by Andre Norton
There was liquid in the jug, my hope and fear concerning which had warred all during my crawl. It was not water alone, for it had a sharp, sour taste which drew mouth tissues. But I drank, for I would have lapped up far worse and thought it wine at the moment.
Though I tried to limit myself sanely once the water was on my tongue, easing the dry torment of my mouth and throat, it took all my will power to put the jug aside while liquid still sloshed in it.
My head was clearing and, after a short time, I was able to move without bringing on a giddy attack. Perhaps the odd taste in the water had been that of a drug or stimulant. Finally I lurched along the wall to the slit of window, to see what lay without.
There was sun there, though its rays reached me only as a kind of twilight. And my field of vision was exceedingly narrow. Some distance away was a gray reach of solid wall that resembled any fortress of Yiktor. There was nothing else, save pavement which must run from the base of the building in which I was imprisoned to that wall.
Then a man passed across my slip of outer world. He did not linger, but I glimpsed enough to know that he was a sword-sworn of some lord, for he went in mail and helm and had a surcoat of yellow bearing a black device. I could not see the manner of that device, nor would I have been able to read it, the intricate heraldry of Yiktor not being one of the matters of Trader concern.
Yet—yellow and black—I had seen that combination of colors before. I leaned against the wall and tried to remember where and when. Color ... the last time I had thought about color—silver and ruby—Maelen's costume—the pink-gray of her banner which had exerted such an odd influence—the banners of the other amusement places—Amusement places—the searing red and green of the gambling tent that had done more than beckon—it had screamed!
The gambling tent! Half memory sharpened into a mental picture ... Gauk Slafid at the table, the piles of counters heaped into small towers of luck, and to his left the young noble who had watched me so intently as I passed with Maelen. He had worn a surcoat, too, glistening half silk of a forceful yellow—and the breast of it had borne a house badge outlined and stitched in black. But the bits and pieces I now held could not be fitted into any recognizable pattern.
Any quarrel with a native of Yiktor was with Othelm, not with the young man in black and yellow. I could not see a logical alliance between two such widely separated people. The beast seller would have no call upon a lord's protection. My knowledge of Yiktorian customs was as complete as Trader tapes could make it, but no one could absorb the fine nuances of social life and custom on an alien world without years of intensive study. It might well be that the brush with Othelm had led to my present predicament.
Wherever I now was, it was not within the boundaries of the fair. That was astonishing. I could remember part of a journey by kas back which meant, I was sure, that I had not been taken into Yrjar. But I had been forcibly removed from the jurisdiction of the fair court, which was so bald a refutation of all we knew of custom that it was hard to believe it had happened. Those who had so snatched me, as well as he who gave the order for it and any who conspired with him to bring it about, were to be outlawed without question as soon as the fact of my disappearance was known.
What made me worth such a desperate price? Only time and my captors could supply the answer. But it would seem that they were in no hurry, for the hours crept by and no one came near me. I was hungry, very hungry, and though I tried to ration what remained of the water I finished it and then knew thirst again. The dim light went with the day, and the night washed in, to drown me in waves of shadow.
I sat with my back against the wall, facing the ramp down which I had been pushed, trying to make my ears supply information. Now and again some sound, distorted and muffled, reached from beyond the slit window. Then came the call of a horn, perhaps announcing some arrival. I got to my feet again and felt my way back to the window. There was the beam of a lantern flashing across the outer wall, and I heard voices. Then a body of men crossed my line of vision, one wearing the cloak of a noble a step or two in advance of the other three.
Not too long afterward there was the sound of metal striking metal at the top of the ramp. Hearing it, some ill-defined need sent me back along the wall to my old position facing the upper door. Light thrust down, powerful enough to blind me, to hide those behind it. Only when they came down into my cell could I see a little through the glare.
It was the same party that had passed by the window. Now I was also able to identify the noble as the young man from the gambling tent.
There is a trick, so old as to be threadbare, but I held to it now. Remain silent, let your opponent speak first. So I did not burst out with any demand for an explanation, only studied them carefully as well as I could see them, determined to outwait their patience.
Two of the men hurried to draw the bench away from the wall, and the lord sat down as one to whom ease of body was his just due. The third follower hung the lantern on a wall hook to my left, and from that position it gave equal light to us all.
"You!" I do not know whether my silence had surprised the lord or not, but I thought I read irritation in his tone. "Know you who I am?"
This was the classic opening between Yiktorian rivals, a chanting of names and titles intended to impress a possible enemy with the weight of one's own reputation.
When I did not answer he scowled, leaning forward, his fists planted on his knees, his elbows angled out.
"This is the Lord Osokun, first son to the Lord Oskold, Shield of Yenlade and Yuxisome." The man who still stood beneath the lantern chanted in the voice of a professional battle herald.
