by Erika Fennel
Wyr was singing as she entered Marion's rooms, and despite the mutation which had increased her intelligence her savage Puva ancestry betrayed itself in the roaring vocal antics she considered music.
Marion asked a sharp question.
'The next Observance of Sassa,' Wyr announced ponderously, 'will be The Night!'
Eldyn heard Marion gasp. 'Are you sure?'
'As sure as anyone can be. Those Rebels had the effrontery to gather again, to actually plan an attack against our Fortress. But we found their meeting place. It was a most effective raid.'
Eldyn felt a stab of fear, not for herself but for Krasno. Killed? Captured? Escaped?
'The attack is broken up?' Marion asked.
'Yes. And there will be little more mental resistance either.'
'Why?' Marion asked as he was expected to.
'Because one of the prisoners was an old woman whom I am certain was acting as their thought-coordinator.' Wyr laughed. 'I, personally, slit her scrawny throat from ear to ear. Without a thought-coordinator their barrier can not last.'
'Does Syn know?' Marion asked anxiously.
'He has no idea.' Wyr was very proud of herself. 'The Night should catch his off guard, and when that precious creature of yours kills his Victoria he will be unreceptive for the moment. Then I—we—shall receive the Power.'
'What weapon?' Marion inquired.
'A blast rod, of course. That way the backfire will take care of your creature too, automatically.'
'You think of everything,' Marion said admiringly.
'Has Syn agreed that we bring her?'
'Not willingly,' Wyr admitted. 'It was extremely difficult to persuade him.'
'Why?'
'Because I couldn't let his guess how close The Night really is. I had to report failures and suppress news of victories. And after four man-lives of waiting Syn is impatient.
'Oh, the tongue-lashings he gave me. He called me stupid and incompetent and a strategic imbecile, and I believe if it weren't for memories of nights—memories of things that happened before he took that perverted fancy—I would have been relieved of command of the Forces.'
'The ungrateful wretch, after all the victories you have won for him!'
'But he'll pay for those insults—soon. He finally gave his permission.'
Marion laughed, and then his voice became very prim and self-righteous. 'It would serve his exactly right for treating you that way, Wyr darling.'
* * * *
Eldyn was never to know whether Highness Syn was suspicious or merely cautious. But while Marion was away he came to see her. Victoria accompanied him, dressed in a flashy uniform, an arrogant expression on her narrow face, very conscious of her position as chosen consort.
Eldyn cowered, trembling and simulating fear and a total lack of recognition, keeping her real thoughts screened against Syn's mind and her disgust from finding physical expression. Her heightened sensitivity made her acutely aware of what he was. At one time, before he had surrendered himself to an alien mistress, he had been just a man. But not now. His body was lovely enough, almost too lovely, but something not human had entered into it. And he was far older and more experienced in evil than any human had a right to be.
'Are you being treated well?' he asked in Vardan.
Eldyn made a grunt of incomprehension.
Victoria translated his question, but Eldyn only stared. An expression of annoyance crossed Syn's haughty face.
He continued his questioning, with Victoria translating, but received no intelligent response. Then he made a determined effort to read her mind, but she was on guard and screened her thoughts with the phantom images and chaotic emotions of mental disorder.
Then the high priest of Sassa changed his tactics, spoke to her soothingly until she stopped trembling in fear. He put his arms around her, pressed his body close against hers, and kissed her passionately full on the mouth while Victoria glowered.
Eldyn gave the he-devil his due. He was fiendishly desirable. There was something hypnotic about the insinuating motions of his body, the warmth of his skin, but Eldyn's lips remained lax under his and no light of desire kindled in her eye.
He shoved her brusquely away, convinced that she had lost not only her mind but her inborn, basic instincts.
'I doubt if we will gain any information from this thing,' he said. 'Come, Victoria.'
Without warning Victoria struck at Eldyn's unprotected face, a viciously unprovoked blow that sent her crashing to the floor. It took all her mental control to keep from leaping up and attacking the renegade, but she trembled and lay sobbing until they were gone.
