by Andre Norton
“It is the sworn duty of my Fellowship to raise mankind again to what our species once was. In Ulad there has been a beginning of lawful and peaceful government. To preserve that we were willing to advise. Also—the research into ancient knowledge—to that we are pledged.”
“Did Melkolf or the Fellowship suggest the exchanger?” demanded Ramsay. He was more than a little surprised at this explanation. He had never expected Osythes to speak so freely.
“The principle of the exchanger,” Osythes answered, “was known to us. Melkolf was able to build from the study of those principles. Also—” He faced Ramsay now squarely. “We had a foreseeing—we had to learn concerning the power of dreams. When it was proved that dream and exchanger together could work—that was knowledge we needed—”
“Lord Emperor,” Dedan interrupted abruptly, as if impatience to be in action whipped him sorely, “who is this Melkolf of whom you speak? Was it he who gave the order that ended the Company?”
“No. But he is a part of all that lies behind that order,” Ramsay returned. He was standing still, his eyes on the stinking mess of destroyed records.
There was something—idea—hunch—? Just as he had been convinced, against concrete evidence, that Melkolf and Berthal had not fled Lom in that flyer, so now this new sense of something of importance here grew in him.
He walked to the first of the cupboards. Picking up a broken metal rod from the debris on the floor, he stirred the sodden mass of the stuff within, awaking only a stronger odor, enough to make him cough, but discovering nothing, except that which had been systematically destroyed. It was like the old, old game of childhood when one hunted for a hidden object directed by the cries of “hot” or “cold.” Except that those cries did not come now from his two companions, but were generated within his own mind.
That this section of the lab was the most important—of that Ramsay was sure. Yet as he sought to find a clue his instinct told him was there, sweeping out the destroyed records to the littered floor, pulling the remains apart with his rod, he came no closer. It was not until he reached those hidden shelves that his inner monitor assured him that he had come near “hot.” But there was nothing here, not even debris.
The hidden section was a narrow panel rising from the floor for about four feet, containing two entirely bare shelves. Ramsay thumped those—perhaps a secret within a secret—? But he could tell nothing by the noise that he had heard.
He turned again to Osythes. “What lies beyond this wall?”
The Shaman shook his head. “Nothing. This place was known of old—a treasure room and secret prison which dates back to the days of Gulfer, when Lom was the main city of the old Kingdom of Ulad.”
But that hunch within Ramsay was not satisfied. Somewhere here still lay the clue that would lead them to Melkolf. And he believed that with Melkolf there would also be the Prince, Ochall, and—Thecla.
Once more he thumped the interior of the hiding place. He could see that the backing was stone, solid, with the air of having been set for ages in those blocks. He might put men to tearing down the wall and finding nothing, but the feeling was strong here, that at this one point was the beginning of the trail.
“I want”—he made up his mind—“this wall stripped! If there is anyone who knows the ways of this building, get him here!”
Dedan had gone to examine the space. “Lord Emperor—” Having armed himself also from the wreckage on the floor, he was prodding industriously into the cavity as Ramsay had earlier done. “This is stone that has no crevice. If you seek a hidden way—only such flamers as slew the Company might be able to cut a path for you—”
“Cut a path—” Ramsay repeated slowly. “We cannot waste time in cutting a path—we must know the direction!”
“And only you can find that, Supreme Mightiness!” Ramsay gazed at the Shaman.
“Yes,” Osythes nodded, “only you. And already you know the way that you must go.”
Ramsay hurled his prodder from him. “I give no man such power to meddle with my life again!” he said grimly.
“You need no man, Knave. The power is yours if you will have it so.”
The place of nothingness again? But his attempt had brought Dedan to him. Could that world again—“
Now he spoke to the First Officer. “You know what we seek. Now I tell you plainly, Dedan. In this palace I can trust no man, except perhaps yourself. For your need now is as mine—to find a murderer, not of one but many. This Enlightened One says that perhaps it can be done—not with fire or any tool or weapon one holds in hand. If I so essay this search, will you be my shield man, seeing that none approaches me?”
