“Well!” she said. “I felt the weight in the purse just now.” She reached into the purse, pulled out a silky garment, shoved it into a pocket. “Briefs returned with the gun.” She bit her lip. “Perhaps I should feel grateful. Somehow I don’t!”
“Come on!” Telzey turned away, broke into a trot. “They did that to show you your gun doesn’t impress them at all. But now you have it back, you might get a chance to express your lack of appreciation to Hatzel! We’ll have to hurry!”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you set it to stun somebody for just a short time—a few minutes?”
“That’s a bit tricky, but, yes, I can. Five minutes, say.”
“Fine. Hatzel’s been called to the palace to talk to the Regent. He’ll be coming through the gardens on a scooter. If we get far enough ahead, we may be able to spot him and cut him off.”
“All right. And I stun him. Then?”
“That’s no telepath’s shield he’s using. It’s a gadget. And if the gadget’s the kind I think it is, I can open it and get to his mind before he comes around. Sams or somebody might realize what’s happening, of course. That’s a risk we’d better take! The quicker we get it over with, the less likely we are to be noticed.”
They crouched presently at the edge of a terrace, winded and hot from the run, shrubbery about them. “He might still turn off on another route,” Telzey remarked. “But it looks like he’ll be coming by here now, doesn’t it?”
Trigger nodded. “Seems to be heading this way!”
“That break in the bushes is the place to take him. How far will we have to work down to it?”
“We won’t. Right here is fine. He’s just chugging along.”
“That’s a good fifty yards, Trigger!” Telzey said doubtfully.
“And I’m a good fifty yards marksman. Some day I’ll have to teach you how to use a gun.”
“Perhaps you should. I never warmed up to guns. When I’ve had to use one, I just blasted away.”
“What are your contacts doing?”
“Back to rehearsing their Glory Day surprises. They’re not thinking about us at the moment. Sams might be, now and then. It’s hard to be sure about him. But we should be able to get away with this.”
Hatzel’s scooter came chugging up shortly. Trigger touched the gun’s firing stud, and Hatzel was sagging sideways off the scooter as the machine went out of sight behind bushes again. They worked their way hurriedly down to the path through the shrubs, found the scooter on its side, turning in slow circles. Trigger shut it off while Telzey went over to Hatzel who lay on his back a dozen yards away.
She knelt quickly beside him, lifted his head. Trigger joined her.
“Should be at the base of the skull, under a skin patch,” Telzey said. “Here it is!”
She peeled off the tiny device, blinked absently at Hatzel’s face. “Open psi mind—yes, I can do it.” She was silent then.
Trigger glanced presently at her watch, said, “Four minutes plus gone, Telzey! He could start coming around any moment now. Shall I tap him again?”
“No, I’ve got him. He won’t come around till I’m ready.”
“I’ll go plant the rock then,” Trigger said.
She went a dozen yards back up the terrace where ornamental rock-work enclosed a flower bed, returned with a sizable rock which she placed on the path ten feet from where Hatzel was lying.
“I’d think it was a little peculiar I hadn’t noticed that rock!” she observed. “But I suppose you’re taking care of that?”
“Yes. He’ll wake up with a small headache from having banged his skull. He’ll see the rock lying there and be irritated, but that will explain it, and he won’t want to tell anyone he wasn’t looking where he was going.” Telzey replaced the shield which wasn’t operative at the moment, smoothed in the skin patch, stood up and brushed sand from her knees. “Finished! Let’s move!”
They restarted the scooter, left it lying on its side, pushing itself awkwardly about in the grass, went quickly back up to the terrace and along it through the shrubbery, until they reached a grove of trees and came to another path.
Hatzel, still unconscious, reached into a pocket and switched his mind shield back on. He awoke then, sat up with a muttered curse, felt his head, looked around, saw the rock on the path and the struggling scooter in the grass. He nodded in annoyed comprehension, and got to his feet.
