Wizards’ Worlds (44 page)

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 the 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!

She tried to turn in his grasp, to race back and away, knowing already that such a
race was lost before she took the first lunging stride. But he held her fast.

“No muzzle,” he said.

Tamisan strained to see through the poor, flickering light. Perhaps it was a lightening
of the sky which did make clear that there was no muzzle projecting to spew a fiery
death across them all. But that was surely a gun port.

As quickly as it had appeared, that opening was closed. The ship was again sealed
tightly.

“What—?”

“Either they can not use it,” Kas answered her half question, “or they have thought
better of doing so. Which means, by either count, we have a chance. Now—stay you here!
Or else I shall come looking for you in a manner you shall not relish, and never believe
that I can not find you!” Nor did something in Tamisan dispute that.

She stood. After all, apart from Kas’ threats, where did she have to go? If she were
sighted by any of the guards, she might either be returned to prison or dealt with
summarily in another fashion. And she had to reach Starrex if she were to escape.

But she watched Kas make good use of the interest which riveted the eyes of the guards
on the ship. He crept, with more ease than she thought possible for one used to the
luxury living of the sky towers, behind the nearest man.

What weapon he used she could not see; it was not the laser. Instead he straightened
to his full height behind the unsuspecting guard, reached out an arm and seemed only
to touch the stranger on the neck. Immediately the fellow collapsed without a sound,
though Kas caught him before he had fallen to the ground and dragged him backward
to the slight depression in the field where Tamisan waited.

“Quick!” Kas ordered. “Give me his cloak and helm!”

He ripped off his own tunic with its extravagantly padded shoulders, while Tamisan
knelt to fumble with a great brooch, freeing the enveloping cloak of the guard. Kas
snatched it out of her hands, dragged the rest of it loose from under the limp body
and pulled it around him, taking up the helm and settling it on his head with a tap.
Then he took up the crossbow.

“Walk before me,” he told Tamisan. “If they have a field scanner on in the ship, I
want them to see a prisoner under guard. That may bring them to a parley. It is a
thin chance, but our best—”

He could not guess that it might be a better chance than he hoped, Tamisan knew, since
he did not know that she had been once within the ship and the crew might be expecting
some such return with a message from the Over-Queen. But to walk out boldly, past
the line of torches—surely Kas’ luck would not hold so well; they would be seen by
the other guards before they were a quarter of the way to the ship. But she had not
any other proposal to offer in exchange.

This was no adventure such as she had lived through in dreams. She believed that if
she died now, she died indeed and would not wake unharmed in her own world. And her
flesh crawled with a fear which made her mouth go dry and her hands quiver as they
held wet and tight upon the folds of her robe. Any second now—she would feel the impact
of a bolt—hear a shout of discovery—be—

But still Tamisan tottered forward and heard, with danger-alerted ears, the faint
crunch of boots which was Kas behind. His contempt for a danger which was only too
real for her made her wonder, fleetingly, if he did indeed still believe this a dream
she could control, and need not then watch for any one but her. But she could not
summon words to impress on him his woeful mistake.

So intent was she upon some attack from behind that she was not really conscious of
the ship towards which they went. Until, suddenly she saw another of those ports open
and steeled herself to feel the numbing charge of a stunner.

However, again an attack she feared did not come. The sky was growing lighter even
if there was no sign of sunrise. Instead the first drops of a storm began to fall.
And under that onslaught of moisture from lowering clouds, the torches hissed and
sputtered, finally flickering out, so that the gloom was hardly better than twilight.

T
HEY
came close enough to the ship to board, were one of the ramps lowered to them. There
they stood waiting, while Tamisan felt the rise of almost hysterical laughter inside
her. What an anticlimax if the ship refused to acknowledge them! They could not stand
here forever and there was no chance they could battle a way inside. Kas’ faith in
her communication with that ghost of Hawarel had been too high.

But even as she was sure that they made an absurd
failure, there was a sigh of sound from well above them. The port hatch wheeled back
into the envelope of the ship’s wall, and a small ramp, hardly more than a steep ladder,
swung creaking out and dropped to hit the charred ground not far from them.

“Go!” Kas prodded her forward.

With a shrug, Tamisan went. She found it hard to climb with the heavy, frayed skirts
dragging her back. But by using her hands to pull along the single rail of the ramp,
she made progress. Why had not the rest of the guards along that watching line of
torches moved? Had it been that Kas’ half disguise had indeed deceived them, and they
thought that Tamisan had been sent under orders to parley a second time with the ship’s
people?

She was nearly at the hatch now and could see the suited men in the shadows above
waiting. They had tanglers ready to fire, prepared to spin the webs to enmesh them
both as easily handled prisoners. But before those slimy strands spun forth to touch—patterned
as they were to seek flesh to anchor—both the waiting spacemen jerked right and left,
clutched with already dead hands at the breasts of charred tunics from which arose
small, deadly spirals of smoke.

They had expected a guard armed with a bow; they had met Kas’ laser, to the same undoing
as the guardsmen at the castle. Kas’ shoulder in the middle of her back sent her sprawling,
to land half over the bodies of the two who had awaited them.

She heard a scuffle and was kicked and rolled aside, fighting the folds of her own
long skirt, trying to get out of the confines of the hatch pocket. Somehow, on her
hands and knees, she made it forward, since she could not retreat. Now she fetched
up against the wall of a corridor and managed to pull around to face the end of the
fight.

The two guards lay dead. But Kas held the laser on a third man. Now, without glancing
around, he gave an order which she mechanically obeyed.

“The tangler—here!”

Still on her hands and knees, Tamisan crawled far enough back into the hatch compartment
to grip one of those weapons. The second—she eyed it with awakening need for some
protection herself, but Kas did not give her time to reach it.

“Give it to me—now!”

Still holding the laser pointed steadily at the middle of the third spaceman, he groped
back with his other hands. She had no choice—no choice—but she did!

If Kas thought he had her thoroughly cowed—Swinging the tangler around without taking
time to aim, Tamisan pressed the firing button.

The lash of the sticky weaving spun through the air, striking the wall from which
it dropped away, then one arm of the motionless captive, who was still under Kas’
threat; there it clung, across his middle. And then it spun through the air until
it clasped Kas’ gun hand, his middle, his other arm, adhering instantly, tightening
with its usual efficiency and tying captor to captive.

Kas struggled against those ever-tightening bands to bring the laser around to beam
on Tamisan, though whether he would have used it even in his white hot rage, she did
not know. It was enough that the tangler made it so she could keep from his line of
fire. Having ensnared them enough to render them both harmless for a time, Tamisan
drew a deep breath and relaxed somewhat.

She had to be sure of Kas. She had loosed the firing button of the tangler as soon
as she saw that he could not use his arms. Now she raised the weapon, and with more
of a plan, tied his legs firmly together. He kept on his feet, but he was as helpless
as if they had managed to turn a stunner beam on him.

Warily, she approached him. And guessing her intent, he went into wild wrigglings,
trying to bring the adhesive tangler strands in contact with her flesh also. But she
stooped and tore at the already fringed and frayed hem of
her robe, ripping up a strip as high as her waist, winding this about her arm and
wrist to make sure she could not be so entrapped.