The Corridors of Time (21 page)

The glass fell from Lockridge’s hand. He got up. ‘I can’t stay here,’ he exploded. ‘I’m going to call for someone to come
get me.’

‘No, wait, that set only goes to Istar’s keep, you don’t think the likes of me has a direct line to the Goddess, do you? Sit
down, you fool.’

Lockridge brushed the woman aside. She sank onto a bed and poured herself another tumblerful. He covered the single call light.
The screen came to life with a young man bored, sleepy, and resentful.

‘Who are you?’ the Warden demanded. ‘My lady is a-hunting.’

‘Your lady can hunt herself into Chaos if she wants,’ Lockridge snapped. ‘You connect me with the Westmark Koriach’s palace.’

The beardless chin dropped. ‘Are you possessed?’

‘Listen, pretty boy, if you don’t jump I’ll nail your hide to
the nearest barn, with half of you still inside it. Get me the Warden Hu, the Lady Yuria, any of the court that’s available.
Tell them Malcolm Lockridge is back. In the Koriach’s name!’

‘You know them? Forgive me? One, one, one minute, I beg you.’ The screen blanked.

Lockridge reached for the jug but pulled his hand back. No, he wanted his wits tonight. He stood for a time and raged. Outside,
wind gusted under the eaves. The woman watched him, and drank unceasingly.

Hu’s face appeared. ‘You! We took you for lost!’ He showed more astonishment than gladness.

‘It’s a long story,’ Lockridge cut him off. ‘Can you trace this call to where I am? All right, come fetch me.’ He broke the
connection.

The crone was too drunk now to show much of the fear that had come over her. She did shrink from him and mumble, ‘Lor’, par’n
me, I di’n’ know—’

‘I still owe you my life,’ Lockridge said. ‘But the Koriach is gone away for a while. I’m sorry.’ He couldn’t remain in this
hut where a boy’s bed stood so neatly made. He lifted the mother’s hand to his lips and went outside.

The wind streaked around him, with a rattle of dead leaves. The moon was high and seemed shrunken. Immensely far off, he heard
the hunters. None of it mattered.

I’ve got to be careful, he thought once. If nothin’ else, I’ve got to get Auri home again.

He didn’t know how long he waited. Half an hour, maybe. Two green-clad men swooped from the dark and saluted him. ‘Let’s go,’
he said.

And over the land they went. Mostly he saw it as one immense night. Here and there lay villages, ringed around the brilliant
upwardness of a palace-temple but separated from it and each other by miles of nothing. Often he spied the ankh that was a
factory. Sure, he thought, the Wardens live by machines just as much as the Rangers. They only dress the fact up a little
more.

I wasn’t meant to see any o’ this. The idea was, I’d go straight to a corridor, if I lived, and get wafted straight to her
sanctuary.

It rose before him, even now so splendid that he knew pain to think this must perish. His guides set him down on a terrace
where jasmine perfumed an air kept warm and a fountain sang. Hu stood waiting, in a robe that cascaded like a fireball.

‘Malcolm!’ He seized Lockridge’s shoulders. His enthusiasm did not go deep. ‘What ever happened? How did you escape, and go
that far north, and, and, why, this calls for the biggest festival since She chose Her last avatar in the Westmark.’

‘Look,’ the American said, ‘I’m nearly too tired to stand. My mission succeeded and you can have the details later. Right
now, how’s Auri?’

‘Who? … Ah, the Neolithic girl. Asleep, I imagine.’

‘Take me to her.’

‘Well.’ Hu frowned and rubbed his chin. ‘Why are you so anxious about her?’

‘Has she been hurt?’ Lockridge shouted.

Hu stepped back. ‘No. Certainly not. However, you must realize she was distraught on your account. And she’s evidently misunderstood
some things she observed. That’s to be expected. The very reason we had to study someone from her culture so closely. Believe
me, we treated her as kindly as possible.’

‘I believe you. Take me to her.’

‘Can’t she wait? I thought we would give you a stimulant now, and after your basic account is recorded, a celebration —’ Hu
gave in. ‘As you wish.’

He lifted an arm. A serving youth appeared. Hu gave instructions. ‘I shall see you tomorrow, Malcolm,’ he said, and walked
off. His robe flamed about him.

Lockridge hardly noticed by what ways he was taken. In the end, a door opened. He trod through, to find a small room with
another door opposite and a bed on which Auri lay. The shift she wore was quite pretty, and she had not grown thin (the
local biomeds knew how to keep a specimen in good shape), but she moaned in her sleep.