He couldn’t be left unshielded because one of the telepaths would have been bound to notice it. Every five minutes, however, Hatzel now would switch the shield off for a moment, unaware of what he did. If there was reason to take him under active control, Telzey would make use of such a moment. They had a glimpse of him presently on the network of paths ahead of them, nearing the Regent’s palace.
“Reacting just as he’s supposed to, isn’t he?” Trigger said.
Telzey nodded. “Uh-huh! It was a stupid accident, and that’s all. He’s got more important things to think about.” She added, “I’d like to give Casmard some idea of what’s going on, but there’s no way I can keep them from looking into his mind or Vallain’s, and anything we told him they’d soon know. We’ll have to work out this side of it strictly by ourselves.”
VI
As they were approaching the palace entrance by which they’d left, a tall, splendidly uniformed man emerged from it and came toward them.
He introduced himself as Colonel Euran, head of the Regent’s Palace Guard. “It’s come to my attention,” he said, “that you weren’t informed of a security regulation requiring guests to surrender personal weapons for the period of their visit in the palace. I thought I should correct the oversight, to save you possible embarrassment. It’s merely a formality, of course—but do you happen to have weapons in your room or on your persons?”
Since they’d known their encounter with the cheola had been observed, they weren’t surprised. Trigger took the cosmetics purse from her belt and handed it to him.
“There’s a Denton inside,” she said. “Take good care of it, Colonel! It’s an old friend.”
He bowed. “Indeed, I will!”
Telzey said, “Could there be other regulations we don’t know about?”
Colonel Euran smiled pleasantly. “It’s no regulation. But the Regent Toru told me to suggest that you remain within the palace itself until he has the pleasure of meeting you again at dinner tonight. He’s concerned about your safety.”
“You mean the Regent’s own gardens aren’t safe?” Trigger asked.
“No, not always during the periods of arena games. There are subterranean levels here where beasts and criminals who’ve been condemned to the arena are kept. And it happens on occasion that some very dangerous creature eludes its keepers and appears unexpectedly in the palace grounds.”
They thanked him for the warning, went inside. Following the directions given them by Vallain, they presently located the suite of Perial Casmard and announced themselves at the door. He opened it immediately.
“Come in! Come in!” he said, drawing them into the room and closing the door again. He looked at them, shook his head. “I’m very glad to see you,” he said. “I wasn’t at all sure you were still alive! Shortly after you’d left, Toru hinted in his pleasant manner that he had some particularly brutal end prepared for you! I went down to the gardens to find you, but no one could tell me where you’d gone.”
They told him about the cheola. Telzey said, “We went on then and met some Federation people who’ve organized the Glory Day games for Toru this year. We thought we might be able to talk them into smuggling us out, but they weren’t interested in getting involved in an intrigue against the Regent.”
Casmard said he couldn’t blame them too much. “If Toru found out about it, they might become more intimately involved in the games than any sensible man would wish to be!”
“And we’re confined to the palace now,” Trigger said.
“That’s good—since it probably means that Toru is planning no
further immediate steps against you. But the situation remains extremely difficult! Have you eaten?”
“Not since breakfast,” Telzey said, “and we didn’t eat much then. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I notice I’m very hungry.”
Casmard had lunch for them brought to the suite. He watched pensively while they ate, said at last, “There was an explosion a while ago on the Regent’s living level. Not badly timed—he’d entered the level shortly before the device went off. However, only one of his guard dogs was killed. Toru escaped injury.” They looked at him expectantly. He shrugged. “Vallain’s now confined to his quarters. Toru rarely acts hastily. He’ll wait for the pre-Glory Day dinner in the House of Wirolla tonight before pursuing the matter.” When they’d finished lunch, he said, “I’m reasonably certain the Regent also will hold his hand now as far as you two are concerned. However, it would be best if you went to your room and stayed there, so as to bring yourselves as little as possible to his attention.”
Telzey said, “You still don’t see how we can get out of this?”
