Wizard's Worlds: A Short Story Collection (Witch World) Page 32

  Now Tamisan raised her hands to either side of his head, spreading wide her fingers so they might in some way ape the expanse of a dreamer’s cap, and then brought them swiftly down to cover his head, putting firm touch on his temples though she could not exert real pressure there.

  He gave a muffled cry and tossed his head from side to side as if to free himself from a cloud. But Tamisan, with all the determination of which she was capable, held fast.

  She had already seen this done once in the Hive. However then it had been used on a docile and willing subject and both the controlled and the dreamer had been on the same plane of existence. Now she could only hope that she could disrupt Kas’ train of thought long enough to make him release the dreamer himself. So she brought to bear all her will to that purpose. He was not only shaking his head from side to side now, making it very hard to keep her fingers in the proper position, but he was swaying back and forth, his hands up, clawing as if to tear her hold away, though it appeared he could not touch her any more than she could lay firm grip on him.

  That fund of energy which had enabled her to create strange worlds and hold them for a fellow dreamer was bent to the task of influencing Kas. But to her dismay, though he ceased his frenzied movements and his clawing for the hands he could not clutch grew feebler, and though his eyes closed and his face screwed into such an expression of horror and rejection that it was that of a frightened child, he did not move to the box.

  Instead, he slumped forward so suddenly that Tamisan was taken wholly unaware, falling half across the divan. And in that fall he flailed out with an arm to send the box smashing to the floor, its weight dragging the cap in turn from the dreamer.

  She drew several deep breaths, her haggard face now displaying a small trace of returning color. Tamisan, still startled at the results of her efforts to influence Kas, began to wonder if she might have made matters worse. She did not know how much the box had to do with their transportation to the alternate world and whether, if it was broken, they would ever be able to return or not.

  There was one precaution, if she could take it. If she returned to that prison cell in the High Castle—as she must do or leave Starrex-Hawarel lost forever—then to leave Kas here, perhaps able again to use his machine—no! But how—since she could not—

  12

  TAMISAN looked to the stirring dreamer. The girl was struggling from the depths of so deep a stratum of unconsciousness that she was not aware of what lay about her. In this state she might be pliable. Tamisan could only try.

  Leaving Kas, she went back to the dreamer. Once more, touching the girl’s forehead, she sought to influence.

  The dreamer sat up with such slow movements of body and limbs as one might use if almost unbearable weights were fastened to every muscle. In a painfully slow gesture, she raised her hands to her head, groping for the cap no longer there. Then she sat, her eyes still shut, while Tamisan drew heavily on her own strength to deliver a final set of orders.

  Blindly, for she never opened her eyes, the dreamer felt along the edge of the couch on which she had lain, until her hand swept against the cords which fastened the cap to the box. Her lax fingers fumbled and then tightened as she gave a feeble jerk, then another, until both cords pulled free. Holding those still in one hand, she slipped from the couch in a forward movement which brought her to her knees, the upper part of her body on the other couch, one cheek touching that of the unconscious Kas.

  The strain on Tamisan was very great. She was wavering in her control now; several times those weak hands fell limply as her hold on the dreamer ebbed. But each time she found some small surge of energy which brought them back into action again. So that at last the cap was on Kas, the cords which had connected it to the box in a half coil on which the dreamer’s head rested.

  So big a chance and with such poor equipment! Tamisan could not be sure of any results, she could only hope. Tamisan had released her command of the dreamer, who now lay against the couch on one side as Kas half lay on the other. She summoned all that she had, all that she sensed she had always possessed, that small difference in dream power she had secretly cherished. Once more she touched the forehead of the sleeping girl and broke her own dream within a dream!

  This was like climbing a steep hill with an intolerably heavy burden lashed to one’s aching back—like being forced to pull the dead weight of another body through a swamp which sucked one ever down. It was such an effort as she could not endure—

  Then that weight was gone, and the relief of its vanishing was such that Tamisan did not for a space more than just savor the fact that it did not drag at her. She opened her eyes at last and even that small movement required an effort which left her spent.

  She was not in the sky tower. These walls were stone. And the light was dusky, coming wanly from a slit high in the opposite wall. The High Castle from which she had dreamed her way back to her own Ty-Kry, the dream within a dream. But how well had she wrought there?

  For the present, she was too tired to even think connectedly. Bits and pieces of all she had seen and done since she had awakened first in this Ty-Kry floated through her mind, not making any concrete pattern.

  It was the mind picture of Hawarel’s face as she had seen it last while they marched toward the spacer which roused her from that uncaring drift—Hawarel and the threat the Captain had made and which the Over-Queen had pushed aside. If Tamisan had truly broken the lock Kas had set up to keep them here, then it would be escape—but now there was in her no strength. She tried to remember the formula for breaking, and knew a stroke of chilling fear when her memory proved faulty. She could not do it now—she must have more time to rest both mind and body. Now she was hungry, thirsty, with such a need for both food and drink that it was a torment. Did they mean to leave her here without any sustenance?

  Tamisan lay still, listening. And then she inched her head around slowly to view the deeper dusk of her surroundings at floor level. She was not alone!