“Lord Emperor, if the trail you seek brings down that murderer, then I am your liege man—for so much!”
Ramsay nodded, reassured by what he knew to be a promise as strictly given as a blood-oath, even though the man who offered it was this Dedan he hardly knew.
“Well enough. All right, Shaman. I shall take the dream road. Yet from you also must I have a promise—on what you hold sacred enough to blind you. I will have no aid from you—or any of your ilk. This I do alone, and free, or not at all!”
“So can it be done,” Osythes returned. “You are the variable. We could not if we would—control or direct the future for you.”
Though his suspicion of the Shaman and his kind ran deep, yet at that moment Ramsay thought Osythes’s assurance was as empathic and to be accepted as Dedan’s had been.
“Then let us to it—” He turned away from that plundered cupboard that still was in his mind a door of sorts, though he did not know the trick of it.
Back they went to that chamber where Ramsay had waited for the reports of the searchers. He saw that the sun was almost gone now—night advanced quickly on Lom. And night somehow seemed better for the task he set himself.
Osythes gave certain orders which brought more food, drink. Ramsay waved Dedan to join him while the Shaman himself would sip only from a brew served him in a small, curiously fashioned flask.
“We eat for strength,” Ramsay said. “You, Dedan must watch the night—or as much of the night as is needed. For I am to sleep—and—dream—”
“Dream?”
“Dream true. Believe me, Dedan, in dreams do lie truths. This I have proved.”
The Free Captain eyed him thoughtfully. For a fleeting moment Dedan seemed shaken out of his obsession. “You wear the face of Kaskar, the Emperor, you seem to rule here in Lom. And now you speak of things that are said concerning the Enlightened Ones. What manner of man are you?”
Ramsay laughed. Perhaps the Dedan he had known was not yet dead. That meeting of their eyes assured him even more than the other’s words. “The tale is a long one, comrade, and not easily credited. But I am neither Kaskar nor an Enlightened One—I am myself—and perhaps only a true dreamer. This I must discover. I lay upon you, Osythes”—he spoke secondly to the Shaman— “to make clear to this promised liege man of mine that what I attempt may come true.”
Osythes put aside the small glass from which he had been sipping his cordial.
“There are many truths,” he said. “And there are secrets that are better not disclosed—”
“Except to those who have the right to hear them,” countered Ramsay. Within him confidence was growing. He was about to turn to his own this trick of the Enlightened Ones—no wonder the Shaman was reluctant.
“Dedan”—Ramsay did not wait for Osythes to reply to that thrust—“this is the way of what I would do. I must sleep—a sleep so deep that perhaps I shall not be easily awakened from it. And while I sleep, so shall I also dream—and learn how thus to open that door I know lies below. Your part is to stand guard that none wake me before my time.”
“This you believe you can do?” the Free Captain replied in a wondering tone. “Well, if it leads as you say, then I am willing—”
Ramsay went to the divan, stretched out upon it. There was a faint spicy scent which seemed to come from the pillow
under his head. Thecla—as he had concentrated on Dedan to summon the mercenary, now he would fasten on the Duchess. He closed his eyes and began to form Thecla, not as he had seen her last slipping from his door, that barrier rising between them, but Thecla as he had known her at the lodge among the trees, free, sometimes laughing at some mistake he made in speech. Not a Duchess locked in the tight formality of a court, but a girl who had somehow found a place in his memory—his mind—which no one else could or would fill. Thecla—thus she was—would always be—
EIGHTEEN
Ramsay was floating—not as if he were enclosed in a flyer, but rather as if he were free to wing the air; the art men had so long envied the birds that they had sought for generations to equal it. At first about him was the nothingness—the absence of all. Then, out of that nothingness, arose a shadow, taking on solid substance as he winged toward it. Only this was not Thecla as he had expected.