With a hand that wavered, he inserted his diaglossa for her time and stroked a soft cheek. Her eyes blinked. ‘Lynx,’ she mumbled;
and then, coming bolt awake:
‘Lynx!’

He sat down and held her close while she laughed and wept and shuddered in his arms. The words torrented from her, ‘Oh, Lynx,
Lynx, I thought you must be dead, take me away, take me home, anything, this is where the wicked dead must go, no, I was not
beaten, but they keep people like animals, they
breed
them, and everybody hates everybody else, always they whisper, why do they want to own the others, every one of them does,
she can’t be the Goddess, she mustn’t be —’

‘She isn’t,’ he said. ‘I came here through her land, I saw her people, and I know. Yes, Auri, we will go home.’

The inner door opened. He turned his head and saw the Lady Yuria. Blonde tresses did not quite hide the thing in her ear,
nor did her nightcloak mask how stiffly she stood.

‘I almost wish you had never admitted that, Malcolm,’ she said.

1827
B.C.

Lockridge crossed the auroral curtain. ‘When are we?’

Hu checked the calendar clock. ‘Later than I desired,’ he said. ‘The end of August.’

So Avildaro has lived a fourth of a year since we broke Brann and the Yuthoaz, Lockridge thought. Auri, about as long. Me,
a few days, though each one passed like a century.
What’s Storm done here, this whole summer?

‘The uncertainty factor is what makes transtemporal liaison so difficult,’ Hu complained. He half turned back to the gate.
‘We might try again.’ The four soldiers who accompanied them showed alarm. One man actually started to protest. Hu changed
his mind. ‘No. That sort of thing can entangle you in the grisliest paradoxes, if you’re unlucky. I did get some couriers
back and forth during the past several weeks. At last report, everything was still going smoothly, and that was little more
than a local month ago.’

He started up the ramp. His men fell in around Lockridge and Auri. The girl clutched the American’s hand and breathed, ‘Are
we truly home?’

‘You are,’ he said.

In an abstract way, he wondered why no garrison of Wardens was maintained at a gate which had become as important as this
one. Well, he decided, she’s got a variety of reasons, includin’ the fact that she needs to keep as many loyal men as possible
in her own era. But mainly, I reckon she doesn’t want to chance givin’ the show away, in case some Ranger scout reconnoiters
this far.

They emerged. The sun stood noon high over a forest rich and vivid at season’s climax. A herd of roe deer, cropping the meadow,
bolted and flushed a thousand partridge. Auri stood for a moment with glory in her face, raised her arms to the sky and shook
back an unbound mane. Before they left, she had changed to the brief garb of her people. Lockridge noticed how startlingly
her body had matured while he was gone.

He wished he’d had the nerve to ask for kilt, cloak, and necklace, instead of the green uniform given him.

‘And we are free again, Lynx.’ Abruptly the girl must leap and shout for joy.

You are. Maybe. I hope, he thought. Me? I don’t know.

They had not mistreated him, during those two days he was held in the palace before being taken here. He could stroll about
as he liked, with a single guard. They asked him, quite courteously, to make his report under a drug which inhibited
lying; and he had done so, spilled the whole beanpot, because the alternative could be a mind machine. Afterward Yuria had
held lengthy discussions with him, not the least ill-tempered. Her position was that, imprimis, his background did not equip
him to understand a totally different civilization; secundus, what he had seen was not a fair sample; tertius, tragedy must
be integral to any human life which was to realize its full nobility; quartus, granted, abuses did occur, but they were correctible,
and under a wiser government they would be.

He’d said nothing to that, nor accepted the favors she offered. She was too alien to him. They all were.

Hu spoke an order. The party rose and aimed for the Lim-fjord.

This day I’ll see Storm again, Lockridge thought. His heart slammed. He couldn’t tell how much was fear and how much –well
– herself.

Nevertheless, she would judge him, no one else dared. Not only was he a chosen of hers, but he had that enigmatic word from
her future.

The woods fell behind. Brilliance danced on the bay, where Avildaro stood under its holy grove. Some fisher boats were out,
and women at their work between the cabins. But camped to the north and spilling eastward —

Auri screamed. Lockridge ripped out an oath.

‘The Yuthoaz! Lynx, what has happened?’

‘By God, Warden, start explainin’,’ Lockridge choked.

