a great tongue used its tip to beckon him.

  Andas could feel the urge, the need to reach that mouth. But what he wore about him kept him steady, though the pull was nigh unbearable. And all the time the mask grew.

  Still Andas waited for the signal he was sure would come. Move too soon and that which manifested itself in the mask would not be drawn far enough into this plane of existence to be destroyed. Wait! But the need to go to it—He swayed as he stood, torn between the witchery of the mask and the counter force about his body.

  He could not stand it much longer—he would be torn apart!

  The signal he waited for came with a flash of energy filling his whole body. Andas raised his hands and began to trace in the air the contours of the mask. From his lips poured the ancient chant he had learned at the fort. It was the sound and tone of those words that should release the energy now filling his entire being and aim it as he made of himself a vessel of destruction.

  His whole body quivered and shook with what filled it. Andas believed he could actually see faint threads of light shooting from the tips of his fingers. And then he obeyed the call of the mask, leaping up to meet it as if he were its prisoner at last.

  There was—

  But no man could—would—be allowed to remember what came then. There was nothingness and the dark.

  He was cold. He had never been so cold in his life. Life? No, this was death, which had been his burden and finally finished him. But could one smell in death? Could one feel? If so, then old speculations were at fault. Smell, feel, hear—for there was moaning he could hear.

  See? Andas opened his eyes. He lay on rock, looking at blasted, blackened stone, so stained it might have been worked upon by blaster fire.

  Stone? Memory came back. So, he was not dead. He levered himself to his knees and swung his head slowly from side to side. And what he saw sickened him somewhat but did not pierce far, for it was as if the cold he felt created an ice barrier between him and the world.

  He could not get to his feet, but he crawled out of that hollow until he crouched in the open between the bone walls of the pathway. He was no sooner in the open than there was a resounding crash from within. A great billow of gritty dust puffed out, so he cried aloud and threw up his arms to cover his face. But afterward there was no moaning in the dark.

  Andas crawled on, and the stones and gravel cut his hands and knees. He felt no pain, for the cold kept him in its hold, and no other sensation could pass it. Finally he came to the skimmer.

  It took the last of his strength to crawl within and tumble into the pilot’s seat. He had to raise two bleeding hands to set the controls, nor was he fully aware as the craft raised from the valley and swung around on the recorded tape that would take it home.

  For a while he was limp, inert, preserved from all feeling. That he had accomplished what he had gone to do, that what occupied the mask had been destroyed in this world, at least for a space, and with it those who had served it, he knew. But he felt no triumph. It was like watching a taped story in which one was not personally involved.

  He had hoped to die swiftly and cleanly in that final moment when he made of himself the ultimate weapon. But it seemed that the very power he had invoked had preserved him, to die more horribly and lingeringly. That, too, he was able to face with detachment, which he dimly hoped would continue to hold. If the energy had burned out of him all fear and emotion, so much the better.

  At last he either lapsed into a stupor or slept while the skimmer bore him away from those ominous mountains toward a land waiting to be reborn.

  When Andas awoke, he was not in the skimmer, but lying on a cot bed, and around him were the walls of the fort. So he had made it back after all—or the skimmer had made it for him on tape command. But again there was no feeling of triumph in him, only a vast weariness. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep. Perhaps this was the first symptom he must endure before the end.

  Someone moved into his line of vision. Shara stood there—but with a difference about her. Those tight braids were gone. Her hair made a soft halo about a face that was still far too thin and drawn. Again the years had fallen from her. She was young, and in her burned a light that made her far different from the woman who had wept over the dying emperor. But though she did not weep for him, she would watch a second emperor die. Suddenly feeling broke through the cold that encased him. There was no one to weep for him. And the desolate loneliness was more than he could bear. Andas closed his eyes. But it seemed she would spare him nothing.

  “Andas! Andas!”

  Reluctantly he looked at her once more. She was on her knees beside his bed so her face was close. There were tears in her eyes after all. One spilled over to form a clear droplet on her brown cheek.

  “Andas—”

  “It is done,” he told her. “The Old Woman-is destroyed—perhaps forever. Rule in safety, Empress!”

  “Only with an emperor!” she replied. “Andas, the medic—he could not find any radiation deterioration. You will not die, not now!”

  He continued to stare at her. She was telling the truth. He could read it in her face. Not die? With radiation readings such as they had told him? It was impossible that any human being could survive.

  Any human being! Did he have at last the answer to his one moving question? Was he Andas—the false emperor, the android? This was the proof.

  “I am not what you think—no emperor, not even a real Andas.” He must tell her now, before she went on building on something which did not exist. She would perhaps have some kindness in her, but being human, she could not but repudiate him for what he truly was.

  “You are Andas!” she told him firmly. Her hands closed upon his with a grip he could not find the will to fight. She held them, imprisoned in hers, against her breast. “You are Emperor Andas, of that there is no question.”

  How could he make her understand? There was only the stark truth left.

  “I am an android—made to look like the other Andas in my own world. But I thought that I was real!”

  “You are real! You are Andas—”

  “No!” His energy seemed to grow with his need to deny, to make her realize what he was. “This proves it. I am an android. A human being could not have survived such radiation. Don’t you understand? I am not human!”

  “Brother.” A hand with fur growing down its back came out of nowhere to rest lightly on his shoulder. Andas turned his head to see Yolyos.

  “Tell her,” he appealed to the Salariki. “Tell her the whole story. She must not go on believing—”

  “He has told me, Andas! When you went as we thought to your death, he told me. Do you think the medics would not have known that you were android? They believe that you were healed by the force you used to destroy the Old Woman, that it might have killed you instead if you had not been already exposed to the radiation, but that one balanced the other, to your saving.”

  “Yet neithe
r would have affected an android—”

  “No one could make so human an android. You are a man. Believe—accept it—” she entreated him.

  But he looked to Yolyos. The Salariki smiled. “If you are android, so am I, but we are near enough human, it seems, to be human. Why should it then matter, brother? If it has saved your life twice over, be glad for it.”

  “Be glad—” Shara leaned closer. Her lips were warm and comforting on his.

  He surrendered. Near enough human to be human. He would believe—he had to now.

  About the Author

  For well over a half century, Andre Norton was one of the most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. With series such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and Janus, as well as many standalone novels, her tales of adventure have drawn countless readers to science fiction. Her fantasy novels, including the bestselling Witch World series, her Magic series, and many other unrelated novels, have been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. An Ohio native, Norton lived for many years in Winter Park, Florida, and died in March 2005 at her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1971 by Andre Norton

  Cover design by Barbara Brown

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2544-7

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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