The names, son or father, meant nothing to me, even the lands they represented were unknown. I remained silent. And I did not see any gesture from Osokun, nor did he give any order. But one of his bully boys leaped at me and slapped my face with his open hand, sending my head thumping back against the wall with a pain so intense that I almost fainted. Only will kept me swaying on my feet, and by will I tried to hold to a halfway clear mind. So it was going to be that way? Whatever they wanted of me they were prepared to gain by force.
And what they wanted Osokun made clear in a rush of words.
"You have weapons, knowledge, off-world skulker. Both you will give to me, if not one way, then another."
For the first time I made answer, my lips swelling from the blow.
"Did you find such arms on me?" I gave him no title of courtesy.
He laughed. "No, your captain was too clever. But you have the knowledge. And if he would see you again, we shall have the weapons also, within a short time."
"If you know anything about the Traders, you also know that we are mind-locked against such disclosures planetside."
His smile grew wider. "So I have heard. But each world has its own secrets, as you must also be aware. We have a few keys to open such locks. If they do not work, a pity. But your captain has a bargain to consider, which he shall be doing shortly. As for the rest—Get to it!" His last order had the snap of a riding whip.
I do not want to remember what happened thereafter in that stone-walled room. Those who took part in the questioning were indeed experts in their line. I do not know whether Osokun really believed that I could, if I would, reveal what he wanted to know, or if some monstrous compulsion drove him to enjoy such an occupation for its own sake. Much of it was afterward gone from me, past recalling. An esper, even to the smaller degree, can shut off parts of consciousness to save the balance of one's mind.
They could not have learned anything to their value. And they were expert enough in their dirty employment not to maim me permanently. But I was not aware of their going, nor of anything else for a period of time. And when pain again roused me, there was once more wan day beyond the window. The bench was back against the wall, and on it sat once again the jug, and this time with it a plate bearing a mass of something congealed in cold fat.
I crawled to that sustenance. I drank and felt the rest
orative of the bitter water, but I sat for a long space before I could make myself try the food. Only the knowledge that I must have strength of body for the future made me choke it down, nauseous as it was.
This much I knew: I had been kidnapped by Osokun, who hoped to exchange me for weapons and information—doubtless that he might use both in a bid for a kingdom. The boldness of this act meant that he either had backing so powerful as to set aside the laws of the fair, or else that he hoped to make his bid with such rapidity that the authorities would not have time to move against him. The recklessness of his act was so near the borderline of utter folly that I could not believe he meant it. Yet I had only the past hours here to realize that he had already far overstepped all bounds and could only keep on the same dangerous way. There was no turning back.
That Captain Foss would buy me with the price Osokun asked was impossible. Though the Traders were close knit, and one of their main rules was loyalty to one another, the Lydis, her crew, and the whole good fame of the Free Traders could not and would not be risked for the life of a single man. All Foss could do would be to turn to the machinery of the Yiktorian law.
Did he know where I was? What had the raiders done with Lalfarns? If our tube man had escaped, Foss must have already learned that I had been taken, and could have set in action all countermoves.
But I must depend not on vain hope but on my own efforts now. I had to think and think clearly.
Chapter 6
Now was I driven to loose a mind-search, exhausting as that could be. For this was the place and time in which only desperate methods were left. Since thought-seek operates differently between races and species, I could not hope for any open message, perhaps nothing at all. It was as if I tried to monitor a band of communication so high or so low that my pickup caught only an indistinct pattern. No words, no clear thoughts, but what did come was fear. So sharp at times was that emotion that I believed those who broadcast it did so in peril.
Prick here, prick there, perhaps each prick signaled the emotions of a different defender of this fort. I raised my head to look at the pale window slit, then I crept to it to listen. But there were no sounds without. I pulled myself up to peer through. Day, yes, even a small strip of sunlight on the other wall. All was very quiet.
Again I closed my eyes to the light, strove to thought-seek, to fasten on one of those fear-pricks enough to read the source of that unease. Most of them still swam in and out beyond my catching. I found one near to the very door which guarded my prison, however, or so I thought. And into that I probed with all the effort I could summon.
It was as if I tried to read a fogged tape which was not only overexposed but also composed of alien symbols. Emotion, yes, one could feel that, for basic emotions remain the same from species to species. All living creatures know fear, hate, happiness—though the sources or reasons for these feelings may be very different. And of the common emotions fear and hate are the strongest, the easiest to pick up.
The fear that rode minds here was growing, and intermingled with it was anger. But the anger was weak, much overborne by the fear. Why? What?
My teeth closed upon my underlip, I gave all my remaining strength to the need for discovery. Fear ... of something ... someone ... not present ... coming? Need ... need to get rid ... rid of me! That breakthrough came so sharply that I straightened as if to meet a physical blow. Yet there was no one there to deliver it. But I knew as well as if it had been shouted aloud that my presence here was the cause of fear. Osokun? No, I did not believe that the lord who had tried to impress his will in this cell had had such a forceful change of attitude.
