Ashake shrugged. "Why ask me, Khasti? You must have made yourself familiar with those long ago. Would you tell me now that you come from such a world? Do you expect me to look upon you as a G.o.d because you might have knowledge such as we have not? Knowledge varies, it is of many kinds, comes from different sources. Yours is built on what lies about us in this room. It is not ours, nor would any man of our kin be fitted to use it. Therefore, I can believe that it may be unearthly-"
His frown had deepened as he looked at her.
"Such a thought does not alarm you then?"
"Why should it?" she returned. "Did you believe that I would say you were a demon as might those unlearned? There is that in you which is not kin-nor are you like anything we have heard of among the barbarians. Thus you must have come from a place we know not, the proof being that you stand here and now to meddle dangerously in our affairs." Again she shrugged.
"Meddle dangerously in your affairs." He caught up her phrase. "Yes, that is how you would see it, I suppose. But what if I have much to offer you-"
"No merchant offers trade upon the point of a sword," she snapped and was pleased to see the answering flash from his eyes. Ah, she had indeed p.r.i.c.ked him then. "You want not a bargain with us, you want the Empire. For what reason I do not know yet, unless there is such a boiling of desire to rule within you that you must seize all you can, as a greedy beggar stuffs his mouth with both hands and then reaches quickly for more. Why are you now so frank with me, Khasti? Is it because you have not broken me as quickly as you thought to do? Is there some time limit on your meddling?"
He was silent and she knew a small surge of triumph. If that guess were only right! What time limit, and set by whom, and for what purpose? She had the questions, but who would give her the answers? For she believed in this exchange she had brought more out of him than any other in Amun knew.
She had angered him, but she did not care.
"For a female you are quick with words, bold words-"
"Among your kin then, Khasti, are those of my s.e.x considered the lesser? That is a barbarian belief. I hear that their women in the north are wed to become the possessions of the men. With us it is not so. Does that anger you a little?"
"It angers me not at all. It merely amazes me that your men are such spiritless fools as to allow such a way of life to continue," he said coldly, in spite of the anger she sensed in him. "It is well known that the female mind is inferior-"
"Inferior to what, Khasti?" She had the last word with that, for he did not answer, but turned and strode away. She waited until the door closed behind him, alert to any other move he might make toward the box. It had been the force of the box that had drawn her to the brink of remembering her initiation, thus almost supplying him with some knowledge he pried for.
She was alone once more. He had left the water trickling from the pipe in the sink. Her mouth was dry. Now also her stomach begun to proclaim its emptiness. She folded both arms across it, hugging herself, as if by touch alone she could persuade herself that she was not hungry.
If she could only have talked Idieze into trying that row of b.u.t.tons. One of the four must must release the cage. She remained sealed here at Khasti"s pleasure. She tried to occupy her mind with the hints he had dropped. release the cage. She remained sealed here at Khasti"s pleasure. She tried to occupy her mind with the hints he had dropped. Was Was he really from off-world? Ashake memory had produced some very ancient tales of "Sky Lords" of incredible learning who had visited Khem to the Two Lands thousands of years ago. Tallaha.s.see"s memory was ready to babble less intelligently of flying saucers, and the speculations concerning ancient s.p.a.cemen giving impetus to the beginnings of civilization in that time and world. he really from off-world? Ashake memory had produced some very ancient tales of "Sky Lords" of incredible learning who had visited Khem to the Two Lands thousands of years ago. Tallaha.s.see"s memory was ready to babble less intelligently of flying saucers, and the speculations concerning ancient s.p.a.cemen giving impetus to the beginnings of civilization in that time and world.
Or could Khasti have slipped through another rift in s.p.a.cetime such as had entrapped her, merely stepped from another world like this, but one that had followed a different pattern of history? It did not really matter-he was not only here, but well prepared to engraft on Amun his own pattern of living.
She was thirsty! The trickling of the water...And she was empty enough to feel weak. How long could she stand up to this? She could not even be sure how long she had been here. That period of induced unconsciousness might have been prolonged past her judgment of time. How long could she last?
Her headache came from the strong light as well as lack of food. And it would seem that her brave fight against the demands of her body was nearly lost. Once more she rested her forehead on arms crossed over her upheld knees. She was very close to the sleep of complete exhaustion.
There was a cold touch on one elbow, a tingling that spread from that point of contact up her arm. She had felt something like that before. Her mind seemed sluggish. What?...
She made herself look up. This time her extra sense had been too dulled to alert her. Outside the cage coiled that serpent thing, and it had again inserted a tendril to make contact with her.
