Changeling (Illustrated) (18 page)

“I was happy to serve.”

“Tell me more about it.”

“I tasted the colors, too—and the sounds.”

“It was a fine mix, then. Pity it only has such a short range. There are all sorts of problems in scaling it up, too . . . I wish I had more time.”

“What do you call the—thing that did it?”

Mark hefted the small unit.

“For want of a better name, I call it a jumble box. It smears your sensory inputs, mixes them. Instant synesthesia.”

The man gestured toward the huge unit to his right.

“That didn’t do it? Just the little one you’re holding?”

“That’s right. The other just recorded what was happening. If you didn’t hurt, tell me why you cried out so much?”

“I—I couldn’t understand what was happening. Everything was still there, but it was changed . . . It scared me.”

“No pain?”

“No one place that hurt. Just a—feeling that disaster was coming.Most of the time, it kept getting worse. Sometimes, though—”

“What?”

“There were moments of great pleasure.”

“You were able to count all right.”

“Yes . . . Most of the numbers were yellow. Some tasted sour.”

“Did you feel you could have gotten up, walked about?”

“Maybe. If I’d have thought of it. It was hard to think. Too much was wrong.”

“You are a brave man, and I thank you again. I will not forget this service. Now, let’s test your reflexes.”

Mouseglove heard some instruments being shifted about. Silently, he slid off through the night.

*  *  *

It was difficult for Stel to place her hoofs quietly on stone and tile unless she moved very slowly. This she did, however, with the patience of a huntress and former commando.

Memories returned to her as she passed through the great hall where she had stood dripping blood and sweat that final day of the battle. Ah! the stallions had had much work that night . . . She recalled the sorcerers’ confrontation, and her eyes automatically sought that ruined area of ceiling which had settled Det for good, before he could call upon his hidden powers. Much of the rubble beneath had been cleared for the removal of his body. She recalled how Mor had borne it away into the west . . . 

She paused periodically and stood listening. Her ears pricked forward. There were voices. Somewhere up higher, to the left.

She crossed the gallery, came to the foot of the stair, halted again. Yes, up there . . . 

Slowly, keeping near to the wall, she began to climb. The place appeared to be in better condition than she had remembered.

As she made her way along the hall, the voices came louder. To her right now, that third door . . . 

She noted that the door was ajar. Approaching, she stopped directly beside it. She heard nothing from within, not even the sounds of breathing. Venturing farther forward, she looked around the corner,then drew back in puzzlement.

The couple had just seated themselves, facing one another—the young man with the white streak through his hair and the slim blonde girl. But . . . These were the same people she had seen departing ondragonback. She had not seen them return. Strange . . . 

She looked again.

More than strange . . . 

The girl’s face seemed to be melting, pieces of it falling, drifting away, decomposing in the air. The man—who still bore a striking resemblance to old Det—seemed totally oblivious to the fact that portions of his left arm and right thigh appeared to be unravelling, as though he were composed of thin strips of cloth wound about nothing.

Fascinated, Stel did not retreat, but stared in frank astonishment as the couple came apart. Finally, she moved forward and entered the room. What was left of the pair paid her no heed whatsoever.

“Lovely weather.”

“Yes . . . ”

The man’s face now began to melt, the girl’s garments ran from her body like liquid, drifted in the air currents like strands of silk. Their conversation continued.

“ . . . Though it could rain.”

“That is true.”

The man rose to his foot and crossed to the girl.

“You have lovely eyes.”

She rose slowly.

Stel watched them embrace, losing larger and larger pieces ofthemselves every moment, to drift tinsel-like before her, fading from view as they crossed the room.

“I-arrooowarnn . . . ”

The words slowed and deepened, the mouths were gone, the hair went up like smoke. Another half-minute, and they had intertwined and vanished. Stel whinnied and backed away. She had never before seen the like of it. Superstitious dreads rose to harry her. 

The prototype blue-bellied, gray-backed tracer-bird now focussed its attention upon her as she circled the room, studying it carefully without paying real attention to the opened atlas, as she retreated out the door and into the corridor beyond, her hoofs clattering rapidly as she passed down the corridor.

*  *  *

Mouseglove heard the great doors opening below and made it to an appropriate vantage in time to see the metal birdforms launched like blown leaves into the dark sky, where they rose to swirl beneath stars, then assumed a formation which tightened itself as it wound and unwound, took its course and passed in a direction he deemed to be roughly southeast. This troubled him as he made his way to the surveillance center. He managed the approach once more and heard Mark within, cursing and giving orders. The one glimpse he got of the screens showed nothing of interest.

He did not understand Mark’s, “They’re gone! More of that magic, I suppose. That damned centaur had something to do with it! Bring me a centaur!”

Mouseglove decided to leave it at that. Less now than at any other time did he desire to fall into the hands of the ruddy giant the small men treated like a god. As he backed away, though, the words, “ . . . At the triangle’s point!” reached him from within. It would not be until later, however, that these would set off lengthy trains of speculation.

