Lost Lands of Witch World (78 page)

Now I was no longer conscious of Jaelithe and Simon, only of the strong, ever-flowing current they gave to me. And I hurried faster, each passing breath of time giving me more control over Ayllia's body, though I did not try as yet to do more than take it back to the spot not far from Zandur.

I came to the far side of the dais, and along that to the corner from which I could see Zandur in his chair still facing the four blazing rods which held—
me
.

Seldom is it given one to look upon one's self save in a mirror. And now when I tried it I had a sensation of dizziness, of whirling into some space which was neither here nor there, that I speedily averted my eyes and kept them fixed on Zandur.

Fear marched forward with every measure I gained. Why the master of this prison had not already turned to sight me I could not understand. It seemed to me that the generation of such energy as had brought me to this desperate move would touch him. It was almost as if an invisible line spun across the open air tying the me in the cage of light rods to the me who crawled in Ayllia's body.

At last I came to the place where Ayllia had lain when first I saw her. There I paused for some long breaths. If Zandur turned now and sighted me, I might
still be safe. But if I proceeded, as now I must, to a point behind him, I had a long, or what seemed a very long space of open to cover—during which journey I would be instantly suspect if sighted.

He stood up and, involuntarily, I cringed. But he did not turn his head. He was instead looking into the depths of the chamber to a point beyond the cage of rods. There was a stir there as his gray men returned. Now he came to stand before the cage. Could he tell that I was not in my rightful body? I must depend upon the fact that he had none of the real gift, and things instantly visible to an adept would not be so to him.

Now I must dare my last move along the step, rising to my feet at last and running to a point directly behind him, willing all the way that he would not turn to see me. Now much would depend upon expert timing. I made my last impressions on Ayllia's sleeping mind. This must she do when the time came; I set that command as deeply and strongly as all the renewed strength I could call upon gave.

Then I returned to myself. Between my hands, ready, was the wand. The gray men had reached an area where I could see them without turning my head. They bore, some singly, some together, a number of objects. And these Zandur went to sort, sending some to one side of the dais, assembling the burdens of others closer to my cage.

Instinct told me that I would only have a few moments at the best, no more than a heartbeat or two at the least. And for that I must be ready. I waited. I could see Ayllia standing on the dais. Her eyes were open, fixed on mine, and a touch assured me that she was filled with the need to obey the last command I had left in her.

Zandur came to stand before me again.

“Now, my Kaththea of the House of Tregarth,” he said mockingly, “and well do I call you mine, since you shall do my will from this hour forth. But be not downhearted at such a fate. Will you not now be one to live forever, knowing life as you have not been privileged to taste it before? No, you will have much to thank me for, once you have learned to accept my wisdom, Kaththea of the House of Tregarth.”

He must have given one of those voiceless orders to his followers for they began to open boxes and casks and set out on the corner of the dais a gleaming circle, making it fast to that base.

It pleased, or amused Zandur to explain what they did for two reasons: to let me know there was no escape from what he planned for me, and to have an audience. Perhaps he had long gone lonely for one still sentient enough to match him in brain power, for it was plain to see that the gray men were no companions, rather servants and extra hands and legs for his use.

What they were doing was preparing a second pillar, this to encase me as Hilarion was held. And so encased I would add what Power I held, even as the adept did, to protection and renewing of Zandur's precious machines. He seemed
almost to believe, as he talked, that once it was all explained to me I would indeed understand the justice and need for this action, and go docilely into the cage which would be far more permanent than the one which held me now, going so because I agreed that this was necessary.

The very ancient war between the towers and this place had existed so long as a way of life that he could not think of any other pattern. And aught which would make more secure his position was to be seized upon and incorporated in his defense. Thus I was another sword for his hand.

His followers worked with precision and no wasted motions, as if they were so much a part of the machines here that they needed little direction to the task. They had embedded the ring in the floor of the dais, and now they set certain small machines about it.

When they had done and stepped away, I made ready. They must release the force of my rod cage to free me from one trap before putting me in another. I would have seconds then to act. I tensed, ready, the wand now in my right hand. Yet I strove to give Zandur the impression of one cowed and easy to control.

Perhaps he thought speed best, to use surprise as a counter to any attempt at escape on my part. The glow from the rods flicked out without warning. Only I had been watching, was ready.

I did not try to leap away as he probably expected. Instead I hurled the wand and joyfully saw Ayllia catch it. Then, without hesitation, she turned and leaped up the last step to the top of the dais, dashing for Hilarion's pillar with the wand held point out, as she might hold a sword against a human enemy.

Perhaps Zandur was not aware at once of what I had done. Or he could have been so sure of his own defenses and safeguards that such cooperation between me and one he believed utterly useless came as a shock he did not at first absorb. I think that absolute control for so many centuries had given him such confidence in his own power to rule his world that he could not foresee nor understand what had happened.

The point of the wand struck the pillar. In that moment all the installations in the chamber went wild, as if some vast storm, such as the Wise Women working in concert could summon, burst upon our unsheltered heads.

Flashes of raw light which blinded and hurt the eyes, noise as might have been thunder multiplied a thousand times, swept down and held us. Smoke rose in acrid clouds to make a stinking fog.

I moved now, running for the arch in the wall screen. I heard Zandur shouting, saw gray men blundering here and there as light whips of raw energy struck at them. There were things I saw only briefly, marveled at afterward, when I remembered them. There were worms of fire crawling on the floor, or dropping from air to writhe with a semblance of living creatures. I leaped over one and reached the front of the dais.

“Ayllia!” With mind call I pulled her and she came stumbling down to me. I need not so summon that other; he was already running for the arch, free as he had not been for untold centuries. In his hand was the wand, which he used as a pointer, aiming with it to send those serpents of fire hither and thither behind us. Whether they attacked Zandur and his men I could not see, for the stifling smoke was a yellow fog to set one coughing, with streaming eyes, but they did build behind us a formidable rear guard.