Prick, prick ... I readied my mind, pushed aside amazement, went back to the patient mining of those incomprehensible thoughts. Prisoner—danger—Not my present danger, no—but as a prisoner here I was a danger to the thinker. Perhaps Osokun had so overstepped the laws of Yiktor that those who aided him, or obeyed his orders, had every reason to fear future consequences.
Dared I try a countersuggestion? Fear pushed too far erupts in violence in many men. If I added to that fear in the mind I had tapped and concentrated upon, I might well bring a sword to my own end. I weighed one thing against another while holding the link between us.
What I decided upon was perhaps so thin a chance that it already lay under the shadow of failure. For I attempted to set in that wavery mind-pattern the thought that with the prisoner gone there would be no fear, and that the prisoner must fare forth alive not dead. In the simplest pattern I could devise, and the most emphatic, I sent that thought-beam along the linkage.
At the same time I edged along the wall to the ramp which gave entrance to this place. I stopped only to pick up the jug, drank the remainder of its contents, and then grasped it tightly in my hand. I tried to remember how the door above opened, though my eyes had been dazzled when Osokun had come that way. Outward—surely outward!
Now I was halfway up the ramp, braced, waiting ...
Free the prisoner ... no more fear ... free the prisoner ...
Stronger—he must be moving toward me! Now—the rest would depend upon fortune alone. And when one sets his life on such scales it is a fearsome thing.
I heard the click of metal against metal—the door—I raised the jug—Now!
The door swung back and I threw outward not only the water container but also a blast of fear, directed down the link between mind and mind. I heard a cry from the figure silhouetted against the light. The jug struck against his head and he staggered back.
I scrambled up, putting all my weakening force into that dash, reaching and passing the door. The light was dazzling even in this inner corridor, but the man who had unlocked the door was slumped against the opposite wall, his hands to his face, and between his fingers trickled blood. He was moaning.
My first thought was for his sword. I staggered to him, making his weapon mine. Even to have an unfamiliar weapon in hand bolstered my confidence. He did not fight me. I thought afterward that the blast of fear had struck his mind a far greater and incapacitating blow than the shattered jug had inflicted on his body.
With a roll of shoulder, a thrust of arm, I sent him down into the pit from which I had climbed. He had most thoughtfully left the lock rod still in the door and that I turned swiftly and withdrew to take along.
So much I did before I looked around. The light here, while stinging my dark-orientated eyes, was, I thought, after a moment or two of blinking adjustment, perhaps that of late afternoon. How long I had lain below I did not know, the passing of days and nights had escaped me.
But for the moment, at least, the hall in which I stood was empty. I had made no plans beyond this instant. All I could do was try to reach the open, though I might not have such good fortune in another meeting with any member of the garrison. Mind-seek was too thin to use for scouting. I had tried my esper talent to the full when I had drawn upon it to unlock my cell. What I did now must be accomplished largely by physical means alone, and the weapon I carried was strange to me.
I staggered along the corridor, ever listening for any sound which might herald the coming of another. There was a sharp bend where another narrow window slit gave light. I paused there to look out.
Again I saw a small piece of courtyard bounded by a wall. And this showed me a portion of gate, now shut—such a portal as would serve a large party. If that was the only way out of this place, I tasted defeat indeed.
At the jog in the corridor the way turned left. Doors opened along it and for the first time I heard voices. However, there was no other way out save this. With my shoulder against the wall, a bared untried sword in my hand, I began my journey.
The first two doors, recessed in the thickness of the wall, were closed, for which I would have given devout thanks had I been able to spare any relaxation of concentration. Though I knew my esper was at a very low ebb, I tried to use its remnants to feel out any life ahead.
So faint a flickering. I already knew from the sound of voices that
there were at least two in one of those rooms, and mind-seek confirmed this. But there could be a dozen more and I would not pick them up now. I shuffled along. The voices grew louder, I could make out separate words, but in another tongue. By the sharpness of the tone I thought they were quarreling.
Brighter light, cutting from a half-open door across the corridor. I halted to study the door. Like that of the cell, it opened outward and it was more than half closed. The lock looked the same as that of the prison, some inner system which was made secure by a rod inserted in a hole and turned. My left hand went to the one I carried. Could it be that the same one might be used successfully here?
First, could the door be entirely closed without arousing those within? I dared not show myself in the open space to see what or who were there. But the voices had reached close to the shouting point, and I hoped they were so engrossed that my next move would go unnoticed.
I put the sword in my belt, took the rod in my right hand. The left I placed palm-flat against the surface of the door and gave it a gentle push. But no such easy touch would work with this ponderous slab, I discovered. It needed shoulder muscles to move it. I waited tensely for some betraying creak, some lull in the conversation, to tell me that I had made the wrong choice.