A wall—block upon thick block.
Ramsay hung suspended in the space of nothingness, facing that barrier. No door, not even a promising crevice or crack. In him surged his will, strong as rage—he was not to be easily defeated.
There was a way through, he determined upon that. A way through—
Just as he would have used his hands in the world he had left behind to test and examine each of those ghostly gray blocks, so now he drove his will, a spearhand of force against each block in turn. Through!
As his will touched, here and there awoke small points of light—not on each of the stones, but rather on two that were set one above the other. Those points of light looked as if they had sprung from the imprint of fingers—five above, five below.
When the last flashed into life, the stones began to turn, slowly, with great reluctance—but they turned. He had found his door and now he sped through it, again a thing of the air. Nor was there nothingness beyond.
Rather here was another lab, which was near twin to that which had been destroyed. It was not quite the same, being smaller, far less crowded with apparatus. In the very middle of that chamber stood once more an exchanger, undamaged. Only from the top was missing the selector.
Movement centered Ramsay’s attention elsewhere. He distinguished four figures. But they had not the concrete, vivid representation of those he had sighted in other dreams. Rather they were veiled in a way that made each one blur as he tried to see it clearly. Ramsay fought with all his will to clear his sight, to know—
There was a flickering of light, swinging back and forth like a pendant supported somehow in the air. Ramsay flinched. Remembered— Just so had Ochall swung the key of his office. There was danger in that swinging pinpoint of light.
He tried to avoid watching it, tried to reach beyond to the dim figures. Two were in constant movement, but he could not make out what they were doing. Always as he tried to concentrate that flicker arose. He began to feel drained, confused, for a second or two the force of his will lessened.
Thecla!
Was she one of those ghostly blurs?
Even as he wondered, he saw her—far to one side, her face clearing under his gaze. It was a face such as Dedan had turned upon him in the place of nothingness—a face without life. Nor did she open her eyes in answer to his dream demand.
The flickering had stopped. He was somehow warned by that. They must know of his invasion, they wanted him to be sure that they held a hostage. He had only realized that when there was imprinted over Thecla’s face, even more clearly, something else—a black object—
It was the selector missing from the exchanger!
A threat—a promise? Either or both, Ramsay knew. Search out this hidden den, try to free the prisoner, and she would be gone—rift away to the death they had tried to give to Kaskar!
He who planned this—who was protected by that flicker of swinging light—Ramsay continued to watch what he had been allowed to envision as if shocked by the implication so easily induced by that other. To open himself to attack—was that what the other sought, to provoke Ramsay into trying to reach the source of the threat?
There was a feeling of vast confidence, so strong it might have streamed visibly from behind the flicker. The mind, the will, hidden beyond, believed his position impregnable. He alone would state terms, all others must surrender.
Let him believe so!
Ramsay relaxed his will, withdrew— And sensed the high roll of triumph, following him as a hound might be dispatched to snap at the heels of a beggar, hurrying the hopeless on his way. Once more he hung in nothingness, the wall closed before him.
Something he had learned, but not enough. To force the issue now when he was too ignorant—no. He relaxed his will again—and awoke.
Dedan’s face, then Osythes. He was back. But he did not try to rise.
“I know where—” he said slowly.
“Yes, but that may avail us little,” the Shaman answered him. “There has come a message. Grishilda roused moments ago, nearly out of her senses with fear. If we do not surrender to their demands, the Duchess—”
“Will be sent to her death,” Ramsay interrupted. “Then they will begin on the rest of us, no doubt. There is a second exchanger—behind the wall. They are still in the heart of Lom, and one of them has knowledge that may equal yours. Ochall I think.”
Osythes muttered, but his words were not plain enough to hear. Dedan merely watched Ramsay’s face, his eyes narrowed.
“Which is the murderer?” he demanded, intent upon his own dark hunting.