  Kas!

  Had she been successful and pulled Kas with her? And if so—was it that he had no counterpart in this world as she and Starrex had found, so that he was still his old self?

  However, she did not have time to explore that possibility, for there was a loud grating, followed by a line of light marking an opening door. In the beam of a torch stood that same officer who had earlier been her escort. Using her hands to brace up her body, Tamisan raised herself. But at the same time there was a cry from the far corner.

  Someone moved there, raising a head and showing features she had last seen in the sky tower. Kas—and in his rightful body! He was scrambling to his feet. The officer and the guardsman behind him in the doorway, stared at the other-worlder as if they could not believe their eyes. Kas shook his head to clear away some mist and then—

  His lips pulled back from his teeth in a terrible rictus which was no smile. There was a small laser in his hand. She could not move; he was going to burn her! In that moment she was so sure of it that she did not even know fear, only waited for the crisping of her flesh.

  But the aim of that weapon raised beyond her and fastened on the doorway. Under it, both officer and guard went down. With one hand on the wall to steady himself, Kas pulled along until he came to her. He stood away from the stone then, transferred his laser to the other hand and reached down to hook fingers in the robe where it covered her shoulder.

  “On—your—feet.” He mouthed the words with difficulty, as if his exhaustion nearly equalled hers. “I do not know how—or why—or who—”

  The torch dropped from the charred hand which had carried it to give them much curtailed light. But Kas swung her around, thrusting his face very close to hers. He stared at her intently, as if by the very force of his glare he could strip aside the mask this other world body made for her, force the old Tamisan into sight.

  “You are Tamisan—it can not be otherwise! I do not know how you did this, demon-born.” He shook her with a viciousness which struck her
painfully against the wall. “Where—is—he?”

  All that came from her parched throat were harsh sounds without meaning.

  “Never mind.” Kas stood straighter now and there was more vigor in his voice. “Where he is—there shall I find him. Nor shall I lose you, demon-born, since you are my way back. And for Lord Starrex here there will be no guards, no safe shields. Perhaps this is the better way after all!” He slapped her face, his palm bruising her flesh, once more thumping her head back against the wall so that the rim of the Mouth crown bit into her scalp and she cried out in pain.

  “Speak! Where is this place. Answer me.”

  “The High Castle of Ty-Kry,” she croaked out.

  “And what do you in this hole?”

  “I am prisoner to the Over-Queen.”

  “Prisoner? What do you mean? You are a dreamer, this is your dream. Why are you a prisoner?”

  Tamisan was so shaken she could not marshal words easily as she had done-to explain to Starrex. And she thought, a little dazedly, that Kas might not accept her explanation anyway.

  “Not—wholly—a dream,” she got out.

  He did not seem surprised. “So the control has that property, has it—to impose a sense of reality. Then—” His eyes blazed into hers. “You can not control this dream, is that it? Again fortune favors me, it seems. Where is Starrex now?”

  She could give him a truthful answer and she was glad of that. As it seemed to her now, she could not speak falsely with any hope of belief. It was as if he could see straight into her mind with those demanding eyes of his. “I do not know.”

  “But he is in this dream—somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you shall find him for me, Tamisan. And speedily. Do we have to search this High Castle?”

  “He was, when I saw him last, outside.”

  She kept her eyes turned from the door, from what lay there. But now he hauled her toward that and she was afraid she was going to be sick. Where they might be in the interior of the small city which was the High Castle, she did not know. Except that those who had brought her here had not taken her on to the core towers, but had turned aside along the first of the gateways and gone down a long flight of stairs. She doubted if they would be able to walk out again as easily as Kas thought to do.

  “Come.” He pulled at her, dragging her on, kicking aside what lay in the door. She closed her eyes tightly as he brought her past. But the stench of death was so strong that she staggered, retching, with his hand ever dragging at her, keeping her on her feet and reeling ahead.

  Twice she watched glassily as he burned down opposition. And his luck at keeping surprise on his side held. They came to the foot of the stairs and climbed. Tamisan held to one hope—now that she was on her feet and moving she found a measure of strength returning, so that she no longer feared falling, if Kas released his hold upon her. When they were out at last in the night, with the damp smell of the underways wafted away by a rising wind, she felt clean and renewed and was able to think.

  Kas might have been able to get her this far because of her weakness. So to his eyes she must continue to counterfeit that, until she had a chance to act. It could be that his weapon, so alien to this world and thus so effective, might well cut their way to Starrex. But that did not mean that once they had reached him she need obey Kas. And somehow she also felt that face to face Kas would be less confident of success.

  It was not a guard that halted them now but a massive gate, such a barrier as was meant to hold. Kas examined the bar and laughed, before he raised the laser and sent a needle-thin beam to cut as he needed. There was a shout from above and Kas, almost lanquidly, swung the beam to a narrow stair leading from the ramparts, laughing again as there came a choked scream and the sound of a falling body.

  “Now!” Kas put his shoulder to the gate and it swung, more easily than Tamisan would have thought possible for its weight. “Where is Starrex? And if you lie—” His smile was a very evil one.