‘Be easy,’ Hu called over his shoulder. ‘This was planned. Everything is going well.’

Lockridge slitted his eyes and counted. The Battle Ax people were no horde. He saw a dozen or so chariots, parked outside
the tepees of their chieftainly owners. The men, gathering excited to stare at the flyer band, numbered little over a hundred.
Others might be out hunting or whatever, but surely not many.

They had brought their women, though. No Orugaray female wore coarse wool sweaters and skirts. Small children scrambled among
them. Older ones tended herds of cattle,
sheep, horse, a wealth of livestock grazing miles over the range. Turf sheds were being erected.

The enemy had returned to stay.

Storm, Storm, why?

Hu brought them down at the Long House. View of the encampment was cut off by the huts clustered around. The open area before
the doorway was deserted; no villager stirred in what had once been the jostling, haggling, laughing center of the community.
Voices from afar hardly touched this sunlit silence.

The house itself was changed. Garland used to hang over the lintel, oakleaf in summer and holly in winter. Now an emblem shone
in gold and silver, the Labrys across the Sun Disc. Two warriors stood proud guard, leather armored, plumed and painted, spear,
dagger, bow, and tomahawk to hand. They gave the newcomers a Warden salute.

‘Is She within?’ asked Hu.

‘Yes, my master,’ said the older of the Yuthoaz, a stocky forkbearded redhead. The wolf was painted on his shield. Jarred,
Lockridge knew Withucar again. His broken arm had knitted. ‘She makes Her magic behind the blackness.’

‘Keep this man here for Her summons.’ Hu went inside. The skin curtain flapped to behind him.

Auri covered her face and sobbed. Lockridge stroked the bright locks. ‘You need not stay,’ he murmured. ‘Go seek your kinfolk.’

‘If they live.’

‘They must. There was no second fight. The Storm brought back the strangers for some purpose of her own. Go on, now, home.’

Auri started to leave. A soldier grabbed for her. Lockridge slapped down the man’s hand. ‘You have no orders to detain her,’
he barked. The solider stepped back with fright on his countenance. Auri vanished among the huts.

Withucar had watched the interchange with more amusement than his awed companion. His face cracked in a grin.
‘But you are him who got away from us!’ he bawled. ‘Well, well!’

He leaned his spear and came over to pummel Lockridge’s back. ‘That was a warrior deed,’ he said with quite genuine warmth.
‘Ha, how you tumbled us about, and for the sake of one little girl! What fortune had you since? We’ve become your friends,
you know, and I’ve seen the gods so close these past weeks that I grow jaded and think you used no wizardry, only tricks I’d
be most glad to learn. Welcome, you!’

Lockridge collected his wits. Here was a chance to get an honest account. ‘I went afar, on Her business,’ he said slowly,
‘And know not what’s happened in these lands. No little surprised am I to find your clan returned.’ He planted a barb: ‘And
to find yourself playing sentry like any common youth.’

Withucar signed himself and answered with quick gravity, ‘Who but the highest born is fit to serve Her?’

‘Uh … yes. Still, when did the charioteers do so?’

‘Since this midsummer, or a while after. See you, we were a frightened people, after him we thought the very Firelord was
beaten and ourselves scattered by outlanders whose weapons were real metal. We counted ourselves lucky to get home, I can
tell you, and made big sacrifices to the gods of this land. But an emissary came from Her and spoke to our council. He said
She was not too angry with us, we being simple folk whom the giant had tricked. Indeed, She would fain use us as warriors,
for Her own must go back whence they came.’

Of course, Lockridge remembered. The English had to be sent home: too ill adapted to be efficient help in this age, not to
mention being too noticeably foreign. Storm had dropped a remark about some idea she’d gotten, for arming this headquarters
of her newest theater of operations….

‘Well,’ Withucar continued, ‘we were unsure. Adventurous youngsters might join Her guard for some years. But family men? So
far from our own kind and gods? Then the emissary explained She wanted a warrior people to come and stay. The fishermen are
brave, but untrained in order of battle and modern weapons. She wanted us, not only our hale men but our
entire tribe.

‘We would get land, and be honored. So would our gods be. Sun and Moon, Fire and Water, Air and Earth – why should they not
wed, and be worshipped alike? So in the end, those phratries you have seen remembered how they were getting too large for
their pastures, bethought themselves what could come of alliance with One so powerful and trekked hither.