“Ochall. But he is not the one we can easily take.” Ramsay lay still. “Shaman”—he put into his voice now the crack of a demand from equal to equal— “what forms a defense against a dream search which appears as a flickering light? You have the resources of the Enlightened Ones, and surely you know enough to find explanations. Let me warn you—in your dream searching you have unloosed what perhaps cannot be controlled, a weapon worse than any out of Norn, put into the hands of one ruthless enough to use it at will.”
Osythes seemed to shrink in upon himself. He had always been an old man to Ramsay; now he was a withered remnant of the one he had been only hours earlier. His lips parted as if he would answer, then shut again; his fingers plucked feverishly at the folds of his robe.
“These—” His voice came as a ghostly whisper, grew only a little stronger as he continued. “These are forbidden things—you are not of the Grove. I cannot reveal to you, an UnEnlightened—”
“Then prepare to have your own weapons turned against you,” Ramsay returned. “Do you think that Ochall will spare any of us now? He apparently has some power of his own, he has the secret of the exchanger. Be ready to dream yourself into death, Shaman. For you he may now consider the most important of his resident enemies.”
“I have not the authority,” Osythes made answer. “I must consult with—”
“And while you are consulting,” Ramsay pointed out, “Ochall may be on the move. Your secret is no longer any secret to him!”
Dedan got to his feet. “You say, Lord Emperor, that this burner of men is behind the wall? Then it is simple enough, we tear down that wall—”
“I wish it were so simple.” Ramsay turned his head wearily. Again he was drained of energy. “The fact is we do not know what defense stands beyond. Would you send more men to face flames?”
Dedan grimaced. His fist struck into the open palm of his other hand.
“Then what will you do, Lord Emperor?”
“Bargain—” Osythes began.
“No!” Ramsay returned. “Ochall would use the time to concentrate his own position. He will yield nothing in any bargain, merely play with us to his pleasure. You know him, Shaman—can you say that I am not now speaking the truth?”
Osythes was silent. Then, as if the words were dragged from him one by one through some torture, he spoke?
“I will be breaking oaths that are beyond your understanding if I do as you wish. There are great matters to which men are nothing—”
“You have said,” Ramsay broke in, “that the safety of Ulad is a part of the plans of your Fellowship. Very well, where will that safety be if Ochall achieves his purposes?”
The stricken look Osythes had worn earlier was going; the Shaman sat straighter in his chair, his head erect, will and a gathering determination about him.
“You are the Knave,” he said. “And as the Knave you have such power as no one, not even one who is outside the disciplines and restraints of the Grove, can in the end defeat. But what you draw upon can be lessened by lack of confidence in yourself. To battle you must commit all that is you, body, mind, spirit. And this is also true, that in such a struggle you may lose mind, body—spirit I do not know, for though we can measure two of the possessions of men, the third is beyond our understanding.
“If you are willing to risk all that you are, then you can drag Ochall down. But there is no promise that you will not also fall. This I say because once more yours is a choice no one else may make for you.” Ramsay’s gaze lifted from the earnest face of the Shaman. He lay now with his eyes on the ceiling overhead. To commit himself utterly—never in his life had he made such a choice. There was a finality to this that threatened a part of him now rising to active rebellion. Though he could not understand to the full Osythes’s warning, there was that in it which chilled his tired body.
When he had been proclaimed Emperor he had touched upon a choice, but that was only a pallid shadow when compared to this. He knew that there would be no return—
Still, he had, in a manner, already gone well down this road.
“You will tell me now”—he did not look to the Shaman as he said that, but continued to stare upward—“what I must do.”
“You must confront Ochall both as a dreamer and one who wakes,” Osythes replied. “You must hold on both planes against all his powers, believing in yourself strongly enough to defeat him. How this may be done no other can tell you.”
Ramsay pulled himself up. His weariness was a weight, and now he made another demand of the Shaman.