  “There.” Tamisan was sure of her direction and she pointed to where there was a distant blaze of torches about the shadow bulk of the grounded spacer.

  13

  A spacer!” Kas paused.

  “Besieged by these people,” Tamisan informed him. “And Starrex is a hostage on board, if he still lives. They have threatened to use him in some manner as a weapon and the Over-Queen, as far as I know, does not care.”

  Kas turned on her. His evil merriment had vanished, his smile was rather now a snarl, and he shook her back and forth. “It is your dream—control it!”

  For a moment, Tamisan hesitated. Should she try to tell him what she believed the truth? Kas and his other world weapon might be her only hope of reaching Starrex now. Could he be persuaded to a frontal attack if he thought that was their only chance of reaching their goal? On the other hand, if she admitted she could not break this dream, he might well burn her down out of hand and take his chances.

  “Your meddling has warped the pattern, Lord Kas. I can not control some elements. Nor can I break the dream until I have Lord Starrex with me—since we are pattern-linked in this sequence.”

  Her steady reply seemed to have some effect on him. Though he gave her one more punishing shake and uttered an obscenity, he looked on to the torches and the half-seen bulk of the ship, a certain calculation in his eyes.

  They made a lengthly detour, away from most of the torches, coming up across the open land to the south of the ship. There was a graying in the sky and a hint that dawn might perhaps be not too far away. Now that they could see better, it was apparent that the ship was sealed. No hatch opened on its surface, no ramp ran out. And surely the laser in Kas’s hand was not going to burn their way in, in the manner he had opened the gate of the High Castle.

  Apparently the same difficulty presented itself to Kas, for he halted her with a jerk while they were still in the shadows well away from the line of torches forming a square around the ship. They sheltered in a small dip in the ground surveying the scene.

  The torches were no longer held by men, but had been planted in the ground at regular intervals, and they were as large as outsize candles. The colorful mass which had marked the Over-Queen and her courtiers on Tamisan’s first visit to the landing field was gone, leaving only a perimeter line of guardsmen in wide encirclement of the sealed ship.

  Why did the spacemen just not lift and planet elsewhere? Unless that confusion in the last moments when she had been on board the spacer meant that they could not do so. They had spoken then of a sister ship in orbit above. It would seem that it had made no move to aid them, though she had no idea how much time had elapsed since last she had been here.

  Now Kas turned on her again. “Can you get to Starrex—reach him a message?” he demanded.

  “I can try. For what reason?”

  “Have him ask for us to come to him.” Kas had been silent for a moment before replying. Was he so stupid as to believe that she would not give a warning with whatever message she could so deliver? Or had he precautions against that?

  But could she reach Starrex? She had gone into the secondary dream to make contact with Kas. There was no time nor preparation for such a move now. She could only use the mental technique for inducing a dream and see what happened thereby. She said as much to Kas, promising no success.

  “Be about what you can do—now!” he told her roughly.

  Tamisan closed her eyes to think of Hawarel as she had seen him last, standing beside her on this very field. And she heard a gasp from Kas. Opening her eyes she saw Hawarel, even as he had been then—or rather a pallid copy of him, wavering and indistinct, already beginning to fade, so she spoke in a swift gabble:

  “Say we come from the Queen with a message, that we must see the Captain—”

  The shimmering outline of Hawarel faded into the night. She heard Kas mutter angrily. “What good will that ghost do?”

  “I can not tell. If he returns to that of which he is a part, he can carry th
e message. For the rest—” Tamisan shrugged. “I have told you this is no dream I can control. Do you think if it were, we two would stand here in this fashion?”

  His thin lip parted in one of his mirthless grins.

  “You would not, I know, dreamer!”

  His head went from left to right as he slowly surveyed the line of planted torches and the men standing on guard between them. “Do we move closer to this ship, expect them to open to us?”

  “They used a stunner to take us before,” Tamisan saw fit to warn him. “They might do so again.”

  “Stunner,” he gestured with the laser. Tamisan hoped his answer would not be a headlong attack on the ship with that.

  But instead, he used it as a pointer to motion her on toward the torch line. “If they do open up,” he commented, “I shall be warned.”

  Tamisan gathered up the long skirt of her robe. It was torn by rough handling, frayed in strips at the hem where she could be tripped if she caught those rags between her feet. And the rough brush growing knee-high about them caught at it so that she stumbled now and again, urged on continually by Kas’ pulling when he dug his fingers painfully into her already bruised shoulder.

  So they reached the torch line. The guards there faced inward to the ship and in this increase of light Tamisan could see that they were all bowmen, armed with crossbows, not with those of bone which the black-tunicked men had earlier used. Bolts against the might of the ship! The answer seemed laughable, a jest to delight the simple. Yet, the ship lay there and Tamisan could well remember the consternation of those men who had been questioning her within it.

  Now—

  There was a dark spot on the hull of the ship and a hatch suddenly swung open! A battle hatch—though she had only seen those via tape study.

  “Kas—they are going to fire!” With a laser beam from such, they could crisp everything on this field, perhaps clear back to the walls of the High Castle!