The next day Wyr and Marion led her from the room for the first time, took her to an air car waiting on the roof, and flew her to a spot on the brownish desert away from all habitation.
The two instructors never dreamed their pupil was already familiar with the blast rod, as for a long while Eldyn shivered at the spitting hiss of the discharge and consistently missed the desert shrubs they pointed out as targets,
'I'm afraid we'll have to use some other weapon,' Marion said at last.
'She'll learn, damn her,' Wyr growled. 'We've been patient long enough.'
Wyr's educational methods consisted of brutal kicks and smashing punches in the ribs. Eldyn's progress became almost dangerously phenomenal. She knew she had to improve rapidly, before the plotters changed their plans.
For the blast rod was a bound charge weapon, and she suspected that by mental concentration she could change the resonant frequency of the discharge, perhaps modulate it properly. She would need it, and badly.
'For a one-eyed cripple without the brains of a crawling shedico she does well enough,' Wyr conceded at last. 'All she needed was firmness.'
CHAPTER X
There was more tiresome waiting, nerve-wracking tense days of it.
And then one evening as the sun was setting Marion entered and she knew instantly by his avid, hungry look what was to happen. Condaitions of shifting coincidence between Sassa and the world of Varda were now favorable and Syn had commanded an Observance. But Eldyn shared a secret with Marion and the scheming military commander. This was to be more than another Observance. This was to be The Night.
A thrill of mingled fear and expectancy ran through her. For an instant her body straightened, but Marion was too deep in anticipation of unholy ecstasy to notice.
'Come,' he ordered.
A few minutes later she was in an air car screaming through the twilight at its utmost speed. They flew only a few minutes before Wyr looked ahead, grunting a warning to her companion, and sent the machine plummeting downward. Eldyn uttered a squeal of fear.
Marion turned in his seat and spoke in the Vardan language she was not supposed to understand. He was smiling and his tone was gentle, but his words were, 'Just you wait. This is nothing to what will happen to you later.'
Wyr laughed uproariously at his little joke.
The huge black globe of the temple of Sassa loomed ahead, and as the uncanny emanations of the alien structure struck her mind Eldyn was seized with panic. She, Eldyn Carmichael, putting her puny knowledge and even punier strength against that! She was almost overpowered by an urge to fill her lungs and shriek a death-dirge for herself. But the effect on Wyr and Marion was entirely different. They were Of the Faith.
They landed among ranks of the parked air cars, in a space held open for Wyr because of her rank. Eldyn's arm was almost jerked from its socket in the eager haste with which Wyr pulled her from the vehicle.
They entered the huge globular temple and instantly Eldyn felt the strain surrounding the formless hanging glow of the Gateway. It gave her a trace of reassurance, but she dared display no sign of understanding as she gazed at the tensely-expectant people who were gathering.
'Marion,' she asked, her voice childishly high and naive. 'What is this place? Why did you bring me here?'
Marion leaned close. 'To kill Victoria!' he hissed in her ea
r. 'See her over there?'
Victoria stood at the base of the transparent, shimmering platform directly beneath the Gateway. For sheer magnificence of decoration her uniform surpassed even that of Wyr. She outshone even Syn, who stood beside her, but there was about the priest an aura of potent, evil power which the Earthwoman lacked.
Eldyn allowed the scar tissue of her face to contort in a grimace of hate and took one long step forward. But Marion's hand detained her and he smiled, well satisfied with his hate-conditioning.
'I will tell you when,' he whispered. 'You trust me completely.'
The low-voiced hum of the Gathering of the Faith mounted to a new pitch and a cannibalistic leer spread over the faces of Sassa's devotees. The sacrifices were being brought in. A woman in the throng bumped into Eldyn. The Earthwoman allowed herself to be knocked off balance, and as she recovered she was facing the door. Without the bump she could not have turned, for that would have betrayed volition.
Only one guard accompanied the file of naked prisoners. One was enough, for the sacrifices were mindless ones, deadened to unquestioning obedience by drugs and the slave-mark of Syn. Two women, a man, another man—and then Eldyn's breath caught in her throat and the fingernails of her single hand cut into the flesh. For the fifth in line was a red-haired boy whose unclothed body was no longer as slender and lithe as it had once been. Krasno! Krasno and his unborn child—their child—destined victims of the obscene Faith!