Instead, immediate considerations occupied him for the better part of several hours: Time to get out. Things are getting more frantic and life goes less certain. The longer I stay, the worse my chances . . . 

The lock on the training room door barely halted his stride. Slowly and carefully, his fingertips found the controls in the model cockpit. He was afraid to make a light . . . . Funny if I can only fly it with my eyes closed, he reflected. It’s scary up there, but it’s worse down here. Anyway, better this than a dragon. What did he say about this little lever? Oh, yes . . . 

Batteries fully charged, the dark birds fled across the night, the land, the water.

 
XVI
.

East and south. They traveled until fatigue overcame them. Night was rising when they located the island they had marked, and there they slept unmolested. The following day, before the night was fully departed, they crossed over the waters to the land, to sweep above mountains, dwindling rivers, desert. The next night was spent among chilly hills, where Pol reviewed all that he knew concerning their route and destination. The geography here was not congruent with that of his previous world. In that place, the larger land mass he had departed did not even exist, and that over which he was crossing, while similar in places, was not a true match. Distances varied radically between locales which seemed to possess some reconcilability on maps of the two worlds. But they both had pyramids in several places, though the one he sought had the way to its entrance flanked by rows of columns alternating with sphinxes, many of them fallen, damaged, but most still visible. Something in the description he had read seemed to indicate that he should commence his entrance at the end of that way.

*  *  *

The dark birdforms dotted the mountaintops like statues of prehistoric beasts, wings outspread. Had there been an eye to observe them, it might not even have noted their minute, tropism-like pursuit of the sun across the sky as they recharged their batteries for the night’s flight.

The day had beaten its way well on toward evening before they stirred, almost simultaneously, as if shaken by a sudden breeze. They began to flex their wings.

Soon, one by one, they dropped from the heights, caught the air, rose, found their way, found their patterns, resumed their journey . . . 

*  *  *

Pol’s wrist began to itch some time before their goal came into view. He felt that it was not just the now-darkening sunburn, and increased his surveillance of the bright and wavering horizon. Minutes later, a pointed dot resolved itself before him and he licked his dry lips and smiled.

Your internal compass seems to be working fine.

I do not know what you mean.

That seems to be it up ahead.

Of course.

“Nora!” His voice came out as a croak. “I see it!”

“I think I do, too!”

It grew before them until there could be no doubt as to its nature. There were no signs of movement anywhere about the dark stone structure. The plain before it was dotted with columns and statues.

Moonbird took them down near the far end of the approach, and Pol’s joints creaked as he alighted.

“I can’t persuade you to wait here?” he said, as he helped Nora down.

She shook her head.

“If anything happened to you, I’d be in to investigate later, anyway. Waiting would just defer things.”

He turned to Moonbird.

Wish I could take you with
—
but the entrance is too small.

I will guard.
You will play sweet music for me later.

I appreciate your confidence.

Pol turned and looked up the sand-scoured roadway, pylons and beasts converging upon the dark rectangle of the structure’s entranceway.

 . . . Walking into a vanishing point, he mused.

“Okay, Nora. Let’s go,” he said.

His vision blurred and cleared again as they advanced. For a moment, he thought it was an effect of the brilliant sunlight or the sudden activity after hours of sitting crouched. Then he saw what he took to be flames pouring forth from the opening before them. He flinched.

Nora took hold of his arm.

“What is it?”

“I—oh, now I see. Nothing.”

The flames resolved themselves into great billows of what he had come to think of as the weft of the world. He had never seen them bunched so thickly before, save in the great ball in the caverns of Rondoval—and here they were flapping and drifting freely.

“You must have seen something,” she said as they continued on.

“Just an indication of sorts, showing a concentration of magical power.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

She loosened her blade in its scabbard. He did the same.

His right wrist, which had not stopped its itching and tingling was now throbbing steadily, as if that special part of him which was best suited to deal with such matters was now fully alert.

He brushed his fingertips across the massed strands and felt a surge of power. He tried to locate some clue as to its nature, but nothing suggested itself.

The rod, the rod . . . he concentrated. Somewhere among you . . . 

A pale green strand, like milky jade, drifted toward him, separating itself from the mass. As he raised his hand, it seemed drawn toward his fingertips. Once he touched it, he willed it to adhere and held it, knowing that this was the one.

“Now,” he told Nora, advancing to the threshold, “I know the way—though I know nothing of what it will be like.”

He entered the narrow passage and halted again. The dimness about them deepened to an inky blackness only a few paces ahead.

“Wait,” he said, commencing the mental movements which had summoned the phantom dragon from his wrist the night he had fled her village.

It rose and drifted before him again, exactly as it had on that earlier occasion.

Is this a phenomenon I am destined never to use in the absence of danger? he wondered.

Behind him, Nora drew her blade. His chuckle rang hollowly.

“That is my doing,” he told her. “It is our light. Nothing more.”