Even her fear arose slowly, and she could not make the effort to avoid the thing. It clung to her flesh. And now it seemed no longer so wispy, so tenuous. In dull horror, Tallaha.s.see watched the thread turn milky and opaque. At the same time she realized that it was drawing strength from her in some way. Down that thread traveled the opaque suggestion of new solidity. She reached out her other hand desperately trying to break its hold on her. But she could not. It remained, sucking, sucking.
Tallaha.s.see began to cry weakly. For all her brave words to Khasti, her struggle to remain herself, this she could not fight any longer. She was too worn from the earlier struggle to defend herself.
She crumpled on the floor, moaning a little. Still the thing fed-if you could call this vampire-draining feeding. Then, before she blacked out entirely, it loosed hold. Wonderingly, she saw something else appear in the air before that shimmer, which she identified with Akini. It was milky white and it was a hand. A hand that ended at the wrist. Its fingers were now being flexed as if about to be put to use.
Her mouth open a little in astonishment, Tallaha.s.see pulled herself up on her knees. The hand was moving away from her, propelled through the air as if it had been given some task it must do. The outline kept changing, as if to hold it in shape was almost too great a task.
But it was before the cabinet now-nearing the row of b.u.t.tons. Another dream? Perhaps one evoked by Khasti to further torment her and drain her obstinate strength so that he could make her wholly his tool?
The hand darted forward. She could not see from her cage just what it had done. But certainly there was no change in the wire mesh around her and, for a moment, she knew a deep disappointment. If the hand thing had not intended to kill, she had hoped a little that it might be here to help. Only-nothing had happened. She was as securely pent as ever.
While the hand was fading, the strange stuff of which it was formed sloughed away from the shape of fingers into wisps. It was moving again, shapeless though it was, not back toward her cage, but rather to the near table. For a moment, as long as it took her to blink twice, it hung above the smaller cage that imprisoned the Rod and Key.
Could it be?...
Tallaha.s.see"s heart lurched within her. Perhaps she was not free-as yet-but that other...She watched the shifting blob, which the hand had melted into, pa.s.s through the mesh of the smaller cage, make a dart at the Rod and as swiftly recoil, not only recoil but become dispersed into nothingness.
There was a feeling of shock in the air. Akini was gone, driven away by the very force he-it-had attempted to use. But what had he done at the control box? Perhaps turned off whatever unseen defensive mechanism Khasti had set up to protect what had been stolen?
Ashake-Ashake knew what could be done. If Tallaha.s.see surrendered completely to Ashake there might be a chance. But if she so surrendered could she ever regain herself?
Only-now she believed that even such a loss as that was worth a chance to escape. She closed her eyes, summoned Ashake memory defiantly, opened her mind to what the other had to give.
Ashake crouched down. Her body was feeble, it was true, but she could still draw upon some inner energy, enough, she prayed, to do what must be done. She fixed her stare on the jeweled head of the Rod.
"Come to me!" she commanded with all the strength left at her command. "Come to me!"
Slowly the Rod arose from the surface on which it lay, the lighter end sloping upward ahead of the heavy, begemmed top. Now it was pointing upward at a sharp angle, the tip aimed at the woven wires of its cage.
"Come to me!"
The tip touched the cage mesh. There was no reaction. Sweat streamed down Ashake"s face, lay wet in her armpits, on the palms of her hands.
"Come to me!"
The tip of the Rod exerted more and more force against the cage. Ashake fought to give it all she had in her. Then the cage tilted, fell to one side with a clatter. And, since it was bottomless, the Rod was free. It whirled around and swooped through the air, aiming straight at Ashake as she called it.
Like a lance it struck the side of her own cage. There was a brilliant flare, which made her cry out as the backlash of radiance struck her. But she had had time to shield her eyes. When she dared to look again she saw that the Rod lay on the floor. But where it had dashed against the cage there was a black patch in which holes appeared to spread. The metal was rotting swiftly as might a broken fungus.
Now she looked beyond that growing hole to the Key and raised a hand weakly.
"Come!" she called for the fifth time.
The Key arose, slower and more sluggishly, since she called now from the very dregs of her failing strength. But it obeyed her, moving in jerks through the air and settling at last in the trembling palm she held out to it.
The hole in the screen was open enough to let her through. And at the touch of the Key new strength flowed into her. She crawled out into the open, stooped to pick up the Rod, and then, with her her weapons in hand, stood to her full height and looked around. weapons in hand, stood to her full height and looked around.
Such a use of the Power had set up a troubling in the whole atmosphere. If there were any within this building who possessed a sc.r.a.p of the Talent, they would be warned. She waited, using the force renewed in her from the talismans of her people, to listen, with not her ears, but her mind.
She could pick up no instant response to the waves of energy she had projected. But she owed a debt, whether the other had meant to save her or had only been working to liberate the Rod. And debts, for one of those who walked the Upper Ways, lay heavy.