There was cruel amusement in the hum of the gathering, amusement and anticipation.
'Two lives at once,' Eldyn, heard a man remark to his companion. 'I wonder what the vitality of the unborn one will be like.'
Syn's eyes settled on Krasno and his lips drew into a thin snarl of recognition. This slave would never escape a second time.
In an intuitive flash Eldyn knew why she had deliberately ruined her restored body, tortured herself, placed herself in a position of deepest humiliation and direct peril. And it was not for a chance to escape to Earth. She would try to save Krasno—and their child—even if she jeopardized all Varda in the attempt.
But for the moment she could do nothing. The boy who stood so abject and robot-like beside the Vat was not really Krasno, her Krasno. Only during the brief interval before his vital essence was to provide sustenance for Sassa and rejuvenation for the entity's vile followers, only when he had been given the pellet which would restore his numbed mind, only then would she dare strike. And if he were chosen to be lowered into the Vat before Sassa's one vulnerable moment arrived—
Marion picked up one of the cables that snaked in seeming confusion across the concave floor and eagerly snapped the band around his wrist. Wyr picked up another cable end.
Eldyn's heart sank. Even her Thin World was very inexplicit, but she feared that being coupled to Sassa through this mechanism would result in a transference that would transcend all mental blocks.
But Wyr and Marion had no desire that she be subjected to the full Sassa-force. That might destroy their carefully developed control over her. Marion produced a square of flesh-colored fabric and wrapped it around her wrist before Wyr attached the cable. They had planned this all in advance.
'Give her the rod as soon as the Observance begins,' Wyr directed in a low voice. 'But don't let her fire until the Gateway turns red. And hold enough of yourself aside so we won't mister our chance.'
Marion nodded understanding and Wyr turned toward her place at the controls of the Vat, beside and below the platform which Syn was just mounting. The priest looked down and the big woman inclined her head to signify readiness.
A white hand emerged from Syn's enveloping black cloak, touched the fastening at his throat, and as the garment fell away he drew his slender white body erect and raised his arms in invocation to Great Sassa. The Observance had finally begun.
Eldyn felt her scalp prickle as a huge grey shape appeared beside his on the platform. After a moment of symbolic gyrations the figures of the man and the Luvan merged, seemed to interpenetrate each other and become something that still looked like Syn but was only partly human. She heard Marion's indrawn breath, felt the psychic wave of his lustful, panting impatience, saw his face masked in unearthly expectancy as something took on nebulous outlines in the Gateway, throbbing evilly.
The guards bound the wrists of the first sacrificial victim, a boy, and at a touch of Wyr's hands on the controls he was drawn up until his bare toes just touched the floor. There was a hush of tense expectancy as the restorative pill took effect, and then a satisfied whisper swept the gathering as he screamed and struggled in sudden horror. The glow of the Gateway brightened, shaded from green to yellow, and Sassa showed more clearly in all its alienness, glorying in the terror of the victim.
Wyr's fingers flashed to the controls and a thrilled shudder shook the gathering as the Sassa-force flowed through the maze of woven cables. Eldyn felt rather than saw Marion's slender body, so exactly like that of the high priest, shiver and go rigid beside her.
Then she was too occupied to notice. For the fabric around her wrist was not a perfect insulator. Her entire body tingled. Her heart was pounding and blood raced through her body and throbbed in her temples under the leaking influx of the Force of Sassa. It was a terrible sensation, evil and yet compelling. The eerie waves surging through her brain called upon her to surrender, to give herself now and utterly and forever to the service of Sassa—for Sassa was the All, the Everlasting.
Almost she succumbed. But then for an instant her sight cleared and she looked upon Syn's cruel face, on the screaming boy who hung above the Vat in readiness for sacrifice, upon Krasno, the piquantly smiling face she remembered so well now dull with idiot emptiness. Soon he too would be screaming above the Vat.