Hilarion looked at me and I read in his eyes something of what he felt in his moment of triumph. With his free hand he gestured us on toward the opening through the big screen; there was an alert wariness about him which told me that we were far from rid of what Zandur might summon.

On the other side of the screen we met the first of these ranks of the gray men, in their hands fire tubes such as I had seen used by those who cut their way into the transports. I drew upon the tripled power within me and built an hallucination. It was hastily contructed, unfinished, but for the moment it served. Ayllia, by my side, took on the appearance of Zandur. Seeing him with us, the gray men did not loose their fire, but fell back to give us an open passage, down which we fled.

We came to a plate in the floor beneath the balcony and huddled on this at Hilarion's gesture. Once we were upon it, it rose under us, taking us to the higher level. None too soon, for the gray men had taken heart, or learned the deception, and were firing at where we had been only seconds earlier. As those fiery trails whipped back and forth under the rising plate, I saw smoke float out from behind the screen and heard the clamor of that storm Hilarion's freeing had induced.

“Well done, sorceress.” For the first time he spoke. “But we are not free yet. Do not think that Zandur is one as easily handled as this girl you have so aptly used.”

“I do not underrate any enemy,” I told him. “But help comes—”

“So!” It appeared that with that I had startled him. “Then you did not come through the gate—you two—alone?”

“I am not alone.” I made him an answer, but more than that I did not say. Hilarion was a key now as Ayllia had been the key earlier, and I did not trust him. Only with my mother and father to stand with me would I dare to set any demands on him . . . for the old question stirred and dwelt ever at the back of my mind: some of the adepts, many, had turned to the Shadow. Was Hilarion even faintly so tainted, though he might not have been wholly of the dark? I had believed in and trusted Dinzil, who had in turn seemed one with the Valley people, been accepted as friend by them. And yet he had proved in the end to be one with the enemy. So it would seem there were those on the other side of our war who could take on the semblance of light while they were truly of those choosing to walk in the great dark.

A common danger can make temporary allies of unfriends and this might be true here. Suppose Hilarion did return us through the gate he had created, enter with us into Escore, and then prove to be such a one as those there had to fear? No, we must be ever on our guard until we knew—and how could we learn?

W
e faced now what seemed a solid wall, and I remembered how that had parted when I had been drawn here and closed behind me. How could we force our way out when this must be controlled by Zandur's machines, and we had not even the fire-shooting weapons of his followers? It would not take them long to reach where we stood, and then we might be crisped to ashes with no escape.

But Hilarion had no doubts. He approached the wall, though I noticed how he moved stiffly, as if long imprisonment in the pillar had frozen his body. But even if his muscles obeyed him slowly, he had every confidence in his Power. As Ayllia had done he used the wand in a swordsman's move, laying its tip against that portion of the wall where we could see a fine line of division.

And I felt, though I did not add to it, the surge of will which emanated from him at that moment. From the tip of the wand leaped a blue spark which fastened to that line, sped down and up, running along it. There was a trembling through the floor on which we stood. Then the portal gave, very grudgingly, affording us only a narrow slit of passage. I pushed Ayllia through and followed myself, to have Hilarion bring up the rear.

We were in the dark passage through which I had groped with such care nights—days—earlier. In the narrow strip of light from the door I saw Hilarion aim the wand once more at the portal. Again blue light moved, and, as falteringly as it had opened, the door began to close. When a slit only the width of a finger remained, I saw a flash of blue, this time not aimed at the opening but along the floor, rising to run in the same fashion overhead.

“I do not believe they can force that too soon.” There was satisfaction in his voice, but something else, such a spacing of words and slurring of them as I have heard in the voices of men who have been pushed very close to the edge of endurance in both body and spirit.

“Kaththea?” he called. I could not see him in the dark.

“I am here.” I answered swiftly for it seemed to me that this was a call for either reassurance or aid. It astonished me greatly—unless the battle he had waged for his freedom, and incidently ours, had truly exhausted him.

“We . . . must . . . reach . . . the . . . surface—” The hesitation, the slurring were stronger. And I could now hear heaving breath, a rasping as a man might make after he had just climbed a steep rise at his best speed. I put out my hand,
touched firm, warm flesh, and felt my fingers taken into a grasp which was not strong, but which held. Straightaway I sensed a draining from me into him.

“No!” I would have broken that hold but, weak as it seemed to be, there was no loosing of my fingers.

“Yes, and yes!” There was more energy in his denial. “My little sorceress, we are not yet out of this pit, and perhaps our first skirmish was the least of those to be faced. I must have what you can give me, as I do not think you could carry me if you would. Nor do you know the pitfalls herein as I do; remember I have been an unwilling part of them. I have been too many ages pent within that prison to be as able on my feet, or as fast as a master swordsman. You will give me what I need, if you truly wish to be free of Zandur.”

“But the machines—the fires—” I drew upon what had happened in the chamber to add to my stubborn resistance.

“No worse hit than they have been many times before. There are fast methods of repair, and Zandur will have already put those into action. Remember, this place was made to wage war, such a war as I do not believe you have dreamed of, my lady sorceress. For it is not a war those of our blood have ever seen. This place has many defenses and most of them shall now be turned on us, as speedily as Zandur can make the repairs to activate them. So give me of your strength and let us hurry.”

Then I, recalling that long descent which I had made, wondered if we could reclimb it. Ayllia came willingly enough, but as at first, she must be led. I did not try to control her mind again.

“Let him have what he now needs,” my mother's thought rang in my head. “Feed, and we shall feed you! He speaks the truth: time now marches, heavily armed, against us all!”