“Oh, I’m not entirely at the end of my resources,” Casmard told her. “I shall meet the Regent again during the afternoon and may be able to persuade him to accept less drastic arrangements than the one he has in mind.”
They left to go to their apartment. Trigger inquired reflectively, “You had the impression Casmard wanted us out of the way?”
“Yes, he does want us out of the way,” Telzey said.
Trigger glanced at her. “Picked up things over lunch, huh?”
“Yes. Something about an elderly character in the palace who used to act as poisoner for Casmard’s mother, and seems to have kept his hand in. Casmard’s promised him a high spot in the nobility if he can get to Toru before dinner, and the old boy’s game to try it.”
Trigger shook her head. “Life expectancies would be awkward to calculate around here! Does Casmard think it will work?”
“Not really. He’s getting desperate. If he did get rid of Toru, there’d still be a serious problem with the Servant of the Stone—Lord Ormota.”
“How does he fit in?”
“After Toru, he’s apparently the most powerful man in Tamandun. If Toru died, he’d have a great deal more power here in the Regent’s palace than Casmard and Vallain combined could bring up. So he’d probably simply become the next Askab, with no other change in the proceedings.”
“The Stone he’s the Servant of is presumably the Stone of Wirolla, where they cut out people’s hearts?”
“Yes.”
“And the House of Wirolla, where they’ll be holding the ceremonial dinner we’re supposed to attend—that’s where the Stone is?”
“Yes,” Telzey said. “I got that from Hatzel. Big black hall. The Regent’s table stands right across from the Stone.”
“Should be a great dinner party for ghouls!” Trigger said after a moment.
“Well, it all seems part of their local religion or whatever you want to call it.”
In a closet of their room they found games, provided for the entertainment of guests. They were unfamiliar and looked complicated enough to be interesting. They set up one designed for two players. It was cover—Telzey would be mentally active on other levels.
Hatzel’s shield had been opening regularly on schedule. She’d caught the opening a few times, checked him out briefly. There was nothing of interest there at present. She’d dropped her contacts with the unprotected minds in Sams’s group. They had no immediate value.
She spent a little time hunting around for traces of the navigator of Casmard’s space yacht, located him finally and told Trigger, “Kewen’s not in the palace any more. He’s been transferred to the place they keep the criminals they’ll start feeding into the arena games tomorrow. That’s what’s scheduled for him.” Trigger looked startled. “Does he know it?”
“He knows, but I sort of tranquilized him this morning after I picked him up. It isn’t bothering him.”
“It bothers me,” Trigger said. “Of course, he might last longer than the rest of us, at that.”
“Yes. And if we get out of it, we should be able to get him out.”
A palace courier had announced himself discreetly at the door half an hour after they’d returned to their room, and handed them a formal invitation from the Regent. They would be sitting at his table during dinner in the House of Wirolla that night.
Telzey spent the remaining hours scanning the minds in the palace and its vicinity. There were many she could have entered without much trouble, but finding minds that would be useful in the present situation was more difficult. Colonel Euran of the Palace Guard had been a primary target but turned out to be as thoroughly mind-shielded as the Regent and the Servant of the Stone. Telzey wasn’t too disappointed. Toru hardly would want someone in that position to be subject to hostile psychic influences.
She developed some selected contacts presently. There were others she would have preferred, but they couldn’t be made available to her quickly enough.
Then it was time to prepare themselves to be taken to the House of Wirolla. It was one of the buildings on the Palace grounds, serving both as a personal palace for the Servant and as a temple for the Stone.
VII
The ceremonial hall in the House of Wirolla lived up to Trigger’s expectation that it might have made a good place for the festivities of ghouls. Walls, ceiling and floor were of black stone. On the lower level, the only light was provided by torches flaring sullenly from the walls and along the tables, where the top rank of Tamandun’s nobility and dignitaries dined tonight. It was separated from the upper level by a flight of low stairs, running the width of the hall.