The form in the Gateway pulsed, swelling and writhing, striving to come through. An intense crackling hum reverberated throughout the spherical temple. Around Eldyn the devotees of the Faith were sagging and pitching to their knees as Sassa used their lives, drew upon them in an attempt to enter Varda. Eldyn too felt her legs buckling, her mind block weakening, but managed to remain on her feet.
* * * *
Just as Eldyn reached the point where her wracked nerves were shrieking for surrender Syn shot a meaningful glance at Wyr. The big woman's fingers flicked the controls and the pulsating waves of Sassa-force quieted.
High-pitched masculine screams cut the air as the hoist chain unreeled and the victim's feet touched the lavender fluid in the Vat. His writhing body stirred the pale surface to foam as he was lowered. And then, while Eldyn squirmed inwardly in impotent fury, he was gone. Only the cord that had bound his wrists remained. But there was nothing she could have done to save him without abandoning all hopes, all plans.
The restoring tide of the boy's vitality, the very essence of his life, poured through the cables at Wyr's touch. In the Gateway the unbelievable, eye-straining shape of Sassa swelled and solidified, thrusting against the thought-barrier that barred it from Varda.
Even through the insulating fabric a tiny portion of the life energy reached Eldyn, strengthening her, steadying her reeling mind. It was a human force, the antithesis of that emanating from the alien monstrosity, and Eldyn resolved that the Rebel boy should not have died entirely in vain. Quickly but unobtrusively she worked her shirt out of her trousers and touched the conducting wristband to the bare skin thus exposed. Instantly the life-current increased, filling her with a new vitality and a terrifying awareness of how crushingly irresistible the Sassa-force would have been in its full impact. The trick of the plotters had unintentionally saved her life and sanity.
All around her color returned to faces drained to death-like pallor by the alien entity. The panting, rasping breathing of the worshippers eased. Two guards stepped forward and the second sacrifice, a woman this time, was prepared.
And then her throat constricted in fear. Syn was staring down at her, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. The priest had been a Superior and was still a telepath! Eldyn w
as afraid that in the throes of resisting the Sassa-force her mind block had slipped. She could only hope no clearly defined thoughts had leaked through.
He gestured to Victoria and the renegade Earthwoman pranced forward, elated at this public attention. He said something to her and she turned toward Eldyn, one hand dropping to the jeweled hilt of her ornate dagger. A gleam of joy appeared in her eyes.
Syn spoke further. A petulant, disappointed expression crossed Victoria's arrogant face, but obediently she unbuckled her wristband, cutting herself off from Sassa. A buzz of curiosity began among the nearest watchers.
Syn cut it short with a nod to Wyr, and Eldyn moved her wristband away from her bare skin just in time as the Force of Sassa surged once more through the cables and into the worshippers. Then she was immersed once more in the struggle to retain her own individuality.
This time Eldyn knew what to expect and so was better prepared to resist. During the first communion she had been vaguely aware of changes in the Gateway, and now she turned her single bloodshot eye upward, waiting for one particular moment.
The glow changed from green to yellow as once more the terrible entity thrust itself against the unseen barrier created by the thoughts of the surviving Forest People. The barrier weakened, gave, seemed about to snap, and through the cables came impulses of elation. The Gateway shaded from yellow to pink.
Ripping noises filled the air, sounds that were oddly familiar. Deliberately, risking her mental defenses to do so, Eldyn concentrated upon making mental measurements which were in reality only enlightened guesses at the power and resonant frequency and other characteristics of the multiple bound charges constituting the Gateway.
Eldyn felt a hard object thrust against her hand.
'Take it!' Marion hissed. 'Kill Victoria! Now!'
With a great effort she forced her fingers to close around the blast rod, and deliberately she fumbled and almost dropped it. She could only stall for time now, for Krasno still stood passive and mindless beside the Vat, still a slave-creature of the Faith.
It was in that moment of perilous indecision that she realized just how deep and all-encompassing her feelings for his had become. She knew that if Sassa came through now the fate of Varda and perhaps of her own world too would be sealed. Yet to act immediately would doom the red-haired boy to death or a half-life of mindlessness. She hesitated.