"Akini?" With mind, not voice, she sought the creature who had come to her rescue. She did not know what he wanted with Rod or Key. But manifestly it was not not to put them in Khasti"s hands, for all that labor had been to free them. to put them in Khasti"s hands, for all that labor had been to free them.
But there was only mind-silence. When Akini had striven to reach the Rod had he-it-been blasted forth to extinction? Somehow Ashake did not believe it.
She tottered toward the sink with its trickle of water from the pipe. Gathering both Rod and Key into a single hand, she held the other under that less-than-finger-wide stream. It filled the hollow of her palm, and she brought the liquid to her lips, sucking carefully, doing this many times until her thirst was at last quenched.
Hunger was still with her but that must wait until she could find food. Purposefully now she started for the door, waveringly at first because of weakness, but each moment that she held the precious talismans it decreased a little, so at last she walked with much of her old, determined stride.
There seemed to be no catch or k.n.o.b on this inner side. Well, she could use more of the charge of the Rod to burn her way through. But that she would rather not do. She did not want to further deplete its energy.
However, when she set flat palm to the door, its surface shifted slightly so that she inched it forward, listening all the while, hardly daring to breathe lest that faint sound cloud her hearing.
Now that the crack was wide enough, she could see a slice of darkness beyond. After waiting a very long moment more to make sure there was no sound at all, she slipped through.
There was darkness facing her and not too far away, but both Key and Rod radiated light enough for her to see that she was now in a narrow hallway that ran into deeper darkness both left and right beyond the range of the talismans" glow.
She had two choices and no guide as to where each might lead. Not only was there no sound, but, Ashake decided, there was a peculiar emptiness here, as if all that which made life as she knew it had been barred.
Left-right....Her head turned as she quested for some guide as to which way would lead her back to the world she knew. Finally she faced right, holding the Rod and Key before her to give the best light possible, and started on.
-12-.
There was no other break in the wall after she left the door of the laboratory. Also the hall narrowed. The way was very dark and there was an odd heaviness in the air. She might be approaching some very ancient tomb which the living had not troubled for a long time. Then the hall ended abruptly in a flight of stairs that led down into a thicker dark, far beyond any radiance of the Rod or Key to pierce.
So she had chosen wrongly. Her path should have been left rather than right. Could she retrace her steps, or might her escape be already discovered?
Tallaha.s.see was deeply tired, in spite of the energy she drew from the talismans. Her hunger was an additional weakness. To go on down into this dark was folly. Back. . . .
Somehow she inched around, looked back. Now a sound reached her. Footfalls, echoing from sandaled feet, where her own bare ones made no noise. There came a flare of light-though it was very small and far away. Someone had flung wide open the door of the laboratory. She was cut off, with only the dark descent left as a way of escape. Khasti!
Her heart beat faster. What strange weapons he could command she had no way of guessing. That he would pursue her, Tallaha.s.see had no doubt at all. But there was one thing....
Steadying her hands with all the control she could summon, she turned fully to face that distant door, raising Key and Rod. She moved them through the air, drawing invisible lines of force, while she recited under her breath the Words of Power. Let him come then. He would meet with something that might not entangle his body, but would strike at his mind, alien though it might be.
Then, with foreboding, she began the descent. The hall above had felt dry and chill, but as she went carefully from step to step downwards, the chill became damp. The air about her, in spite of that odd dead quality, held a touch of moisture.
New Napata was on a river. Did this warren run down close to those sites where the river had been long ago covered over and hidden? She listened, both for an outcry from behind, and for any sound below. What she had done to seal this way in her own defense had drawn from the store of energy in the Rod and Key. Now their radiance was faded, did little more than light a single step ahead. Smells a.s.saulted her nostrils-of wet, or rot, of nauseous things she could not set name to. Still the steps descended into the heart of a dead-black pit. Who had wrought this way and what use it had been in the past she could not imagine. At least it had been unknown to Ashake before.
On the steps led, down and down. Tallaha.s.see was so tired she trembled from head to foot. Only her will kept her mind clear. Clear enough to- She halted, her feet together on a step slimed with moisture, and raised her head high.
"Akini?" There was a presence here again. No, more than one! They were pressing in against her, as wayfarers in a desolate land might press inward to warm their hands by a camp fire. And what drew them were the talismans!
She was right, one of those was Akini. But who were the others? If she could only communicate, discover what they wanted, for their emotion touched her mind, grew in her thoughts. They were avid. As her own bodily hunger gnawed at her, so did some greater hunger tear at them-a hunger that was centered in what she bore. They did not even seem to be aware of her, only of what she carried.
"Akini!" Again she tried to reach that one presence she could put name to.
"Give-us-the-life...."
