Wizards’ Worlds (43 page)

The sleeper’s hands arose very slowly, unsteadily from her sides and wavered up toward
the cap, though her eyelids did not raise. Her expression was now one of pain. And
Kas, breathing hard and fast, kept to his adjustments on the box.

So they fought their silent battle for possession of the dreamer. And slowly Tamisan
was forced to concede that whatever force lay in that box, it overrode all the technique
she knew. But, the longer Kas kept this poor wretch under, the weaker she would grow.
Death would be the answer, though perhaps that did not trouble him.

If she could not wake the dreamer, break the bonds
which she was certain now were what tied her and Starrex to that other world, then
she must somehow get at Kas himself. He had responded to her touch before—therefore
he might just—

Tamisan slipped away from the head of the couch and came to stand beside Kas. He straightened
up, a faith relief mirrored on his face as he studied the dreamer, and apparently
his box reported that there was no longer any disturbance.

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—

T
AMISAN
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.

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.”