On the upper level, there was light. The curved table of the Regent stood there by itself, the Regent’s honor guests seated along the outer edge of the curve. The arrangement provided them with a good view of the Stone of Wirolla on the far side of the hall. The Stone was huge and seemed almost formless, while somehow suggesting a hunkered shape which could have been human as much as Wirollan. It was gray-green, and there was an indication of scales over parts of its surface. A thick hollowed projection near the lower end might represent a pair of cupped and waiting hands. Supposedly, the Stone had been in the Hub for some centuries, having been found on the destroyed flagship of a Wirollan war fleet. But the early part of its history was uncertain.
Nowadays, at any rate, it represented a deity, or demon, who periodically indicated an appetite for human sacrifices. Traditionally, it should indicate that appetite tonight. The circumstances didn’t make for light-hearted dinner conversation, but most of those who sat along the curving table, Casmard and Vallain among them, hadn’t seemed much affected. Hatzel, three seats from Telzey, ate in stolid silence. From the lower level came an indistinct sound of voices. Glory Day music washed through the air, incongruously bright and brisk.
Weapons weren’t allowed in the hall. But guns pointed through concealed openings in the three walls of the upper level; and the Palace Guards who held them had every section of both levels under observation in scanners.
Three of those Palace Guards and their guns were now Telzey’s. The Regent’s guard dog, a great arena hound standing twelve feet back of its master’s chair, was nearly hers. It was, at any rate, no longer the Regent’s.
It wasn’t till dinner drew near its end that tensions began to be noticeable. At last, Telzey became aware of a faint tremor in the stone floor under her feet, in the chair on which she sat. It continued only a moment; but when it stopped, all talk had ended and the music had faded away.
Now the tremor returned, grew stronger, swelled into an earthquake shuddering. Again it lasted only a few seconds. By then, no one near Telzey was stirring. She found herself holding her breath, released it. A third time it came, accompanied by a distant roaring sound, suggesting a blurred giant voice. As that stopped, a low black table was rising out of the floor before the Stone of Wirolla. Two gray-clothed men, gray masks covering
their faces, came out from behind the Stone on either side and stopped at the ends of the table, ropes held in their hands.
Lord Ormota, Servant of the Stone, got to his feet and strode out in front of the Regent’s table. He raised his arms, and his amplified voice sounded deeply through the hall.
“The Stone of Wirolla will take two hearts tonight!”
Ormota paused, bearded face turned up in an attitude of listening. The roaring sound came again; the black hall shook, and grew still. Ormota turned toward the Regent.
“Two traitors to Tamandun sit with the Regent Toru tonight, believing themselves unknown! The Stone of Wirolla will point them out and receive their hearts.”
Two traitors? Vallain, whose face had paled at last, must be one. The other? Telzey had seen in Casmard’s mind that while his poisoner had found no opportunity to practice his arts on the Regent, he’d at least aroused no suspicions. But perhaps Casmard was mistaken in that. Or perhaps—
Telzey’s thoughts broke off. Out of the hollowed projection on the Stone a black object like a cane or wand floated up into sight. It lifted swiftly into the air, impelled by a mechanism which Ormota presumably controlled. It hung quivering for a moment in the center of the upper level of the hall. Then, emitting a high singing note, it drifted down toward the Regent’s table, swinging left and right like a compass needle. No one moved at the table; but there was an expectant stirring on the lower level, as diners shifted about to have a better view at the instant the Stone’s device would indicate the night’s sacrifices.
It came closer, still swinging back and forth along the curve of the table. Then, the singing note surging shrilly upward, it halted, pointed at Hatzel.
Telzey felt the shock of utter surprise in Hatzel’s mind, saw for an instant a look of incredulous consternation on Ormota’s face.
The wand vanished.
There was a crystal shattering against the face of the Stone. Black shards clattered down into the hollow below. The Regent Toru staggered half up out of his chair, eyes and mouth grotesquely distended, made a groaning sound and went over backward with the chair. Ormota clutched his chest, looked for a moment as if he were trying to scream, collapsed in turn.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 230