Only a flutter of thought, so faint and far away that she could barely pick it up.
The life? Did the Rod and Key mean life to these wisps of ident.i.ty?
"Life!" The word was no stronger this time, but more imperative.
Ashake took firmer hold on the talismans. It seemed to her that the presences were trying to clutch at what she held, drag them from her grasp. But they were too weak to achieve that.
She took a deep breath and then made her answer: "Guide me hence, if you can-and I, who use the Power, will also try to give you life!" Could she bargain with these lost things? And if she did strike such a bargain, then how might she fulfill her part of it? She did not know. But there were Zyhlarz, Jayta-the others of the Upper Way-surely among them all they could give these wraiths either life or eternal peace.
That weak plucking at the talismans quieted. But they were not gone. She took heart from that. Perhaps they had understood. If they were creatures of this darkness, they surely knew the ways below.
"Akini?" She made a question of that thought.
There was a touch on her wrist. She started and glanced down. A threadlike tendril rested there. And through it came a thought.
"Forward."
She could only trust in this. If it were a true bargain, she had won. But, since there was no turning back, she must accept what came. Down and down she went. The Akini presence was there, the others too, but they had withdrawn a little, trailing behind her.
They reached the foot of the stair and stood in a place of evil smells and air so thick that she gasped as she went. But she did not have to travel far. On the wall to her right that thread, which had touched her wrist, centered on a block of stone that the radiance showed faintly.
Ashake held closer the Key and the Rod. Here was the line of an ancient arch, but it was filled with blocks of stone, wedged in to seal what once opened there. Ashake raised the Rod, willed its power higher. She tapped with its tip against the top stone, and as she did so she muttered the old chant of the Builders. This she had never done before. She was not even sure that she knew all the words that released such power. And in the days when the Builders had wrought with the Talent, then there had been a number together wielding their wills into a single strong force.
But the stone was moving. Slowly Ashake drew the Rod back toward her, and the stone followed, to fall at her feet. So much force expended to loose a single stone! Could she achieve the withdrawal of another? She was not sure, but once more she lifted the Rod and whispered the chant. And once more a stone obeyed the summons of her Talent.
Three more blocks were so dislodged. She could not do it again! As she stood she wavered on her feet, her eyes blurred. But there was a hole-large enough to crawl through? It would have to be!
Her single flimsy garment was torn, there were bleeding gouges in her skin, grazes on her arms and legs which burned. But she had won through, to stand in yet another dark way. But this lacked the dampness of that other, and there was now a current of air blowing about her, enough to hearten her.
Ashake limped forward on bruised and bleeding feet, weaving from side to side of that narrow way, until first one shoulder and then the other sc.r.a.ped painfully along the stone. But the straight path was very short. Again she faced steps, very narrow steps, leading up into the dark.
She pulled herself up from one to the next. All the world had narrowed for her to that one rough staircase. And she was not aware, until she came upon it, of a landing some four steps wide. In the wall to her right, a little below her eye level so she had to stoop a fraction to gaze through it, was a peephole from which came a wan light. She could see only a small fraction of what lay beyond, but it was enough to both startle and encourage her. For she gazed into the inner courtyard upon which fronted Naldamak"s own suite in the Inner Palace!
There was no sign of a door here, and anyway she had no wish to come blindly into the open-not until she knew more about the situation that might face her. Up again...
Tallaha.s.see did not count the steps, but here was another landing. No, it was the end of the stair itself. And when she peered through another hole it was into the dark, as if this hole was covered. Taking Key and Rod both into one hand, she felt along the wall before her. Surely there lay some way of opening it!
Her fingers dropped into a hollow in the stone, which was barely perceptible, even when she held the talismans close to it. And it was her sagging weight as she leaned forward that must have released the hidden catch.
Ashake tumbled out through a narrow opening, to become entangled in a hanging which she nearly ripped from its high wall fastenings as she fell. Her head and shoulders lay on the carpet of the room she had entered so secretly, and the smell of delicate perfume, the freshness of good air filled her nostrils, cleansed her lungs of the foulness filling those dark ways below.
She was so spent that she did not even try to move for a s.p.a.ce. Khasti himself could have stood before her at this moment and she would not have been able to summon the strength to face him.
It was a frightened cry that brought back her wits. She lifted herself a little, with one arm braced under her, and looked up hazily into a face she knew.
"Sela-"
"Great Lady! But where-"
"Sela," she forced out the name again with her remaining strength. "None-must-find-me...."
Naldamak"s old nurse-would she, or could she, understand?
"No-one-Sela....The-Candace is in danger....No-one-must-find-me...."
"Great Lady, none shall." It was an old voice, thin, and weak, but there was the same decision in it Ashake had always heard. "Lady, I cannot carry you; can you walk?"